Jeff Passan

Jeff Passan (born 1980 or 1981)^[1] is an American baseball sportswriter and author.

Jeff Passan
Passan in 2019
Born	1980 or 1981 (age 44–45) Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Alma mater	Syracuse University
Occupations	Sportswriter author
Years active	2004–present

Early life and education

Passan was born in Cleveland, Ohio.^[2] He is Jewish, and grew up attending Hebrew school three times a week.^[3] After graduating from Solon High School in suburban Cleveland, Passan attended the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where he wrote for The Daily Orange and graduated in 2002 with a degree in journalism.^[2][4]

Career

Passan began covering baseball in 2004 at The Kansas City Star,^[5] before moving to Yahoo! two years later. After 13 years at Yahoo! (2006–18), he announced that he was joining ESPN's baseball team in January 2019. In early 2022, Passan signed a four-year, $4 million contract extension with ESPN.^[6] While working at ESPN, he makes guest appearances on SportsCenter, Get Up, The Rich Eisen Show, The Pat McAfee Show and other ESPN studio shows.^[7]

In 2018, while working for Yahoo!, Passan refused to cast his ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame due to a letter that Joe Morgan wrote to the voters asking that steroid users be excluded.^[8] He has voiced negative opinions of the Baseball Hall of Fame due to its exclusion of players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens that were involved in performance-enhancing drug scandals.^[9]

Passan is the author of The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports,^[10] and the co-author of Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series.^[11]

Awards and recognition

Passan has been a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America since 2004, while he was at The Kansas City Star.^[12] The National Sports Media Association named Passan as the 2021 National Sportswriter of the Year.^[13] He won the award again in 2023.^[14]

Passan received the 2022 Dan Jenkins medal for Excellence in Sportswriting for his ESPN article, "San Francisco Giants Outfielder Drew Robinson's Remarkable Second Act."^[15]

Personal life

In 2023, Passan was struck by a falling tree limb after a storm, fracturing his back. He retained the use of his limbs and extremities.^[1][16]