Community Loses A High School Ambassador, I Lose A Friend

One of the perks of creating High School Baseball Network, is that year after year, I get to meet hundreds of new people associated with the South Florida high school baseball community. For the 14 years HSBN has been in existence, I have met thousands of coaches, players, parents, umpires, and just fans of the game. Along that journey, hundreds have become friends, dozens close friends, and then a handful have become lifelong friends.

The downside of that opportunity is that life is fragile, and just in sheer numbers alone, that means I have come across my fair share of having to say goodbye to some of these people I have met. All loss of life is emotional, but sometimes, it hits closer to home.

I was always blessed with an ability to put into words what others could not. Taking the feeling and emotion of a situation, and painting a picture that makes sense to everyone going through it, or witnessing it with their own eyes.

A walk-off home run. A no-hitter. A state championship. A feel-good story. Or in some cases, the painful truth that loss of physical life brings.

This weekend, the South Florida community learned of the passing of Joe Luciano, known affectionately here as Baseball Joe.

I am going to do my best to paint the picture of what Baseball Joe meant to not only this community, but to me, and the people closest to him.

When I started High School Baseball Network back in 2011, the first thing I did was go around to all the coaches and programs in South Florida, and inform the coaches of what I was trying to build.

At the time, I was told by many of these coaches, that there was someone that was trying to do something similar to the HSBN concept. Someone who wanted to bring more coverage to high school baseball down here.

So naturally, my first instinct was this is our competition, and this is who we must conquer if we want to be the best at what we do.

I came to find out, that this “rival”, was attempting to do a baseball magazine monthly, to go in-depth with high school baseball stories. Knowing what I did with the amount of work I was putting in, I decided, I had to find out who this person was, and what they were all about.

And that decision was the start of an amazing friendship and collaboration.

Upon meeting Baseball Joe, I learned that our approaches to how to deliver the baseball news and stories was much different, but there was a commonality I could see from the start. We both had an intense passion for high school baseball.

So as we got to know each other through those early years, and I convinced Joe to come work for HSBN. We needed someone that cared about the game with a passion that went beyond doing this as a job. Eventually, Joe came on board, and together, along with the website programming abilities of my brother Jamie, and my relentless do-it-all sidekick, Rick, we proceeded to build the most informative high school website in the country.

Jamie did the programming, Joe brought the enthusiasm, did the reporting, and the analysis, and Rick did it all. Me, I just connected all these pieces together.

As I got to know Joe, I learned that Rick and Joe both came from the same background. They worked at the Sun-Sentinel in the high school sports department. Ironically, my now-fiancé, Nicole, also worked with Joe at the Sentinel. Only back in those days, he wasn’t Baseball Joe. He was Cup-A-Joe.

And that was the endearing trait that Joe had. He made everyone happy. He was the lovable, make everybody laugh with his “Dad” jokes, type of guy. He didn’t care about the nonsense. He would take a funny meme over a political discussion any day.

I remember his favorite Halloween costume, that he shared on social media every year. He was the Kool-Aide Man. And he won the award for best costume. Because honestly, it really was. He was a perfect fit for that costume.

But back to the baseball and the friendship. What connected Joe and I was this idea that, if we cared about high school baseball enough, then others would also. And it worked. It worked for several years, until Joe decided to relocate and get back into the newspaper industry. No matter how much Joe liked doing baseball reporting, his true passion was newspapers. He became an editor, and did his thing, this time, creating the headlines for all sports, and not just high school baseball.

He found a new life when he moved first to Arkansas, and then Louisiana. He dedicated himself to working on his health, and his newspaper craft. But he still could be found on social media making his daily corny jokes.

Looking back, he became one of those above-mentioned, “lifer friends”. From formal rivals, to close enough friends where him and his mom spent several Christmas holidays at my house.

Did we always see eye to eye? No. We had different philosophies on many aspects of the high school baseball reporting. But what we shared was a love for the game. The excitement. The story behind the story.

And that, in my industry, is rare.

Baseball Joe may have moved on from physical life this past weekend, but he will forever be known as an ambassador for the game of high school baseball here in South Florida. He will also be forever known as my friend. And that is the part of this job that is hard to say goodbye to.

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