There was no middle ground with TJ Simers.
If you were a sports fan in Southern California, if you were a great athlete or coach – if you were someone who read his column – you either loved him or hated him.
And that was exactly what he wanted.
The caustic, controversial Simers, who spent 23 years at The Times before leaving in characteristic fashion, feuding with editors and suing the paper, died Sunday of a brain tumor. He was 73.
“TJ turned left when everyone else turned right,” said former Times sports editor Bill Dwyre. “People read him. It was something different.”
A series of newspaper jobs — including stints at Rocky Mountain News in Denver and San Diego Union-Tribune — led Simers to the San Diego edition of the Times in 1990. He started as the Chargers beat writer and then switched to reporting the Rams.
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Athletes, coaches and team owners got to know the big man with glasses, the one who liked to joke, the one who could take over a press conference by asking blunt, if sometimes bombastic, questions. He enjoyed confronting people and then writing about their reactions.
Not surprisingly, his relationships with sports figures were often rocky.
In 2000, Dwyre and former assistant sports editor Randy Harvey wondered whether this unconventional style would be a good fit for the site of Allan Malamud’s beloved Notes on a Scorecard.
Simers started arguing with his very first column.
“It’s a penalty when it comes to Dodger losses, Clipper losses and Orange County events,” he wrote. “Someone suggested I go to a Sparks game too, but I don’t like being alone in big gyms.”
Arrogant was the word he usually associated with the name of USC athletic director Mike Garrett. Dodger player FP Santangelo was poked incessantly despite playing a minor role with the team. Chargers quarterback Ryan Leaf was labeled “the punk.”
No one escaped unscathed. Not his family, which included a son-in-law named “The Grocery Store Bagger.” Not his editors, his colleagues or writers at other newspapers.
“TJ Simers was caustic, witty and cantankerous and knew how to win people over,” Southern California sportswriter Janis Carr tweeted Monday. “When he put me in one of his columns, I felt honored, even though he tore at me.”
Others were offended. Although Simers was named California Sportswriter of the Year in 2000, critics accused him of going after people in no position to fight back and of crossing the line between humor and mean-spiritedness.
“The backlash was incredible for the entire community and the local teams,” Dwyre remembers.
Simers’ abrasive attitude was also a problem for ESPN, which hired him in 2002 as a panelist for a new show called “Around the Horn.” Within a year, Simers publicly condemned the program: “I hate that show. But I hear the cash register going off in my head when I do it” – and was removed from the queue.
Still, his weekly columns in The Times remained a draw for readers who loved them or hated them. It was only in 2013 that a disagreement arose with the newspaper’s editors, who reduced him to writing twice a week with the stated intention of improving the quality of his work. Some of his pieces, they said, were “poorly written or poorly presented” in the newspaper.
Simers was subsequently suspended for violating ethics by failing to fully disclose a deal to develop a television comedy loosely based on his life. Editors then took away his column and demoted him to reporter. They later offered him a one-year contract to resume the column, provided he adhered to ethical guidelines.
Instead, Simers resigned on September 6, 2013, after accepting a job at the Orange County Register. He sued The Times for age and disability discrimination, claiming his troubles began after he suffered a mini-stroke during spring training in Arizona. He was later diagnosed with complex migraine syndrome.
The case went to trial three times over several years, with juries awarding him millions in damages, but twice these awards were overturned by a judge. At the time the lawsuit was filed, The Times was part of Tribune Publishing. When The Times was sold to Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, as part of the sale, Tribune Publishing assumed liability for the Simers case. The case is currently on appeal.
When his career as a journalist ended – he left the Register in 2014 – Simers devoted himself to his wife Ginny, his two daughters and four granddaughters. He also continued his longstanding support of children’s health care.
“We scrapped during my Dodgers days,” former Dodgers general manager Dan Evans posted on social media. “But later we found a common bond through it [Children’s Hospital L.A.] that has completely restored things.”
Last fall, as Simers’ health deteriorated, doctors discovered a tumor in his brain. He spent the last months of his life at home in hospice care, where he continued to jab at friends and former colleagues via social media.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
