Book Review: Brian Kenny’s “Ahead of the Curve”

Published

9 years ago

July 18, 2016

Book Review – Boxing fans know Brian Kenny from his work on ESPN2 Friday Night Fights, Showtime Championship Boxing, and PBC Boxing on FOX. But his #1 area of sports expertise is baseball.

Kenny is an MLB Network host and anchors some of its most important studio programming: MLB Now and MLB Tonight. He’s also an ardent proponent of sabermetrics: the use of cutting-edge statistical analysis as a key component of decision-making in virtually every aspect of the game.

Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution (Simon & Schuster) is Kenny’s presentation in support of sabermetrics. “Somewhere along the line,” he writes, “we stopped thinking. In the most basic ways, a purposeful ignorance set in. We have received considerable baseball wisdom from the early days of childhood from our adult role models, our peers, the media, and the baseball industry itself. What is so fascinating is that all this nonsense survived. For nearly a century, no one even bothered to think about it deeply enough to give themselves an incredible competitive advantage. At a certain point – about the time we discovered penicillin – it was time to evolve past these 19th-century relics. Instead, our thinking calcified and then endured decades beyond its point of usefulness.”

Book Review: Brian Kenny’s “Ahead of the Curve”

With that as his starting point, Kenny challenges long held assumptions regarding baseball strategy.

He begins with the sacrifice bunt, studying how a simple scenario has played out over an 18-year study period.

Man on first base, nobody out. Your team needs a run. Sacrifice bunt, right?

That what most managers do. But look at the numbers.

With a man on first base and nobody out, a team can be expected to score .94 runs in that inning. With a man on second base and one out, a team can be expected to score .72 runs.

“So let’s be clear,” Kenny writes. “Even with a successful bunt, you score fewer runs.”

But by bunting successfully, the manager has taken himself out of the line of fire and absolved himself of blame.

“He put the next two batters in the spotlight,” Kenny continues. “There’s a man on second waiting to be driven in. When he doesn’t score, it’s those two hitters that didn’t get it done. Failure is there visually in the hitter slinking off the field, having left a man on base. The manager walks off scot-free, even though he is the one who traded three chances for two.”

Then there’s the matter of third-base coaches, who are reluctant to send a runner home on a fly ball to the outfield that’s caught for the second out of an inning. The current success rate for attempts to score from third base in sacrifice fly situations is 90%. In other words, the coach only instructs the runner to go for it when the odds are overwhelmingly in his favor.

But if the fly ball is the second out of the inning, the runner’s chance of being driven in by the next or a succeeding batter is roughly 30%. Thus, Kenny writes, “Third base coaches send runners only when it’s obvious they will score. Getting a runner thrown out at the plate looks bad for both the third base coach and runner. But taking more risks will lead to more runs even with more runners being thrown out.”

The manner in which today’s managers deploy their pitching staff also mystifies Kenny. He starts by asking, “Why do all major league teams pitch the way they do?” And he arrives at the answer, “Because that’s the way we always have done it.”

But times change. In 1904, pitchers finished 88% of the games they started. In 2014, that number was down to 2%. “The only reason we still have starters,” Kenny writes, “is because, once upon a time, one pitcher was all you used for the whole day.”

Kenny advocates starting games, not just with long-inning pitchers but with short-inning hurlers as well. And he heaps scorn on the way managers use their closers.

“Today’s relief aces,” he writes, “are treated like rare exotic flowers to be taken out only in certain conditions. They work the ninth inning only, preferably with nobody on base, and they top out at seventy innings for the season. Take a step back. You’ve established one pitcher as the best on your staff, batter for batter. You then artificially restrict his innings [and] keep him from the most important parts of the game.”

But isn’t the ninth inning the most important part of the game?

“Any manager who is saving his closer/relief ace/fireman/stud for the ninth inning,” Kenny notes, “is thinking the following: ‘I’m saving him to seal this win when the game is most on the line.’ And this is simply not the case. The game is frequently on the line in the ninth. But the act of saving your best pitcher for a situation that may not come (a one-run lead in the ninth) is not worth the exchange. A 4-1 lead with the bases loaded in the fifth? Run the numbers! You think there will be a bigger threat? The ninth-inning closer model has bolstered the myth that the game is on the line only in that final inning. It certainly is more obviously on the line at that point. But the fact is, most games are decided before then.”

The nerve center for decision-making during a baseball game is the manager who, Kenny declares, typically stands on the top step of the dugout “like Washington crossing the Delaware.” He then notes that 83% of the MLB managers who started the 2015 season had played previously in the major leagues. By contrast, only 19% of NFL head coaches and 50% of NBA head coaches had similar playing experience. That leads Kenny to ask the rhetorical question: “Do you think Major League Baseball requires some different level of understanding of its sport that the NBA and NFL don’t?”

Then comes more sacrilege. Kenny states, “If you told me I would be an NFL head coach tomorrow – taking over on a Monday in the middle of the season – it would be a disaster. Same thing if you gave me an NBA team. Now tell me I’m managing the Cincinnati Reds tomorrow. You know what? I’d be fine. Understand the distinction. I’m not saying I could coach. I couldn’t teach a cutter or even a good curve ball. I couldn’t teach a hitter proper mechanics. But coaching isn’t managing. The Reds would go along for days before you even knew I was there. It’s not that hard.”

He’s probably right. A case study proves his point.

Game 5 of the 2015 World Series. The Kansas City Royals are leading the New York Mets three games to one. Mets ace Matt Harvey has thrown eight scoreless innings, giving his team a 2-to-0 lead. Mets manager Terry Collins tells Harvey he’s done for the night. Harvey pleads to take the mound for the ninth inning. The crowd is chanting his name. Collins relents and sends Harvey to the mound to finish the game.

“So what’s wrong with a manager letting his stud pitcher take the mound for three more outs?” Kenny asks.

Then he answers.

“Here’s what’s wrong: a mountain of evidence that pointed to Harvey fatiguing late in games. Harvey has a fairly clear fatigue point: 100 pitches. To that point in his career, in pitches 1-100, major league hitters hit an anemic .206 against Harvey. After Harvey reached 100 pitches, they hit a robust .373 with a Hall-of-Fame level .440 on-base percentage. Harvey, after eight innings against Kansas City, was at 102 pitches.”

In the ninth inning, Harvey – predictably, to the sabermetrician’s way of thinking – blew up. The Mets lost the game and, with it, the World Series.

“The mainstream media almost universally defended Collins for going with his heart,” Kenny writes. “Nowhere that I can recall did anyone wonder where brains fit into this equation.”

That leads to Kenny’s next target: the media.

“It is a sportswriter’s job.” he states, “to help bring the game to a mass audience, to help the interested reader or listener understand the latest strategic innovations, explain the nuances, and keep them abreast of the ongoing revolution. During the sabermetric revolution, the sportswriting fraternity failed miserably.”

And there are choice words for the self-important writers who are responsible for inducting players into baseball’s Hall of Fame: “How hard is it to figure out that Bob Feller and Mickey Mantle are Hall of Famers? Most of the players voted into the hall by the writers would also have been voted in by a panel of fourth-grade baseball fans. The hard part for the baseball writers is at the border. This is where they continue to fail.”

Kenny extols Babe Ruth as the greatest hitter of all-time. And he sets forth an intriguing theory (first advanced by Bill James) as to what enabled The Bambino to turn baseball upside down: “It happened only because he was a pitcher. No one much cared if he swung from the heels. His hitting was superfluous. The baseball culture therefore didn’t pressure him into conforming. Ruth had the good fortune to break the single-season home run record while still a pitcher. By the time he was ready to convert to an outfielder, it was too late to stop him. He had already shown that swinging for the fences was a worthwhile risk.”

Basic record-keeping also comes under Kenny’s withering eye. He denounces what he calls ”the tyranny of the batting average,” noting, “In batting average, a single is as good as a home run and walks don’t exist. Yet the very first stat cited in most baseball conversations for 120 years was the batting average.”

He savages what he believes is an idiotic overemphasis on a pitcher’s won-lost record, beginning with the question, “Do you care that Mariano Rivera, from 2001 to 2012, had an average [won-lost] record of 4-3?”

Then Kenny adds, “I’m sorry if I’m the one to break this to you, but the same goes for all pitchers.” And he backs up his opinion with data showing that, between 1920 and 2014 (a 94-year data base), pitchers who threw eight innings in a game and gave up two earned runs were credited with a “win” only 33.6% of the time.

Further analyzing his data, Kenny calls Ted Williams the second best hitter of all-time, behind only Babe Ruth. Examining The Splendid Splinter’s 1941 season (.406 batting average, .553 on-base percentage, and .735 slugging percentage), he writes, “Williams’s numbers can barely be fathomed. Our minds aren’t trained to see .553 as an on-base percentage. It’s too high. No one does that past high school.”

Kenny also notes that, while Joe DiMaggio set a major league record that still stands by hitting safely in 56 consecutive games, Williams owns three of the four longest streaks for getting on base in consecutive games, including a streak of 84 consecutive games in 1949. “In baseball,” Kenny writes, “0-for-0 with three walks is likely better than 1-for-5 with a single.”

Sabermetrics can be a daunting subject for those who grew up in a simpler time when batting average, RBIs, HRs, wins, losses, and ERA reigned. Old eyes tend to glaze over when faced with OPS, OPS+, WAR, DRS, and FIP. But Kenny ties snippets of data together in enlightening and entertaining ways and brings statistics to life with a non-stop parade of informative and entertaining anecdotes

There’s a tip of the hat to Bill James, the patron saint of sabermetrics, who Kenny calls one of “the seven most influential figures in the history of baseball” along with the likes of Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Marvin Miller. Speaking first and foremost about James, Kenny writes, “The best thing about the sabermetric revolution is that the pioneers of the movement weren’t looking to run teams. They were fans of the game who loved baseball and proved that we can see much more when we take a wider view.”

Kenny also hails Billy Beane (who pioneered sabermetrics with the Oakland Athletics) and Theo Epstein, (who refined the art, first with the Boston Red Sox and now with the Chicago Cubs). The Houston Astros are lauded as today’s team leader in sabermetrics.

And yes; in recent years, teams have been learning. By way of example; the defensive shift (realigning the traditional placement of fielders) began in 1946 with an experiment by Cleveland Indians manager Lou Boudreau when Ted Williams was at bat. It wasn’t until the second decade of the 21st century that the shift became more than an oddity. In 2011, MLB teams employed a defensive shift on 2,358 occasions. In 2014, the number rose to more than 13,000.

“If you give it about thirty seconds of thought,” Kenny observes, “you realize why, for about 130 years, professional baseball players stood where they did on the field. That’s where they always stood. With this inability to evolve, it makes you wonder: how do we even survive as a species?”

“Athletes train hard for hours every day,” Kenny writes in closing. “Managers plot and plan, losing sleep. Organizations pour money into resources. Given how hard every player, coach, manager, and executive works, wouldn’t you think they would leap at the chance to gain a tactical edge using information? Each loss is crippling. Things do not have to even out. You need to fight and scrap and give yourself the best chance to win in every half-inning of every game. Burn this into your mind. You cannot give away a game.”

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (Muhammad Ali: a Tribute to the Greatest) was published by Pegasus Books. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism.

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: A Hectic Boxing Week in L.A.

Published

20 hours ago

May 16, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-326-A-Hectic-Boxing-Week-in-LA

The Los Angeles area is packed with boxing.

Japan’s Mizuki “Mimi” Hiruta, Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk, and the indefatigable Jake Paul are all in the Los Angeles area this week.

First, Hiruta (7-0, 2 KOs) defends the WBO super flyweight title against Argentina’s Carla Merino on Saturday May 17, at Commerce Casino. The 360 Boxing Promotions card will be streamed on UFC Fight Pass.

Voted Japan’s best female fighter, Hiruta faces a stiff challenge from Merino who traveled thousands of miles from Cordoba.

360 Promotions is one of the top promotions especially when it comes to presenting female prizefighting. Two of their other female fighters, Lupe Medina and Jocelyn Camarillo, will also be fighting on Saturday.

They are not only promoting female fighters. They have several top male champions including Bohachuk and Omar “Trinidad performing this Saturday.

Don’t miss this show at Commerce Casino.

“This card is one of the deepest cards we’ve promoted in Southern California which has been proven by the rush for tickets and the wealth of media interest. Serhii, Omar and Mizuki are three of the top fighters in their respective weight classes and it’s a great opportunity for fans to see a full night of action,” said Tom Loeffler of 360 Promotions.

Jake and Chavez Jr. in L.A.

Jake Paul took time off from training in Puerto Rico to visit Los Angeles to hype his upcoming fight against former world champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. next month.

“The fans have wanted to see this, and I want to continue to elevate and raise the level of my opponents,” said Paul, 28. “This is a former world champion, and he has an amazing resume following in his dad’s footsteps.”

Paul, who co-owns Most Valuable Promotions with Nakisa Bidarian, last staged a wildly successful boxing card that included Amanda Serrano versus Katie Taylor and of course his own fight with Mike Tyson.

It set records for viewing according to Netflix with an estimated 108 million views.

Paul (11-1, 7 KOs) is set to face Chavez (54-6-1, 34 KOs) in a cruiserweight battle at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. on June 28. DAZN pay-per-view will stream the Golden Boy Promotions and MVP fight card that includes the return of Holly Holm to the boxing world after years in MMA.

No one should underestimate Paul who does have crackling power in his fists. He is for real and at 28, is in the prime of his boxing career.

Yes, he is a social influencer who got into boxing with no amateur background, but since he engaged fully into the sport, Paul has shown remarkable improvement in all areas.

Is he perfect? Of course not.

But power is the one attribute that can neutralize any faults and Paul does have real power. I witnessed it when I first saw him in the prize ring in Los Angeles many years ago.

Chavez, 39, the son of Mexico’s great Julio Cesar Chavez, is not as good as his father but was talented enough to win a world title and hold it until 2012 when he was edged by Sergio Martinez.

The son of Chavez last fought this past July when he defeated former UFC fighter Uriah Hall in a boxing match held in Florida. He has been seeking a match with Paul for years and finally he got it.

“I need to prepare 100%. This is an interesting fight. It might not be easy, but I’m going to do the best I can to be the best person I am, but I think I’m going to take him,” said Chavez.

Paul was not shy about Chavez’s talent.

“This is his toughest fight to date, and I’m going to embarrass him and make him quit like he always does,” said Paul about Chavez Jr. “I’m going to expose and embarrass him. He’s the embarrassment of Mexico. Mexico doesn’t even claim him, and he’s going to get exposed on June 28.”

Also on the same fight card is unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (47-1, 30 KOs) who defends the WBA and WBO titles against Yuniel Dorticos (27-2, 25 KOs).

In a surprising addition, former boxing champion Holm returns to the boxing ring after 12 years away from the sport. Can she still fight?

Holm (33-2-3, 9 KOs) meets Mexico’s Yolanda Vega (10-0, 1 KO) in a lightweight fight scheduled for 10 rounds. Holm is 43 and Vega is 29. Many eyes will be looking to see the return of Holm who was recently voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Wild Card Honored by L.A. City

A formal presentation by the Los Angeles City Council to honor the 30^th anniversary of the Wild Card Boxing Club takes place on Sunday May 18, at 1:30 p.m. The ceremony takes place in front of the Wild Card located at 1123 Vine Street, Hollywood 90038.

Along with city councilmembers will be a number of the top first responder officials.

Championing Mental Health

A star-studded broadcast team comprised of Al Bernstein, Corey Erdman and Lupe Contreras will announce the boxing event called “Championing Mental Health” card on Thursday May 22, at the Avalon Theater. DAZN will stream the Bash Boxing card live.

Among those fighting are Vic Pasillas, Jessie Mandapat and Ricardo Ruvalcaba.

For more information including tickets go to www.555media.com/tickets.

Fights to Watch

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Mizuki Hiruta (7-0) vs Carla Merina (16-2).

Thurs. DAZN 7 p.m. Vic Pasillas (17-1) vs Carlos Jackson (20-2).

Mimi Hiruta / Tom Loeffler photo credit: Al Applerose

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Sam Goodman and Eccentric Harry Garside Score Wins on a Wednesday Card in Sydney

Published

3 days ago

May 14, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Sam-Goodman-and-Eccentric-Harry-Garside-Score-Wins-on-a-Wednesday-Card-in-Sydney

Australian junior featherweight Sam Goodman, ranked #1 by the IBF and #2 by the WBO, returned to the ring today in Sydney, NSW, and advanced his record to 20-0 (8) with a unanimous 10-round decision over Mexican import Cesar Vaca (19-2). This was Goodman’s first fight since July of last year. In the interim, he twice lost out on lucrative dates with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue. Both fell out because of cuts that Goodman suffered in sparring.

Goodman was cut again today and in two places – below his left eye in the eighth and above his right eye in the ninth, the latter the result of an accidental head butt – but by then he had the bout firmly in control, albeit the match wasn’t quite as one-sided as the scores (100-90, 99-91, 99-92) suggested. Vaca, from Guadalajara, was making his first start outside his native country.

Goodman, whose signature win was a split decision over the previously undefeated American fighter Ra’eese Aleem, is handled by the Rose brothers — George, Trent, and Matt — who also handle the Tszyu brothers, Tim and Nikita, and two-time Olympian (and 2021 bronze medalist) Harry Garside who appeared in the semi-wind-up.

Harry Garside

A junior welterweight from a suburb of Melbourne, Garside, 27, is an interesting character. A plumber by trade who has studied ballet, he occasionally shows up at formal gatherings wearing a dress.

Garside improved to 4-0 (3 KOs) as a pro when the referee stopped his contest with countryman Charlie Bell after five frames, deciding that Bell had taken enough punishment. It was a controversial call although Garside — who fought the last four rounds with a cut over his left eye from a clash of heads in the opening frame – was comfortably ahead on the cards.

Heavyweights

In a slobberknocker being hailed as a shoo-in for the Australian domestic Fight of the Year, 34-year-old bruisers Stevan Ivic and Toese Vousiutu took turns battering each other for 10 brutal rounds. It was a miracle that both were still standing at the final bell. A Brisbane firefighter recognized as the heavyweight champion of Australia, Ivic (7-0-1, 2 KOs) prevailed on scores of 96-94 and 96-93 twice. Melbourne’s Vousiuto falls to 8-2.

Tim Tsyzu.

The oddsmakers have installed Tim Tszyu a small favorite (minus-135ish) to avenge his loss to Sebastian Fundora when they tangle on Sunday, July 20, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Their first meeting took place in this same ring on March 30 of last year. Fundora, subbing for Keith Thurman, saddled Tszyu with his first defeat, taking away the Aussie’s WBO 154-pound world title while adding the vacant WBC belt to his dossier. The verdict was split but fair. Tszyu fought the last 11 rounds with a deep cut on his hairline that bled profusely, the result of an errant elbow.

Since that encounter, Tszyu was demolished in three rounds by Bakhram Murtazaliev in Orlando and rebounded with a fourth-round stoppage of Joey Spencer in Newcastle, NSW. Fundora has been to post one time, successfully defending his belts with a dominant fourth-round stoppage of Chordale Booker.

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Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Johnny Greaves Tells a Sad Tale

Published

6 days ago

May 11, 2025

Thomas Hauser

Johnny Greaves was a professional loser. He had one hundred professional fights between 2007 and 2013, lost 96 of them, scored one knockout, and was stopped short of the distance twelve times. There was no subtlety in how his role was explained to him: “Look, Johnny; professional boxing works two ways. You’re either a ticket-seller and make money for the promoter, in which case you get to win fights. If you don’t sell tickets but can look after yourself a bit, you become an opponent and you fight to lose.”

By losing, he could make upwards of one thousand pounds for a night‘s work.

Greaves grew up with an alcoholic father who beat his children and wife. Johnny learned how to survive the beatings, which is what his career as a fighter would become. He was a scared, angry, often violent child who was expelled from school and found solace in alcohol and drugs.

The fighters Greaves lost to in the pros ran the gamut from inept local favorites to future champions Liam Walsh, Anthony Crolla, Lee Selby, Gavin Rees, and Jack Catterall. Alcohol and drugs remained constants in his life. He fought after drinking, smoking weed, and snorting cocaine on the night before – and sometimes on the day of – a fight. On multiple occasions, he came close to committing suicide. His goal in boxing ultimately became to have one hundred professional fights.

On rare occasions, two professional losers – “journeymen,” they’re called in The UK – are matched against each other. That was how Greaves got three of the four wins on his ledger. On September 29, 2013, he fought the one hundredth and final fight of his career against Dan Carr in London’s famed York Hall. Carr had a 2-42-2 ring record and would finish his career with three wins in ninety outings. Greaves-Carr was a fight that Johnny could win. He emerged triumphant on a four-round decision.

The Johnny Greaves Story, told by Greaves with the help of Adam Darke (Pitch Publishing) tells the whole sordid tale. Some of Greaves’s thoughts follow:

* “We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t to win. The home fighters were the guys who had sold all the tickets and were deemed to have some talent. We were the scum. We knew our role. Give some young prospect a bit of a workout, keep out of the way of any big shots, lose on points but take home a wedge of cash, and fight again next week.”

* “If you fought too hard and won, then you wouldn’t get booked for any more shows. If you swung for the trees and got cut or knocked out, then you couldn’t fight for another 28 days. So what were you supposed to do? The answer was to LOOK like you were trying to win but be clever in the process. Slip and move, feint, throw little shots that were rangefinders, hold on, waste time. There was an art to this game, and I was quickly learning what a cynical business it was.”

* “The unknown for the journeyman was always how good your opponent might be. He could be a future world champion. Or he might be some hyped-up nightclub bouncer with a big following who was making lots of money for the promoter.”

* “No matter how well I fought, I wasn’t going to be getting any decisions. These fights weren’t scored fairly. The referees and judges understood who the paymasters were and they played the game. What was the point of having a go and being the best version of you if nobody was going to recognize or reward it?”

* “When I first stepped into the professional arena, I believed I was tough. believed that nobody could stop me. But fight by fight, those ideas were being challenged and broken down. Once you know that you can be hurt, dropped and knocked out, you’re never quite the same fighter.”

* “I had started off with a dream, an idea of what boxing was and what it would do for me. It was going to be a place where I could prove my toughness. A place that I could escape to and be someone else for a while. For a while, boxing was that place. But it wore me down to the point that I stopped caring. I’d grown sick and tired of it all. I wished that I could feel pride at what I’d achieved. But most of the time, I just felt like a loser.”

* “The fights were getting much more difficult, the damage to my body and my psyche taking longer and longer to repair after each defeat. I was putting myself in more and more danger with each passing fight. I was getting hurt more often and stopped more regularly. Even with the 28-day [suspensions], I didn’t have time to heal. I was staggering from one fight to the next and picking up more injuries along the way.”

* “I was losing my toughness and resilience. When that’s all you’ve ever had, it’s a hard thing to accept. Drink and drugs had always been present in my life. But now they became a regular part of my pre-fight preparation. It helped to shut out the fear and quieted the thoughts and worries that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

* “My body was broken. My hands were constantly sore with blisters and cuts. I had early arthritis in my hip and my teeth were a mess. I looked an absolute state and inside I felt worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting yet. Not before the 100.”

* “I had abused myself time after time and stood in front of better men, taking a beating when I could have been sensible and covered up. At the start, I was rarely dropped or stopped. Now it was becoming a regular part of the game. Most of the guys I was facing were a lot better than me. This was mainly about survival.”

* “Was my brain f***ed from taking too many punches? I knew it was, to be honest. I could feel my speech changing and memory going. I was mentally unwell and shouldn’t have been fighting but the promoters didn’t care. Johnny Greaves was still a good booking. Maybe an even better one now that he might get knocked out.”

* “Nobody gave a f*** about me and whether I lived or died. I didn’t care about that much either. But the thought of being humiliated, knocked out in front of all those people; that was worse than the thought of dying. The idea of being exposed for what I was – a nobody.”

* “I was a miserable bastard in real life. A depressive downbeat mouthy little f***er. Everything I’ve done has been to mask the feeling that I’m worthless. That I have no value. The drinks and the drugs just helped me to forget that for a while. I still frighten myself a lot. My thoughts scare me. Do I really want to be here for the next thirty or forty years? I don’t know. If suicide wasn’t so impactful on people around you, I would have taken that leap. I don’t enjoy life and never have.”

So . . . Any questions?

****

Steve Albert was Showtime’s blow-by-blow commentator for two decades. But his reach extended far beyond boxing.

Albert’s sojourn through professional sports began in high school when he was a ball boy for the New York Knicks. Over the years, he was behind the microphone for more than a dozen teams in eleven leagues including four NBA franchises.

Putting the length of that trajectory in perspective . . . As a ballboy, Steve handed bottles of water and towels to a Knicks back-up forward named Phil Jackson. Later, they worked together as commentators for the New Jersey Nets. Then Steve provided the soundtrack for some of Jackson’s triumphs when he won eleven NBA championships as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

It’s also a matter of record that Steve’s oldest brother, Marv, was arguably the greatest play-by-play announcer in NBA history. And brother Al enjoyed a successful career behind the microphone after playing professional hockey.

Now Steve has written a memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth. Those who know him know that Steve doesn’t like to say bad things about people. And he doesn’t here. Nor does he delve into the inner workings of sports media or the sports dream machine. The book is largely a collection of lighthearted personal recollections, although there are times when the gravity of boxing forces reflection.

“Fighters were unlike any other professional athletes I had ever encountered,” Albert writes. “Many were products of incomprehensible backgrounds, fiercely tough neighborhoods, ghettos and, in some cases, jungles. Some got into the sport because they were bullied as children. For others, boxing was a means of survival. In many cases, it was an escape from a way of life that most people couldn’t even fathom.”

At one point, Steve recounts a ringside ritual that he followed when he was behind the microphone for Showtime Boxing: “I would precisely line up my trio of beverages – coffee, water, soda – on the far edge of the table closest to the ring apron. Perhaps the best advice I ever received from Ferdie [broadcast partner Ferdie Pacheco] was early on in my blow-by-blow career – ‘Always cover your coffee at ringside with an index card unless you like your coffee with cream, sugar, and blood.’”

Writing about the prelude to the infamous Holyfield-Tyson “bite fight,” Albert recalls, “I remember thinking that Tyson was going to do something unusual that night. I had this sinking feeling in my gut that he was going to pull something exceedingly out of the ordinary. His grousing about Holyfield’s head butts in the first fight added to my concern. [But] nobody could have foreseen what actually happened. Had I opened that broadcast with, ‘Folks, tonight I predict that Mike Tyson will bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear,’ some fellas in white coats might have approached me and said, ‘Uh, Steve, could you come with us.'”

And then there’s my favorite line in the book: “I once asked a fighter if he was happily married,” Albert recounts. “He said, ‘Yes, but my wife’s not.'”

“All I ever wanted was to be a sportscaster,” Albert says in closing. “I didn’t always get it right, but I tried to do my job with honesty and integrity. For forty-five years, calling games was my life. I think it all worked out.”

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder at:

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329

In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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