Tim Kurkjian

Tim Kurkjian. Sports Journalism Fellows. The bond between Tim Kurkjian and baseball's Big Train runs deep. Kurkjian played basketball and baseball at Walter Johnson High School where he also wrote for the school newspaper, "The Pitch," and the yearbook, "The Windup." He has authoritatively called Johnson "the greatest pitcher of all time.", A Bethesda native, Kurkjian reported on local high school sports while a student at the University of Maryland. Stints covering the Texas Rangers for The Dallas Morning News and the Baltimore Orioles for The Baltimore Sun led to a senior writer position at Sports Illustrated from 1989 to 1997. In 1998, Kurkjian moved to ESPN as a reporter for Baseball Tonight and a senior writer. The author of three books on baseball, Kurkjian is widely regarded as a living encyclopedia of baseball. "Baseball is the only language we spoke in my family growing up," he explains., A great supporter of Bethesda Big Train baseball, Kurkjian agreed in 2020 to allow us to give the summer interns who broadcast our games, write our game stories, produce our social media, and photograph Big Train baseball the title "Tim Kurkjian Sports Journalism Fellows.", The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) selected Kurkjian for its Career Excellence Award, an award won by Shirley Povich in 1975, to be presented during the 2022 Hall of Fame Weekend in Cooperstown.