Free An Accidental Sportswriter by Robert Lipsyte Page A

about.
    â€œIf Jesus had been electrocuted, we’d be wearing little chairs around our necks—how do you make the sign of the chair?”
    And my favorite of the night: “Biggest loss of the Obama presidency is for black entertainers and athletes. Sports and entertainment used to be the only tickets out. We’re not better athletes and dancers, just twenty-two million parents making their kids practice.”
    Afterward, happy and proud, I decided not to try to fight through the crowd outside his dressing room. I wanted to keep the high, think about the past flowing into the present, how our subjects choose us, and how lucky we are when they choose wisely. Greg had taken me through a door into another world and changed me.
    I remembered how thrilling and exhausting it was hanging with Greg in the sixties, always on the run to a cab to a train to a plane, ending up in an unscheduled city a stop ahead of our clothes, marching in a demonstration, sitting in on a Supreme Court hearing (where a black janitor let us in a side door and slipped Greg some papers), whispering in a restaurant bathroom with the water running to foil listening devices. Years later when I got my FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act, I wondered if some of the redacted pages were about Greg. Joe Louis, Jim Brown, civil rights leaders, writers, politicians, gangsters, blues singers paraded through his dressing room. He took me on visits to Malcolm X and Harry Belafonte.
    Once I took him along to visit Muhammad Ali, who covered the phone and asked Greg what advice he should give to some Muslim ministers calling from Africa.
    â€œTell them to look to the east and pray,” said Greg.
    Ali uncovered the phone and said, “Look to the east and pray to . . .”
    â€œNo,” snapped Greg. “They know who to pray to.”

Chapter Five
The Onliest (Part One)
    M uhammad Ali was my first Big Story. He put my name on page one. He made me a columnist. He was also the single most important sporting lens through which I learned about politics, religion, race, and hero worship. I’ve written far more about him than any other subject, and in watching him change and grow for almost fifty years I’ve watched myself.
    Loving Muhammad Ali has been easy. It’s grasping what he stands for at any given moment that’s been hard.
    Our journey began as sheer joy. The first time I ever saw him, I was standing with the Beatles.
    That was February 18, 1964, when his name was Cassius Clay. He was twenty-two years old. I was twenty-six. The Times was so sure that Gaseous Cassius, which was one of his early derogatory dubs, would be knocked out early in his heavyweight title fight against the champion, Sonny Liston, that instead of sending the regular boxing writer, Joe Nichols, down to Miami Beach, the paper sent a feature writer whose time was less valuable. I was thrilled with the assignment, another Talese-type adventure.
    My instructions were cold: as soon as I landed, I was to drive my rental car from the arena to the nearest hospital, mapping the quickest route. The paper didn’t want me to waste any deadline time following Clay to intensive care.
    After my mapping expedition, I drove to the seedy old Fifth Street Gym (in what is now trendy South Beach) to watch Clay’s daily training session for the first time. He hadn’t arrived yet, but the gym was packed with tourists and sportswriters—Clay had been on the cover of Time for his coffee house doggerel readings (“This is the story about a man / with iron fists and a beautiful tan”) and his ability to predict the round in which his carefully chosen opponents would fall. He had not yet earned the right to challenge the champion, but boxing needed a box-office draw against the unbeatable monster Liston. Clay was considered a necessary sacrifice. It was hoped that enough people would pay to see the Louisville Lip buttoned for good.
    As I