HEROES

Ok Thursday's blog is late and there will be no Friday blog. I have my annual Thanksgiving dinner for friends this weekend so I will be busy with that for the next few days.
So my question for today is, who are your heroes? Why are they your hero? Do you even have any in today's world? We have people we admire. We have people we look up to but a hero comes along only so often. I asked Ethan who his heroes were and he told me I was his hero. Nice but heroes should be larger then life.
As a child I had three heroes Doc Savage Captain Kirk, and Muhammad Ali . The first two were easy to explain. I wanted to be them. The idea of being Captain of a starship or being an explorer or adventurer appealed to me greatly. They were a pure escapist fantasy to me.
Doc Savage and Captain Kirk were fictional characters. Muhammad Ali was real. He was the greatest fighter I ever saw. But what made me admire him so fiercely was that his fights in the ring always seemed to mean so much more then a simple boxing match.
Muhammad gave up his titles and his boxing career when he refused to fight in Vietnam. He didn't protest in the streets. He didn't burn the flag. He made his stand by not stepping forward when his name was called to fight. He didn't dodge. He didn't hide. But he risked everything he had and everything he had ever done for what he believed. My Dad was an ex-Marine. He was as Pro-Military as you'll ever find. But when I asked him as a child about what Ali was doing all Dad would say was,"He's doing what he believes is right. You have to admire a person like that even if you don't agree."
It was as close to a negative comment as Dad would ever utter about Ali.
Ali was stripped of his title as Heavyweight Champion and denied a boxing license in all 50 states. His passport was taken away. Ali appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. There he won. But by then the damage had been done. For 3 and a half years he wasn't able to fight. The best years of his boxing life were taken away from him.
His titles had been given to a man named Joe Frazier. Ali wasted no time trying to get a fight with him. After just two warm up matches the Fight was scheduled for March of 1971. He was to lose that fight by a close decision.
When he fought Joe Frazier it was if Ali represented the anti-war people whereas Frazier was the pro-war fighter of choice. (In all fairness to Joe he had no vote in it.) And when Ali lost that fight it seemed as if the bad guys had won.
I was crushed.
But Ali would not give up. He kept fighting. Two years later he fought another man named Ken Norton. In the first round of the 12 round fight he broke Muhammad's jaw. Ali refused to quit. The fight went the distance and he lost a split decision. Which meant that even with a broken jaw one of the three judges thought he won.
My mind boggles at the pain he endured.
Again Ali started over. Within the next year he had avenged both his loses by defeating Joe Frazier and Ken Norton in rematches.
But Joe Frazier no longer held the title of Heavyweight Champion.
A big lumbering powerful young man named George Foreman was now champ. (Even though he says he's the same guy, the big nice bald guy with the goofy smile bares no resemblance to the utterly frightful man who was heavyweight champ.)
George Foreman had also defeated Joe Frazier and Ken Norton. Where it took Ali 2 fights each and a combined 51 rounds to finally beat those two guys it took George a combined 4 rounds. He knocked Joe Frazier down 5 times and He knocked Norton down 3. It was simply the most awesome thing I had ever seen in the ring. Foreman wasn't human he was some kind of monster. Dad suggested he was a bigfoot they had shaved and taught how to fight.
So when Ali was scheduled to meet him in the ring I was very afraid for him. I honestly thought that he might be killed. Foreman was bigger , vastly more powerful, and 11 years younger. My brother John was almost zen like serene in his confidence that Ali would prevail.
On October 30th 1974 they fought. He didn't have the fight on TV there was no pay per view back then. So we had to listen to it on the radio. Round by round he listened. And with each round I grew more afraid. All Ali was doing it seemed was laying against the ropes. He was letting George Foreman throw his most powerful punches right at him. I looked at John clearly afraid. John just looked right back and said in a inhumanly calm voice, "He knows what he's doing."
And he was right. In the 8th round Muhammad Ali knocked out Foreman and became the Heavyweight Champion again. I was so happy I literally jumped in John's arms.
It seemed that good guys had finally won. For the first time since I was 3 Muhammad Ali was Heavyweight Champion and everything was as it should be.
So yes while I admire Martin Luther King, JFK, and RFK, and a host of other people I never actually saw their fights. Ali was and is my hero because his fights took place before the world.
I still love boxing. I still make a point to watch the important fights. But they seem more empty less meaningful since Ali left the sport.
Over the last few years I've watched Ali battle Parkinson's without ever once asking for pity. I actually got choked up when he lit the Olympic torch in 1996. I've watched him transcend the sport he was so great at.
When I read in the newspaper or hear on the news that some famous person has passed away I'll generally say something like ,"That's sad." Even when William Shatner eventually passes away it won't choke me up to much. After all he's just an actor.
But I know on the day that Muhammad Ali dies that I will cry like a baby.