Shut Up and Dribble

A meditation on courage....

I remember sitting in the kitchen with my dad on Friday nights to ‘watch the fight’. He would bring the 12-inch black and white from the living room and set it on the tall white Formica kitchen table—the one with faint grey polka dots interspersed with sparkles creating a slight shimmery pattern on the hard surface. Also on the table, near the TV (that was the recipient of the occasional smack from my father’s fist to restore the picture) was a blue glass ashtray—it was small, heavy and round; a gorgeous cerulean that you could see through like the sea. A Marlboro Red sat wedged in one of the two indentations cut into the glass for this purpose, the tan brown filter poking out as the trail of smoke snaked up to the ceiling. I loved the smell of the lit cigarette and couldn’t wait until one day I would be old enough to smoke too. I watched the two men in the ring on the black and white beat each other as my father chopped onions and looked on, breaking from time to time to take a drag or gulp a slug of red wine from the long-stemmed glass that sat perched next to the ashtray, the wine glass he could make sing a little when he circled the rim under the faucet in the sink. The blue glass, red wine and tan filter offered the only color against the backdrop of the white plastic laminate surface of the table that came courtesy of the rental house.

I don’t remember who it was that was fighting that particular night: Ali, Frazier, Foreman? It didn’t matter, it was what we did: watched the fight. “Smokin’ Joe” Frazier was my favorite. The 12^th child of sharecroppers from rural South Carolina, his path to the limelight—like so many boxers in his time—was long and hard. I thought Joe was handsome. Did I favor him for that? Or was it because he won the first bout with Ali? Or was it because he presented more humbly in my 7-year-old sensibility? I do not know. But Frazier and Ali and Foreman and Norton were all household names in our home. Many of the matches were on TV back then. On rare occasions, for a particularly big fight, my dad went to a movie theater to watch. They called it “closed circuit TV”. I wasn’t old enough to go on these nights but my father would tell me all about it the next day. He would explain to me how Ali could outsmart his opponents—get into their head (my dad was a psychiatrist after all). He taught me about strategy, and rope-a-dope and how Ali had changed his name. We had a coffee table book—a hundred years of photos from LIFE magazine. There was a huge black and white picture of Cassius Clay after he won the championship with a quotation under the pic, “I am the greatest!” he said. And the LIFE editor commented, “And for awhile, he was.” Apparently the book had been published a little too soon….. I looked at the picture and I knew it was Ali and I saw the caption and my father explained what it was to change a name and to rise again.

“I am the greatest!”….. LIFE editor: For a while, he was. (They should have waited a little longer before going to print.)

It was a different time. We had Howard Cosell and Dick Cavett and the Wild World of Sports. We had connection. 300 million people watched the first bout between Ali and Frazier – roughly 7% of the total world population. An estimated one billion people watched the rematch, the “Thrilla in Manilla” – roughly 25% of the world’s 4 billion people at that time. Similar numbers for “Rumble in the Jungle”. Ali and Howard Cosell and Joe Frazier and George Foreman somehow united us all. Shared experience. It was a thing. And it certainly bonded me with my father. To this day I remember jumping up and down and screaming when Leon Spinks beat Ali – not because we didn’t like Ali at that point, but rather because it was such a truly American story, the man from out of nowhere claims his fifteen minutes. It was all anyone talked about. It’s something….to be connected that way.

I didn’t watch the Tyson / Jake Paul match. I don’t watch boxing anymore. And my sons are grown and I no longer live with them so we couldn’t have watched it together even if we wanted to. But 60 million of our now 8 billion people tuned in live to watch a convicted rapist fight an entitled YouTuber. While that’s a far cry from 25% of the world’s humans, it’s still a lot of people. I asked my older son about this, what did he think? He told me that he doesn’t judge Tyson, he believes Tyson has grown and changed and evolved from the young man who punched his wife and then raped a beauty pageant contestant. And perhaps Tyson has grown. And I know I want to live in a world that allows for that. Growth. Huh.

So I don’t watch boxing anymore and my father has passed ten years now. And I have thoughts about boxing and fathers and everything in between. Times are different. And perhaps I feel a certain kind of way about all that. Still, somehow a short clip came across my feed. It was Tyson talking about how he didn’t care about his “legacy” – that was just “ego” he said. And I suppose I noticed that. And I appreciated his callout. But I appreciate more that Colin took a knee and it cost him his career. And I appreciate more that Ali took a stand and forfeit his title, his career and his freedom – at least for a few years. And then I think about Laura Ingraham and how she doesn’t have much to say to Nick Bosa, and she does take the time to laud Harrison Butker’s ‘courage’. I guess she and I define courage a little differently. After all, principles don’t mean anything if you only adhere to them when it’s convenient.

Shut up and dribble? I could listen to Ali all day…..

Ali on snakes

Ali on the war….

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollar which should accrue to me as the champion.

But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years.”

Ali was prosecuted for dodging the draft, stripped of his heavy weight title and boxing license, and sentenced to 5 years in prison. His conviction was eventually overturned—four years later—in a Supreme Court unanimous decision.

Portraits in courage (unless you're Laura Ingraham) the boys who said no

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PS Russell had 414 yards today—second most in his career. Who says dogs don’t have their day? We’re coming people….we are coming…..