RIP Joe Resnick; veteran AP stringer honored by BBWAA

Felt like it should go here, but mods feel free to move it if not. Bit of a tearjerker from Bill Plaschke on Joe Resnick. And as is our tradition here, fuck cancer.

He has always been there for fans, and now writer Joe Resnick receives honors he earned

 

By the way, is it more than a little ridiculous that AP never found a way to make Joe a staffer, given that he worked for them just about every day for more than 30 years?

 

And not just AP, even though I understand there's a tremendous amount of loyalty to the wire services by those who have worked there. But the Times, Daily News, Press-Telegram, Register, etc?

 

I broke in on the AP New York agate desk where Joe (and O'Connell and Tom Canavan and Dennis D'Agostino) was a full-timer there more than 35 years ago. Those who know Joe understand he was always a bit of a loner and kind of gruff in those days, but he was always kind and gracious to me. Always wanted very badly to get to Los Angeles (he was a Brooklyn guy who loved the Dodgers) and I believe when the AP didn't send him there, he left full-time work as an agate clerk and moved to LA on his own and became a stringer. He and I would always spend a few minutes catching up whenever I went to one of the LA parks.

 

I was stunned and saddened to see the photos of Joe, a robust person who is now so drawn and frail. I've known Joe since the early '80s, but never knew him well. I did not know his background. Back then, sports editors had comp tickets for the pro sports and every time I went to Dodger Stadium, I would walk past my paper's seats and he would always be there. The SE who controlled the tickets was a soft touch, and our office was 40 miles from where Joe lived. I never understood that, but it didn't really matter to me.
After seeing Joe at games for just about every pro team, always as a stringer, I wondered why he never landed a real job at a real newspaper. I figured somebody would hire him. But maybe all he wanted to do was cover the major league teams and not do preps and the other stuff that everybody else had to do to work their way up in this business. If you're at a metro with an opening for a major beat, you hire a national name. If you're a suburban, you promote from your staff and fill in underneath. Honestly, newspaper beat writers don't write in AP style. I never knew what Joe was really capable of. I am glad that the BBWAA gave him this moment of recognition, gave him a reason to smile through his difficult circumstances.

 

And this is now an RIP thread. Mods, please fix the the header.

Longtime Los Angeles sports fixture Joe Resnick passes away

 

Sorry to hear. Joe took an enormous amount of pride in his work. He was a grinder. RIP

 

Maybe not germane to the original thread, but I noticed another fairly regular AP byline, Adam Czech, died of colon cancer over the weekend. Appeared to be based out of the Twin Cities.

 

On that note, a GoFundMe for Czech's family: https://gofund.me/adamspack

 

Le bump: