SubscribeLest we forget: Joe Hirsch
Joe Hirsch, who covered horse racing for more than 50 years for the Daily Racing Form and was widely regarded as the dean of American turf writers, died at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City on Friday. He was 80.
According to his obituary in The New York Times:
He was showing visible effects of Parkinson’s disease by the early 1990s, but was determined to continue his work. He sometimes needed minutes to hit a single stroke on the keyboard. Still, he managed to get out a column.
“It really wasn’t an easy thing for him, but he was absolutely determined to keep filing,” said the publisher of The Daily Racing Form, Steven Crist. “We tried all sorts of things, like voice-recognition software, to help him, but Joe was not exactly at the forefront of the computer revolution.”
Telling Crist that he could no longer physically do his job, Hirsch announced his retirement in 2003.
In 2004, The New York Racing Association renamed a major stakes race run each fall the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic, and the press boxes at Churchill Downs and at Saratoga are named in his honor.
Another nice tribute came years before his death, when the University of Kentucky established a scholarship in his name. Here’s a link to Amazon.com for a list of his books on horse racing. And a sample of his work from a 1959 article in Sports Illustrated.
Joe Hirsch watching the Kentucky Derby in 1997. Photo by John Greco
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