Board of Directors

Gary Gillette

DIRECTOR AND TREASURER

ggillette@hamtramckstadium.org

Gary Gillette is a historian and consultant who has written, edited, or contributed to dozens of baseball periodicals, books, encyclopedias (including the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia and Total Baseball), and Websites (including Baseball-Reference.com and ESPN.com). 

As founder and chair of the nonprofit Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, Gillette led the successful campaign to restore the site, one of only five remaining Major Negro League home ballparks. In 2023, Gillette and the Friends co-hosted the annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference in Detroit.

In 2006, Gillette founded the Detroit Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He is currently president of its successor Southern Michigan Chapter. He served on SABR’s board of directors from 2009 to 2012 and was the 2021 recipient of the Tweed Webb Award for Lifetime Achievement from SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee. In 2023, he and the Friends received the Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation for their work on Hamtramck Stadium.

Gillette is currently writing the definitive history of Black Baseball and the Negro Leagues in Detroit and Michigan. He is also editing a new edition of a seminal Negro Leagues encyclopedia. He lives on the East Side of Detroit with his wife Vicki.