Veteran Globe baseball writer Nick Cafardo dies at 62

Nick Cafardo, the Boston Globe’s nationally recognized and widely respected baseball columnist, died Thursday in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 62.

Cafardo’s love of baseball and commitment to his craft compelled him to report to JetBlue Park, the spring training home of the Red Sox, on one of his rare days off. He was apparently stricken by an embolism at the park, and members of the Sox medical team were unable to revive him.

Cafardo joined the Globe in 1989, after covering the Sox for the Patriot Ledger. Over the next three decades, he established himself as one of Boston’s most prominent sports reporters. He covered the Patriots for the Globe between stints on the paper’s Sox beat, and he…