Bill Plaschke didn’t sugarcoat it. “I’ve got Parkinson’s, and it hurts to even say it,” the longtime Los Angeles Times sports columnist and ESPN personality wrote in a personal column on Sunday. With those words, the 66-year-old opened up publicly for the first time about a diagnosis he’s lived with privately for four years.

Plaschke, known for his sharp takes on ESPN’s Around the Horn and years of L.A. sports coverage, revealed he has quietly battled a struggle that began with weakness in his right arm. “That weakness has disappeared,” he wrote, “but it’s a constant struggle to keep everything else from slowly going to hell.” His candid essay offered a raw look into the toll Parkinson’s Disease has taken on his day-to-day life, from fatigue that mimics a post-marathon haze

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