I became such a fan of Scott Ostler when he joined the L.A. Times, I saved a few dozen of his columns from the early 1980s. They’re all brown and frayed now, but like the man himself, they haven’t lost a bit of magnificence.
And in case you missed it, Scott announced his retirement from the Chronicle this week. If you put aside his status as one of the two greatest humorists in the history of sportswriting, we won’t be missing a thing.
On the morning of Feb. 23, 1981, the Times ran a photo at the bottom of the sports-section front page, announcing Ostler’s promotion as a columnist. There he is at a typewriter — greatest of all inventions, can’t be stylistically replaced — sporting a thick dark moustache and a deadly serious expression…