The covers of the slapdash tribute magazines for Muhammad Ali at the supermarket checkout counters all depicted him as a young man. That’s to be expected: It’s a lot more savory to recall Ali as the beautiful dynamo who conquered Sonny Liston than as the aged sentinel humbled by his own hubris.
Two Septembers ago, exactly two weeks before I got married, I decided to try something called “The Survival Race,” kind of a 5K on steroids. It served as a bonding experience with some longtime friends, and a relatively wholesome “sowing wild oats” kind of thing before I tied the knot.
My fiancee was fine with it, though she made me vow not to let anything happen to my face, and not to break anything. No problem, I said. At the time, I’d never broken a bone.
I was in my best shape in some time back then, having healed a persistent shin injury and done CrossFit for the past six months. As such, The Survival Race did not live up to its foreboding moniker. No obstacle was particularly daunting, and I felt fast and strong.
They had a steep, muddy embankment, probably about a quarter mile straight up, with a rope to painstakingly guide yourself. I simply clambered up the hill, no rope necessary. Forget 32 years old; I felt 22 that day.
That hubris got the best of me. With a half mile left, I scaled a 12-foot wall, misunderstood the obstacle and leaped off the top instead of climbing down. I had that sickening feeling when you hang in the air just a little too long and found myself flat on my back. I bounced up, shook it off and finished the race, but I drove home with a searing pain in my right heel.
I figured if I ignored it, maybe it would go away. I even went for a few short runs the following week. It was only when I caved and got an X-Ray the day before my wedding that I learned I had broken my foot in the dumbest way possible.
I wasn’t all that discouraged. I toughed it out without a cast at my wedding, and I figured I’d heal up and get right back in the swing of things, a little bit of wishful thinking left over from my 20’s.
*****
Exactly a week after the Survival Race — and a week before our wedding — I settled in with my broken foot and my soon-to-be-wife to watch our favorite boxer, Sergio Martinez, in his first big payday against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. And it was fitting, since Martinez’s rise to prominence directly correlated with the blossoming of our relationship.
We don’t really watch much sports together, but Montana and I had long bonded over our mutual enjoyment of boxing. Between us, we’d been to three of Sergio’s fights, including his stoppage of Matthew Macklin on St. Patrick’s Day 2012 in front of a raucous MSG Theater. We have signed gloves in our living room, and a picture I took after his demolition of Paul Williams leads Martinez’s Wikipedia Page.
Sergio was nothing short of magnificent for 11 rounds against Chavez, effortlessly fighting rings around his bigger, slower opponent. But he let his guard down in the 12th, got caught against the ropes and was dropped, and his knee buckled underneath him. He held on and won a wide decision, and we went to bed happy — and relieved.
But as we now know, that fateful 12th round was the beginning of the end.
A former soccer player and a gifted athlete, Martinez was slick enough to specialize in keeping his hands at his waist a la Roy Jones, luring opponents for counters. But he returned from right knee surgery the following spring without the speed and elusiveness that made him special.
Martinez looked every one of his 38 years against Martin Murray while winning a decision I wasn’t sure he deserved. He then required another operation on his knee.
After 14 months of rehab and training, Martinez returned a 2-1 favorite against fellow aging warrior Miguel Cotto, whom he had begged to fight for years. The day of the fight, we watched Sergio on 24/7 swear that his knee was fine, that the large brace he was wearing was merely a precaution. But if you looked close, you could see a hint of trepidation behind his bravado. I turned to Montana and said, “I think he’s in trouble.”
Cotto smartly swarmed him from the opening bell, and three first-round knockdowns later, a woozy Martinez knew he was out of his depth. Though it’s a credit to his toughness and perseverance that the fight lasted eight more rounds, it was clear that while his mind was still willing, his legs weren’t quite able.
It’s a feeling I know all too well.
*****
I think we’re generally too proud to accept that we’re not immune to the shortcomings of growing older, needing to be humbled multiple times before admitting it to ourselves. And once you’re on the wrong side of 30 and something goes awry, it tends to have a ripple effect.
After a month confined to a walking boot and a subsequent month in physical therapy, I was back on the road. And there were days when nothing hurt and I felt like I could fly.
But little things started cropping up, and they kept adding up. I came down with plantar fasciitis that sidelined me for four months, and it’s never quite healed all the way. My left knee aches one day, my quadriceps another. Lately, I’ve dealt with tightness in my left leg; I can’t ascertain if it’s my hip, my groin, my hamstring or all three.
And it’s hard on me, because I’m not so far removed that I don’t remember what it was like to feel invincible. A late bloomer, I got into running at 20 — the same age Martinez took up boxing — started to love it at 24 and ran two marathons at 27 and 28. My infrequent injuries seemingly healed within hours. I never once iced postrun.
I don’t want to say I took it all for granted — I remember specific runs that were so euphoric that they were almost spiritual experiences — but there’s no question youth is wasted on the young.
Watching a stunned Martinez stagger around the ring on Saturday like Willlie Mays in the Shea Stadium outfield, it was just another reminder that nobody is impervious to gravity and time. To try to hold on to the way things were — the way we were — is a fool’s errand.
But that doesn’t mean we have to entirely let go, either. Sergio may never fight again — at this point, honestly, I hope he doesn’t — but it doesn’t take away from his terrific legacy, or from the wonderful experiences my wife and I shared attending and watching his fights.
Likewise, it bothers me I may never run another marathon, since I tend to break down after going much farther than four miles. But I will always treasure the two I completed.
Besides, I’m kind of liking the concept of mud runs lately. Montana ran one with me last year, and we had a blast crawling under barbed wire and leaping over fire pits. Not to mention, I honestly think I got more from completing an ordeal like that with my wife than I did running the marathons alone.
As such, we’re running our second Rugged Maniac about a month from now. This is how it goes: You move on, you find new challenges, you get in where you fit in.
Because when it comes down to it, I think it’s perfectly fine to look back at how things were once in a while, so long as it doesn’t distract from everything you have to look forward to.
Admittedly, I used to hold the concept of the Hall of Fame in the highest esteem. When I was a kid reading as much about baseball as I possibly could, Hall of Famers were flawless demigods from a thousand years ago who pitched comets and swung bolts of lightning.
My parents took me on a pilgrimage to Cooperstown when I was in fifth grade, and I dutifully took pictures of the plaques for Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and personal favorite Ty Cobb. As recently as a few years ago, I vowed to be in Canton when Dan Marino was enshrined into the football Hall.
As have many of my stances, my position has changed quite a bit over time. Marino’s big day came and went; I never even made the conscious decision that it was too much of an effort to make the trip from New Jersey. I spent a couple days in Springfield, Mass., for a prep basketball tournament last winter and declined to check out the Basketball Hall, though I drove by it several times. (It was really cold outside.)
The baseball Hall, in particular, seems more and more laughable to me, a morality-soaked tug of war between old school Murray Chass types and new-age Dave Cameron-ites. Omar Vizquel is probably going to make it to Cooperstown, while Barry Bonds probably won’t, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
Plus, I’ve gotten to know a few baseball Hall of Fame voters, and though some are sharp, by no means does that apply to all of them. One in particular, I wouldn’t rely on to vote on what I have for lunch. For the most part, I tend to laugh off most Hall of Fame debates – that don’t involve Bonds – as the harmless rantings of fans, and fans with press passes.
I was a pretty big fan of the band Live back in high school, but then, basically everyone was. Throwing Copper sold eight million copies, and you couldn’t turn on MTV or the radio without hearing “Lightning Crashes†or “I Alone.†I went to four excellent Live concerts in college, and the crowds were universally jam-packed.
Two summers ago, a full decade after Live’s popularity began to wane, I caught wind of a free outdoor show by former lead singer Ed Kowalczyk in the parking lot behind City Winery in New York. My high school friends and I discovered a somewhat different dynamic than what we had been used to, with Ed K. playing Live songs and new solo material in the oppressive heat of a 90-degree afternoon in front of a couple dozen nostalgia-seekers.
At first, I found the scene bittersweet in that the enormous popularity of a band I loved had been distilled down to a very small group at a show that cost nothing to attend.
But the music was wonderful as always. I came face-to-face with a lot of memories; Live had, after all, been my first concert as a freshman in college. I was finally able to meet Kowalczyk.
And there was something pretty great about sharing the afternoon solely with true die-hards who had bothered to stick around long after Live’s last spin on contemporary rock radio.
When I went to meet Muhammad Ali the morning after I graduated from high school, my enthusiasm was tempered by my growing recognition of what was happening to him. I’d seen Ali light the Olympic Torch the previous summer, I knew all those fights had taken a toll, but it didn’t totally sink in until I shook his hand and felt it shake. I verbalized my admiration for him; it was a one-sided conversation.
Compared to Ali, I was relieved to find Micky Ward seemingly in relatively good shape when I went to the North Jersey book signing for his new memoir, “A Warrior’s Heart,†last Tuesday. I came away thinking that Ward looked and sounded pretty good, considering his former line of work. And honestly, that’s what we want when we seek out the heroes of our youth.
We want to be able to say, “He looks good.â€Â
21,000 people sold out Madison Square Garden on Saturday to watch Miguel Cotto give Antonio Margarito his comeuppance, and there would be no other acceptable outcome.
A Margarito victory would have been catastrophic, as would have a run-of-the-mill boxing debacle akin to Bernard Hopkins’ aborted match against Chad Dawson a few weeks back. As such, with the exception of the first Mets game at Shea Stadium after 9/11, I’m not sure I’ve attended a sporting event where the outcome seemed quite so crucial.
Halloween/Watch The Throne/recovering from baseball … it all added up to me missing a week of this. It was a pretty lousy week to miss NFL pick-wise, as I went 10-4 in my weekly league.
As a Dolphins fan that just saw his team’s Suck for Luck hopes dashed by a demoralizing victory over the Chiefs, I’m still baffled by one thing: Why wasn’t I supposed to root for them to lose as many games as it takes to get the No. 1 pick in the Draft?
Some random thoughts, starting with a series finale I just watched five months after it happened.
Working nights, I pretty much only watch television with DVR, and there are two types of shows for me: the ones I can watch any old time just to keep up with and get out of the way, and the ones I save for when I can truly enjoy them.
Law & Order SVU minus Christopher Merloni has become a show I can shoehorn in while I’m eating my cereal in the morning, or getting ready for work. Boardwalk Empire, on the other hand, requires my full concentration.
This dynamic was the reason that despite airing back in May, I only watched the final episode of Friday Night Lights last night, tempering my curiosity with the desire to watch it at exactly the right time.
This week’s random thoughts. A little boxing, a little baseball, a little Kobe Bryant as a rapper.
Last November, I thought after watching Sergio Martinez detonate Paul Williams in Boardwalk Hall that I had seen The Next Big Thing.
Almost a year later, the growing suspicion that we’re never going to see that actually happen has become a bigger personal disappointment to me than anything else in a sport that tends to consistently disappoint, far surpassing the interminable wait for Pacquiao-Mayweather.
I’d say it’s pretty safe to say it’s probably not a good idea to kiss Floyd Mayweather on the cheek in the middle of a fight.
I had people text me after Saturday’s fight with that old tired talking point, that the fight wasn’t worth the admittedly exorbitant price tag – though Tecate trimmed that to a more reasonable amount. But all things considered, it’s hard to say we didn’t get our money’s worth, despite the truncated main event.