Book Review
“The SuperFight” Marvelous Marvin Hagler vs. Sugar Ray Leonard
BOOK REVIEW by Thomas Hauser — Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler were two of the greatest fighters of all time. On April 6, 1987, they met in the ring at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in one of the most anticipated fights ever. The SuperFight by Brian Doogan (published by Brian Doogan Media) revisits that historic encounter and puts it in context.
“Leonard,” Doogan writes, “was Ali’s successor, the most charismatic, bankable, and virtuoso exponent of his trade. The standard-bearer for his sport. Apolitical with multicultural appeal, courted by corporate America, championed by the TV networks, paraded and fawned over on the chat show circuit. The cool acceptable face of a dark, squalid, ultimately indefensible profession.”
Or phrased differently, as Mike Tyson put it, “Ray Leonard was a pitbull with a pretty face” who became the highest paid athlete of his time.
Hagler loved the craft and hated the business of boxing. His early years were spent in riot-torn Newark, New Jersey. His mother moved the family to Brockton, Massachusetts, where Marvin dropped out of high school after fathering a son. Trained and managed by Goody and Pat Petronelli, he earned his championship by cutting a wide swath through the middleweight division.
“Hagler has done everything you could ask of a champion,” Hall of Fame great Archie Moore said after Marvin (or, as he was legally known by then, “Marvelous Marvin”) destroyed Thomas Hearns over three of the most enthralling rounds in boxing history. “He’s fought one top contender after another and beaten them all. I rate him right up there with Sugar Ray Robinson. He’s a hard hitter with both hands. And he’s cruel in the ring, like a great fighter must be.”
Hagler was hard-working, disciplined, and honest. Pure fighter, if there is such a thing. “His aura,” Doogan observes, “spoke for him.”
“I’ve gotten meaner since I became champion,” Hagler noted. “They’re all trying to take something from me that I’ve worked long and hard for years for. And I like the feeling of being champ.”
For most of their respective ring careers, Leonard and Hagler plied their trade in parallel universes, dominating the welterweight and middleweight divisions. The thirteen-pound weight differential between them was considered too wide to bridge. From time to time, Ray dangled the possibility of a super-fight in front of Marvin in the manner of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown in the Peanuts comic strip of that era. But he was toying with Hagler. And over time, Marvin’s resentment grew, fueled by the disparity in purses between them.
Mike Trainer was a constant throughout Leonard’s ring career. Ray trusted the attorney to look after his business interests, and Trainer did so brilliantly.
Hagler’s purse for his first pro fight was forty dollars. Leonard, the darling of the United States boxing team at the 1976 Olympics, made $50,000 for his pro debut. Leonard earned $1,000,000 for his first title opportunity against Wilfred Benitez. Hagler’s first title challenge was against Vito Antuofermo on the undercard that night. Marvin was paid $40,000. And he got screwed by the judges, who ruled the bout a draw.
Four fights later, Hagler earned a second title shot, this time against Alan Minter who he stopped in three rounds. Marvin’s purse that night was $150,000. Meanwhile, Leonard was paid $17 million for two fights against Roberto Duran (a loss avenged in an immediate rematch) and $12 million (equal to more than $35 million today) for knocking out Thomas Hearns.
“No one,” Doogan writes, “wanted to take a look beneath the mask that was Sugar Ray, the ATM machine for family and friends, the all-American and international star, [But] to Hagler, he was always ‘pretty boy’ – a description the middleweight king spat out with contempt. The antithesis in almost every respect of the spartan blue-collar outsider who, by overwhelming force of will, climbed the ranks to establish himself as the feared ruler of the sport’s red-light district.”
Five months after beating Hearns, Leonard disposed of Bruce Finch in three rounds. Then he suffered a detached retina and left boxing, only to return in 1984 to fight Kevin Howard. Howard knocked Ray down – the first time in Leonard’s career that he’d been on the canvas. Ray prevailed on a ninth-round stoppage that brought his record to 33-1. But he’d looked mediocre, and the assumption was that his days as an elite fighter were over.
Meanwhile, Hagler was becoming increasingly marketable with victories over Duran and Hearns elevating him to superstar status. On March 3, 1986, he added to his laurels by stopping John Mugabi in eleven rounds.
But against Mugabi, Hagler seemed to be slipping a bit. And outside the ring, for the first time, he was growing ambivalent about fighting.
At the same time, Leonard was getting an itch that he had to scratch. Commenting during the telecast of Hagler-Hearns, Ray acknowledged, “I would be lying if I told you I didn’t envy those two men up there right now. There is a lot you don’t miss in boxing. You don’t miss the roadwork while the rest of the world is sleeping. You don’t miss all the hype, all the promotion. But you do miss moments like these. You miss the feeling that, for a little time, the whole world is looking at you and the guy you are fighting. You miss the fact that, for a few days of your life, you’re at the dead center of the world.”
Offers for Hagler vs. Leonard were forthcoming. Despite Hagler’s ebbing desire, it was a fight that Marvin had to take. Bob Arum, who would promote the bout, said as much when he declared, “If Leonard decides not to accept the offer, I think Marvin would be delighted. He really and truly doesn’t want to fight Leonard. He’s doing it to protect his reputation.”
Eventually, a deal was reached. For only the third time in his ring career, Leonard would be on the short end of a purse split. Leonard-Benitez and Duran-Leonard II had been the first two instances. This time, after all the revenue streams were added up, Team Hagler would take home roughly $20 million while Leonard’s end would be $12 million.
But in exchange, Leonard received several significant concessions. The fight would be twelve rounds, not fifteen. It would be contested in a 20-foot ring. The fighters would wear ten-ounce gloves instead of eight. And because Ray had previously suffered a detached retina, the fighters would wear thumbless gloves.
“I’m not coming back to have a career,” Leonard said. “I’ve had a career. I want Marvin.”
Hagler was a 7-to-2 betting favorite.
In the preceding five years, Leonard had fought once – his unimpressive outing at 149 pounds against Howard. Now he’d be fighting the dominant middleweight of his time and one of the greatest fighters ever.
Previously, Emanuel Steward (who trained Thomas Hearns) had opined, “A Hagler-Leonard fight would be a fraud on the public. It would be another Larry Holmes – Muhammad Ali show. A hoax.”
The sporting press was in accord:
* Hugh McIlvanney (The Observer): “I think it’s ludicrous that Sugar Ray should be able to come back after one fight in more than five years – nine very unimpressive rounds – and step into a world championship fight. We all love Sugar Ray. He possessed everything essential to the great man’s fighting armoury. Superb technique, speed, fluency, imagination, punching power, and a strong chin. And behind his dazzling good looks and the readily summoned charm, there was the remorselessness of a street fighter. But what is being said about him now by his admirers relates mainly to what he was. I think he is more memory than substance.”
* Jim Murray (The Los Angeles Times): “You look at Sugar Ray Leonard and you want to take him to lost-and-found and buy him an ice cream cone until you can find his mother and father. You look at Marvelous Marvin Hagler and you wonder where the police are when you need them. If this is a contest, so is a train wreck.”
* Tom Boswell (The Washington Post): Hagler is the embodiment of the fighter we don’t want Leonard to fight. Hagler hurts you. He changes you. Permanently.”
“If he’s foolish enough to step in the ring with me, I’m foolish enough to rip his eye out,” Hagler said ominously. “Nobody is going to want Leonard when I get through with him. I’m gonna rip his brains out. Ray says he’ll use strategy. But I’ll be using something called punching. This guy is just a pretty boy.”
Sixty of 67 writers polled on site predicted that Hagler would win, 52 of them by knockout.
“It was almost like we were going to a hanging,” HBO commentator Barry Tompkins later reminisced “That was the mood in the air that week in Las Vegas. People thought there’s no way Ray Leonard can win this fight and, essentially, we’re about to watch an execution.”
“Maybe I don’t hit as hard as Marvin, but I hit consistently, “Leonard offered in response. “If I’d always heeded everybody’s advice, I would have stayed in school and never boxed.”
Hagler was 32 years old. Leonard was 30. In 1987, that was getting on in age for a fighter.
Earlier in his career, Leonard had battled an addiction to cocaine. Now that was behind him. Hagler, by contrast, had dabbled with cocaine after beating Hearns. Except with cocaine, it’s hard to just dabble.
More to the point; prior to fighting Leonard, Hagler had said, “For me, the fight with Tommy was World War I. This fight is World War II.” But when the bell for round one against Leonard rang, Marvin didn’t fight like it.
Richard Steele (who refereed Hagler-Leonard) later recalled, “I saw something different about Hagler. He wasn’t himself. As the fight unfolded, I began to realize he was trying to be a boxer instead of the fighter he really was. His ‘destruct and destroy’ mindset was what got him to be the great fighter, the great champion he was. But Leonard had won the mental battle. He got Hagler to change his style.”
Most notably, Hagler gave away the first three rounds by fighting from an orthodox stance instead of his usual southpaw stance. That would cost him dearly.
Equally important, Barry Tompkins later revealed that, before the fight, Leonard had confided in him, “I’m going to tell you how you beat Marvin Hagler. You’ve got to fight three times a round for fifteen seconds. At the beginning of the round, in the middle of the round, and you have to do it again at the end of the round. And you’ll steal the fight.”
When it was over, Dave Moretti scored the bout 115-113 for Leonard. Lou Filippo favored Hagler by a 115-113 margin. The deciding vote was cast by Jo-Jo Guerra whose scorecard was an inexplicable 118-110 in favor of Leonard. Guerra’s scorecard cast a stench over the proceedings. Had he scored the bout 115-113 for Leonard, the verdict would have been less controversial.
For the record; I scored Hagler-Leonard twice – once in a theater watching on closed-circuit TV and later viewing a replay on television. Each time, I scored the bout a draw.
“The truth is really simple,” Hagler said bitterly afterward. “And everybody knows it. Leonard didn’t come to fight. He came to run all night. With the politics, I knew if Leonard stayed on his feet, I was probably gonna lose. And he ran and survived.”
But Leonard wasn’t trying to win a war. He was trying to outpoint an opponent and win a prizefight. As Doogan states, “Whatever the vagaries of the scoring, the reality is Hagler was unable to make good on his vow while Leonard, against all odds, continued to execute his battle plan.”
Hagler never fought again. He retired and stayed retired, moving to Italy and landing roles in four action films.
“You always need to have another road ahead of you,” Marvin said of his new life. “If you ever feel it’s done, then it is done and you’re done too. You’ve always got to keep reaching and striving.”
Leonard, it turned out, was more of a junkie for boxing that Hagler was. Having engineered one of the greatest comebacks in boxing history, Ray would fight five more times over the next ten years, ending his illustrious career on losses to Terry Norris and Hector Camacho, both of whom did to him what people had thought Hagler would do.
The SuperFight is a good book. Brian Doogan did his homework conscientiously. He writes smoothly and fashions compelling portraits of Leonard and Hagler, bringing both men to life. He recounts the key fights in each man’s career leading up to their April 6, 1987, encounter and also their lives outside the ring, including Leonard being sexually abused multiple times as an adolescent, Ray’s troubled first marriage, and the descent into cocaine that almost destroyed his life.
Hagler’s life is similarly explored. One of many whimsical details Doogan recounts that caught my eye is the recollection of Robbie Sims (Marvin’s half-brother) who says of their childhood years, “Every day, he made sure I made my bed, cleaned my side of the room, put my shoes away and the dirty clothes in the dirty-clothes bag.”
Hagler succumbed to an apparent heart attack at age 66 on March 13 of this year. It’s a tragedy that he died as young as he did,
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – Staredown: Another Year Inside Boxing – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, he was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Book Review
“The Knockout” and More from Thomas Hauser
The Knockout by Andy Clarke (published by Aurum) is a thoughtful book that encourages readers to think more deeply about boxing’s most violent spectacle, described by Clarke as, “The greatest finish in all of sport . . . Boxing’s money shot . . . Sport’s most decisive moment . . . The ultimate sporting cataclysm . . . A public sporting execution . . . The ultimate expression of sporting victory and defeat.”
Clarke focuses on two types of knockouts that he labels “type one” (the single-punch knockout) and “type two” (when a fighter has been beaten down over time to the point where he can no longer properly defend himself).
“Type one is spectacular,” Clarke writes. “The suddenness of it is shocking. It almost doesn’t seem right or fair that something that until so recently was so full of potential and possibility can just end like that, without warning, without consultation. But that’s boxing and that’s the knockout and you won’t find anything like it anywhere else in the world of sport. Type two is slow by comparison, gruelling, and, at least in theory, much more preventable. Torture. Breaking the will. That’s what a type-two knockout is about.”
“There is no response to a knockout,” Clarke continues. “There is no other moment in sport that can rival it for its utter finality. No opportunity to come back. It renders the clock irrelevant. Other sports can provide moments of great drama. But a last-second goal or basket on the buzzer to win the game requires whoever scores them to be within striking distance, to be close enough to their opponent’s score for that final act to be decisive.”
Clarke examines knockouts from multiple perspectives. He starts with fighters – both winners and losers – keying on conversations with Carl Froch, Ricky Hatton, Amir Khan, Matthew Macklin, Jamie Moore, David Haye, and Tony Bellew. Then he broadens his inquiry to consider the role played by third parties such as trainers and referees and the response of fans to a “traumatic physical event” that often redirects the trajectory of a fighter’s career and, for the loser, can change him physically and mentally for life.
Here, the thoughts of two trainers are instructive.
Joe Gallagher, talking about whether or not to stop a fight when his charge is taking a beating, told Clarke, “There’s a very fine line. You’ve got to understand what your fighter is capable of or not capable of. And if you’ve got to ask them to do something that he’s never done in his career before, never done in the gym, than why do you keep him in there? We’re beginning to get into a highlight-reel knockout situation and he shouldn’t be in there. It’s very hard.”
And Billy Graham opines, “Fighters might say they don’t want to hurt their opponent. But let me tell you, when you’re in there, you absolutely f***ing do. You want to knock them out. You want to keep hitting them until they drop so they’ll stop f***ing hitting you and you can get yourself out of that hellhole. Yeah, a few seconds later, when you’ve done it, when it’s over, you might start to think about if they’re okay. But whilst you’re in there, you just want to finish it, to knock them the f*** out.”
To Clarke’s credit, his book is not a tedious compendium of boxing’s greatest knockouts. But a little more historical perspective would have been welcome. The most celebrated one-punch (“type one”) knockout in boxing history was a left hook to the jaw delivered by Sugar Ray Robinson on May 1, 1957, in his second fight against Gene Fullmer. Rocky Marciano’s one-punch knockout of Jersey Joe Walcott to seize the heavyweight throne on September 23, 1952, runs a close second. More recently, on November 5, 1994, George Foreman solidified his place in boxing history with a one-punch knockout of Michael Moorer. It would have been nice had Clarke acknowledged those moments.
Also, “type one” knockouts come from body punches as well as head shots. Clarke largely ignores that phenomenon.
That said; The Knockout is a good book.
“Boxing,” Clarke observes, “is as old as sport gets.” He reminds us that, “In boxing, the ability to survive is the cornerstone around which everything else can be built.” And he cautions, “The ultimate aim for all boxers is to leave the sport having taken more from boxing than boxing has taken from them. It’s a straightforward ambition but one that few achieve.”
****
One of the sad things about the craziness that enveloped Mike Tyson for much of his ring career is that it obscures what a remarkable fighter he was when he was young. Consider this one statistic.
Tyson knocked out Trevor Berbick on November 22, 1986, to claim the WBC heavyweight crown. He was undefeated in THIRTEEN fights that year. Some of his opponents were easy outs. But others – like James Tillis and Mitch Green – posed credible challenges.
Compare Tyson to his brethren.
Larry Holmes fought three times in the twelve months before he defeated Ken Norton for the heavyweight crown. Evander Holyfield had two fights in the year prior to his beating Buster Douglas. Lennox Lewis, two before beating Tony Tucker. Riddick Bowe, four before beating Holyfield.
What about “throwback fighters”?
Rocky Marciano had five fights in the year before he dethroned Jersey Joe Walcott. Joe Louis had seven fights in the year before beating James Braddock. Gene Tunney, three before toppling Dempsey. Dempsey, ten before beating Jess Willard. Jack Johnson had one win the year before he beat Tommy Burns.
And recent heavyweight champions?
Oleksandr Usyk had one fight during the year before he dethroned Anthony Joshua . . . Joshua, four before beating Charles Martin . . . Tyson Fury, two before beating Wladimir Klitschko . . . Deontay Wilder, two before beating Bermane Stiverne.
So to repeat the number: Mike Tyson’s knockout of Trevor Berbick to claim the WBC heavyweight title was his THIRTEENTH fight of 1986. That’s a lot of fights.
****
At the kick-off press conference at the Hunt and Fish Club in New York for his largely-ignored August 24 rematch against John Gotti III, Floyd Mayweather bragged, “Last time I checked, I’ve beat more fighters that are in the Hall of Fame than any fighter in history.”
Floyd should check again.
Floyd beat Diego Corrales, Arturo Gatti, Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Juan Manuel Marquez, Shane Mosley, and Miguel Cotto. That’s victories over seven Hall of Fame opponents. And let’s assume that Manny Pacquaio will be inducted into the Hall of Fame some day which will give Floyd eight (although the number now stands at seven).
Now let’s look at two men who Mayweather often compares himself to.
Pacquiao defeated eight opponents who are now in the Hall of Fame: Marco Antonio Barrera, Juan Manuel Marquez, Eric Morales, Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley, and Tim Bradley.
And Sugar Ray Robinson defeated eleven: Henry Armstrong, Kid Gavilan, Carmen Basilio, Jake LaMotta, Rocky Graziano, Gene Fullmer, Fritzie Zivic, Randy Turpin, Bobo Olson, Joey Giardello, and Sammy Angott.
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1
In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Book Review
Literary Notes from Thomas Hauser
Literary Notes from Thomas Hauser
Bernard Fernandez has written thousands of articles during his 55-year career as a sports journalist. Championship Rounds: Round 5 is the fifth (and Bernard says, the last) collection of his articles to be published in book form.
Fernandez has a way with words. He also has an ear for quotes as evidenced by the following thoughts from Championship Rounds: Round 5:
Alex Rodriguez (speaking about his brother, Francisco, who died after being knocked out by Teon Kennedy at the Blue Horizon in Philadelphia): “My brother had a perfect heart, perfect lungs, perfect kidneys, perfect pancreas. Because of him, other people will have a chance for better health, more birthdays, the fulfillment of their own dreams. Paco is going to continue walking through this world through them.”
Johnny Tapia (after Don King completely dominated the final prefight press conference for his fight against Nana Yaw Konadu in Atlantic City): “I don’t understand this. I mean, I’m the one who’s fighting, right?”
Archie Moore: “A legend is something between fact and fable. Some people might say that that is an accurate description of me.”
George Foreman (on Roy Jones): “The better he is at his craft, the less people understand it.”
Mike Tyson (on Sonny Liston’s gift for weakening opponents through intimidation): “He was a menacing force. Sonny could pull it off. I could pull it off. Not a lot of people could pull it off.”
Bert Sugar (reflecting on some of the unsavory characters who have been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame): “You can always make a case for someone’s exclusion. It depends on how moralistic you want to be. But remember, this is boxing we’re talking about.”
Ferdie Pacheco (after watching 47-year-old Roberto Duran get knocked out by William Joppy in three rounds): “What happened tonight happens too often in boxing. How often do we need to see Joe Louis knocked out by Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali beaten to a pulp by Larry Holmes, Sugar Ray Robinson losing to everybody? How much longer do we need to see these legends take beatings like this? This wasn’t a boxing match. It was a licensed execution. I hope it’s the end of the line for Roberto. It should have been the end of the line ten years ago.”
Seth Abraham (reflecting on having signed Roy Jones to a multi-bout contract with insufficient quality control regarding opponents): “In retrospect, I wish I had taken a harder line with him. He wanted to make the most money. That’s fine. He wanted to take the fewest risks. That’s not fine if you want the most money.”
Matthew Saad Muhammad (on his hyper-aggressive ring style and growing older): “You can’t fight the way I did unless you got something to back it up. I couldn’t back it up anymore.”
Archie Moore. “Boxing is magnificent. It’s beautiful to know. But you’ve got to marry it. And so I did. Boxing was my lover. It was my lady.”
Earnie Shavers (on knocking Larry Holmes down and near-senseless with an overhand right. Miraculously, Holmes rose from the canvas and, four rounds later, knocked Shavers out): “I was the heavyweight champion of the world. All my troubles were finally over. It was the greatest feeling I’d ever had. And it lasted for five whole seconds.”
Dan Goossen (on Michael Nunn leaving him for a new manager): “Am I hurt that he decided to leave me? Of course. It’s kind of like being married to a beautiful woman. Guys are going to whistle at her, try to pick her up. It’s up to her to do the right thing and come home. Same thing with Michael. People are going to constantly hit on him. This time, he didn’t come home.”
* * *
Women’s boxing peaked with Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano at Madison Square Garden on April 30, 2022. It was a superb fight between two skilled fighters in an atmosphere that was electric. In Malissa Smith’s words, that night “set the stage for a new era of elite female boxing” and “legitimized” women’s boxing.
Six months later, Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall squared off at the O2 Arena in London with Mikaela Mayer vs. Alycia Baumgardner on the undercard. Like Taylor-Serrano, the fights in London were a platform for women’s boxing to build on.
Smith’s new book – The Promise of Women’s Boxing (Rowman & Littlefield) – focuses on women’s boxing from the 2012 Olympics to date and is a sequel to her first book – A History of Women’s Boxing (published a decade ago).
Smith has put a huge amount of research into her work. But she recites the details of fight after fight after fight. After a while, the fights tend to blur together and reading about them feels like reading a 224-page encyclopedia article.
Also, when Smith’s writing isn’t too dry, it tends toward hyperbole. Words like “great” and “spectacular” are overused . . . Amanda Serrano is a very good boxer. She is not “one of the hardest-hitting fighters in boxing, male or female.” (Amanda’s last seven opponents have gone the distance against her) . . . And as good a fight as Taylor-Serrano was, it was not “one of the greatest boxing matches in the history of the sport.”
Here, the thoughts of promoter Lou DiBella are instructive. As recounted by Smith, DiBella cautions that fans should “stop comparing women’s boxing contests to men’s and start appreciating them on their own terms.”
* * *
Every fighter has a story. And every fighter’s story is interesting. But some fighters’ stories are more interesting and more artfully told than others.
Land of Hope and Glory by Maurice Hope with Ron Shillingford (Pitch Publishing) has some worthwhile moments but falls short of the mark.
Hope (30-4-1, 24 KOs, 2 KOs by) fought professionally from 1973 through 1982. The high point of his career came in 1979 when he stopped Italian-born Rocky Mattioli in San Remo to claim the WBC 154-pound title. Two years later, he lost his belt to Wilfred Benitez.
The loss to Benitez ended with a frightening highlight-reel knockout that left Hope unconscious on the canvas for an extended period of time. In an ugly coda, when Wilfred was told that Maurice had lost two teeth in the battle, Wilfred responded, “He can put the teeth under his pillow.”
There are some entertaining passages in Land of Hope and Glory. Recounting the prelude to his championship-winning fight against Mattioli, Hope recalls, “Walking to the ring was frightening. Shady figures in the crowd in dark suits and sunglasses were walking around with hands on their breast pockets. Whether there was just a handkerchief there or a loaded gun, the impact had the desired effect – intimidation. I pretended not to see them but it was hard to stay focused and calm. Gangsters with bandages around their hands seemed to be everywhere. It seemed like the Mafia had taken over the whole venue.”
There are also poignant recountings of the death of Hope’s son in a car accident and Maurice visiting a horribly disabled Wilfred Benitez in Puerto Rico long after Wilfred had descended into a hellish dementia.
But sixty pages pass before Land of Hope and Glory gets to a boxing gym. Hope doesn’t turn pro until page 93. And overall, the treatment of boxing is superficial. The book doesn’t explain with nuance or in depth what’s involved in being a fighter or what the business of boxing is about.
There are too many factual errors. For example, Las Vegas is described as being “in the middle of the Arizona desert.” And there’s some fuzzy math. Hope complains about an 80-79 decision that he lost to Mickey Flynn, writing, “The 80-79 decision meant Flynn won two rounds and the other six were draws.” That leads to two thoughts; (1) It’s more likely that Flynn won one round with seven rounds being called even; and (2) Since Maurice was the A-side fighter in that bout and Flynn had thirteen losses on his record, one might speculate that referee Benny Caplan (who was the sole judge) leaned over backward in Maurice’s favor and marked his scorecard “10-10” for rounds that Flynn should have won.
To his credit, Hope got out of boxing at the right time. After losing to Benitez and in his next fight to Luigi Minchillo, he retired from the ring at age thirty. He understood the risks of the trade he had chosen and now writes, “In my mind, boxing is the hardest sport out there. Once you get in the ring, you know your head’s going to hurt.”
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1
In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Book Review
Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Dave Kindred and Robert Seltzer
Midway through reading Dave Kindred’s most recent book – My Home Team (published by Public Affairs) – I said to myself, “Kindred is such a good writer.”
Kindred, now 83 years old, has won virtually every sports journalism award worth winning. My Home Team is a memoir that weaves together three love stories – Kindred and Cheryl Liesman (his high school sweetheart and wife for more than fifty years) . . . Kindred and sports journalism . . . And late in life, Kindred’s immersion in a high school girls basketball team (the Lady Potters of Morton, Illinois).
The book is divided into two parts. The first (“Act One) details Dave’s career as a sports journalist and his personal life from early childhood through his retirement from big-time journalism. “Act Two” deals with the Lady Potters and the tragic stroke that ravaged Cheryl, leaving her bedridden and unable to control her environment or speak more than a few words in her final years. A short coda puts the final pieces in place.
Kindred wrote more than six thousand columns during his years at the Louisville Courier-Journal, Washington Post, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As his reputation grew, he covered virtually every major sporting event in the way he chose to cover it.
“Newspapers were never better nor did they matter more than in those days when they were rich with cash and ambition,” Dave writes. “Before the Internet, before Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, newspapers were important in ways that social media could never be – as trusted messengers of the day’s news.”
“I was not a fan of a team, a coach, a player,” Kindred continues. “That relationship could only end badly. I was a fan of reporting and writing. Journalists root for stories. Whatever happens, good or bad, just make it something we can write. Sometimes we get lucky and the best story is the one we want to write.”
I met Kindred in 1989 when I was researching a biography of Muhammad Ali. Dave had just written a remarkable piece of investigative journalism about a lawyer named Richard Hirschfeld who was exploiting Ali and imitating Muhammad’s voice in telephone calls to members of Congress. It was a notable example of the ways in which Ali was being used by hustlers to advance their own economic interests. Kindred pieced the story together brilliantly. In later years, I got to know him better as a writer and a person.
Dave was with the young Ali in Louisville when he was king of the world, the old Ali in Las Vegas when he was brutalized by Larry Holmes, and each incarnation of Ali in between. He wrote that Ali in his prime was “as near to living flame as a man can get” and added thoughts like:
* “You could spend twenty years studying Ali and still not know what he is or who he is. He’s a wise man and he’s a child. I’ve never seen anyone who was so giving and, at the same time, so self-centered. He’s either the most complex guy that I’ve ever been around or the most simple. And I still can’t figure out which it is. We were sure who Ali was only when he danced before us in the dazzle of the ring lights. Then he could hide nothing.”
* “I never thought of Ali as a saint. He was a rogue and a rebel, a guy with good qualities and flaws who stood for something. He was right on some things and wrong on others, but the challenge was always there.”
* “Rainbows are born of thunderstorms. Muhammad Ali is both.”
In 2010, when Kindred’s sportswriting days on the national stage came to an end, he and Cheryl moved back to their roots in rural Illinois. They bought a house on a big plot of land and envisioned a comfortable old age surrounded by family and friends.
Then, in December 2010, Dave went to a Lady Potters basketball game to see the daughter of friends play.
Three years earlier, Kindred recalls, “Carly Jean Crocker [had been] thirteen years old, blonde and blue-eyed, tall and trim in blue jeans, stylish in a denim jacket and red canvas sneakers.”
This was long before Caitlin Clark set the basketball world ablaze.
A neighbor had asked, “Carly, are you going to be a cheerleader?”
“No,” Carly answered, “I’m going to be the one you cheer for.”
Now Carly was on the Lady Potters roster.
“I climbed three rows up at the Morton High School Gym,” Kindred recounts. “The game was the first sporting event for which I ever bought a ticket. Though I resisted saying the word, friends counted me as, quote, retired. With newspapers and magazines dying in the Digital Age, there was also the unhappy circumstance of nobody looking to coax geezers out of retirement. Without a press credential for the first time since I was seventeen, I was an official spectator.”
Before long, Dave was hooked. He began writing about the Lady Potters for the team website and Facebook. “I had no agenda,” he recalls. “It got me out of the house. It made me pay attention to something other than growing old.”
His pay?
Before each outing, the team gave him a box of Milk Duds to eat in the stands during the game.
“But I like Milk Duds,” Kindred notes.
Then tragedy struck.
Cheryl was the only girlfriend Dave ever had. Her place in his heart was sealed at their high school senior prom when the awkward young man confessed, “I’m a very bad dancer.”
“She took my hand and squeezed it,” Dave told me decades later. “And then she said, ‘Bad dancing is better than no dancing.'”
On December 6, 2015, Dave and Cheryl were at the movies. She was eating popcorn when a massive stroke hit.
“It’s like a bomb exploded in her brain,” one of her doctors said.
For the next five years, Cheryl lay in bed in a nursing facility – in Kindred’s words, “her spirit gone, her body smaller and smaller, life disappearing.” He made the 36-mile round-trip from their home to her bedside more than a thousand times.
“Some days, I don’t even think she knows who I am,” Dave told me after one of his visits. “But I hold her hand and talk to her. I hope it comforts her. And it makes me feel better to be there.”
Cheryl died on June 24, 2021.
Meanwhile, the Lady Potters had become a very good basketball team. During one five-year stretch, they won 164 games and lost only 13, leading Kindred to refer to them as “the Golden State Warriors, only with ponytails.” In 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2019, they won the Section 3A Illinois State Championship.
“Basketball is beautiful when people move the ball quickly and surely to places where it can be put in the basket easily,” Kindred writes in My Home Team as he looks back on his journey. “It is beautiful, too, when people play defense as if it is the most fun a teenage girl can have. A couple of years in, I understood my real reason for writing about the Lady Potters. No professional athlete ever introduced me to his parents or asked about my family’s well being. Slowly, I understood that I cared about the Lady Potters games in ways I had not cared about all those that came before. We met good people and shared good times. I loved the little gyms, loved the games. [And] writing was my life. Writing anything gave me a reason to stay alive.”
Kindred’s writing is as smooth as silk with some sharp barbs woven into the fabric. In that vein, I’ll close this review with an anecdote from My Home Team that Dave shares in chronicling his days as a national journalist.
Jenny Keller (a reporter for the New York Daily News) was assigned to cover the New York Jets and found herself in the team locker room confronted by a huge defensive lineman who held his male organ up for inspection and asked, “Do you know what this is?”
“Looks like a penis,” Jenny answered. “Only smaller.”
—
Ted Williams – arguably the greatest hitter of all time – had a Mexican-American mother. But he rarely talked about that part of his heritage. After retiring from baseball, Williams said of growing up in San Diego, “If I had my mother’s name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California.”
As Williams’s mythic career was winding down, a 17-year-old named Ritchie Valens from California’s San Fernando Valley recorded a love song called Donna – one of the most popular love songs of its time. One year later, his life was cut short when he died in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and J.P. Richardson. Valens’s real name was Richard Valenzuela. But he’d been told to anglicize it so his records would be more saleable to mainstream America.
This is the world that Robert Seltzer was thrown into at age ten when he moved with his parents from El Paso to Bakersfield, California. His mother was a Mexican woman from Chihuahua. His father was a “gringo,” originally from Cleveland, who preferred Mexican culture to his own and took the pen name “Amado Muro” for much of his writing.
Amado Muro and Me recounts Seltzer’s first year in Bakersfield when he experienced racism for the first time and was mercilessly picked on as the only Mexican-American in his fifth-grade class. Through the prism of that year, he explores his relationship with his father, wrestles with his own self-identity, and recreates the multi-cultural world that he came from.
Seltzer is known to boxing fans as a past recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Career Excellence in Boxing Journalism. There’s not much boxing in this book. But it’s a wonderful read with a particularly reprehensible bully. And it reinforces the view that families are families regardless of race, religion, or national origin.
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is an intensely personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1
In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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