Fred Claire was so delighted to see a mention of the Prog in his morning newspaper, he dashed off an email to me.
“It was the Pomona Progress-Bulletin that played an important part in my life and career that ultimately led to 30 years with the Dodgers,” Claire began.
Claire’s name looms large in Dodger history as the publicity man who became executive vice president and ramrodded the team to its last World Series title. But he still casts a shadow in local newspapers, where he got his start. I’d heard his name off and on at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Prog’s successor, as the sportswriter who made it big.
And here was Claire in my inbox, responding to my column about longtime newspaper subscribers that had appeared, among other places, in the Pasadena Star-News, one of the papers that hits his driveway.
What was his beat at the Prog? “Everything,” Claire, 84, told me by phone a few days later. “You could cover a high school game on a Friday, a college game on a Saturday and, depending on the time of year, sometimes go into the Coliseum on a Sunday to cover the Rams. It was a wonderful opportunity.”
He also got to cover the 1959 World Series, in which the Dodgers beat the White Sox.
Claire played basketball and baseball at Torrance High but realized he wasn’t talented enough to go professional. So he opted to pursue journalism at El Camino College, Mt. San Antonio College and San Jose State. Upon graduating in 1957, he sent letters of interest to 30 daily newspapers in Southern California, then paid them visits, starting with the Prog.
“I went to the Progress-Bulletin because my parents lived in Pomona. The managing editor was a wonderful man named Ted Johnson,” Claire recalled. “He said, ‘Young man, we may have an opening cityside in two weeks.’ I said, ‘Mr. Johnson, I really can’t wait two weeks, I need a job.’”
His next appointment was in Fullerton. The managing editor was at lunch and wouldn’t return for two hours. Too long. Claire hustled up to the Whittier Daily News, where managing editor Mel Rich hired him on the spot as a sportswriter.
His first day was a scorcher, immortalized in a front-page photo of Claire and another staffer next to a thermometer atop the Daily News building.
After 18 months, including six months in the U.S. Army Reserves, Claire had the chance to shift to the Prog, a larger paper, and he leapt at it. That was the tail end of 1958. He stayed in Pomona for almost a decade.
“The Progress-Bulletin was a wonderful paper with very experienced people,” said Claire, who recalled most of the staff being in their 40s and 50s. Sports was a two-man staff, himself and editor Gene Earl, later adding Jerry Miles.
When Earl left for the L.A. Times, Claire was named sports editor.
“Special memories,” Claire said. “How dedicated the people were and how hard we worked as a sports staff. It’s not 9 to 5. It’s covering games every night or every other night and working weekends. We had a great spirit and we had great freedom. It was just a special time and a great opportunity and far different from the newspaper world of today.”
The Prog twice won best sports section in Southern California from the California Newspaper Publishers Association under Claire’s leadership.
He relished the friendly competition with Jim Bryant at the Ontario Daily Report, the chance to interact with the Prog’s printers and linotype operators, the acknowledgment from readers and coaches.
He assumed he’d stay in Pomona, even rejecting an overture from the Times. But in November 1967, the Richardson family sold the Prog to Arkansas-based Donrey Media Group. Soon Claire was asked to lose a sports wire service or lay off a photographer. He was shaken.
“I knew it was time to go,” Claire recalled, deciding he needed to move forward, not backward. He left editing behind to become the California Angels beat writer for the larger Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram in May 1968. In 1969 he moved to the paper’s Dodgers beat.
Claire soon learned the team’s publicity assistant was about to be fired. With a wife and young family at home, and seeing an opportunity to get off the grind of road trips, he wrote a letter to the vice president of public relations, Arthur “Red” Patterson, and got the job.
Was leaving newspapers hard?
“It was,” Claire admitted. “As fate would have it, on my first day with the Dodgers, in July 1969, I got a call from the Los Angeles Times saying there was a job there for me. I said, ‘Couldn’t you have called me yesterday? I’m not going to walk into Peter O’Malley’s office and tell him I’m leaving on my first day on the job!’”
When Patterson left in 1975 to become president of the Angels, Claire took over as head of publicity, then was elevated to general manager in 1987. He built the team that won the 1988 World Series, its last championship to date. After FOX bought the team, Claire was ousted in 1998.
A legacy of Claire’s publicity tenure are the phrases “Dodger Blue” and “Think Blue,” both still in use today. They were an attempt to build up “feeling and spirit” around the team, akin to college sports, he explained.
“I knew we had it made,” Claire said, “when Union Oil came out with a bumper sticker. It didn’t show the Dodgers, it didn’t show a baseball. It was the Union Oil logo and it said ‘Think Blue’ and everybody in Los Angeles knew what it meant. I thought, ‘Wow, we’ve made a mark here.’”
In recent years Claire has made a mark on City of Hope.
Skin cancer in 2016 that started on his lip and spread to his jaw upended his life, leading to surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy and facial reconstruction. Inspired to become an advocate for the medical center, he’s raised some $500,000 via celebrity golf tournaments and produced a book, “Extra Innings,” with all proceeds going to City of Hope.
His latest cancer scan, July 11, was clear. He’s sticking close to home during coronavirus with his wife, Sheryl.
They get the Star-News, the L.A. Times and the Wall Street Journal delivered daily, plus Barron’s and the New York Times on Sundays. They must need a wheelbarrow to bring them all inside.
“I’m a newspaper guy,” Claire said.
“I was just as happy as sports editor of the Progress-Bulletin as I was as executive vice president of the Dodgers, because it was a team effort. You have a daily result,” Claire said. “Every day you’re there to be judged. With the Prog or with the Dodgers, I always thought, ‘We can do this better tomorrow. I know how we can do better.’”
If he knows how I can do better, I’ll expect another email.
David Allen, who bleeds black ink, writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email firstname.lastname@example.org, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.