RIP Andy Jasner (UPDATED)

Really sad news in the Philly sports world on a Friday morning. Longtime writer Andy Jasner died earlier this week:

Andy Jasner, the son of longtime @PhillyDailyNews sportswriter Phil Jasner & a terrific man & writer in his own right, died suddenly yesterday. He leaves behind a wife & three lovely daughters. He was a friend & a gem of a human being. Please, keep his family in your thoughts.

— Mike Sielski (@MikeSielski) August 2, 2024

Andy was a talented freelancer and a jack-of-all-trades type who was a regular at various sporting events in Philadelphia. I’m pretty sure he wrote about every team at some point, but he was frequently at Sixers games, covering the same team as his late father, Phil Jasner. I got to know him during the early days of the Philadelphia Union, when he wrote for the team website and joined us on road trips to Harrisburg and Maryland and North Jersey, chronicling the not-halcyon days of Peter Nowak and John Hackworth. He was part of a talented press corps that included people like Kerith Gabriel, Jonathan Tannenwald, Chris Vito, Marc Narducci, and Matt De George.

Jasner was a Syracuse graduate back in 1991. He wrote a 2010 book about the Baltimore Ravens and also penned a tribute to Phil in 2017 titled “On the Case” – His Best Writing on the Sixers, the Dream Team, and Beyond.

Andy really looked up to his dad and did a wonderful job preserving and sharing his work over the years. He was a family man, very proud of his three daughters, one of whom is off to Vanderbilt. He didn’t post a lot on social media, and didn’t get tangled up in the typical argumentative back and forth that other scribes partake in. He was more of a “show up and do the job” type of person, definitely old school in that regard, which you’d expect from someone who grew up with Phil Jasner as a father. But in terms of personality, he was an affable guy, easy to talk to, good sense of humor, and didn’t take himself too seriously. He had a lot of respect for the profession, but wasn’t stuffy about it, if that makes sense. Andy was one of the bigger hoops fans in Philadelphia with a wealth of knowledge on the sport. 

It’s really sad. He leaves three girls behind. I’ll post the obituary when it goes up, and a better photo if I can find one.

The only Union picture I have on my hard drive is a wide shot of the backs of our heads in the Red Bull press box. Not the best photo of all time, but apropos I think because it’s candid and captures Andy in his element, doing what he liked best:

Update:

Here’s Andy’s obituary and service schedule. This was a really nice mention from T Mac during one of the Phils games this past weekend:

Great tribute to Andy Jasner by @TMacPhils on the TV broadcast pic.twitter.com/VMETn2hg33

— Nick Piccone (@_piccone) August 4, 2024

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