For Once This Space Is Filled With Sadness

To readers of this page, he was an invaluable source of information, the man who put together Notes on a Scorecard.

To Hollywood directors, he was a Damon Runyon character, better than anyone Central Casting could send over.

To the journalism and sporting communities across the country, he was simply “Mud.”

Allan Malamud, who was found dead Monday at 54, touched many lives in his 33 years as a sportswriter/columnist/actor.

Former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda had lunch with Malamud last Friday, the main topics of discussion health and exercise, considering Lasorda’s recent heart attack.

“I’m in shock,” Lasorda said. “I talked to him about losing a few pounds and getting his rest. He promised me he was going to start exercising. I loved the guy like a brother. Something like this makes me glad I didn’t go back to managing.”

Orange County Register columnist Steve Bisheff, who worked with Malamud in his days at the now defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, says Malamud had a special touch from the start.

“What people don’t realize,” Bisheff said, “is that before he evolved into a terrific notes columnist, he was a great writer, by far the most gifted writer of all of us on that staff. He did some things early in his career that were phenomenal. For a long time, he was as good a boxing writer as there was in America. He could knock out a wonderful piece of prose in 25 minutes. He was like a child prodigy at the start of his career.”

Later in life, Malamud became as interested in movie-making as he was in sports. He had bit parts in approximately 15 movies.

His closest friend in the movie business was director Ron Shelton.

“Our friendship was bigger than the movies,” Shelton said. “Allan was part of my family. In the cynical business of journalism, he was without guile. He didn’t have an ounce of maliciousness. Allan Malamud had the biggest heart on the planet.”

Malamud’s initial part in “Tin Cup” wound up on the cutting-room floor. While the movie was in its final stages of shooting, Malamud visited Shelton on the set. On that particular day, a scene being re-shot called for a sportswriter. Malamud was hustled in front of the camera and, this time, his scene made it to the screen.

“He called it,” Shelton said, “the greatest comeback in movie history.”

Malamud would be the first to admit that he loved to eat. And everybody who knew Malamud well has a story about his eating habits.

Rich Levin, a former Herald colleague who is now an executive with Major League Baseball, remembers a morning when several Herald sportswriters were in a restaurant eating breakfast and saw Malamud coming down the street.

“He didn’t know we could see him,” Levin said. “He stopped at this scale on the street, one of those you put coins into. Allan took off his coat, hung it on his arm, stepped onto the scale still holding his coat, got his weight and then stepped off and put his coat back on.”

Boxing promoter Bill Caplan was Malamud’s closest friend.

“We were eating buddies for 33 years,” Caplan said. “We might talk to each other six times a day. I have five kids and there were times when I was pretty financially strapped, trying to survive in the boxing business. But Allan always came through with a loan. He was the best friend anyone ever had.”

Even in his grief, Caplan allowed himself a laugh at the time he and Malamud each bought a peach pie and went to Caplan’s house to eat them. Caplan was supposed to be on a diet and didn’t want his wife to see him eating the pie.

So he sneaked into his house and grabbed two forks while Malamud waited in the garage with the lights out. And there they sat, these best friends, trying to eat their pies in total darkness, only a portion of the food actually making it to their mouths.

But it is for Notes on a Scorecard that Malamud will be best remembered.

There was a special feeling about Malamud at USC, where he first honed his skills as an undergraduate.

“Allan was an artist,” USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett said. “What he wrote had an impact on our community. He was the last of the local writers who promoted Los Angeles in a way that was constructive for the entire community. What a loss to the entire Los Angeles community and certainly to USC. I don’t know how the Times will recover from this.”

Former UCLA coach Terry Donahue still has the first column ever written about him, a Malamud column from two decades ago, hanging on his office wall.

“He did what all sportswriters do,” Donahue said, “but if he had something critical to say, he did it in a way you could not take exception to. You never felt he was vicious or vindictive. You never felt he personalized it. He was a genuinely nice man.”

Said Laker executive Jerry West: “Everyone got used to reading him. His column really represented everything in the sports field. It was one of the first things you picked up in the morning. He will be missed.

“It’s sad. You lose a part of you when something like this happens.”

Rogie Vachon, the Kings’ chief hockey operations officer, said Malamud was a frequent guest in his home.

“He was a good friend of mine and my wife, Nicole,” Vachon said. “He used to cover the team and we had a tradition that every Monday night when we were home, he used to come to my house at 6 o’clock. We’d cook dinner and invite him and some of the single guys on the team. We spent quite a bit of time together.”

Said sportscaster Jim Hill: “He was one of the hardest workers I ever knew. You would see him at every sporting event. I was amazed at how he could put that column together every day. He was unmatched in our profession.”

Said Doug Krikorian, now a columnist for the Long Beach Press Telegram and a former Herald colleague: “I’ve lost a friend and L.A. has lost a voice. He was the quintessential L.A. sportswriter.”

It was Malamud who first suggested in print that Walter Alston should retire after 23 years as Dodger manager. Alston was so angry he threatened to fight Malamud.

“Welcome to the big leagues,” Bud Furillo, Malamud’s sports editor at the Herald, told him.

And that’s where Malamud stayed for more than 30 years.

Times staff writer Helene Elliott contributed to this story.