Readers haven’t forgotten Fred Claire, the Pomona sportswriter who became a Dodgers exec

Since writing in July about the newspaper career of former Dodger executive Fred Claire, I’ve read the new book about him — more on that in a bit —  and received a bunch of emails, calls and online comments from people who remember him from Pomona, where he wrote and edited for the Progress-Bulletin’s sports section from 1958 to 1968.

Let’s go right to your comments.

“Remember his articles in Progress-Bulletin quite well. I was very surprised when he was offered the job as GM of the Dodgers. He did that job very well,” writes Jim Andersen.

“Fred is the ultimate professional. He was my inspiration to enter journalism as I’m sure he was for many others growing up in Pomona,” says Jim McConnell, who from 1973 to 1988 was a sportswriter or assistant sports editor for the Prog.

“I really appreciated your article in The Press-Enterprise regarding Fred Claire,” writes Temecula reader Rich Klassen, who grew up in Pomona and delivered the Prog. “I remember him there for all those years and also when he went to work for the Dodgers. I’ve been a Dodger fan for many years and it was sad to see him released by Fox after they bought the team in 1998.”

Klassen adds: “I’m 73 and one of those guys that reads the newspaper every single day of the week.” A virtual fist bump to you, Mr. Klassen.

Dave Snyder says he followed Claire’s career closely from the Prog to the Dodgers but had not realized Claire was a fellow Mt. San Antonio College alumnus. (Claire was inducted into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018.)

Snyder was on staff at the campus paper, The Mountaineer, in the early 1960s and considered a career in journalism until learning about a staffer at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

“When I saw the hours he worked and the pay he got,” Snyder confides, “I switched to accounting.”

Bob House boasts that he “may be the only reader about whom Mr. Claire has written,” saying that in 1964 he was the subject of a Claire story with photo about his placekicking for Claremont High’s football team.

Perhaps, although Joel Wiese says Claire covered his Cal Poly Pomona baseball team. Bill Goodale says likewise about his Pomona High and American Legion baseball years of the late 1950s. And so does Charles Zetterberg about Claremont High sports and the old Tri County League of the early 1960s.

“Fred was a busy man,” Zetterberg says, “but always had time for supporting coverage of local high school teams.”

Jim Price met Claire during Price’s Little League days at Pomona’s Ted Greene Park — imagine making time to cover Little League games — and Dennis Lio met Claire at the office: “Always seemed friendly to those of us who were journalism students and got to visit the Prog.”

Jennifer Wilkins got to know him personally: “The Claire family lived across the cul-de-sac from me in the mid-’60s. His daughter and I were best buddies.” Mary Wallace’s son was in preschool with one of Claire’s children, which made her more invested in following Claire’s Prog work.

“I first met Fred while covering a Dodgers game in 1970 for The Sun, where I spent five years as sports editor,” says Mike Murphy. “We both graduated from San Jose State (me in 1964) and we both served six months of active duty in the U.S. Army Reserve (me in 1964-65).”

Claire, 84 and a Pasadena resident, had mentioned in our interview how much he had enjoyed working with the Prog’s composing room staff. That meant something to reader Ian Bryant. His late father, Roy Bryant, was hired as a linotype operator in 1958, the same year as Claire, and later ran the composing rooms in Pomona and Ontario.

“He often spoke of Fred and ultimately him working for the Dodgers. It made us follow them even more,” Bryant says. “His comment about how it was a good group with great camaraderie was exactly how my dad felt working there.”

(A linotype machine, by the way, still sits in the basement of the Prog building.)

Two readers who used to phone in youth sports scores to Claire at the Prog got in touch. One was Don McCullough. The other was Lynn Kliewer, a paperboy whose father, Art, was a printer at the Prog and whose older brother, Ken, sold display advertising.

Coincidentally enough, Kliewer’s handwritten letter was mostly about his history with newspapers, in response to my column about longtime subscribers, but he mentioned Claire. I read it at my desk just minutes before Claire himself emailed concerning the same column, which is what prompted me to ask if he’d consent to an interview about his newspaper days.

He had moved on from the Prog to the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram as Dodgers beat writer when the team hired him in 1969 for its publicity department.

It was impressive how many readers remembered Claire from more than a half-century ago. I heard from just about everybody but his barber. But then there was P-E reader Alan Tavener, who didn’t know him. He just liked the story.

“I had no idea of Mr. Claire’s background,” Tavener concedes, “and it is quite a testament to the man that he is to see his rise from a small-paper sportswriter to the executive vice president of the Los Angeles Dodgers.”

Indeed. When Claire was promoted in 1987, Tim Madigan writes in “Extra Innings,” “sportswriters joked that one of their own was now running the team.” Claire, after all, never played professionally. But Madigan credits Claire for using his journalistic traits of doggedness and curiosity to learn the Dodger organization from top to bottom and get to know every person in it.

Published in July, “Extra Innings” is largely about Claire’s jaw and neck cancer and the care he received at City of Hope in Duarte. Of course the Dodgers are in it too, especially the 1988 championship. All proceeds go to the medical center.

The book can be wrenching, but it’s affecting and inspiring, a tribute to Claire’s grace and grit.

Nice to see an old newspaperman doing well.

David Allen does just well enough Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.