Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971 - Softcover

Montville, Leigh

 
9780307950321: Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307950328 ISBN 13: 9780307950321
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

A PEN/ESPN AWARD FOR LITERARY SPORTS WRITING FINALIST

A tremendous new biography of Muhammad Ali that zeroes in on the moment Ali turned from an athlete to an activist-icon.

Muhammad Ali: heavyweight champion, Olympic gold medalist, and cultural icon. In Sting Like a Bee, bestselling author Lee Montville takes a close look at the famed boxer, whose bombastic persona was rivaled only by his athletic performance. But Ali was more than just a boxer. He renounced his "slave name," joined the Nation of Islam, and refused to join the military. His story is the story of America in the late sixties, his life intersecting sports and pop culture, politics and the people. Sting Like a Bee zeroes in on five important years of his life, putting the legend in context. It's a portrait of an athlete and a portrait of America during a time of social unrest and earth-shaking change, a must-read for anyone looking to get a clear view of the man and his country.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Leigh Montville is a former columnist at The Boston Globe and former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He is the winner of many sports journalism awards, including the 2016 Red Smith Award, and was inducted into the Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in 2009. Montville is the author of Evel, The Mysterious Montague, The Big Bam, Ted Williams, At the Altar of Speed, Manute, and Why Not Us? He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

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Chapter 1

Local Draft Board No. 47

The day moved slowly. Bob Halloran tried to keep the conversation going in the living room of the small concrete house at 4610 NW 15th Court in the worn-­down section of Miami, Florida, that the residents called Brownsville, but after one hour passed, two hours, three, there wasn’t much else he could say. The list of topics had been covered and covered again. He mostly sat and waited, a talkative man curiously out of words as Muhammad Ali puttered and fretted, went outside and came back, and sometimes watched cartoons on the black-­and-­white television set.

A worry squirmed in Halloran’s chest that Ali would become tired of him and would send him home. Or would want to be with different people. Or something. What then? The twenty-­nine-­year-­old local television sports reporter from WTVJ tried to be as inconspicuous as possible.

His cameraman had set up on the front lawn in the morning. The guy was still somewhere out there watching the equipment. Neighborhood kids also were out there, kids who came around Ali every day, kids who treated him as if he were one of them, another kid, ready for fun. Most days he was. This day he wasn’t. A worry also squirmed in the chest of the heavyweight champion of the world.

Local Draft Board No. 47 was preparing to make its move in Louisville, Kentucky. The machinery already was in motion. Although a New York lawyer had been dispatched to plead Ali’s case, there was little doubt what the result would be. The weight of the U.S. government would fall directly on top of the primary resident of this house.

Nobody knew for sure when it was going to happen, but rumors had been floating for a week that he was going to be made eligible for the military draft at any moment. The demand for soldiers had grown, more than doubled, with the escalation of the Vietnam War. The generals at the Pentagon now wanted more than 400,000 troops for the war effort.

Ali had failed the intelligence test twice, which resulted in a 1-­Y classification, unfit for service, but under new standards, changed only three days ago, his score of 16 now passed. He not only would become 1-­A, eligible, but at twenty-­four years of age, newly single again, he would be at the top of the induction list for the next month’s call. All indications—­which included comments he had made in the past on the subject—­were that he would challenge the order to report.

Halloran had received a tip that today, Thursday, February 17, 1966, was the day all this would begin. Thursday was the day that Draft Board 47 made its weekly announcements. The tip was that the news would come from Louisville later in the afternoon, but Halloran had wanted to make sure he was there for the moment. That was why he had arrived before anyone else. That was why he had been here so long.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Communication was a problem. The bulletin from Louisville would come across the wire machine in the newsroom, but there was no way the people at the station could reach Halloran here. There was no such thing as a cellphone. He had to call them. The only phone he could use was Ali’s home phone.

As time stretched, the reporter became uneasy about breaking the mood periodically by standing and going to that phone. Any news? Okay, thanks. The movement, the words, seemed intrusive. He would shuffle back to his place to watch more cartoons.

The wait continued.

Ali was more than just another interview subject. Halloran had known the boxer since he was a nineteen-­year-­old kid, since he was Cassius Clay, back from the Olympics, training at the 5th Street Gym at the start of his professional career. Boxing was important in Miami. There were no other professional sports, unless you counted horse racing, which also was important. The University of Miami was important. The Miami Dolphins, the new football team, no doubt would be important when they finally opened for business in the fall. That was it.

Halloran needed material for two shows a night. He spent much of his week at 5th Street, upstairs in the heat and the sweat and the multicultural noise, talking with fighters and trainers and whoever might come through the door. Ali was at the top of the list, now the most known professional athlete in the world. Need words? Ali, Cassius, whichever name was used, would deliver them with style and emotion. Often they would be in rhyme.

In the early days, the beginning, Halloran sometimes would see him in the mornings, running from Brown’s, the little hotel in the Central Naval District, to the gym in Miami Beach. The trip took him over the Causeway. Who ran over the Causeway? Halloran would pick him up, save him from being clipped by the traffic. They would go somewhere for breakfast.

On the crazy night when the kid took the title from Sonny Liston at the Convention Center, when Liston didn’t leave his stool for the seventh round, Halloran was with him for the whole experience. Sat with him and Angelo Dundee and Sugar Ray Robinson and maybe Bundini Brown in the stands early in the night to watch Ali’s younger brother, then called Rudy Clay, now Rahman Ali, win a ten-­round decision over Levi Forte, who later became a crack bell captain at the Fontainebleau. Was in the locker room just before the fight, was there when Sugar Ray, known as the greatest fighter of all time, pound for pound, had to sit on top of Ali’s chest to keep him from hyperventilating. Was in the ring seconds after the fight ended, first reporter to get to the new champ.

“I’m the king of the world!” the kid shouted, pretty much hyperventilating now in public. “I shocked the world. Shocked the world. I am the greatest. I’m a baaaaaaaaaaaad man.”

Halloran kept good field position as the chaos developed, as people came from everywhere to be in that ring. The words went into his WTVJ microphone in a rush. The kid moved and moved, side to side, climbed on top of the ropes in a neutral corner, shouted and shouted some more, celebrated and pranced. Halloran kept with him as much as possible until there was a tug from behind.

“Hey,” a nasal New York voice said, “you’ve had your time. This is network television.”

That was how he met Howard Cosell, the most prominent sports announcer in the country.

The two-­year anniversary of that fight, that night, would arrive in eight days. The two years had passed in an unremitting rush of activity. The day after the fight, the new champ declared himself a member of the Nation of Islam, a disciple of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The news was greeted with public discomfort as he began his dialogue about the separation of the races, about white devils and slavery guilt. Four days later he was in New York at the United Nations with Malcolm X. Malcolm X! Radical! Revolutionary! Everything had unrolled from there as most of America winced.

“A rooster crows only when it sees the light,” the new champ said. “Put him in the dark and he’ll never crow. I have seen the light and I’m crowing.”

The kid who ran across the Causeway free and easy moved at a much faster speed after his announcement. He changed his religion, changed his name to Cassius X, changed it again to Muhammad Ali, traveled across Africa on a triumphant tour, was married, beat Liston again in Lewiston, Maine, of all places, went to Europe to fight a few exhibitions, came back to the United States to humiliate Floyd Patterson in Las Vegas, then was divorced little more than a month ago. Every day seemed touched with notoriety, with adventure.

He cut a record in New York, ten backup singers and...

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Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307950328
ISBN 13 
9780307950321
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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Osnabrück
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