Floyd ‘Bucky’ Walter, 85; Sportswriter Covered the Bay Area

Floyd “Bucky” Walter, who covered the Bay Area sports scene for more than half a century for the San Francisco News, News Call-Bulletin and San Francisco Examiner, has died. He was 85.

Walter, who retired in 1987, died Sunday at a board-and-care facility in South San Francisco, where he had lived since being injured in a car accident in the mid-1990s.

“Bucky projected the image of an old-time sportswriter, talking in jargon, with a cigar hanging from his mouth and his shirt spotted with food stains,” said San Francisco Chronicle sports editor Glenn Schwarz, who worked with Walter at the Examiner for 18 years.

“But his writing was always fresh and lively. He covered football and basketball also, but he loved baseball the most, and it showed in his stories about the old Seals, the Giants and the A’s. He was a joy to read.”

During the last 11 years of his career, Walter wrote the “Evening Muse,” a five-day-a-week column for the Examiner.