Former Kansas City Star editor and sports writer, Joe McGuff, died on Saturday at his home in Kansas at the age of 79 after a battle with ALS (Louis Gherig’s diseas).. He joined the staff at the Star in 1948 and stayed there until 1992.
Many credit McGuff with helping to lure the Kansas City Chiefs to town and influencing Major League Baseball to give Kansas City an expansion team after the Athletics left town for Oakland after the 1967 season.
In 1985, McGruff was inducted into the sports writers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He also served as president of the Baseball Writers Association of America for two years and is a member of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in Springfield.
McGuff’s influence led the Kansas City Star to hire him as their editor in 1986 and under his guidance the paper earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Later that year he retired.