Baseball Tonight

Happy Valentine's Day, ESPN! Did you hear the news about one of the smartest guys in Major League Baseball ever? Bobby Valentine is joining ESPN's Baseball Tonight as an analyst. How do I know that Bobby's so smart? He told me so. Me and every other sports fan in the New York metropolitan area when he was there as the New York Mets manager.

Seriously, though, Bobby V. is a very, very savvy baseball man. He was a player, a coach and a manager. He was the Mets manager during their last foray into the World Series. Remember the Subway Series, Yankees vs. Mets?

Peter Gammons has been off the air since suffering a brain aneurysm last June, and boy do I miss him. Don't get me wrong; Gammons' substitutes on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball have done a good job. But he was one of the few people on that program and on Baseball Tonight that you could trust to give insightful analysis and insider information that wasn't full of bluster, catch-phrases, and smugness.

So this is good news: According to ESPN, Gammons will return to the channel on a part-time basis, starting Wednesday night. He'll appear from Fenway Park for both the 6 PM SportsCenter and the 7 PM edition of Baseball Tonight. He will be scheduled for further appearances as he becomes more comfortable. Good to see Peter back, especially considering it's been less than three months since his surgery.

[Thanks to Tim UF for the tip.]

After news leaked that ESPN baseball analyst Harold Reynolds -- one of the only guys on Baseball Tonight that wasn't a raving lunatic -- was let go by the network after 11 years, there was speculation that he got pink-slipped because of one too many incidents of sexual harassment. There was other speculation that he got in a shouting match with BT producers over the show's continuing obsession with the woes of Yankee star Alex Rodriguez. But Reynolds and the network weren't talking.

Until today. This morning, Reynolds confirmed to the New York Post that he indeed was fired for sexual harassment reasons, over what he deemed a misunderstanding. "To be honest with you, I gave a woman a hug and I felt like it was misinterpreted," he tells Andrew Marchand. He also hopes to straighten things out with The Worldwide Leader and come back to fulfill the six-year contract he signed earlier this year. Deadspin, though, cited a blog that said that this was the latest in what was a string of incidents, so we may not be seeing Reynolds argue with John Kruk about on-base percentage anytime soon.

ESPN correspondent and sportswriter Peter Gammons suffered a brain aneurysm earlier today at his Cape Cod home, and is currently in intensive care after undergoing surgery.

Gammons was also a writer for The Boston Globe and Sports Ilustrated, then joined ESPN in 1990. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame last year. He can be seen talking about baseball on Baseball Tonight and other shows and segments.

[via TV Barn]