MR PERSONALITY

The man with a louder mouth than Donald Trump

Not so very long ago, as the years of a human life are counted, there were only two major sports in New York City: baseball and boxing. My neighbourhood was packed with Brooklyn Dodgers fans. Nobody had money for spiked shoes, uniforms, leather gloves. We used stripped broom handles instead of bats and small pink balls we called “spaldeens” (a corruption of AG Spalding, who made the balls). Home plate and second base were steel sewer lids. First and third were marked with chalk. Usually, it was one strike and you were out. Our summer games were filled with laughter, joy, affection and surprise. I will go to my grave aching to hit one more spaldeen three sewers.

Though we had heroes on the Dodgers, they did not compare with the fighters we revered: Joe Louis, Willie Pep, Rocky Graziano, and, above all, Sugar Ray Robinson. As someone said at the time, “There’s Ray Robinson, and then there’s the top ten.” He was the greatest of them all. Or so we believed then.

In 1960, I was hired as a reporter at the New York Post. Through my friend José Torres, a professional fighter who once held the light-heavyweight title, I became a regular at the Gramercy Gymnasium on Fourteenth Street. From Torres I learned what a good jab was, a powerful left hook, a vicious right hand to the ribs, and a more mysterious factor that everybody called “heart”. That was the ability to absorb pain in order to inflict it. All of us at the Gramercy learned one simple rule of behaviour in boxing and in life: if you get knocked down, you gotta get up.

I remember watching Cassius Clay win the light-heavyweight gold medal at the Olympic Games in Rome on the television at the Gramercy. The room was packed with young fighters. Someone said, “He’s the biggest fuckin’ bantamweight in the world!” We all laughed. A week later, I heard, Clay visited Sugar Ray Robinson’s bar in Harlem wearing his gold medal. Robinson was there. Clay approached him, easing through the crowd engulfing the greatest fighter of his era. Robinson looked up.

“Mr Robinson, my name is Cassius Clay

‘IT’S A FUNNY FEELING TO LOOK DOWN ON THE WORLD AND KNOW THAT EVERY PERSON KNOWS ME. I THINK ABOUT HITCH-HIKING AROUND THE WORLD,

WITH NO MONEY, JUST KNOCKING ON A DIFFERENT DOOR EVERY TIME I NEEDED A MEAL OR A PLACE TO SLEEP. I COULD DO IT’

From ‘Muhammad Ali is the Most Famous Man in the World,’ US Esquire, December 1983