01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 28, 2006

BOSTON -- ESPN baseball analyst Peter Gammons, a pioneer first in print and later on television, was stricken with a brain aneurism yesterday morning.

Gammons left his summer home on Cape Cod yesterday morning to drive to a nearby gym to work out when he was stricken. He was airlifted to a Boston-area hospital, where he was treated last night. He was out of surgery by 9 p.m. and in intesive care. No further information was available.

Gammons, 61, is a Massachusetts native who began working at the Boston Globe soon after graduation from the University of North Carolina in 1968. He twice left the Globe to go to Sports Illustrated before joining ESPN in 1991.

Now in his fifth decade of covering baseball, his list of contacts and sources is seemingly inexhaustible. It's not uncommon for general managers to solicit his opinion on potential trades.

As a baseball writer for the Globe, Gammons helped to pioneer the concept of the Sunday "Notes" column, in which he assembled assorted anecdotes, developments and rumors, filling an entire page. Such columns are now standard in most newspapers.

He was also one of the first print reporters to make the leap from newspapers to television and radio. Gammons is a fixture on SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, and this year was added to the broadcast crew of ESPN Sunday Night Baseball.

Last summer, Gammons was named the winner of J.G. Taylor Spink Award, gaining him entrance into Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

-- SEAN McADAM

smcadam@projo.com / (401) 277-7340