Geoff Baker
| Geoff Baker | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 16, 1968 Montreal, Quebec |
| Residence | Seattle, Washington |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 1987–present |
Geoff Baker (born December 16, 1968) is an award-winning, Canadian-born journalist and media personality currently working as an investigative sports reporter and sports business columnist for The Seattle Times.
Baker currently resides in Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Amy.
Baker was born December 16, 1968, in Montreal, Quebec, and raised in the suburb of Laval, Quebec. A graduate of Chomedey High School, Baker played football for the Vanier College Cheetahs (CEGEP) 1987 provincial championship football team and attended training camp with the Concordia University Stingers as a slot receiver in 1989.
After summer internships at the Toronto Star and The Gazette in Montreal, Baker was hired full-time by The Gazette as a night police reporter in 1991.
In Canada, Baker won the country's National Newspaper Award three times in 1994 (spot news), 1997 (sports) and 2005 (sports) and was a top-three finalist in 1992 (spot news). The final award, in 2005, was for a series on steroids use by young baseball players in the Dominican Republic. Those stories also helped Baker become the first Canadian to win an Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) award in the highest-newspaper-circulation category.
Baker won a second APSE award, with the Seattle Times, in 2014 for a story about troubled indoor soccer owner Dion Earl. He has been a finalist for six other APSE prizes with the Times, in 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013,. and 2015.
Upon joining the Toronto Star in June 1998, Baker became aware that manager Tim Johnson had talked to players about serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and fighting overseas during the Vietnam War. But Baker knew Johnson had not served overseas and the manager quickly claimed he'd never told such stories to players or coaches. On Sept. 23, 1998, Baker wrote an initial story describing a rift amongst team coaches and a heated bar argument between them over Johnson's fake Vietnam stories. A much-larger, feature-length follow-up story on Oct. 18, 1998 quoted players on and off the record about having been told Vietnam stories by Johnson. The most damaging quotes came from former Cy Young Award winner Pat Hentgen, who described Johnson telling him about his Vietnam hardships while on the field at Fenway Park before a series with the Red Sox. Johnson had just told Hentgen he would not be starting in what was then a crucial series for the Blue Jays.
Johnson continued to deny he'd told such stories until a Boston Globe column by Will McDonough in November 1998 mentioned that Johnson had told such war stories while serving as a Red Sox bench coach a few years earlier. A few weeks later, at the 1998 baseball winter meetings in Nashville, Johnson held a press conference admitting he'd lied about serving in the war. The Blue Jays allowed Johnson to stay on as manager (he'd won 88 games his only season in 1998) but fired him in spring training when it became clear players no longer respected him.
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