John Ashley "Daff" Gammons (March 17, 1876 – March 24, 1963) was an American baseball and football player, college football and baseball coach, amateur golfer, and insurance agent. He played professional baseball for one season, 1901, for the Boston Beaneaters. Gammons served as the head football coach at Brown University in 1902, 1908, and 1909, and as its head baseball coach from 1901 to 1903.
After college, Gammons embarked upon a professional career in the insurance business. In 1901, he founded his own insurance company, John A. Gammons, Inc.[5] (later Gammons & Son),[6] in Providence, Rhode Island, which still remained in business more than one hundred years later.[5] One source considered Gammons to be "one of the leading insurance agents of Providence".[7]
Gammons also coached the Brown baseball team from 1901 to 1903.[5] In 1902, his coaching duties were expanded to include that of head coach of the football team. Brown compiled a 5–4–1 record that season.[10] Gammons later returned to that position in 1908 and 1909, in which the football teams compiled records of 5–3–1 and 7–3, respectively.[11]
In 1917, Gammons led a group of investors which purchased the Providence Grays baseball team of the International League.[5] He was named the club's president, but resigned that post in 1918 when he was appointed to the advisory committee of the Bureau of Mines during World War I.[5]
Gammons was also a skilled amateur golfer. A contemporary source called him "one of New England's best golfers."[7] He won the 1924 Rhode Island Amateur Championship,[12] in which he had previously finished as runner-up in 1919 and 1920.[12]
Gammons died in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on March 24, 1963.[1] He was inducted into the inaugural class of the Brown University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1971.[4][13]
