Jeff Scott

Jeff Scott died on 19 September 2026 at 6:36 p.m. at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, New Jersey, while under hospice care, after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis. Lenore and Shanice were present. He was 72. Obituaries ran in The Express Times, the Bucks County Herald and, on 29 September 2026, The Philadelphia Inquirer. A celebration of his life was planned for a future date. In lieu of flowers, the family requested donations to Shanice's college trust fund in care of Kris Grossman of Kingsbridge Financial Group.

Jeffrey Llewellyn Scott was born on 18 November 1953 in Philadelphia and grew up in Hilltown Township in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He played street hockey with neighborhood friends and baseball at Pennridge High School, and later attended what is now West Chester University. After college he drove a truck, worked as a disc jockey and traveled across the country before settling into newspaper work in Bucks County.

Scott's writing career began at Bucks County newspapers. While driving for a salvage yard shuttle he spent nights covering sports for the Doylestown Intelligencer. In 1975 the Perkasie News-Herald hired him as sports editor and feature writer; he wrote the "Time Out" sports column and "Know Your Community" features and became a familiar face at Pennridge games. He later joined the Quakertown Free Press as a columnist, weekend magazine editor and medical writer, including a closely observed series on his publisher's heart surgery that also appeared in Philadelphia Magazine.

In 1983 Halcyon Days Productions brought him to New York to write ABC's weekly coverage of the original USFL and other sports specials. In 1988 Major League Baseball Productions hired him for ESPN's MLB Magazine. As senior writer for the next 27 years he wrote more than 1,000 television scripts for ABC, NBC, ESPN, Fox, MLB Network, YES, NESN and others, including 450 consecutive This Week in Baseball episodes, dozens of Yankeeography and World Series films, and highlight and blooper programs. Broadcasters from Mel Allen and Red Barber to Bob Costas and Harry Kalas delivered his words. He won 16 New York Emmy Awards. Colleagues at MLB Communications posted a video tribute after his death; former TWIB narrator Buzz Brainard wrote that he was honored to bring Scott's words to life for eleven seasons. Sports reporter Jayson Stark urged fans who might not know the name to remember it.

Scott married Lenore Homeward in 1991 after meeting her on vacation in Tobago; they lived in Manhattan and later Pittstown, New Jersey. He had previously been married to and divorced from Lorrie Greenly and Amber Hudson. He and Lenore raised niece Shanice as a daughter. He created seven flower beds and many pots at their New Jersey home, followed Philadelphia's four major teams, enjoyed music, and kept a candy drawer for visitors. Lenore said he liked to make people laugh and could have someone smiling in a minute. He often called Lenore and Shanice the rocks in his life.

Scott's legacy is written into decades of baseball television that millions watched without knowing his name: the weekly rhythm of This Week in Baseball, World Series films, team documentaries and the voices of the sport's most familiar narrators. Emmy recognition and tributes from MLB colleagues, narrators and Bucks County newspaper friends underline both craft and character. Locally he is remembered as the sports writer who showed up at Pennridge games and the Free Press wit who made younger reporters feel they mattered.