T.J. Quinn and the late Pedro Gomez were more than ESPN colleagues. They were longtime friends before working together at The Worldwide Leader in Sports. Gomez suddenly passed away in 2021, but his legacy lives on. Quinn sits on the board of The Pedro Gomez Foundation, which aims to help others pursue and achieve their dreams in sports journalism and education. Sandi Gomez, Pedro’s wife of nearly 30 years, is the foundation’s executive director.
On Nov. 15, the foundation will host the Pedropalooza Gala in Phoenix, Arizona. The charity event is open to the public and will feature auctions, fundraising, and live music. We recently caught up with Quinn to talk about Gomez and Quinn’s career as an investigative reporter at ESPN. To register for Pedropalooza, visit here.
Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Awful Announcing: Why should someone support The Pedro Gomez Foundation?
T.J. Quinn: “If they support the things that he supported and that we do, then that’s all the reason. We’ve got an internship that we do with the Arizona Republic and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. We do a fully funded summer internship for bilingual young journalists because that was a huge thing for Pedro. When he spoke particularly to student groups, he would tell young bilingual prospective journalists: ‘Embrace that. That’s this huge gift that you bring to this job. This ability to speak to communities that don’t always speak to each other.’ So we were looking for a way to help foster that. We’ve already been able to endow scholarships at Arizona State at the Cronkite School, and the University of Arizona. Also, the charity that the Major League Baseball Umpires Union supports, UMPS CARE, we’ll send kids to their training camps.”
Why do people get involved?
“I think it was Keith Olbermann who said it right after he died: Pedro was everybody’s best friend. So much of what the event is is just a way for people to get together and remember him. You hear from somebody that you wouldn’t have suspected who said, ‘Hey, I adored him. I want to do something connected to him for his legacy.’ I think a lot of people get involved for that reason.”
Why is The Pedro Gomez Foundation important to you?
“He was one of my closest friends. When you lose somebody the way we lost Pedro, you feel so useless. He was such a huge presence in so many of our lives. I talked to him every day. He brought such joy to what he did. He brought such professionalism to what he did. I think part of it was feeling like a young generation of journalists should know who he is. I feel like anything that we can do to keep that spirit alive is worthwhile. It allows me to feel connected to him and especially to his family.”
Hey baseball twitter – please help spread the word about the LAST Pedropalooza next month, as we raise money and remember our irreplaceable friend, Pedro Gomez. This year it’s open to the public.
— T.J. Quinn (@TJQuinnESPN) October 30, 2024
And come to the event!
Music, food and revelry the way Pedro would have wanted it https://t.co/QVSgUnLWmX
How did you guys become friends?
“We met as sports writers 28 years ago. He was covering the Oakland A’s for the San Jose Mercury News. I was covering the White Sox for the Daily Southtown, and we just hit it off. I saw that he could talk to a player as a human being. He recognized how important it was to Latino players that someone was completely fluent in both languages and could represent their voice. At the same time, even though he was such a warm presence, he always did his job. He never apologized for it. I was with him through all that stuff with Barry Bonds, where he was reporting for ESPN about the BALCO scandal and the home run chase. He was taking unbelievable grief for it. There would be racist attacks. There would be threats. He never let it even get to him.”
What’s the best thing available at the Pedropalooza auction?
“I haven’t seen all the items yet. They’re still kind of rolling in. It’s dealing with the sports community so there’s a huge golf crowd. One of the things we’ve had pledged is a round of golf, drinks, and dinner for three people at Winged Foot. I think that’s going to get a lot of appeal.”
You’ve done this event before. Why is this the last Pedropalooza?
“Sandi felt and the board felt that when you see foundations like this, they can get off to this terrific start, and then they just sort of peter out and you kind of flounder as people find other things to do with their money and interests. We thought it was really smart to let’s have a short-term goal of how we want to do this and raise the money we can. The foundation will continue to operate. But (Pedropalooza) is a ton of work and it’s asking people a lot, and we feel like if people know there’s a fixed period of time, they’re a lot more likely to give.”
Did you guys work on stories together at ESPN?
“Yeah, the BALCO stuff, the Barry Bonds trial, things like that. We had been around each other for all that. I covered all that too, starting when I was at The New York Daily News and then when I went to ESPN. So, we had spent a ton of time together, even when we were technically competing on stories.”
As an investigative reporter, what’s a story you’re particularly proud of?
“One was a huge project that we did, four and a half years, a 90-minute documentary (LISTEN). I wrote about a 12,000-word written piece to go with it. Maybe you saw the story about this young woman from the University of Utah Lauren McCluskey. That was four and a half years and then we finally published it, broadcast and published it. While that was going on, I was kind of neck-deep in everything with Brittney Griner. We had lots of people talking about her incarceration, but I was the one doing the reporting and had a 20,000-word piece that we did about her time over there (in Russia).”
What are your thoughts on the state of investigative journalism?
“The journalism industry has been in rough shape for a while and is going to continue to be. Journalism itself is in better shape than people think. At our place, it is incredible what we get to do and how many people we have doing it, even with the cuts that ESPN has had since I first got there. I’m coming up on 17 years in about a week. Our group typically expanded when there were other cuts. Any of us who came from the newspaper world and went to do this at ESPN, there was always some skepticism. ‘Are they really going to let us do anything that we want to do?’ After 17 years, yes. No one’s ever said, ‘You can’t go after this story. You can’t do this because it’ll offend this league or this person.’ We get the resources. We get the support. Where we are, it still feels like a miracle sometimes.”
Your father was the late actor Tom Quinn. What was his influence on your career?
“He influenced my career by telling me when I was six years old that I was going to be a newspaper reporter. He was friends with Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, and he was kind of big with the literary crowd in New York, even though he wasn’t a writer himself. He was a Wall Street guy when I was a kid, which he never liked. He loved writing. He loved sports writing. He just instilled such a love of writing and journalism that from the time I was a kid, I knew this is what I was going to do.”
To donate to The Pedro Gomez Foundation, visit here.
