By Doug Huff, West Virginia Sports Writers Association
WHEELING, W.Va. — Bob Hertzel, a print journalist for over five decades, has been selected the winner of the 2024 Morehouse Award by the West Virginia Sports Writers Association.
The award is given for contributions to journalism and named for the late Marshall University sports information director and broadcaster Gene Morehouse, who was killed in the 1970 airplane crash that claimed the lives of 75 Marshall football players, coaches, staff and fans. The award has been given since 1971 with the list of recipients on the wvswa.org website.
He will be honored at the 77th annual Victory Awards Dinner on May 5 at River City in Wheeling.
“I didn’t get into this business for awards,” Hertzel said, “but I appreciate it. I’m sure there are others who are deserving of the honor.”
Hertzel was born, and raised, in New York City and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1964. Two years later, he started his professional sports writing career which has taken him to major markets, and newspapers, in the country. He has worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer, Pittsburgh Press and newspapers in New York, Cleveland, Baltimore, Atlanta, St. Louis, Dayton, Ohio, and Wilmington, Del. He has been a baseball beat writer for the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees.
While working in Cincinnati in the mid-1970s, he authored two books on the Reds — “The Big Red Machine’ and “Charlie Hustle”, co-authored by Hertzel and the subject, Pete Rose.
In 1996, he started his current Mountain State journalistic career as Sports Editor of the Morgantown Dominion-Post. Currently, the Morgantown resident is a syndicated columnist for WV News while covering West Virginia University sports and other subjects. His widely-read columns have appeared in numerous newspapers in Clarksburg, Fairmont, Beckley, Bluefield, Wheeling, Parkersburg, Charleston, Huntington, Martinsburg, Elkins and others.
