William Paul Plaschke (born September 6, 1958, in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

) is an American sports journalist who has written for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' since 1987.

Biography

As a child he attended

St. Albert the Great Elementary School There are or have been over thirty Catholic elementary schools within the Archdiocese of Louisville. Ascension Elementary School Ascension Elementary School serves grades PreK-8 within the Archdiocese of Louisville. Sports teams compete under ...

in Louisville. He then went on to attend Ballard High School. He spent his freshman year at

Baylor University Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the fir ...

in Waco, Texas. In 1980, he received a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

in mass communications from

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is a public university in Edwardsville, Illinois. SIUE was established in 1957 as an extension of Southern Illinois University Carbondale.Butler 1976, p. 18 It is the younger of the two major inst ...

, where he was the sports editor for the school's paper, the ''Alestle''. Before joining the ''Los Angeles Times'', he worked as a reporter in Fort Lauderdale and Seattle. After joining the ''Times'', he mainly covered the

Los Angeles Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Brooklyn ...

. He became a columnist in 1996. Plaschke is a member of the

Baseball Writers' Association of America The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) is a professional association for journalists writing about Major League Baseball for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying websites. The organization was founded in 1908, and is known fo ...

and the Professional Football Writers Association. He is also a regular panel member of

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

's sports-themed debate show, ''

Around the Horn ''Around the Horn'' (''ATH'') is an American sports Round table (discussion), roundtable discussion show, conducted in the style of a panel game, produced by ESPN. The show premiered on November 4, 2002, as a replacement for ''Unscripted with C ...

''. Fellow panelist and ''

Denver Post ''The Denver Post'' is a daily newspaper and website published in Denver, Colorado. As of June 2022, it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 ...

'' columnist and author

Woody Paige Woodrow Wilson Paige, Jr. (born June 27, 1946) is a sports columnist for '' The Gazette'', author, and a regular panelist on the ESPN sports- talk program ''Around the Horn''. He was a columnist for the ''Denver Post'' for 35 years, and co-host ...

often refers to him as "Reverend Bill." Plaschke has been named National Sports Columnist of the Year by the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

four times. He had a cameo in the film ''

Ali ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب; 600 – 661 CE) was the last of four Rightly Guided Caliphs to rule Islam (r. 656 – 661) immediately after the death of Muhammad, and he was the first Shia Imam. ...

'' as a sports reporter before the first fight against

Sonny Liston Charles L. "Sonny" Liston ( 1930 – December 30, 1970) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1953 to 1970. A dominant contender of his era, he became the world heavyweight champion in 1962 after knocking out Floyd Patterson i ...

. Plaschke also had a recurring role in the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

series ''

Luck Luck is the phenomenon and belief that defines the experience of improbable events, especially improbably positive or negative ones. The naturalistic interpretation is that positive and negative events may happen at any time, both due to rand ...

''. Plaschke was the subject of controversy while serving as a correspondent for the ''Los Angeles Times'' at the

2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics ) , nations = 207 (including IOA and EOR teams) , athletes = 11,238 , events = 306 in 28 sports (41 disciplines) , opening = 5 August 2016 , closing = 21 August 2016 , opened_by = Vice President Michel Temer , cauldron = Vanderlei Cordeiro de ...

for a column that accused U.S. gymnast

Gabby Douglas Gabrielle Christina Victoria Douglas (born December 31, 1995) is an American artistic gymnastics, artistic gymnast. She is the Gymnastics at the 2012 Summer Olympics, 2012 Olympic all around champion and the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Champi ...

of a lack of patriotism for failing to smile and place her hand over her heart during the playing of the U.S. National Anthem; the column was in turn described as "a stunning display of superfluous concern-trolling," "rife with thinly-veiled racism and sexism" and attracted further widespread criticism. Douglas later tearfully apologized at a press conference even though the criticism was widely regarded as unfair. Plaschke, who had systematically criticized Douglas' demeanor during the games, stayed silent on the controversy. Plaschke wrote about his experience with

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

in the summer of 2020. He has written two books: ''I Live for This!: Baseball's Last True Believer'' (with Tommy Lasorda) (2009), and ''Paradise Found: A High School Football Team’s Rise from the Ashes'' (2021), about how a high school football team inspired the people of

Paradise, California Paradise is a town in Butte County, California, United States in the Sierra Nevada foothills above the northeastern Sacramento Valley. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 4,764. On November 8, 2018, a major wildfire, the Camp Fire ...

after the town was virtually destroyed in a wildfire.

References

External links

LA Times biography of Plaschke
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Plaschke, Bill 1958 births Living people American sportswriters Baylor University alumni Los Angeles Times people Writers from Louisville, Kentucky Southern Illinois University Edwardsville alumni Ballard High School (Louisville, Kentucky) alumni