If there’s no story, how to create one

Armchair View, by Norman Canale

WHEN I did the sports beat on the Sunday Times and Sunday Express, I always looked for something different and sometimes made things happen story-wise.

For instance, I decided it would make a major scoop for my newspaper if I could get the then world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali to fight a 10-rounder against the young, dazzling Gerrie Coetzee in Johannesburg.

After getting the okay from the Coetzee camp, I contacted Ali’s trainer Angelo Dundee, an old friend, and asked him about the chances of my setting up such a bout for a Johannesburg boxing syndicate.

Angelo said the chances were good and that his brother Chris, a well-known promoter stationed in Miami, could do the negotiations on behalf of the Johannesburg connection with me in a supervisory capacity.

I wanted no money gain, but insisted on story exclusivity. So it came about that I flew to New York and Chris Dundee finally hammered out a contract with Ali’s connections.

Ali insisted, though, that there be a clause in the contract stipulating that the fight would go ahead only if he didn’t have a particularly gruelling title defence that was coming up in two weeks’ time against the hard-hitting challenger Ernie Shavers.

Ali emphasised he didn’t expect it, but he wanted to cover himself if Shavers managed to rough him up.

Unfortunately, Ali got more than he bargained for. Not only was he badly hurt in the fight, but he was extremely lucky to get the judges’ decision.

Gerrie Coetzee was with me at the Madison Square Garden ringside and we both gave Shavers the decision. I missed the big scoop, but I still had a story nobody else got.

The great American sportswriter and author Paul Gallico (The Snow Goose) was responsible for my eagerness to create stories (like the Ali piece) as well as dig them out.

Gallico was sports editor of the New York News back in the 20s and 30s and his ability to create sports news stories helped rocket the newspaper’s circulation.

“I often worked to my own fancy and cooked up a number of articles and promotions that caught the readers’ fancy,” Gallico once recalled in an interview.

“For instance one of them was the perfect athlete. It was a feature and photo montage. I took Babe Ruth’s eyes, Jack Dempsey’s body and fists, somebody else’s wrists, somebody’s legs – about six or seven great athletes. I took a part of each and made a man out of them.”

Gallico’s first stunt was to spar a round with Dempsey when he was training for the slugfest with the Wild Bull of the Pampas, Argentine’s Luis Firpo. Gallico got knocked out, but his story was a knockout in itself.

He followed that up by standing catcher for the great baseball pitcher Herb Pennock, caught passes from all American quarterback Benny Friedman, played tennis with Wimbledon champion Hellen Wills, and went up with Al Williams, a famous flyer, and did acrobatics with him.

Probably his greatest stunt was to cover five major sports championships in one day. This was made possible because Paul flew his own plane.

“First, I flew up to Boston for a golf tournament and did nine holes following Bobby Jones” he recalled. “On the way back I flew over the America’s Cup yacht race off Newport. My plane at the time was an amphibian so I landed and filed a story.

“Next I flew over Belmont racetrack and wrote a story about the big race and then I landed at Meadowbrook and covered a polo match in the afternoon.

“Then on to Long Island Stadium that night to write up a world lightweight boxing title match featuring the great Barney Ross.”

Possibly Gallico’s greatest sports monument is the Golden Gloves amateur boxing tournament he created. It is still in operation to this day, featuring along the way winners like Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis.

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