About the author
A lifelong resident of Racine, WI, Jerry Tapp graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in 1979 with a B.A. degree in Communication. He remembers his first attempt at writing as a youngster being a short story about a talking baseball. Ironically, that talking baseball story would set the stage for a lifelong love for talking about and writing about... and playing... baseball (and other sports).
He spent nearly a decade as an associate editor with a national sports publication, Referee Magazine, and wrote a nationally-syndicated sports statistics column, "Stats on Tapp" for Universal Press Syndicate. As a freelance sportswriter his work has appeared in Baseball Digest, Inside Sports and the Washington Post. He was also a Scoreboard Statistician for the Milwaukee Brewers for 20 years and wrote the script for two year-end highlight videos and a drug prevention video produced by the major league team.
His baseball playing days after high school included two years of junior college baseball at Indian Hills Community College in Centerville, Iowa. He then received a Division I scholarship to the University of New Mexico playing in the prestigious Western Athletic Conference. He finished his collegiate baseball career at Parkside and also enjoyed a successful semi-pro career with the Quad City Angels and the Green Bay Blue Ribbons.
His career background includes work in the area of sports and recreation, non-profit management, and marketing and communications, where he held titles such as Sports Director, Development Director and Marketing Communications Specialist. His writing background is diverse: He was editor of "His Grace," a monthly newsletter for his local church and spent several years writing a monthly column for local publication, Action Magazine, where his column focused on Christian issues.
In the spring of 2011, with urging from friend Jim Magruder, Jerry ventured into the world of social media by launching his blog, “Sports Stats on Tapp.” He eventually began submitting his sports statistics blog items to such sports blogging sites as BallHyped and Bleacher Report (ranked as the fourth most popular sports website). In 2011 his blog was one of 64 nationwide to be included in BallHyped’s “Sports Blog of the Year” tournament. As of July, 2015, his submissions to BallHyped rank 12th out of the more than 350 blogs on the website.
As a contributor to Bleacher Report (beginning in March 2012), Jerry’s blogs had over 165,000 reads in about nine months. Today, Jerry writes his blog anywhere from three to five times weekly, posting items on his www.statsontapp.com website. He also writes a weekly stats-centric column for Today's Pigskin and Today's Knuckleball.
Jerry has been married to Judi, an elementary art teacher, since 1979. They have two adult children, Eric and Amy. In his spare time Jerry enjoys golf, bike riding, reading and creative writing. You can reach Jerry at tappcommunications@yahoo.com.