Sports Roundup by Various Sports Writers

By Nick Canepa

"The Sweet Science is joined onto the past like a man's arm to his shoulder." — A.J. Liebling

When you've been a part of a quarter-century's-worth of Super Bowl weeks, they tend to run together like watercolors. So I'm not sure at which Roman numeral event this took place, but I know it was in Florida, and I'm almost positive it was Tampa, 1991. Tom Cushman, then sports editor and lead columnist of our paper, and I were seated at a table at a typical function that escalated to an event.

Muhammad Ali, unannounced and unexpected, walked in. And everything stopped. It went to freeze frame. No one could enter a room like Ali. No one.

Ali, less than a decade into being diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome, apparently was to be seated at the table next to ours. Instead of sitting down, he walked past his chair, looking our way. I heard, "Tom Cushman!" and Ali hugged my boss, and they quietly spoke for a few minutes.

And I sat there, thinking, as George Gobel famously uttered to Johnny Carson when seated between Dean Martin and Bob Hope: "Have you ever felt like the world is a tuxedo and you're a pair of brown shoes?"

As brown shoes recalls, Ali didn't hug anyone else that day.

I bring this up now because Cushman has written a terrific book, "Muhammad Ali and the Greatest Heavyweight Generation," that is to be released today by Southeast Missouri State University Press.

It's about time. Millions of words have been spilled over Ali, but no sportswriter is more qualified to speak of His Greatness and the incredible heavyweight generation than Cushman, who retired from our paper in 2001 to live the life of a squire in his beloved Colorado Springs with his wife, Lois (not stupid people, they still winter in San Diego).

As boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News before joining San Diego's paper in 1982, he covered every major boxing event on the planet, following the likes of Ali, Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Ken Norton, Mike Tyson and numerous pretenders (Gerry Cooney) as if he were a war correspondent.

Bob Knight's favorite sportswriter very nearly was. Cushman once mentioned this to me, but he writes about fearing there could have been a threat on his life when the Philly mob wasn't too pleased with his work.

If you read his book — and if you still have interest in what seems to be a dying game and wonderful prose, do yourself a favor — you know he went on undeterred.

Cushman, as boss, not only made me junior columnist in 1984, but he introduced me to big-time boxing and its cognoscenti. Together, we covered nearly every major boxing event in America for more than a decade, and he was the ideal companion, because he knew the filthy underbelly of the fight game better than anyone alive. And he wrote of the sport with an eloquence and knowledge worthy of one of his idols, Liebling. Tom Cushman rubbed elbows with the slime and came away clean.

My former editor and mentor was the first reporter outside New York City to receive the Nat Fleischer Award for excellence in boxing journalism. Cushman not only knew what he was talking about, but he was different, which is what I've always liked about his boxing stuff. He concentrates on the sport's characters, not just the fighters, but the Angelo Dundees (with reverence) and Don Kings (without it), the bad and good that shaped the game he chronicled as well as anyone.

And that's what this book is about, chapters on Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Tyson, Norton, Earnie Shavers, Liston, et al. And the great events he attended, Ali-Frazier I, The Thrilla in Manila, The Rumble in the Jungle. And, of course, bad guys and mob boys who had their fingers soaking in boxing's polluted lake. If you're looking for blow-by-blow, look somewhere else.

"That was one thing I didn't get into — the fight stuff all that much," Cushman is telling me over the phone. "That wasn't what attracted me. It was the people. I don't think there's any sport as rich in characters as boxing. It's a shame it's not there anymore, I suppose.

"I went around to 10 different people here in the Springs, people who are wired to sports, and not one of them could name the so-called heavyweight champion."

Tom needed prodding from friends, particularly Philadelphia sports columnist Bill Conlin, who wrote the book's introduction, to do this. But here is a man who always took great care when it came to the written word, who told me good writing is hard work, to type what you think is right, so for him to do this now is perfect.

"The best part of it for me is that I got back in touch with the fight people," he says. "I was on the phone with Foreman not long ago for 45 minutes."

And, I would wager, listening, more than talking.

Nick Canepa writes about sports for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

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