Tom Gage

Detroit News Baseball Writer

Tom Gage

Tom Gage held a front-row seat for the most significant changes that Major League Baseball, the national pastime, has ever seen. Along the way, he stayed true to his beat and his values, becoming a pillar of modern baseball journalism and a treasured voice of the sport.

Born in Detroit, Gage documented his love of the game as a boy with typewritten stories based on baseball board games of the time. After college, he landed at the New Orleans Times Picayune in 1970.

Gage returned home in 1976 and by 1979 was the Tigers beat writer at The Detroit News. With future Hall of Famer Sparky Anderson as their manager, the Tigers were a journalist’s dream. Featuring a breezy style, Gage recorded it all, culminating in the Tigers’ 1984 World Series title.

Gage remained on the Tigers beat for 36 seasons, witnessing more than 5,000 games from spring training to the World Series, to the Tigers losing games at a historical clip. Upon retirement in 2015, he became a successful book author.

Gage is one of the most honored sports journalists in Michigan history: a 2015 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the highest honor of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America; 2016 induction into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame; the 2016 Dick Schaap Memorial Award for Excellence in Media from the Michigan Jewish Sports Foundation and the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists Detroit.

Married to Lisa, they have one son and two grandchildren.