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50 years and counting for Daily News sports writer Stan Hochman
I've got a game ball. It's inscribed to "honorary assistant coach." And they win the game, and they win it with a play they put in that week. It felt good to be trusted and to be able to have the stamina to be able to endure a long day and still write the 2,500-word stories at night.
You know when it became satisfying? When the Inquirer sent about five people on the same mission about a year ago and they came up half-empty.
Ali-Frazier I
It's the highlight. It's a whole chapter. We did a fist with a number and a minus sign: 21 days to the fight, 20, 19, 18. At least one full-page story with a picture every day. Talk about trust. I was the only white man ever to interview Belinda Ali. She trusted me.
The fight comes. It matches all the expectations. I don't care what they say: We sold twice the number of papers the next day. We were selling 250,000 papers and we sold 500,000 the next day. There seems to be some dispute about it, but I'm convinced that we were the only paper in the entire world that doubled its circulation the day after the fight.
I have a view of Ali as a terrific fighter, as a generous human being but not a civil-rights figure. The man preached separatism. The man preached hate. He was great with the media, though. Terrible with his opponents. Vicious with Frazier, unforgivably. Recognized around the planet. And I would interview him in Deer Lake, and he'd be in bed, propped up on two pillows, and he'd say, "Sit here, so you don't miss anything." So I'd sit on the edge of the mattress, not on a rocker across the room. I'd sit on his bed. He used to call me "Boss."
For a time, when he was in exile, he was living about three blocks away from me. One time I walked Gloria over there and we were going to see him. He had a black phone with no dial - you picked it up and it automatically dialed the police precinct. We go in, he's glad to see us, thrilled to see Gloria - a fresh audience. He gets up on a chest of drawers, with his feet dangling, and does 25 minutes from "Big Time Buck White," a Broadway play he was in while he was in exile. He did his part, the songs, the poetry. Her eyes are that big. Then a guy from the Enquirer, the supermarket tabloid, shows up and asks about Ali seeing aliens. He says, "Yes, Central Park, doing my roadwork, here they come." The guy's taking notes. Ali says, "You want to know how popular I still am?" He takes a cardboard box and picks letters out at random. Picks one - it's from Sri Lanka. Next one is from Afghanistan or someplace. Next from Arizona. It was an impressive performance.
Yes, I was on the inside of that and it felt great. It really felt good. And for the fight to be as good as it was, that made it even better.
A football town
Philadelphia hasn't changed as far as football is concerned. People cared so much about football, even then. People have always cared about the Eagles. It wasn't a passionate Phillies city, but now I think it's getting that way. I think people love and embrace this team. But in my memory, it was always a football town. People cared about those Iggles. They really cared.
It was a better boxing town then, but boxing was better. It became a hockey town - and that surprised me. A bunch of Canadian guys, eh, strangers, and a weird coach in Fred Shero - and the city fell in love with them. The Sixers, long stretches from 1967 to 1983.
You can't fool them. You can't really fool the fans here. It's not that talk radio gives them a chance to talk back - I feel the fans here are knowledgeable. I don't like fringe behavior, flares in the stands or throwing batteries at J.D. Drew. But I like that they care.
It can be very demanding. People have become more convinced that they can influence the outcome of a game. I don't like them thinking that. They're there to enjoy the game, not influence the game.
That stuff they used to do in the last row of the upper deck, the Wolf Pack and those things, I love that kind of stuff. Rauuuuuuuul, I love that. That's your own. That's original. But bad behavior, I don't like. The wave? Ridiculous. Thinking you can intimidate the officials, I don't like.
Is it more negative? Yes, probably, because of talk radio and because of blogs and things where you're not responsible for what you're writing or what you're saying. It's more negative and that's too bad.
The future
Why do I keep doing what I do? The answer is, because I still enjoy it. I get tremendous pleasure out of writing a piece about the efforts to build a safe, smooth baseball field for kids with special needs in Northampton Township - and if it kick-starts the fundraising efforts, that doubles the pleasure. I do have a little historical perspective to add to some of the issues that crop up. And when I read a book like "Heart of the Game" that thrills me, I want to share that excitement with our readers.
