UTK Special - Joe Morgan

Why I Think of Joe Morgan Differently

Joe Morgan passed away today. He was 77 years old.

You might remember him as the arm pumping second baseman for the Reds. You might remember him as the oft-infuriating announcer for years on ESPN’s biggest baseball games. Some inside the game might remember him as a fiercely loyal advocate for the causes he believed in, especially when it involved his friends or pushing for more African-Americans in the game. The last time I saw him was at the Civil Rights Game in Cincinnati. He loved the idea of having it there.

But I think of him differently. For me, Joe Morgan was one of the first baseball greats that I spoke to and who spoke to me. When I first started writing about baseball twenty years ago, the idea that someone like Morgan would send me an email or call seemed ridiculous and at times, it still does.

It probably surprises people that Morgan was an early subscriber to my newsletter. He told me Peter Gammons mentioned it at a production meeting and he signed up. It took a couple emails before I realized who the person was behind the email — it wasn’t as simple as “JoeMorgan@aol.com”. It will surprise more that Morgan read Baseball Prospectus, but he did. He read a lot of things, though he told me he didn’t agree with a lot of the conclusions. He was as old school as he seemed when it came to baseball.

It’s one call I remember most. I’d spoken to a source about a possible waiver claim a team had made when they off-handedly mentioned that Pete Rose was getting back into baseball. To confirm it, I emailed Morgan. About ten minutes later, he called me on the phone. He was angry and wanted to know who was leaking this. After a bit, he confirmed to me that he and a couple others had met with Bud Selig and had brokered meetings for Rose, ending in an agreement for him to return.

He told me that Rose had been punished enough and that getting him back in the game would be a better lesson to people. He strongly believed Rose should be in the Hall of Fame and wanted Rose’s plaque “near mine,” I remember him saying. The phone call lasted maybe five minutes and at the end, I asked if he would go on the record about it.

He paused and said no, the meetings had been secret. “If you won’t tell me your source,” he said, referring to my original, “then I guess you won’t tell anyone I told you either.”

Aside from a few colleagues, I never did.

After we got a tertiary source from another writer at Prospectus, we ended up running the story. Rose still blames me for him not getting back in and I’ll take that. I didn’t agree with Morgan’s view on his former teammate and I still don’t. I didn’t agree with a lot of things Morgan said on air, but in our conversations, he was always willing to listen, something I wish more people did these days.

I hope that Morgan’s in the Good Place today.