Hank Wesch

Hank Wesch was born on June 29, 1947 in Brooklyn, Michigan. Encouraged by a friend, he chose to look into the "sports writer" vocation for an assignment in a freshman-year class at Brooklyn High School and, possibly due to a lack of vision and ambition, or possibly because it was meant to be, followed the notion to places and events he wouldn't have dreamed possible. By his senior year in high school he was covering the basketball team for the local weekly newspaper, the Brooklyn Exponent. He continued in the profession through the State News at Michigan State University and, two days after graduation, The Oceanside (California) Blade Tribune. Following a two-year stint in the Army as one of the last draftees, he resumed newspaper sports writing at the San Clemente (California) Sun-Post and Costa Mesa (California) Daily Pilot before being hired in 1974 by the morning San Diego Union, which merged with the afternoon Tribune in 1992 to become the Union-Tribune. In a 36-year career at the Union and Union-Tribune, he covered a variety of sports from the youth to professional levels with major assignments including all four golf majors, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, college football bowl games, NCAA tournament basketball games, Davis Cup ties and one final. As the horse racing reporter starting in 1985, he covered 20 Kentucky Derbies, five Preakness Stakes, eight Belmont Stakes and 20 Breeders' Cups and 25 years covering the summer Thoroughbred meeting at Del Mar. The Del Mar experience provided the basis for Del Mar, Where The Turf Meets The Surf. https://historypress.net/indexsecure.php?prodid=9781609493103