AMERICA AT LARGE:Locked in a cupboard with the Beatles and interviewing Cassius Clay made his name
OVER THE past several weeks I’ve heard Robert Lipsyte recite the tale of his breakthrough moment in this business enough times that I probably know it better than Bob does, but it’s one that bears retelling one more time.
By way of explanation, Lipsyte and I, and a host of other distinguished contributors to At The Fights: American Writers on Boxing, the anthology John Schulian and I edited for the Library of America, have jointly appeared at so many events celebrating that book's publication that at one point Lipsyte pleaded to LoA publisher Max Rudin, "I just don't want to wind up doing more events for your book than I do for my own."
Now, two months after At the Fightshit the bookstands, Lipsyte is back with his new memoir, which he aptly entitled An Accidental Sportswriter, and unless one badly misses one's guess, he's going to be telling the story a few more times in the coming weeks.
By his own calculations Lipsyte had attended just two baseball games (and zero prize fights) in his life when, still in his teens and freshly out of Columbia, he answered a classified ad and was hired as a copy boy at the New York Times.
“My vague plan had been to go to California, where I’d sit on the beach and write the Great American Novel,” Lipsyte recalls, more than half a century later.
That scheme was altered somewhat when the summer job he had arranged to support him in that endeavour fell through. Somewhat to his surprise, he was hired by the Timesand summarily assigned to the sports department. It was there that he was taken under the wing of a more established staffer, Gay Talese.
By February of 1964 Lipsyte had moved up the ladder, though not very far. He was labouring in obscurity as a night rewrite man on the sports desk. A 7-1 underdog named Cassius Clay was set to challenge the fearsome Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship of the world.
"The fight was considered such a mismatch that the Timesdidn't deem it worthy of the attention of its real boxing writer," recounts Lipsyte. "My time wasn't considered very valuable, so they sent me instead."
His instructions for the assignment were to immediately rent a car and practice driving between the Miami Beach Convention Centre and the nearest hospital.
"The Timesdidn't want me wasting valuable deadline time following the ambulance that would be taking Clay to the intensive care unit," explains Lipstye.
Having duly memorised the route to the emergency room, Lipsyte then paid a visit to Angelo and Chris Dundee’s Fifth Street Gym, where the challenger would be working out.
“As I was climbing the steps there was a commotion behind me. I turned to see these four guys in cabana suits being pushed up the stairs by a couple of burly security guards. I was told that they were an English rock group who were touring America. They were supposed to have had their picture taken with Liston that morning, but he’d taken one look at them and said ‘I ain’t posing with those sissies,’ so they’d brought them over for a photo op with Clay instead.
“They weren’t very happy about it, especially when they discovered Clay wasn’t even there yet. The leader of the group said ‘Come on, let’s get the (bleep) out of here,’ and with that, the cops pushed all five of us into a tiny dressingroom and locked the door.
“And that,” says Lipsyte, “is how I became the fifth Beatle.”
None too pleased at being held hostage, the Fab Four were alternately cursing and banging on the door, demanding their release. Lipsyte says that when he introduced himelf, John Lennon stuck out his hand and said ‘Hi. I’m Ringo’, and Ringo said ‘Hi, I’m George’.”
When Lipsyte asked them about the upcoming fight the Beatles replied “Oh, Liston’s going to kill the little wanker,” and went back to stamping their feet and banging on the door.
“Then suddenly it opened, and there was the most beautiful creature any of us had ever seen. He was much larger than he’d seemed in photographs, and he stuck his head at the door, looked at the lads, and said ‘Come on. Let’s go make some money!’ The Beatles followed the man who would become Cassius Clay into the ring as if he were the Pied Piper, presaging a famous photo shoot that remains preserved on YouTube 47 years later.
“If I hadn’t known better I’d have sworn it had been choreographed,” recalls Lipsyte. “They lined up, he tapped Ringo in the chin, and they all went down like dominoes. When it was over they went back to their hotel and I went to the dressingroom to interview Clay. He didn’t know me from Adam, but he knew I’d been in the dressingroom, so when they were all gone he leaned forward and asked me, ‘Who were those little sissies, anyway?’”
A few nights later Cassius Clay became the heavyweight champion of the world when Liston quit on his stool after six rounds of fighting. Shortly thereafter, Clay became Muhammad Ali, and Bob Lipsyte became the New York Times' regular boxing writer, which led to his becoming, still in his 20s, a sports columnist for the paper of record.
The rest, as they say, is history. And in An Accidental Sportswriteryou can read all about it.
