Phil Pepe, a popular New York sportswriter who covered the Yankees for city newspapers, delivered radio commentary and wrote dozens of books with, and about, major league stars, died on Sunday at his home in Englewood, N.J. He was 80.  The cause appeared to be a heart attack, his son David said.  In a career that lasted more than half a century, Mr. Pepe (pronounced “peppy”) was a versatile reporter who covered basketball, football and boxing. But his familiar New York byline, first at The New York World-Telegram & Sun and later for two decades at The Daily News, was most associated with baseball, which he fully acknowledged to be his passion.  A son of New York who grew up in Brooklyn rooting for the Dodgers — and whose distinctive voice, an enthusiastic Noo Yawkese, made him a companionable presence on WCBS radio for many years — Mr. Pepe spent most of his time as a baseball reporter with the hated team of his childhood, the Yankees.  He began with them in 1961, the year of the famous pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record by Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, and was with them, with a gap or two, through the lean years of the late 1960s and early 1970s and during their resurgence under a new principal owner, George Steinbrenner, when they won their first pennant in 12 years in 1976 and captured the World Series in 1977 and ’78. Mr. Pepe succeeded the venerable Dick Young as The News’s baseball columnist in 1982.  The News reported that from 1969 to 1981, even in years when the Yankees did not make the World Series, Mr. Pepe wrote the lead article for every Series game.  Mr. Pepe was known for his acuity about baseball history and strategy and had a reputation for writing lively game stories. He also had occasion to write about the players themselves off the field, including those involved in scandal — in 1973, Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich revealed that they had switched wives — and tragedy.  In August 1979, after Thurman Munson, the Yankees’ captain and star catcher, was killed in the crash of a plane he was piloting, Mr. Pepe’s article, beginning on The News’s back page, was both a well-reported reaction story and an anguished encomium.  “He was the most misunderstood athlete I have ever encountered, misunderstood because he wore his irascibility like a badge of honor, using it as a facade to hide his true feelings, to camouflage the real Thurman Munson,” Mr. Pepe wrote. “Down deep he was a pussycat, a man of compassion and understanding and great humanity, a devoted family man who hated being away from home, from his wife and children; who hated it so much, it eventually killed him.  “It was his desire to be with his family that made Thurman Munson take up flying, and he flew home almost every night and flew back the next night, much to the concern of Yankee officials.”  Philip Francis Pepe was born in Manhattan on March 21, 1935, and grew up in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, the son of Michael Pepe Jr., a bookkeeper, and the former Lillian Martini, a store clerk. He graduated from Lafayette High School and St. John’s University and served in the Army.  Mr. Pepe joined The World-Telegram & Sun in the 1950s and covered the Yankees from 1961 until 1966, when the newspaper merged with The Journal American and The Herald Tribune. (The new paper, The World Journal Tribune, went out of business the next year.)  After a stint writing radio copy with a broadcaster named Howard Cosell, he joined The News in 1968. He left the paper in 1989 to do radio work, to continue writing books and to work with the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, which he served as executive director for many years.  Mr. Pepe’s books about the Yankees include a 1995 history, “The Yankees”; “1961*,” an account of the Mantle-Maris home run chase; “My Favorite Year, 1956,” with Mickey Mantle; “The Wit and Wisdom of Yogi Berra”; “Slick,” an autobiography of Whitey Ford; “Core Four,” about Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera in a more recent period of Yankee success; and “Yankee Doodles,” recollections from his career with the team, published this year.  He also wrote books with other baseball figures, including Bob Gibson, Jim Kaat and Tim McCarver; books with stars from other sports; and several sports compendiums.  Mr. Pepe was married and divorced twice. Besides his son David, he is survived by two other sons, James and John; a daughter, Jayne Platts; two brothers, Paul and John; a sister, Carol Pepe; and five grandchildren.  An earlier version of this obituary misstated the year of the Yankee catcher Thurman Munson’s death. It was 1979, not 1978.  A version of this article appears in print on December 15, 2015, on page A33 of the New York edition with the headline: Phil Pepe, 80, Longtime New York Sportswriter. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Mr. Pepe was best known for his baseball articles in New York newspapers and for his many books on the Yankees.