Joe Posnanski

Early life

Posnanski grew up in South Euclid, Ohio, and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina during high school. He studied accounting, but later switched his major to English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Journalism

Posnanski began his journalism career as a multi-use reporter and an editor at The Charlotte Observer. He also worked as columnist at The Cincinnati Post and The Augusta Chronicle before taking a columnist job at The Kansas City Star. Posnanski worked at the Star full-time from October 1996 to August, 2009. He was a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated until April 2012, when he announced that he would work for Sports on Earth, a new internet joint venture between USA Today and Major League Baseball Advanced Media. His first column for Sports on Earth was published online on August 26, 2012. In February 2013, he became the national columnist for NBC Sports. In February 2017, he became a national columnist for MLB.com and contributor on the MLB Network.

A selection of his columns about the magic of sports is compiled in the book, The Good Stuff. His book The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America was published by William Morrow & Company and won the CASEY Award as best baseball book of 2007. Another book, about the Big Red Machine, titled The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, was published in 2009 and reached Number 17 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Posnanski wrote a biography of longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno for Simon & Schuster, which was released on August 21, 2012 and debuted at Number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Posnanski's fourth book, The Secret of Golf, details the longstanding rivalry and friendship of golfers Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus. He currently is working on a modern biography of Harry Houdini which is expected to be published in early 2018.

In October 2007 he debuted his new website at www.joeposnanski.com, later converted to a blog and titled Joe Blog. In 2011, his blog post on The Promise was named one of "Nearly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism" by The Atlantic. The blog was also nominated for a National Magazine Award.

Journalism awards

In 2002 and 2005, Posnanski was named the best sports columnist in America by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In all, he has been nominated 26 times for APSE Awards, and he also has won in the features and projects categories. In 2009, he won the National Headliners Award for sports column writing, and he won back-to-back National Headliners Awards in 2011 and 2012 for Online Writing. In January 2012, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association (NSSA) named Posnanski National Sportswriter of the Year. In 2014 and 2016, he won Sports Emmy Awards as part of NBC's Olympic coverage.

Posnanski has won many other awards including the Missouri Press Association award for best sports columnist in Missouri ten times, and he was the first recipient of the Joe McGuff journalism award, presented by the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission. In 2011, the Baseball Bloggers Alliance named Posnanski the inaugural winner of their online writer of the year award. The BBA also announced that they will rename the award "The Joe Posnanski Award." At the Blogs With Balls 4 conference, he won best sportswriter in the first Untitled Sports Media Award Project (USMAP).

Miscellaneous

He is on the 10-person voting panel for the Fielding Bible Awards, an alternative to the Gold Glove Award in Major League Baseball.

Personal life

He and his wife, Margo, live in Charlotte, North Carolina. They have two daughters, Elizabeth and Katie. In a podcast, with Michael Schur, published November 14, 2014, Joe revealed that he is "definitely a seedless watermelon guy now at this point in my life." Additionally, Joe has stated on the podcast that his personal fears include astraphobia, ventriloquist dummies, and "guys in the back of your car".