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Mike Downey learned to be a sports columnist in Detroit and Chicago, but from the moment he arrived in Los Angeles in 1985, it was as if he'd spent his whole life in Southern California.
"Mike didn't get that Chicago Mike Ditka-type gene where you butt heads with everybody," recalled Scott Ostler, a fellow Los Angeles Times sports columnist. "He came to the right place, because he just had this mellow sensibility."
Downey, who entertained and enlightened L.A. Times readers for 15 years, died of a heart attack Wednesday at his Rancho Mirage home. He was 72.
His career took him from a suburban Chicago newspaper -- where he began writing at age 14 -- to the Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times, to the Detroit Free Press, to Los Angeles and back to his hometown Chicago Tribune.
His peers voted him state sportswriter of the year 11 times, with seven of those coming in California and two each in Illinois and Michigan. At the end of his career at the L.A. Times, Downey moved from sports to news.
"Mike was like my spiritual guidepost," Times columnist Bill Plaschke said. "Every morning reading him was like going to journalism school. He was one of the best and smartest wordsmiths in this city's history."
In his first column when he arrived at The Times, Downey wrote about...