"I first saw Ali at the Olympics in Rome, 1960. He was sitting on the steps. I was standing nearby and athletes were walking by. And he's yelling, Look at the face, I'm beautiful, I've got to be a champion! Half the people who passed by could not speak English. They didn't know what the hell he was saying. But I noticed one thing: All the female athletes went about twelve steps, stopped, turned around, and looked at him again."
"I was back from the Korean War and they sent me to Stars and Stripes. I had six different titles. I was the associate editor. I was a sports editor. I was a sports columnist. I was the cooking columnistI boil water. And I was the advice columnist to the lovelorn. I think my name was Patricia Penelope. We made it up."
A Newark sportswriter maintains a hard-edged, blunt persona and rejects social niceties. College attendance came from parental insistence despite severe financial limits, requiring night work at a chemical plant. A vivid memory from the 1960 Rome Olympics captures Muhammad Ali's outsize charisma and the attention he drew from female athletes. Military service placed the writer at Stars and Stripes with multiple roles spanning associate editor, sports editor, sports columnist, cooking columnist, and advice columnist. Journalism is framed as a craft learned in newspapers, focused on documenting events and using daily irritation as fuel for writing. Nostalgia for New York sports culture appears throughout.
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