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

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.

The Steamer reported on the golden age of L.A. sports, writing about events and athletes that have long since seared themselves into the memories of Southern California sports fans, from the greatest generation to its baby-booming offspring. They were the years of Sandy Koufax no-hitters, Elgin Baylor yo-yoing on the dribble, and Sam Cunningham going over the top four times for touchdowns against Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

It was the roar of the Olympic Auditorium on Thursday nights, Bill Walton dropping a high lob pass into the hoop for UCLA against Memphis State, and Native Diver winning another stakes race at Hollywood Park. Vin Scully’s voice wafted from foul pole to foul pole on cool and comfortable summer nights, when transistor radios lifted his words into the Chavez Ravine sky —“Russell to Lopes to Garvey: Double play!” On winter evenings, the transistor carried the more rapid-fire style of Chick Hearn as he described Jerry West driving left to right across the radio dial, stopping on a dime, losing his defender, and rising up and swishing a jump shot to win yet another game at the buzzer.

It was the same with USC football, UCLA basketball, the horse races, and boxing matches—champions flourished, and the Steamer chronicled it all. He helped shape the Los Angeles sports scene as it achieved world-class status. Furillo brokered trades, saved coaches’ jobs, helped show others to the door, tweaked the owners, encouraged and promoted franchise moves, and even worked as a cut man for an L.A. fighter who defended his title in Madrid!

In The 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 Steamer is 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.