Art Spander American Sports Writer Born: ~1938 in San Francisco, California area. Present, age ~70. Residence: Oakland Hills, California near San Francisco. --Biographical information from: Compiled from various sources.

Arthur Melvin Spander is an award-winning American sports writer for over 40 years. He was a columnist for the Oakland Tribune/MediaNews and the American columnist for the Scotland Sunday Herald, the London-based Daily Telegraph and writes for 2 sports websites. In 1999 he was awarded the McCann Award, earning him a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and in 2007 he was honored with the Masters Major Achievement Award. Spander has been a fixture on local sports pages for more than three decades.

Spander began his career as a news writer for United Press International in Los Angeles in 1960, and started writing sports full time in 1963 for the Santa Monica Outlook where he was the beat writer for the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Dodgers and covered UCLA and USC football and basketball. In 1965 he moved to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he covered golf, football, baseball and basketball. Spander became the lead sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner in 1979.

Spander has covered 42 consecutive Masters Tournaments, 32 Super Bowls, 40 US Open Golf Tournaments, 29 British Open Golf Tournaments, 25 Wimbledons and 25 Final Four's. He has also attended 55 consecutive Rose Bowls, initially as a spectator and vendor and the last 45 as a journalist.

He was voted "California Sports Writer of the Year" by his peers in 1980, and is the only person to win Golf Writers Association of America first place awards in each of five decades.

Spander said he probably should have grown up "more Jewish" than he did. His father, Carl, grew up on the Lower East Side in New York and spoke only Yiddish to his parents, immigrants from Poland and Russia who never learned to speak more than a few words of English.

"My grandma was really Orthodox," Spander said. "I remember going over to her house, and she'd turn on the gas stove on Friday afternoon so she wouldn't have to turn it on during the Sabbath."

Spander said his father fashioned a less religious home "as a little rebellion against his parents, I believe."

Born in Los Angeles, CA, Spander is a graduate of Dorsey High School and UCLA. Spander and his wife Liz reside in Oakland, CA. He has two daughters, Wendy, a publicist for Electronic Arts, and Debbie, a sports and entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles.

Interestingly, the name at the top of Spander's sports columns probably should be "Spinder." His grandfather's last name -- at least the name given to him at Ellis Island -- was Spinder, but his father's birth certificate read "Spander." "I guess maybe my grandparents didn't speak good enough English and the doctor couldn't understand them, so he wrote down Spander instead of Spinder."

Spinder, er, Spander has covered every Super Bowl for the past 20 years, and he's been at every Rose Bowl for 46 straight years.

He covers the Wimbledon tennis tournament and the British Open golf tournament every year, in addition to the major U.S. tournaments: the Masters, U.S. Open and the PGA.

In addition to writing for the Oakland Tribune and the other ANG newspapers, Spander is a contributor to various sports magazines. He is also a frequent commentator on sports talk radio. Spander had a regular gig on ESPN radio in the late 1990's and is often on the Gary Radnich Show on KNBR 680 in San Francisco.

He has also written or co-authored three books: "Golf The Passion and The Challenge" with Mark Mulvoy, 1977; "The Art Spander Collection", forward by Al Michaels, 1989, Taylor Publishing; and "Keeping On Course, Golf Tips on Avoiding the Sandtraps of Today's Business World" with Gary Shemano, 1997 McGraw-Hill. Spander recently wrote the foreword for "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Los Angeles Lakers: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Los Angeles Lakers History", written by Steve Travers, 2007, Triumph Books.

If you have any more information about him or know where I can find a better photo, please contact me!!

Art Spander's Quotes

• "The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid."