For Jayson Stark, the journey from The Inquirer to Cooperstown is paved with characters | Bob Brookover

Cover baseball for 40 years and you are bound to have some great stories to tell. Cover baseball the way Jayson Stark has for 40 years and you will also have some of the most unusual and hilarious stories ever told about the game.

Stark, who spent 21 years (1979 to 2000) covering the game for The Inquirer, will surely tell some of those strange but true tales late Saturday afternoon at baseball’s most hallowed site, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. With his wife, Lisa, and three children (Steven, Jessica, and Hali) in attendance, he will receive the 70th J.G. Taylor Spink Award for his “meritorious contribution to baseball writing” during a ceremony at Doubleday Field.

Stark’s speech figures to be a career in review, tales of the oddball characters that contributed to the Week in Review baseball column that he created at The Inquirer in 1983 and continues to write to this day with The Athletic.

You’re sure to hear some Kiner-isms, the many malaprops that lovable Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner used to blurt out on the air. You’re sure to hear about a Frenchman who lived within Sammy Sosa launching distance of Wrigley Field in the mid-1990s. You’re sure to laugh a lot, which is what attracted Stark to the world of sportswriting and baseball right around the time he was reaching puberty.

“This is a totally true story,” Stark said during a recent two-hour lunch near his home in Bucks County. “I dreamed of being a baseball writer from the time I was old enough to dream about being anything.”

Even a fellow baseball writer knows that’s a little weird.

“My mom was a writer, so she thought it was the most awesome thing ever,” Stark said. “My dad definitely thought it was weird. But I would literally go to games as a kid with my binoculars, turn around, and look at the press box trying to figure out what everybody was doing up there. I just thought it was the coolest job ever.”

It made sense that Stark’s mother supported her son’s writing pursuit. June Herder Stark was a writer. She worked at the Philadelphia Record and later edited the Philadelphia edition of Where magazine.

Stark said his mother religiously read the Philadelphia Bulletin and Inquirer from cover to cover, and whenever she saw a sports story that she thought was well written she showed it to her son.

Stark’s father, Ed, was an electronic engineer at General Electric who worked on the space program. Perhaps that is where Jayson’s penchant for extracting the most unconventional of baseball statistics came from.

The Starks lived in Northeast Philadelphia and Jayson went to Lincoln High School, class of 1969. During his days at Lincoln, he became pen pals with Stan Hochman, the late, great Daily News baseball writer and sports columnist.

“One of the greatest things that ever happened to me was that after I decided I wanted to be a sportswriter, I would write to guys like Hochman and Stan would always write me back,” Stark said. “I’m sure he had no idea what that meant to me, but that was oxygen. It was premium gas in the tank and it got me going.”

I dreamed of being a baseball writer from the time I was old enough to dream about being anything.

Stark did not want to know about Dick Allen, Cookie Rojas, or any of the other prominent Phillies of that era.

“I was inquisitive about the business,” he said. “I would write to him about the job and the profession and he would answer my questions. I remember one time asking him about ethics in sportswriting and whether he had a policy on taking gifts or being friends with players and he wrote this: ‘You know there are some guys you could buy out with a cookie. I’m not that guy.’ ”

There were other influences as well, most notably the Daily News’ Bill Conlin and Peter Gammons of the Boston Globe.

“Bill Conlin wrote about baseball and covered baseball in a way that other people didn’t,” Stark said. “I would read his stuff and say, ‘What made that lead so good? What question did he ask to get that quote?’ I would read Gammons and say, ‘How did he ever get that stat? Or he must know everybody to hear that story.’ ”

Stark took his self-propelled education in sportswriting in general and baseball writing in particular to Syracuse University in 1969 and promptly became a news editor at The Daily Orange.

“And then I worked in news [at the Providence Journal] right after I got out of college,” Stark said. "I thought I should do something serious and then I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ I wormed my way into the sports department.”

In Providence, Stark wore a lot of different hats, backing up on the Red Sox and Patriots beats while also covering archery, husband-and-wife golf tournaments, and sailing. Those experiences taught him that he wanted to be a baseball writer.

Conveniently, his friend Larry Eichel was the Phillies’ beat writer at The Inquirer in 1978 and had no intention of being the Phillies’ beat writer in 1979. He encouraged Stark to apply for the job.

The same day he got a rejection letter from the newspaper, Stark received a phone call from Eichel telling him that the Inquirer editors loved him, a mixed message if there ever was one. Eichel made a call, Stark got an interview and then the job of his childhood dreams.

He believes the clip that got him the job was a column he wrote about the infamous 1978 Boston Red Sox in which he wondered as a Philadelphian when the choking would begin. The answer, of course, was September.

I walked out of there thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to cover the Phillies for the Philadelphia Inquirer.’ It was one of the coolest moments of my entire life.

“They read that column and they thought, ‘This is exactly who we’re looking for,’ ” Stark said. “He’s a good writer, he’s funny, and he knows Philadelphia.’ They were sold. I walked out of there thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to cover the Phillies for the Philadelphia Inquirer.’ It was one of the coolest moments of my entire life.

"I’ve had this thought a lot since then, but who winds up doing exactly what they always dreamed of doing from the time they were 10 years old? Me. It happened. That was the beginning of it all.”

Stark discovered in a hurry that joining the first great era of Phillies baseball already in progress would not be all giggles and laughs.

“The writer-player climate wasn’t that fuzzy,” Stark said. “The best player on the team [Steve Carlton] didn’t speak to any of us and told everybody in the clubhouse that we were the enemy, so that wasn’t very conducive to making it a love-fest.

" Also, 1979 was a weird year. They had signed Pete Rose and this was going to be the year. They got off to an incredible start and then it was not the year and nobody was happy. The manager got fired and players were just looking for people to be angry at and we made for convenient targets.

“I was somebody who was used to getting along with everybody … and then walking into that environment toughened me up."

» READ MORE: ’77 Phillies won 101 games but took just 10 minutes to collapse

It also provided him with some classic stories, but not the kind you’d necessarily always read about in the newspaper.

One involved former Phillies reliever Dickie Noles, best known for his high-and-tight fastball that nearly hit George Brett in the 1980 World Series. Like Brett, Stark also has a story about how he was almost hit by Noles.

“I’m in a scrum around his locker after the game and I ask a question,” Stark said. “He acts like he didn’t hear it. A minute later, I ask another question, and he acts like I’m invisible.”

The conversation quickly grew heated.

Stark: “What’s your problem?”

Noles: “What’s your [expletive] problem?”

Stark: “I want to know why you’re not answering any of my questions.”

Noles: “I’m not answering any of your questions because I’m not talking to you. I haven’t talked to you all year.”

Stark: “You talked to me last week. You’re nuts.”

Noles lunged at Stark and threw a punch that did not land.

“I ducked out of the way, players grabbed him, and nothing came out of it, but we almost had a fistfight over whether he was talking to me or not,” Stark said.

Noles, one of the nicest men you’ll ever meet, did apologize, but not until March of this year.

“I was in Phillies camp one day and here comes Dickie Noles,” Stark said. “He says to me, ‘Did I once throw a punch at you?’ He said, ‘I don’t remember ever doing that.’ I said, ‘Dickie, yeah, you did. It’s not the kind of thing you forget. But it’s fine.’ He said, ‘No, it’s not fine. I was a mess back then. You’re a great guy, you’re really great at your job and if I did that to you, I’m sorry.'

"One of the funny things about winning this award is that he’s not the only Phillies player from that era who has come up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry for the way I treated you.’ It’s pretty crazy, but cool in its own way. It has come around.”

Stark’s most famous clubhouse episode came in 1981 shortly after baseball returned from a nearly two-month long strike. Manager Dallas Green was not happy for a lot of reasons, including the fact that his team had no motivation to play the final seven weeks because they were already in the postseason.

“I loved covering Dallas,” Stark said. “Nobody I ever covered left the imprint on me that Dallas did. We had a good relationship and my role in the whole writers-manager dynamic was I could make him laugh when he was in one of those moods.”

Green was in one of those moods three days after play had resumed in August 1981. He thought a lot of his position players had returned from the strike out of shape, but he hoped that the Phillies pitching could carry the team for a while. And then the Phillies gave up 23 runs in their first three games after the strike and they lost the third game, 11-3, to St. Louis.

“We got into the office, we looked at Dallas’ face and I don’t think anybody said a word for over a minute,” Stark said. “So I was Mr. Lighten the Mood and my job was to break the ice, so I thought, let’s go that route.”

Stark’s question: “You think this means the pitchers aren’t ahead of the hitters anymore?”

“And then off he went for over three minutes and you can find the transcript online, but there were 42 words you won’t be able to print in the newspaper,” Stark said.

Green’s answer was quite a bit longer, but it started with “ -- you, Jayson.”

Stark tried to print them the best he could. Here’s a brief excerpt:

I’m sick and tired of you writing about how the bleeping ballplayers are going to bleeping quit on you. The bleeping ballplayers won’t quit unless you guys keep hammering it in all their bleeping heads all the time. We’re not a bleeping bunch of bleeping quitters. We didn’t bleeping quit on you any time last year, and we ain’t going to quit on you any bleeping time in 1981, either. I didn’t bleeping enjoy that bleeping mess out there any more than you did. And I don’t know too many bleeping ballplayers who enjoyed it, either.

Fast-forward to the end of the season and Green is egging Stark on to ask another question that will set him off. Stark does not bite, but another writer – Ralph Bernstein of the Associated Press -- does.

“Come on, Ralph, that’s worse than that question Jayson asked me,” Green said. “And Ralph, playing right into his hands, says, ‘What question was that?’

"Now Dallas starts digging into his desk and he pulls out something and he fires it across the room at me. I open it up and it’s a T-shirt that says, ‘-- you, Jayson.’ I still have it. We were bonded by that diatribe forever. We always got a laugh out of it. I’d see him and he’d greet me by saying, ‘-- you, Jayson.’ ”

“I didn’t want to do it the same way,” Stark said. “I mentioned when I was a kid one of the things that struck me about the way sportswriters wrote was they were funny, they were entertaining, and they found players that were entertaining. They found stuff that went on all the time that was fun and funny and that was the stuff I wanted to write about and so that is what Week in Review became.”

Stark has a terrific international story, too. In the winter of 1983, he accompanied general manager Paul Owens and manager Pat Corrales to Maracaibo, Venezuela, to see some Phillies players. The Pope was feeling particularly good about his team that winter and he was feeling particularly good that night.

“We’re in a restaurant in Maracaibo and refreshments were being served,” Stark said. “I was sitting at one end of the table talking to Pat and the Pope was at the other end of the table and, again, he had a few refreshments. Every once in a while I’d hear the Pope say something like, ‘And if my manager can’t win with this team he’s bleeping horsebleep. Two, three, four times he was talking about how good his team was and he was getting louder each time.”

Corrales’ ears were functioning just fine.

“Finally, after the third or fourth time, Pat popped out of his seat,” Stark said. “Pope pops up and I thought, ‘Oh, no, we have an international incident breaking out right in front of my eyes.’

“I just backed out of the way and they started this kung fu, karate kick fight in the middle of the finest restaurant in Maracaibo and I’m standing there with these two Venezuelan scouts that they had just hired and I was trying to reassure them in my limited Español that it’s fine and they really love each other. ‘Muy bien. No problemo.’ So it went on for a few minutes, then they both burst into laughter and that was that.”

Well, except for the part where Corrales got fired with the Phillies tied for first place after 85 games. Owens, of course, took over and the Phillies reached their second World Series in four years.

Peter Pascarelli had been hired by The Inquirer in 1982 with the idea that he would take over the Phillies beat in 1983. The Inquirer editors asked Stark to continue the National League and American League Week in Review column that Pascarelli had written in 1982 and Stark agreed -- sort of.

He wanted to create his own niche and he got the blessing of his editors. Stark recruited a cast of colorful characters to lighten the mood of Week in Review. Some of the regulars were Pittsburgh pitching coach Rich Donnelly, Houston utility man Casey Candaele, Phillies reliever Larry Andersen, Phillies outfielder Doug Glanville, Pittsburgh outfielder Andy Van Slyke, and Montreal Expos media relations director Richard Griffin.

Stark’s favorite character, however, was a Frenchmen named Philippe Guichoux. They met through the force of Sammy Sosa’s bat, which one day in 1996 cracked a ball that crashed through an apartment window on Waveland Avenue just across the street from Wrigley Field.

“I have to find the guy who lives there,” was Stark’s immediate reaction. “It wasn’t easy. It took me like three days … and it turned out to be a guy from France. I talked to this guy and he had no idea what this baseball was doing in his house. He didn’t know a baseball from a beach ball.”

That seemed almost as weird as a 12-year-old boy wanting to be a baseball writer.

“I said, ‘Philippe when you moved into this apartment, you didn’t notice there was a big field across the street?’ ” Stark asked his new favorite Frenchman. “He said, ‘I knew there was a field across the street, but I never knew that baseballs could go out of the field.’

“That was my favorite thing ever doing that column and I kept in touch with the guy for like five years because he was a cool guy and every once in a while I’d find an excuse to call him and he joined the roving cast of characters I developed.”

One of Stark’s Week in Review staples was picking out and printing malaprops made on the air by New York Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner, who had been a Hall of Fame slugger with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“At first I did them because I noticed them myself,” Stark said. “But then people started sending them to me by the hundreds. I became the foremost curator of Ralph Kiner malaprops in America. I didn’t mean to do that. It just happened.

"I always felt a little funny about it, but Tim McCarver [one of Kiner’s broadcast partners] would reassure me that Ralph didn’t care at all. He understands it is part of his shtick. But I always felt a little funny.

“Then one day I get a call from a writer who tells me he is writing a book with Ralph and he wondered if I had any good Ralph Kiner malaprops. I said, ‘Wait a second, you’re writing a book with Ralph and you’re calling me.’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah, Ralph told me to call you. He said you had all the good ones.’ It was the ultimate validation, his very subtle stamp of approval.”

Stark left The Inquirer in 2000 for ESPN and he continued his Week in Review column while also making frequent appearances on the company’s multiple television and radio outlets.

“After I got to ESPN, a funny thing happened: The Phillies got good again and the Phillies won the World Series,” Stark said. “I covered every game of that postseason and after it was over, my daughter wanted to go to the parade. It was a pretty interesting trip because you couldn’t get there by car, which we found out after we tried to get there by car.

“After the parade is over and we’re on the Broad Street subway along with about 25,000 other people, a guy across the car catches my eye and he’s trying to wiggle his way across to get to me. When he gets to me, he bursts into tears and he hugs me and he says, ‘Thank you. Thanks for telling the story of this team the way we see it, the way Philadelphia sees it and not the way everybody else sees us.’

"I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a pretty cool moment.’ I didn’t work in Philadelphia anymore and I haven’t worked in Philadelphia for a really long time, but Philadelphia is such a big part of me and my life. I haven’t been a Philadelphia sportswriter for 19 years, but I’ll always be a Philadelphian.”

Get insights on the Phillies delivered straight to your inbox with Extra Innings, our newsletter for Phillies fans by Matt Breen, Bob Brookover and Scott Lauber. Click here to sign up.