Seasoned Major League Baseball writer and Penn State alumnus Tom Verducci was named the National Sportswriter of the Year for the second time in a row by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters association on Monday.

A walk-on for the baseball team, Verducci graduated from Penn State in 1982 with a B.A. in Journalism. He also covered the legendary Penn State football teams of the early 80s for the Daily Collegian (probably because Onward State didn’t exist yet). Verducci was a reporter for the Nittany Lions’ first matchup with Georgia, which you might remember as the 1983 Sugar Bowl and National Championship. He was a reporter and baseball commentator for Newsday for 10 years and spent a year covering the Miami Dolphins for Florida Today before his Sports Illustrated career.

“When I wrote my first story for Sports Illustrated, Joe Paterno clipped the article and attached a hand-written note to it and sent it to me. He sent his congratulations and said how proud my late father would have been,” Verducci told us in a 2013 interview.

These days Verducci covers the MLB for Sports Illustrated, is a commentator for Fox, appears on MLB Network as a baseball insider, and visits Penn State. When he visited in 2011, he cited this as his favorite piece. Congratulations on another great year!