Local resident Fred Claire will be joining Cancer Support Community Pasadena (CSCP) from 6 to 7 p.m. Monday for “An Interview with Fred Claire” in which the former L.A. Dodgers general manager will talk about his own experience with the disease.
Claire will also talk about the recently released “Extra Innings,” by Tim Madigan, a book which chronicles Claire’s baseball career and his cancer diagnosis and treatment at City of Hope in Duarte.
People can join the discussion and ask questions.
In a distinguished 30-year career with the Dodgers, Claire served the team as a publicity director; vice president of public relations, promotions and marketing; executive vice president in charge of day-to-day operations, and executive vice president and general manager in charge of player personnel.
Claire joined the Dodgers in 1969 and proved to be an award-winning executive at every stage of his career. Claire was directing the team’s marketing efforts when the Dodgers first hit the three-million mark in attendance and established a period of record-setting attendance figures.
He was named general manager in April 1987. When the team won the World Series in 1988, he was selected Major League Baseball’s “Executive of the Year” by The Sporting News. Claire became the fifth Dodger executive in the team’s history to win the award.
Claire’s years-long experience with cancer and treatment at City of Hope was challenging. After his initial surgery, radiation and chemotherapy in 2016, Claire hoped he was out of the woods, but the cancer came back aggressively, spreading to his neck. An immunotherapy clinical trial saved his life. But then an infection forced him to undergo even more extensive facial reconstruction surgery, replacing his jawbone with a bone from his leg.
Claire speaks of the book, “Extra Innings” as the result of his search for something written about the history of City of Hope.
“I’d go into the Biller Center (City of Hope’s Sheri and Les Biller Patient and Family Resource Center) and ask for books on the history of City of Hope, about all the things taking place there as I know it now. There weren’t any,” he writes.
The book vividly tells the 100-year-old City of Hope story, especially of how it evolved from a couple of cottages in the desert for tuberculosis patients to the No. 1 cancer center in the western U.S.
To join the Zoom event on Monday, visit https://cscpa.gnosishosting.net/Events/Info/An_interview_with_Fred_Claire-3691.
For more information, call (626) 796-1083 or visit www.cscpasadena.org.
