John Tyler Kepner (born 1975) is an American author and sports journalist who is currently a senior baseball writer forThe Athletic, after spending more than 23 years writing baseball forThe New York Times.^[1]

Kepner was born in Philadelphia and attendedGermantown Academy andVanderbilt University. He became interested in baseball as a child, and created a monthly baseball magazine as a teenager. While in high school, he received a press pass to cover thePhiladelphia Phillies. In 1989, he was featured inSports Illustrated Kids andThe New York Times.^[2][3]

While in college, Kepner interned forThe Boston Globe andThe Washington Post. He was hired byThe Press-Enterprise as Angels beat writer in September 1997. He joined theSeattle Post-Intelligencer as Mariners beat writer in September 1998 and began writing forThe New York Times in 2000. After two years as a Mets beat writer and eight as a Yankees beat writer, he became the newspaper's national baseball writer in 2010, moving on toThe Athletic as a senior national baseball writer in September 2023.^[4]

In 2019, he published his first bookK: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. The book received mostly positive reviews from critics, and was praised for its writing style and informativeness.^[5][6]Paul Dickson ofThe Washington Post called it "well-written, anecdote rich and filled with seldom-shared insights by players."^[7]Kirkus Reviews wrote that it "belongs in the first ranks of books on America's most written-about sport."^[8]

Kepner published his second book,The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series, in 2022.^[9] The book chronicles the history of theWorld Series and received critical praise.^[10][11] Olive Fellows, writing forChristian Science Monitor, called it "quirky and engrossing."^[12] Richard Crepeau, in a review for theNew York Journal of Books, praised the book for its nuanced overview of history.^[13]

• K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches (2019)
• The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series (2022)

• 1975 births
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American male writers
• Living people
• Sportswriters from Pennsylvania
• The New York Times journalists
• Vanderbilt University alumni
• Writers from Philadelphia
• Baseball writers
• American male non-fiction writers
• The Athletic journalists

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from April 2023
• Date of birth not in Wikidata