Joe Strauss, a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who covered baseball for nearly three decades, has died at age 54.

Post-Dispatch sports editor Roger Hensley said Strauss's wife called him early Sunday to say Strauss had died that day at a St. Louis hospital from complications related to leukemia.

Strauss, who joined the newspaper in 2002, became a sports columnist in 2012. He previously wrote for the Baltimore Sun and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.