From Central Valley farm boy to L.A. sports TV/radio columnist, quite a path for author
Larry Stewart was eager to try out for football in the months leading up to his freshman year at Strathmore High.
His mother, Greta, a small-town journalist who covered Lindsay and Strathmore, had other thoughts.
Instead of wearing a helmet and shoulder pads, she suggested, why not carry a clipboard and pen on the sideline as The Fresno Bee’s correspondent for Strathmore High sports?
The job paid 25 cents a column inch, meaning for a 4-inch story he’d pocket a whole dollar. Not an insignificant amount of money for a young teenager in 1960.
“I’m not going out for football,” Larry told his friend and his friend’s older brother after they stopped to pick him up on their way to the first day of practice. “I’ve got other plans.”
That turned out to be a fortuitous decision, and not just because Stewart was the smallest kid in his class. It was the moment when a farm boy from Tulare County took his initial step toward becoming one of the most well-connected and widely read sports writers in the entire profession.
Stewart’s journey from suckering lemon trees (i.e. clipping off thorny sucker growths) — a task he describes as a “the worst job I ever had” — to a 35-year run as TV/radio columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Herald-Examiner is chronicled in a behind-the-scenes autobiography, “My Up-Close View, Personal Stories from a Longtime Sports TV-Radio Columnist.”
To Stewart’s great fortune, his time in L.A. corresponded with a golden age of broadcasters that included Vin Scully of the Dodgers, Chick Hearn of the Lakers and Bob Miller of the Kings. But Stewart’s job wasn’t just to heap praise on these luminaries; he also had to offer critiques as well as break news stories about figures in the TV and radio industry, a tricky balance.
The best way to accomplish that is by developing relationships with a wide array of sources, something Stewart did naturally. Funny and interesting anecdotes from these relationships fill the chapters of his book.
A memorable limo ride with Charles Barkley. That time when the normally gentlemanly Scully gave him “both barrels” over the phone. Getting the exclusive scoop on Howard Cosell’s retirement from Monday Night Football. Disagreements with a thin-skinned Keith Olbermann. Encounters with Michael Jordan, Reggie Jackson, Steve Garvey, John Wooden, Al Michaels, Dick Enberg, Jim Murray and countless others. Jim Nantz wrote the foreword.
“If you love stories from inside the superstar’s limo, or at the team owner’s table, or at the announcer’s elbow, you’re going to love this book,” bestselling author and 11-time national sportswriter of the year Rick Reilly wrote on the back cover.
“Larry Stewart is the Zelig of sports writing. He seems to have been around almost every big moment in LA sports history.”
Vivid memories of L.A. sports figures
The moments in Stewart’s book, whether huge sports events like the 1984 Olympics or small personal details from his Valley upbringing and college years at Fresno State, are recalled in vivid detail.
How does Stewart have such a good memory for things that happened more than 50 years ago? I asked him recently as we sat across a table at Campus Pointe.
The 76-year-old just shrugged.
“I can’t remember where I left my keys, but I remember those old stories,” Stewart said with a grin.
Stewart was wearing a white Fresno State football polo and matching cap from the Bulldogs’ New Mexico Bowl — gifts from athletic director Terry Tumey, an old friend from Tumey’s days at UCLA. Now semi-retired (he writes occasional stories for the Southern California Newspaper Group), Stewart traveled from his home in Arcadia to speak to a group of Fresno State broadcast journalism students and, to promote his book, made the rounds at Visalia Rotary club gatherings.
Much in the journalism business has changed since an 18-year-old Stewart, while a freshman at Fresno State in the fall of 1964, landed a part-time job as prep football correspondent at The Bee. (He recalls driving to the old Bee building on Van Ness Avenue to grab a hot-off-the-presses copy of the edition that contained his first-ever byline. “I was more excited by that byline than any I would ever get in my career,” he writes in the book.)
What hasn’t changed are the tenets of a successful career, not just in journalism but any field: determination, skill, networking and luck. Which is the wisdom Stewart tried to impart to the budding broadcasters at his alma mater.
“It took a lot of hard work and a lot of lucky breaks,” he said.
