Nick Anthony Peters

NICK PETERS 1939-2015 Nick Peters, acclaimed sportswriter, esteemed San Francisco Giants historian, devoted fan of the finer things in life, died March 23 in Elk Grove after a long illness. He was 75. Nick covered the Giants for three newspapers for 47 years, a remarkable career that earned him recognition in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2009 he received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for ""meritorious contributions to baseball writing"" at a ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y. He was born in San Francisco and raised a few blocks from where the Giants now play and honor him with the Nick Peters Media Interview Room in AT&T Park. He reported on almost 5,000 games and wrote five books on the team. Nick was a favored travel companion of the Giants' beat writers. They admired the man known as ""The Greek"" for his knowledge of the game, relationships with the players, quick, biting wit - and his recommendations on the best places to eat, drink and listen to jazz or blues. Sports were Nick's passion since boyhood, but he was also an avid traveler, food and drink connoisseur, and collector, particularly of sports memorabilia and music. He and his wife, Lise, made frequent trips to visit relatives in Greece. And when they weren't in Europe, they were in New Zealand, Australia, South America, Lise's native Quebec, on a cruise, or tooling around the West by car. Nick loved to drive, faster the better, and preferred to get behind the wheel or hop on a train between cities on Giants road trips when possible. He grew up in a neighborhood then known as ""Greektown."" His father, Andrew, a Greek immigrant, ran a deli on Third and Folsom Streets. Nick got hooked on baseball watching the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League at Seals Stadium on 16th and Bryant. He was a student at Lincoln High School when the Giants moved to town in 1958, attended City College of San Francisco, earned a journalism degree at San Jose State in 1961 and served in the U.S. Army in Alaska. His first job was on the Chronicle's sports desk but soon he moved to the Berkeley Gazette, where he became sports editor and a prolific writer covering Cal sports as well as all the Bay Area pro teams. He wrote a book on Cal football, ""100 Years of Blue and Gold."" Nick joined the Oakland Tribune in 1980 as the Giants beat writer and held the same job at the Sacramento Bee from 1989 until his retirement in 2007. He also was a longtime Giants correspondent for The Sporting News and Sports Illustrated. He will be missed by his family and many friends, including Giants Hall of Famers Willie McCovey, Willie Mays, Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda and former manager Dusty Baker. The family asks to find ways to enact kindness in Nick's memory. He is survived by Lise, his wife of 42 years; daughter Lisa, granddaughters Anamarie, Melanie and Briana, and son-in-law Brian of Tracy; sister Barbara Peters Sink of Santa Clara; cousins in the U.S,, Greece and Australia; and in-laws in Quebec. No services will be held. A celebration of Nick's life will be planned for a later date. Donations can be made to Brain Support Network, P. O. Box 7264, Menlo Park, CA 94026; www.brainsupportnetwork.org.