So we were sitting around in a place of worship the other night—by “place of worship,” we mean “a bar”—and, as is our wont, got to talking about baseball. It was suggested by one member of our group that this is the best time in history to be a baseball fan, that technology has made it easier, more fun and just plain better to follow the game, even if you’re stationed on an airship off the coast of Guam.

We agreed. But to see if somebody who matters did as well, we checked in with ESPN pundit Peter Gammons, who’s the game’s Fan-in-Chief and pretty much the coolest guy on the planet. Here’s what he had to say.

On the state of the game:
The whole steroids thing, I think, has pretty much burned out. Every time Roger Clemens speaks, he’s going to be on “SportsCenter.” Every time something happens with Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez, you’ll hear about it. But I think fans are beyond that at this point.

Obviously the economy is going to cause attendance to be down this year, but that doesn’t mean there’s less interest. There’s a huge number of extraordinary young players in the game—the Joe Mauers, the David Wrights, Evan Longoria, Grady Sizemore and so forth. We’re not just riding out the big-name, mid-30s/late-30s stars, and I think that’s bringing a lot younger audience back into the game.

On other eras that captured fans’ imagination:
The early '60s, when we came out of the great decade of New York baseball. As the game stretched out, with the Dodgers and Giants becoming huge factors on the west coast, we were just realizing how great Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Willie Mays and Vada Pinson were. We went from the generation of DiMaggios to another generation of great young players who were very different. We saw players totally unlike what we’d seen before.

Now we’ve got a golden era for second basemen and third basemen. In the last two years, we’ve had two guys win the MVP—Jimmy Rollins in the National League and Dustin Pedroia in the American League—neither of whom is even 5’7”, which I love.

On the players willing and able to be ambassadors for the game and sports in general:
What really strikes me as a 1960s veteran, what I find fascinating is the African-American players in the game, whether Torii Hunter or CC Sabathia or Jimmy Rollins. I find that they are so socially conscious. On the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first day in the big leagues, baseball made big deal of having everyone wear his number. But I thought what they missed was honoring what’s really Robinson’s legacy, which is the incredible social work done by some of those guys I mentioned. Sometimes around them, you almost feel like you’re dealing with people out of the '60s who were involved with the Civil Rights movement. Their passion and their fire for doing for others is really refreshing. In the last couple of years, I’ve enjoyed that more than anything else in the sport.

Look at Torii Hunter’s story: he grew up poor in Arkansas and he got about a $2 million signing bonus out of high school. He’ll tell you this—his father stole it all for crack. His father stole the first car he ever had. And he never had a bitter bone in his body, and he devoted his life to making sure other people don’t go through what he went through. I think I might’ve spent my life being bitter. That story is a great story for this country.

Not to wander all over the place, but the day after Tampa eliminated the Red Sox in the American League championship series last year, seven members of the Rays went to an Obama rally in Tampa. I said to Carl Crawford, “I’m really happy that you care.” He said, “We’ve all learned to care—not just because Obama is an African-American, but because he’s talking about things we should care about as athletes who grew up poor.” That really touched me. I thought it was cool that they weren’t there to be seen on a day when most people would’ve been partying. They were there because they believed in something.

On his daily media routine:
Most mornings I’m up by five o’clock. If you’re in my business, you’re always thinking “am I gonna miss something?” Hence the early mornings. There are so many places to go on the web, whether it’s MLBTradeRumors.com or David Pinto’s Baseball Musings. Rotoworld’s “Daily Dose” is phenomenal—there’s stuff in there that I would’ve never thought of.

On the drawbacks of the quick-information era:
The biggest drawback—and this is not saying that anybody creates stuff, that there’s any malfeasance—is that somebody floats a rumor and it becomes fact within two hours. It’s really hard to separate fact from fiction and rumor from reality. Mark Shapiro, the Indians’ general manager, said it’s gotten to point where he spends 40 percent of his time having to say “this rumor isn’t true.” It is fun, but I think we have to be a little more realistic about saying, “This is out there, but it might not be true.”

On how technology has changed the way he covers the game:
It’s so much more immediate. There have been a couple of instances where people send me text messages when I’m on the air either to correct me or to throw in another idea. Last weekend, we were doing something on our Sunday noon show about how the rate for batters being hit by pitches has gone up every decade, how it’s gone up dramatically in the last 20 years. I said I thought it had to do with aluminum bats: growing up and in college, pitchers pitch away because they can’t pitch in. So pitchers don’t know how to pitch in and hitters don’t know how to get out of the way.

In the middle of the show, [Phillies reliever] Chad Durbin text-messaged me: “Don’t forget that back in the '40s and '50s, more than half the hitters had open stances. Now everybody dives into the plate, so it’s a lot easier to get hit by a pitch.” I was able to correct myself and say, “I just heard from somebody who had a better thought than I had.”

On what’s next:
I’d love to be able to get more video. I was talking to somebody about what I’d be doing over the next five years or so. He said that within five years, 60 to 70 percent of all the information we get will come from our phones. I said, “If I want to go and break down video of [best prospect in the history of mankind] Stephen Strasburg, will I be able to do that on my phone?” He said, “The only reason you can’t do that now is that you don’t know how to get to it.” You have to remember—I worked with typewriters for 10 years (laughs).

Photos courtesy of ESPN