Troy and Janet and Bud Furillo, My Favorite Boss

Troy and Janet are the two most crucial reasons I never will be able to forget the late and nearly forgotten Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. As caption writers say, from left to right, they were wives Nos. 1 and 2, the mothers of my four sons.

No. 1 I met in Atlanta during a Dodger game. I was covering the team while working vacation relief for Bob Hunter, the premier baseball writer of his generation.

No. 2 I met late one evening approaching deadline when I had parked both feet atop my desk. Interrupting her duties as a copyboy, she paused at the desk of the night sports editor, to inspect my soles — and possibly my soul.

Sassily she inquired, “How may I serve you, Your Highness?”

Apart from the fact I have not received such an offer from her in the intervening 41 years, I ordered two juice containers.

Twelve months later we were married.

Memories of marriages past came streaming back the other day when a biography of Bud Furillo, my favorite editor, the most colorful journalist I have known, was dropped over the transom.

If he was not the best known, most popular, most talented, best liked, most vociferous Los Angeles sportswriter through the 1950s, 1960s and early ‘70s – until he switched to sports radio – then the sun rises at night and the moon shines during the day. “Moon shines” is not an accidental coupling.

He was so powerful he could open doors without touching the knob.

You should have known Mr. Furillo, “Mr.” being a style concession to this newspaper, not a title ever heard around him.
“The Steamer, Bud Furillo and the Golden Age of L.A. Sports,” (Santa Monica Press, $27.95) is a fascinatingly related tale of made-for-Hollywood sportswriting by his son Andy, a Sacramento sports columnist.

Born in 1925, bombastic Bud Furillo was more Italian than the Pope, Mussolini, macaroni, Marconi and Joe Boney cumulatively.

He was The Godfather before the world thought up the Godfather image. He was Italian three weeks before Italy was formed, a year before Italy was discovered.

He was the daddy and we were the children, his youthful, richly talented sportswriting staff at the Her-Ex.

Don’t forget that. Present company emphatically excluded, he surrounded himself with a half-dozen of the most talented sportswriters in Los Angeles in mid-century. Some matched Mr. Furillo in nuclear temperament.

Someone should have made a movie of those Herald-Examiner days before sportswriting became as sterile as a band-aid convention.

I believe I am the only member of the late ‘60s tribe still active. One late-hour arrival, crossing the border from copyboy to reporter at the end of the Furillo era, toils in Orange County. Check back in 15 years. We will repeat the assertion.

If a short, stocky, fastidiously groomed professional Italian can swagger, Mr. Furillo did.

Almost 50 years ago, he introduced me to Royal Copenhagen. He wore a bottle a day.

Speaking of bottled up feelings, when Mr. Furillo died, the liquor industry shut down for 30 days, plunging into nearly irreversible mourning. Never, however, saw him oversubscribed.

Here is a skinny hint of how powerful he was after giving me the best break of my career –

a) He almost ended my life.
b) He rescued my life when it was about to end.

My late friend Walt Marlow knew more about hockey than the ice did. He and I toiled for a late (naturally) Orange County daily when we made a pact. Whomever escaped first would bring the other along. He was hired by the Herald-Examiner in early 1968, shortly after the Kings were born.

Walter convinced Mr. Furillo that I could enhance his staff. However, one dreadful afternoon less than a month into my hiring, in front of the whole staff – privacy was a dirty word – Mr. Furillo fired me. I forget the flimsy reason. I was recalled from instant oblivion before the dinner hour, thankfully.

Until I step into my grave, I will be grateful to Mr. Furillo for saving me from extinction. I had made the dumbest mistake of my life. Found myself in a setting that would have horrified my family.

Without hesitation, Mr. Furillo rescued me. He utilized judgment and influence that God only grants to his favorite people, such as Mr. Furillo.