His career as a baseball writer began in the late 1930s at the
Post Record in Los Angeles, where he covered the
Los Angeles Angels and
Hollywood Stars of the
Pacific Coast League. On November 11, 1943, Bob Hunter quit law school to go to work for the
Los Angeles Examiner. In 1957 he covered the Dodgers in their final season in Brooklyn, N.Y., and along with
Los Angeles Examiner columnist Vincent X. Flaherty was at the forefront of the group responsible for bringing the Dodgers to Los Angeles. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, Hunter was elected the first chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the
Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). He was later re-elected chairman of the Anaheim/LA branch, and was the first West Coast writer to be national chairman of the BBWAA. His coverage of the Los Angeles Dodgers, spanned more than 30 years and included every spring training through 1992. In honor of this long association, the writer's room at the
Vero Beach, Florida training camp is named for him. It was also at the spring training camp that former Dodgers owner and poker buddy
Walter O'Malley began calling Hunter "The Chopper" because Hunter was the one who divided up the pot after every hand at the evening high-low poker games. It was a nickname that Hunter was known by to many press-box writer friends from then on. As a sideline, Hunter was part-owner of a bar called the Sports Club at Fifth and Hill in downtown Los Angeles. Dan Hafner of the
Los Angeles Times reported, "His friendship with so many baseball managers enabled him to throw a post-World Series party each fall during the 1950s that was almost always attended by the managers of the World Series opponents." Hunter continued writing for the
Examiner when it became the
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner after a merger in 1962, and from 1977 until his retirement in May 1992 he worked for the
Los Angeles Daily News. His column was titled, "Bobbin' Around", and his stories were included in the "Best Sport Stories of the Year" for 25 consecutive years. In addition to his baseball writing, he authored the script for the Laraine Day/Leo Durocher TV series, "Double Play With Durocher Day," and was honored with the appointment of official scorer for four World Series and four All-Star Games. ==Honors==