He became the paper's first Major League Baseball beat reporter when the Los Angeles Dodgers moved to the West Coast in 1958.
The leg subsequently withered, causing him to wear a brace and walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
[3] In order to support her children, his mother remarried soon afterwards, to local businessman Fred J. Finch with whom she had a daughter named Patricia (b.
[4] Finch began his career as a sportswriter with Los Angeles Times in the 1930s, covering college football and boxing.
[6] When it was rumored that the Brooklyn Dodgers would be moving the West Coast, Finch requested the Times' sports editor Paul Zimmerman to remove him from the Rams beat and assign him to the Los Angeles-based Pacific Coast League teams, the Los Angeles Angels and the Hollywood Stars, so he could learn to cover baseball.