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Drake Hogestyn was born Donald Drake Hogestyn in Fort Wayne on September 29, 1953, and graduated from North Side High School in 1971. He attended the University of South Florida on a baseball scholarship — he had planned on dentistry, studying microbiology — and was drafted by both the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees, playing third base for the Yankees' Oneonta farm club until an injury ended his baseball career in 1977. Acting came through Columbia Pictures' national talent search, which chose thirty entrants from 75,000; his television debut followed in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1982).
On January 24, 1986, Hogestyn joined NBC's Days of Our Lives as the amnesiac known only as "The Pawn" — the role that became John Black, which he played from 1986 to 2009 and again from 2011 to 2024, one of the longest-running leading roles in American daytime television. He and Deidre Hall won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Favorite Couple in 2005. His final appearance aired on September 9, 2024; he died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Malibu, California, on September 28, 2024, one day short of his seventy-first birthday.
Sources: TV Guide; TV Insider; Days of Our Lives broadcast record and 2024 obituary coverage.