ESPN Founder Bill Rasmussen Says He Has Parkinson's Disease

ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen announced Monday that he has Parkinson's Disease and was diagnosed with the condition in 2014.

He made the announcement via a post on ESPNFrontRow.com:

"This is the first time I'm sharing my diagnosis publicly. When the doctor looked me in the eye that day and said, 'The MRI results confirm what I suspected—you have Parkinson's,' I didn't react immediately and he continued, 'We can manage this, but as the disease advances it will affect you and here's what we're going to do...'"

"I didn't feel anything different in my daily life and saw no reason to discuss the topic outside of normal family discussions about health matters. As the months and years passed though, I did indeed start to notice little differences in my physical abilities and learned more about PD—that's when I made the decision to share my story with fans, athletes, teams, sports, businesses and hopefully stir the collective, creative geniuses among us to successfully attack this progressive brain disease."

The 87-year-old Rasmussen added he is doing well. While he noted his life has changed in a number of ways—his hands now shake, he takes a wheelchair to get through the airport and no longer drives—he also can still "walk, talk, think and... throw a baseball."

He also announced he'll be throwing out the first pitch at Fenway Park on Sept. 8, along with ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro, when the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees. He'll be celebrating the 40th-anniversary edition of Sunday Night Baseball that evening. 

Rasmussen launched ESPN's cable channel in Sept. 1979 with his son Scott Rasmussen, making it the first 24-hour sports network. While there were serious doubts about such an endeavor, ESPN quickly carved a niche for itself, as Rasmussen told Bills Wells of MassLive.com in Oct. 2009:

"We were confident right from the very start. And when we announced our contract with the NCAA, and that we'd do every game in the NCAA (men's basketball) tournament the following spring, people were skeptical, but once we did it, people said, 'Wow, these guys are here to stay.'

"And then we followed that up in April with the NFL Draft, which back then was a very innovative idea because nobody had ever done it."

The rest is history. Rasmussen was ESPN's president and CEO before leaving the company in 1980. ESPN has continued to grow as both television and internet giant and is now a part of Disney's entertainment empire.