LA Times Sportswriter Mike Penner, AKA Christine Daniels, Commits Suicide Friends Say

Los Angeles Times sports writer Mike Penner, who announced two years ago that he was a transsexual and was changing his name to Christine Daniels, has died and it is suspected that he committed suicide. He was 52 years old.

In his 25-year tenure with the Los Angeles Times, he covered Major League Baseball, the National Football League, World Cup soccer, tennis and other sports. He worked at various times as a reporter, columnist and the newspaper's Los Angeles Angels beat writer.

Penner revealed that journey on April 26, 2007, when he wrote a story for the Times headlined "Old Mike, New Christine," in which he revealed he was taking a few weeks vacation and when he returned to his job as a sports writer it would be as a woman named Christine Daniels. "I am a transsexual sports writer," Penner wrote. "It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words."

At the time of his announcement he was married, and he declined to discuss his family situation. He said he was undergoing female hormone treatments but declined to say whether he planned to undergo a sex-change operation. Source: Huffington Post

At the time of his death he was writing a column for the Times called Totally Random that focused on offbeat, lighthearted and historic moments in sports. The last one appeared in the paper on Nov. 15.