Gary Gillette
Gary Gillette is a baseball writer, author, and editor. He is co-editor of both the "ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia" and the "ESPN Football Encyclopedia". For both series of books, he partnered with noted statistician Pete Palmer, as well as writers Sean Lahman and Matt Silverman. He has been featured as a baseball commentator and analyst for several NPR radio stations, including WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, WKAR in East Lansing, Michigan, and Minnesota Public Radio. He also contributed to NBC Sports 1988 postseason baseball coverage. Gillette served in the role of team leader and lead reporter for Total Sports  for the first-ever live pitch-by-pitch baseball Webcasts at the College World Series (1997), at the World Series (1997), and at the MLB All-Star Game (1998). Gillette works as an expert witness on baseball-related litigation, as a consultant to insurance companies on player contract issues, and as an adviser to player agents on salary arbitration cases. From 1992 to 1997, Gillette was the president and owner of The Baseball Workshop, which operated a national stringer network covering Major League Baseball while producing and maintaining a unique set of baseball databases. In 1997, the Baseball Workshop merged  with Koz Sports and Baseball Ink to form Total Sports. Gillette served as vice president of Total Sports from 1997 to 1999. Beginning in 2005, Gillette has held the title of president for Hidden Game Sports/24-7 Baseball, a sports data research and management agency that represents the proprietors of comprehensive databases for Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball, Professional Football, Professional Basketball, and Professional Hockey. (24-7 Baseball, L.L.C., became part of Hidden Game Sports in 2012.) These professional-grade sports databases have been licensed to many clients, including major media organizations like ESPN, Sports-Reference.com, SportRadar US, STATS LLC , and SportsTicker. Other clients include tech companies, sports game publishers, professional sports agents, insurance companies, university business schools and medical schools, and nonprofit organizations. Baseball Preservation Efforts. In 2012, Gillette founded Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and preserving historic Hamtramck Stadium, ensuring its future through educational, cultural, and recreational programming honoring the history of Negro league baseball and amateur sports in Hamtramck and Detroit. Gillette has served in the role of president/chair. He led the effort to have Hamtramck Stadium listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012 and to have  a State of Michigan Historic Marker placed at the site in 2014. Currently, the organization is raising money for renovation of Hamtramck Stadium. Hamtramck Stadium was the recipient of a 2017 National Park Service African American Civil Rights Grant and a 2020 African American Cultural Heritage grant, both based upon detailed historical research undertaken by Gillette. From 2007-2017, he served as an officer and director of the nonprofit Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy. At first, the nonprofit organization was involved in the struggle to save Tiger Stadium, and then shifted its efforts to the redevelopment of the site of the  historic field at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull in Detroit. Other Distinctions. Gillette organized, hosted, and served as a panelist at the Detroit Negro Leagues Centennial Symposium, held in 2020. He is honored as an elector on the Sports Panel of the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame, a service he has performed since 2006.