The Steamer: Bud Furillo and the Golden Age of L.A. Sports [Hardcover]

For nearly sixty years, Bud Furillo wrote and talked about sports in Southern California. For fifteen of those years, he authored a popular column for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called The Steam Room, which gave him the nickname that lasted him for the rest of his life: “the Steamer.”

As a reporter, columnist, editor, and pioneer of sports talk radio, the Steamer dished out insight and understanding to Southern California sports fans while Los Angeles grew into a sports empire. On his watch, L.A. acquired the Rams from Cleveland, the Dodgers from Brooklyn, and the Lakers from Minneapolis. He covered them all while they won championships for the city.

InThe Steamer: Bud Furillo and the Golden Age of L.A. Sports, Furillo’s son, Andy, himself a longtime newspaperman, uses his father’s lens to give focus to the city’s rise as a sports empire.The Steameris a history of a great sports town at its most dynamic, told from the point of view of a legendary reporter who used his phenomenal access to reveal the inside story of the greatest athletes and teams to ever play in Los Angeles.

Andy Furillohas been in the newspaper business since 1972 when he began working as a copy boy at theLos Angeles Herald Examiner. He went on to work as a sportswriter in 1974 for theDowney Southeast Newsand spent the following six years with theGoleta Valley Todayand theSanta Barbara News-Press. In 1980, he shifted to news reporting and for the next thirty-five years focused on criminal justice issues with theSanta Maria Times, theLos Angeles Herald Examiner, theLos Angeles Times, theSan Francisco Examinerand, since 1991, theSacramento Bee. Furillo won the 2002 Broun Award for his reporting on a Sacramento neighborhood’s descent into one of the most crime-ridden areas of town. He won other national journalism awards for his coverage of L.A. sl3œ