Esteemed writers Dick Jerardi, Paul Moran, and John L. Hervey have been selected to the National Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.
Jerardi grew up in Baltimore and graduated from the University of Maryland with a journalism degree and a minor in history. He attended his first Preakness in 1973 and played a role in Pimlico Race Course officials erecting a fence to keep infield fans from getting too close to the inside rail after dozens did just that to get a glimpse of Secretariat. Jerardi became immersed in the game by attending the races and frequenting the betting windows at Pimlico, Bowie, Laurel, and Timonium almost daily from 1977 to early 1985. He began authoring freelance articles about horse racing for the Baltimore News American and was the racing writer for Sports First, a Baltimore paper dedicated exclusively to sports that lasted just a year beginning in 1983.
In February 1985, Jerardi was hired as the horse racing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and became a fixture on the national scene. He covered every Triple Crown race from 1987 through 2017 and nearly every Breeders’ Cup during the same period while writing more than 7,000 stories for the paper during 33 years there—mostly about horse racing—with time covering other sports. Along with racing, Jerardi wrote about college basketball, with some football and baseball coverage mixed in, as well as the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. He covered 25 Final Fours for the Daily News and has also been the radio analyst for Penn State basketball for the past 20 years (2005 to present).
Jerardi’s favorite experiences in racing were from 2004 through 2006, when three horses with Philadelphia connections—Smarty Jones, Afleet Alex, and Barbaro—won five of seven Triple Crown races, with a second and a third.
In 2006, Jerardi won the Eclipse Award for his series on Barbaro. He has won the Red Smith Award for Kentucky Derby coverage five times and is a three-time winner of the Joe Hirsch Award for best Breeders’ Cup story. He was honored for the best Preakness story in 2004. In 2007, Jerardi was chosen by the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters as the winner of the Walter Haight Award for career excellence in turf writing.
Jerardi is co-host of Let’s Go Racing, a 30-minute weekly horse racing television show that has been on the air in the Philadelphia market for more than 30 years (1992 to present). He has also provided live analysis for a Pennsylvania Derby television show annually since 2011. Additionally, he has served as a co-host for the Maryland Million on HRTV (2009 through 2014) and makes appearances throughout the country on radio shows prior to Triple Crown races in the spring and Breeders’ Cup in the fall (2005 to present). Jerardi has been a panelist on ESPN for the network’s Kentucky Derby preview coverage (2005 to 2007), Preakness (2006) and Breeders’ Cup shows (2005 to 2006). He also wrote a weekly column for Daily Racing Form for 20 years and was a charter member of the Beyer Speed Figure team which was first assembled in the mid-1980s and continues to this day with the Beyers appearing in the Form for the past three decades.
Moran (1947 ̶ 2013) was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and graduated from the University at Buffalo. He served in Vietnam and the Middle East as a sergeant in the Air Force before beginning a distinguished career in sports journalism, primarily known for his prowess as a racing writer.
Following his military service, Moran wrote about a variety of sports for the Tonawanda News near his hometown. He covered his first Triple Crown races in 1973 during Secretariat’s historic run and continued to cover the series without interruption for the next 35 years. Moran worked for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel from 1975 to 1985 then joined the staff at Newsday on Long Island, N.Y., where he worked until 2008.
Moran won two Eclipse Awards while at Newsday. His 1985 Eclipse was for a profile on Daily Racing Form columnist Joe Hirsch. Five years later, Moran was honored with his second Eclipse for his piece about the tragic breakdown of Hall of Fame filly Go for Wand. He also won the Red Smith Award for his Kentucky Derby coverage, as well as the Associated Press Sports Editors Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1990 and the Distinguished Sports Writing Award from the New York Newspaper Publishers Association in 1992. Moran served on the board of directors of the National Turf Writers Association from 1987 to 1990 and was president of the New York Turf Writers Association from 1990 to 1992. Moran semi-retired to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 2008, but he continued to write for various outlets, including ESPN.com, and worked six Saratoga meetings for The Associated Press. Moran was a contributor to the book Crown of Jewels of Thoroughbred Racing and his work was regularly featured in a variety of magazines.
Along with writing about racing, Moran was a participant in the sport as an owner of several New York-bred horses trained by James Bond. After a three-year battle with cancer, Moran died in November 2013. The following summer, a group of Moran’s friends and colleagues scattered his ashes in the Saratoga Race Course infield near the grave of Go for Wand, per Moran’s wishes.
The New York Times said Moran was “the last true turf writer, whose written words and outsize personality belonged on the same page and in the same press box with Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon, Joe Palmer and Red Smith.” ESPN.com added that he “brought a deep understanding of the sport and its history. With such a perspective, he could peer through a fog of pretense and publicity to see the real story. He had a mordant wit and could unleash a sardonic cleverness; he could be profoundly entertaining and entertainingly profound, but he always respected the sport and its competitors.”
Hervey (1870 ̶ 1947), a native of Jefferson, Ohio, was described by The Thoroughbred of California as “the dean of American turf journalists.” He began writing about thoroughbred and standardbred racing around the age of 16. Raised in a horseman’s family, Hervey developed a considerable knowledge of the art and science of horse breeding. While still a teenager, Hervey put that knowledge to good use when he was hired by William Fasig to work in his sales organization—the Tipton Company of Cleveland, later becoming the famous Fasig-Tipton Company—and soon he was writing articles for a variety of turf journals.
Through his connection with Fasig, Hervey became editor of The Trotting Horse in 1892. He also provided racing coverage for the Chicago Tribune in the 1890s and became one of Daily Racing Form’s first contributors. He remained an occasional correspondent for the Form until his death. In 1912, Hervey became editor for The Thoroughbred Record. It was during this period that Hervey, who used the pen name “Salvator” in honor of the Hall of Fame racehorse, became widely regarded as one of America’s foremost authorities on all aspects of racing and breeding. Other publications Hervey wrote for included The Blood-Horse, Breeder and Sportsman, The Harness Horse, Hoof Beats, and The Thoroughbred of California, among others.
The Jockey Club hired Hervey to research and document American racing’s history in a multi-edition work, Racing in America. Hervey wrote three volumes in the series, the periods 1665 to 1865 (split into two books) and 1922 to 1936. Hervey’s exhaustively researched Racing in America books are considered by many to be his important works. He was also commissioned to write several volumes of the annual book American Race Horses, which was originally sponsored by Alfred G. Vanderbilt.
In 1947, Hervey was contracted by the Trotting Horse Club of America, Inc., to author the book The American Trotter, which has been revered as “the most comprehensive history of the standardbred ever published,” according to The California Thoroughbred. Hervey, who died in December 1947, was so well thought of in harness racing that he was posthumously inducted into the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in 1962. The John Hervey Awards for excellence in harness racing journalism are named in his honor.
Previous selections to the Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor are Steven Crist (2010), Charles Hatton (2010), Bill Nack (2010), Red Smith (2010), Dr. Russ Harris (2011), Joe Palmer (2011), Jay Hovdey (2012), Whitney Tower (2012), Andrew Beyer (2013), Kent Hollingsworth (2013), George F. T. Ryall (2013), Jim Murray (2014), Jennie Rees (2014), Raleigh Burroughs (2015), Steve Haskin (2015), Jim McKay (2016), Maryjean Wall (2016), Barney Nagler (2017), Michael Veitch (2017), Jack Whitaker (2017), Joe Burnham (2018), Tom Hammond (2018), Charlsie Cantey (2019), Billy Reed (2019), Pierre “Peb” Bellocq (2020), William Leggett (2020), Walter Haight (2021), Jack Mann (2021), Jay Privman (2021), Heywood Hale Broun (2022), Bert Morgan (2022), and Damon Runyon (2022).
The National Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor was established in 2010 to recognize individuals whose careers have been dedicated to, or substantially involved in, writing about thoroughbred racing (non-fiction), and who distinguished themselves as journalists. The criteria has since been expanded to allow the consideration of other forms of media.
Often referred to as the dean of thoroughbred racing writers, Hirsch won both the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Writing and the Lord Derby Award in London from the Horserace Writers and Reporters Association of Great Britain. He also received the Eclipse Award of Merit (1993), the Big Sport of Turfdom Award (1983), The Jockey Club Medal (1989), and was designated as the honored guest at the 1994 Thoroughbred Club of America’s testimonial dinner. The annual Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Invitational at Belmont Park is named in his honor. Hirsch, who died in 2009, was also a former chair of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Nominating Committee and the founder of the National Turf Writers Association.
The Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor Committee is comprised of Edward L. Bowen (chairman), author of more than 20 books on thoroughbred racing; Bob Curran, retired Jockey Club vice president of corporate communications; Ken Grayson, National Museum of Racing trustee; Jane Goldstein, retired turf publicist; Steve Haskin, Secretariat.com and longtime BloodHorse columnist; G. D. Hieronymus, retired Keeneland director of broadcast services; Jay Hovdey, five-time Eclipse Award-winning writer; and Dan Smith, retired senior media coordinator of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.
Original Source Credited to bloodhorse.com
Cover Photo Credit Photo to Skip Dickstein
