A consummate chronicler of the sweet science

SIDELINE CUT:George Kimball was one of the last true boxing writers and his final collection bears testimony to a crackling energy and curiosity, writes KEITH DUGGAN

WHAT HAPPENED to boxing? That is the question posed by Carlo Rotella in his introduction to Manly Art,the final collection of journalism from the late George Kimball, which goes on the bookshelves this weekend.

“Once upon a time, when boxing’s only peer as a popular sport in America was baseball, a lot more men could make a living at the trade, which made for more bouts, a thicker network of gyms, and more and better boxers,” Rotella writes. The boxing writers “fit between two very different kinds of sophistication – the boxer’s difficult craft and the dark arts of the fight business – supplied a crucial third force to offset the often uncritical passion of fans and the promotional fairy tales peddled by the backstage powers who profited from boxing”.

In the 35 years he spent covering boxing, Kimball managed to pack in his suitcase a childlike enthusiasm for the sport along with forensic analytical qualities, a scrupulous fairness and limitless stamina for late nights. Boxing suited his personality: a wild and unpredictable sport peopled with every kind of character imaginable held together by very precise figures – dates, weights, punch counts, scorecards, titles fights etc.

The many people who read Kimball’s columns which appeared on these pages from 1997 until his death last July understood that his conscience and world view was very much shaped by the period of time in which he came of age. But while he remained true to liberal, leftish 1960s principles all of his life, he belonged to an earlier period as a boxing writer.

The serendipitous rise of Marvin Hagler in Brockton, Massachusetts gave Kimball the chance to insist his employers at the Boston Heraldshould cover his fights with a dedicated reporter. Hagler's boxing life was an integral part of one of the greatest chapters in middleweight history and Kimball was part of the scenery; a big beard and glasses behind a haze of tobacco smoke at ringside.

He would eventually offer the definitive account of the Leonard-Hagler-Hearns-Duran rivalry in his 2007 book, Four Kings. But his boxing journalism was so authoritative and enjoyable that he became, as Carlo Rotella points out, one of the last practitioners of a dying art. He was one of the last true boxing writers. He covered 400 world title fights in his career and got to know one or two people along the way.

The decline of boxing as mass entertainment has been slow and irreversible and nothing, not even the enthralling and politically important era of Muhammad Ali nor the ultra-violent surge of adrenaline that Mike Tyson gave the sport in the 1980s could prevent that. It was drifting more towards the shadows all the time, dominated and twisted by the promoters, disappearing from mainstream television and weakened also by the fact that young athletes no longer turned to the punch bag as a way out of the ghetto as frequently as they once had done.

Most of the pieces that appear in Manly Artwere written after Kimball had notionally retired from his day job with the Herald. Some are columns from this newspaper but many of the longer pieces are published courtesy of the sweetscience.com website.

One of those pieces, entitled 'The Great St Patrick's Day Hooley' revisits the infamous 1923 light-heavyweight title fight held in Dublin between Clare man Mike McTigue and the enigmatic Sengalese boxer, Battling Siki. The piece was occasioned by the screening of Andrew Gallimore's Troid Fhuilteach(A Bloody Canvas) at the Irish Arts Centre in Manhattan in 2009.

The mythology about the fight had bloomed in the decades since and as well as referring to the film, Kimball dug up a 1949 New Yorkerprofile of Siki by John Lardner, a long Sports Illustratedpiece that appeared in 1979, an ESPN film on the subject, a Timemagazine piece by Henry Luce and he lightly rebukes the shortcomings of each of the written pieces as he pieces together his chronology of events.

The details of the build-up to the fight are extraordinary. The Irish Free State was keen to stage an international sporting event but the IRA had different ideas.

McTigue was escorted from his training camp to the venue by armoured car and even so, the IRA tried to blow up the cable that provided electricity for La Scala theatre.

Instead, they succeeded in blowing up the front doors of a nearby film theatre. The fight was one of the last 20-round affairs and McTigue (allegedly spurred on by the bayonet of a Free State soldier who had put his wages on him) finished strongly and was awarded the title. Siki met bad luck on the streets of New York just two years later while McTigue was champion until 1925. While the latter amassed considerable wealth, Kimball asserts that the suggestion in A Bloody Canvasthat he accumulated the contemporary equivalent of $10 million is "downright absurd". In later life, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and died in a hospital in Queens in 1966.

The story has everything that Kimball seemed to enjoy most in boxing: big-hearted, eccentric characters, ringside intrigue, a vivid social and political backdrop and the sense that nothing that happened in the remainder of their lives would prove quite as vivid as those moments spent in the ring. He moves through the decades easily in this collection, switching from an evening spent talking with Tyson on a balcony to the very last creative days of Budd Schulberg.

But the very best pieces light up characters we don’t necessarily know. ‘Counting The House in Wise Guy Heaven’ celebrates the life of Vin Vecchione who, amongst other things, saved his fighter Peter McNeeley from an unmerciful hiding by Mike Tyson by climbing through the ropes and forcing a disqualification after just 89 seconds.

“It was as if he’d been born in that white cap he wore into the ring when he saved McNeeley, and for all I know he slept in it too: I don’t think I ever saw him without it,” Kimball writes. “The other constant was the stubby remains of a cigar he kept clenched between his teeth. You never saw him light up a new cigar and I was always wondered whether Vinnie had found a good deal somewhere on half-smoked stogies.” And just like that, you feel as if you know the man.

Manly Artwas published in America a couple of years ago but even as Big George's glorious indifference to the cancer that slowly – and then quickly – weakened him, having the book released on this side of the Atlantic was important to him. Sadly, he didn't live long enough to see its release but the extraordinarily prolific late years of his life are extended by this latest publication. Once again, it shows that he belongs among the heavy hitters of American sports journalism and once again, the pieces bear testimony to his crackling energy and curiosity.

The closing passage is unforgettable. After covering George Foreman’s famous title fight in 1994 (a friend of Kimball’s and preacher at his wedding to Marge), Kimball headed down to the casino in his Las Vegas hotel. It was close to midnight and the sleepy atmosphere was replaced by pandemonium as the new champion and his entourage walked through.

“Gamblers stopped gambling and leapt to their feet to join in the deafening applause. Dealers stopped dealing, croupiers stopped raking and they and their pit bosses and the cocktail waitresses and everyone else committed themselves to the joyous task of saluting Foreman.” Kimball hung back, trying to work something out: where was Foreman headed for? “Almost as soon as I asked myself the question, the answer became apparent: he was headed to the airport. Two hours earlier he had become the oldest man in history ever to win the heavyweight title, but right now, George Foreman was on his way to catch the red-eye back to Houston. He still had to preach in the morning.”

Manly Art

by George Kimball is published by Transworld Sport, €14.99.