A few have cursed me out and at least one subject, Thomas Pynchon, whom I did not interview - I interviewed only people who knew him - threatened bodily harm.
All of journalism is a shrinking art. So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmark in the decline of journalism.
Also, I am driven by a wonderful muse called alimony.
But all the areas in which I've worked come down to one basic skill: the ability to put words together in interesting ways.
Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.
For example, Lou Savarese has been a friend of mine almost since he got started in boxing. I love Lou. He's just such a nice, sweet guy.
He's in it for Don King and that's understandable because that's why people go into business. He's just kind of slippery about it.
I began learning the sportswriting business very early in life.
I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.
I did not choose necessarily on the basis of significance. If you have a vote for the most significant athlete, then you have Ali, then you have Babe Ruth, then you have Michael Jordan.
I do my most productive writing between six and ten in the morning. Then the phone starts ringing, and I am a phonaholic as well as a workaholic.
I find it very difficult to go to sporting events any more because you can't hear yourself talk. Between rounds or between periods, I'd like to be able to talk to the person next to me. It's awfully difficult these days with all the entertainment that's going on at sporting events.
I first really started covering boxing with the Sugar Ray Robinson fights and the Floyd Patterson fights in the late fifties.
I got to know Sugar Ray but I certainly would not say we were good friends.
I hate repetition and I love challenges, and that is why I've jumped from newspapers to magazines to books to television to radio to public speaking.
I just can't believe all the things I did that decade.
I think most fighters are misunderstood by the general public in the fact that they're all looked upon as viscous and cruel.
I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days.
I think on balance, Don King has been bad for boxing. I think he's done some very good things and I think he did a heck of a job of promoting Ali but I think I could have promoted Ali.
I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier.
I was also in love with the English language.
I was among the first to cross the line from print journalism to so-called electronic journalism, but now the line is blurred.
I wish I had learned to go to sleep earlier. But I was afraid to miss something.
I worked with Rocky Graziano and Rocky was certainly a character.
If I got paid, it was no more than five dollars a column, and I still think I was overpaid.
In fifty years of covering the sport, of course Muhammad Ali is by far the dominant figure.
It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero.
My top three were Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain and Bo Jackson.
My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.
Some people who love boxing might love Mike Tyson, but people outside of the sport are generally repulsed by him and therefore, repulsed by the sport.
Sportswriters have changed more than sportswriting.
Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.
Sugar Ray Leonard was as close as anyone came after Ali to being Ali, but he wasn't Ali.
Sugar Ray Robinson was at the top of the boxing world during the 1950's when it seemed that he would either win or lose the championship about every three or four months.
There is never going to be another Ali.
Today, it's money. There's no question about that. Unless you endorse a grill that cooks hamburgers and steaks, where else can you make the kind of money that you can make in the ring if you're good?
You need heroes like that for a sport to surge the way basketball did with Michael Jordan. Now he's gone and that sport is having problems.
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