Recently, I watched one American treasure (Ken Burns) document another one (Muhammad Ali) for eight hours on TV. Later, I marveled that I could have been so blind to the naked brutality of a sport that captured some of my sports passion as a child, teenager, and young man. But, as they say, it was a different time and a different place.
In my family, and hometown, sports were extremely important. For me and my brothers, winning a high school football game made the grueling, August, two-a-day practices and occasional injuries worth it. Our father, the school principal, wholeheartedly supported his sons and the team.
But as an Army veteran and former baseball pitcher (he pitched against legendary Satchel Paige and his Texas Black Spiders as a semi-pro), he idolized baseball’s Jackie Robinson, and ex-GI Joe Lewis, the great heavyweight fighter. We watched the Gillette Friday Night Fights on a grainy black-and-white TV, and one of my favorite library books had photos and biographies of every heavyweight champion. Even the deaths of boxers in the 1960s (“Kid” Paret, Davey Moore) didn’t persuade us to turn away.
When 18-year-old Cassius Marcellus Clay captivated the world by winning the 1960 Olympic gold medal, I was just as enthralled as millions of others. His boyish face (“so pretty” he said) beamed from magazine covers and TVs. Soon, “The Mouth that Roared” began a self-promotion campaign that lasted decades. But once he became the Champ, changed his name, and publicly embraced the Black Muslims, things took a stark turn. They became even more complicated when he refused to serve in the Army in Vietnam, partially because “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me n****r.” He was quickly banned from boxing.
It’s far beyond my powers to describe an immensely complex man and era in a few sentences: his struggles and triumphs inspired millions of words in biographies, documentaries, and movies. But his willingness to sacrifice his career and his freedom for his beliefs made him almost unique among sports figures. (Ted Williams did the same, sacrificing years of his athletic prime and risking his life by volunteering and fighting in World War II and Korea.)
Later, I (along with many Americans) stopped following boxing because of its brutal nature and persistent corruption, but Muhammad Ali never left my mind. He proclaimed himself “the Greatest,” and knowledgeable boxing fans agreed.
The Civil Rights movement waned in America as well, and I mourned the loss of Martin Luther King Jr. and the strong Black athletes who stood publicly and proudly for his values: Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Olympic winners Smith and Carlos, and many others.
Then, I found basketball as my truest love in sports. I was ecstatic as Michael Jordan flew in from the baseline for his “Superman dunk” (my term) to win the 1987 dunk contest, his body almost parallel to the ground and his head near rim height. Soon, he was recognized around the world. Would he take on the role of Ali as a moral leader?
Jordan can be ranked among the top athletes of all-time for his athletic skills, winning nature, and lack of public scandals. But his greatest symbolic statement came in support of a corporate logo. He and Nike were nearly synonymous, and his multi-million-dollar contract prohibited him from appearing in any other brand. At the Olympic gold medal ceremony in 1992, with the team contracted to wear rival Reebok gear, he took a stand by covering the Reebok logo with a flag on his shoulder. The world’s most idolized athlete showed that his loyalty to a corporate brand was greater than any of the other causes he might have supported. His political silence has been deafening.
Today, Massachusetts is blessed with (at least) two articulate Black athletes who are leaders outside of sports: the Patriots’ Devin McCourty and Celtics’ Jaylen Brown. But no one can ever replace Ali, whose work after boxing included serving as a worldwide American goodwill ambassador for both Democratic and Republican presidents, and helping get political hostages released in the Middle East. The King of a violent sport became a man of peace.
John Lennon, another of the world’s most famous people, wrote, “Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion, too, Imagine all the people, Livin’ life in peace . . .” I imagine that Ali fully embraced that vision near the end of his life.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era crime novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. Comments are welcome at awoods2846@gmail.com.