Ali

by Jonathan Eig

  When Lipsyte asked if he’d read it, Ali whispered in Lipsyte’s ear: “Shouldn’t say this. Never read a book in my life.”

  What about the Koran? Lipsyte asked.

  “Not cover to cover. Some pages forty times.”

  Ali cradled a baby while he spoke to Lipsyte. He and Lonnie had recently adopted a boy, Asaad.

  As he spoke to Lipsyte and held Asaad, Ali watched a tape of his recent appearance on the Today Show, which he had done to help sell the book.

  “Shouldn’t have done it,” he said, looking at his own shaking hands and rigid face on the replay. “If I was a fan, I’d be shocked.”

  Lonnie was saddened at times by Ali’s reluctance to appear on camera and his frustration with his appearance. She knew how much he had once loved such attention. Now, she reassured him: “You know I tell the truth. That man is shaking, but he can be understood.”

  “That man look like he’s dying,” Ali said. The man who had always called himself pretty no longer liked what he saw.

  “You were fine,” Lipsyte said. “You give other people with problems inspiration.”

  In New York that same week, Ali met Chuck Wepner at a charity event. Wepner, who had fought hard against Ali in 1975, still swore he had scored a legitimate knockdown in their bout, while Ali insisted he’d gone down only because Wepner had stepped on his foot. It remained a sore point for Ali. When the men met again, sixteen years later, Lipsyte and others watched anxiously to see how Ali would react. Would he recognize Wepner? Would he say something?

  Lipsyte’s concerns quickly dissolved. The reporter watched as Ali and Wepner came together. Ali moved in close to his old rival, leaned forward, and stepped on his former opponent’s foot.

  55

  A Torch

  At about 10:15 one Saturday morning in the spring of 1994, Muhammad Ali and his brother Rahaman were eating breakfast at their mother’s house in Louisville when the doorbell rang. Odessa Clay, wearing a flowery housedress with lace trim, answered.

  Standing on the porch was a tall, sturdily built white man named Frank Sadlo. Odessa hadn’t seen Frank in years, but she recognized him. He was the son of Henry Sadlo, who had been the Clay family’s first lawyer. Back in the 1960s, Henry Sadlo had been the man Odessa called when her husband had had too many drinks and gotten tossed in jail. Henry Sadlo had been the man who had helped Cassius Jr. reclaim his driver’s license after too many teenaged speeding tickets. He’d been the lawyer who had reviewed Cassius Jr.’s first professional boxing contract after the young boxer had returned from the Rome Olympics with a gold medal. Soon after, the Clay family replaced Henry Sadlo with attorneys of a higher pedigree. But the Clays, nevertheless, had always admired and respected Henry Sadlo; he had been one of the few white men who had shown kindness and respect before the family had been brushed with fame.

  When he was five years old, Frank Sadlo would sometimes accompany his father on visits to the Clay home. Cassius and Rudy would put up their fists and pretend to box with the feisty youngster, but instead of saying “I’ll fight you!” little Frank would shout, “I’ll fish you!”

  Now, Odessa looked up at Frank Sadlo, a grown man, as big as her two boys, and the memory floated back.

  “I’ll fish you!” she said with a laugh.

  Frank bent down to hug Mrs. Clay.

  Rahaman came to the door. He hugged Frank, too. Odessa invited him in.

  Frank followed Rahaman and Odessa into the kitchen, where Muhammad sat at the table eating a bowl of cereal, his right hand shaking as he gripped a spoon. By 1994, Ali’s life had slowed, same as his body. He didn’t care for the way he looked and sounded. Some friends thought he was depressed.

  Odessa reminded Muhammad that Frank was Henry Sadlo’s son. Frank explained Henry Sadlo was at Norton Hospital in downtown Louisville, preparing to undergo heart surgery — a triple bypass and valve replacement. The likelihood of survival was 50 percent.

  Before Frank could even ask the question — would Muhammad be willing to visit? — Ali put down his spoon, pressed both his fists into the tabletop, and pushed himself up out of his chair.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  At the hospital, Ali and Henry Sadlo talked for forty-five minutes. When doctors told Ali that the patient needed to rest, Ali left Henry Sadlo’s bedside but stuck around the hospital. Doctors and people visiting loved ones came in search of Ali, as if he were a physician or a priest, asking if he would attend to more people. Ali was told of a comatose man who was fading fast. Ali went to the patient’s bed in the intensive-care unit and whispered in his ear, and Frank Sadlo swore that he saw the comatose man open his eyes. For the next hour, Ali made the rounds, holding hands with patients, sparring with orderlies in the hallways, flirting with nurses, performing magic tricks for kids.

  When it was over, when Henry Sadlo recovered from his heart surgery and Ali left Louisville, Frank got to thinking: “I wanted to do something nice for Muhammad,” he said. “What he did, getting up from his breakfast to rush to the hospital to see somebody . . . not a lot of people would do that. So I started thinking: what can I do for Muhammad?”

  Shortly after Sadlo’s visit to the Clay family home, Odessa suffered a stroke. Ali visited her in the hospital every day for weeks. Many nights he slept by her side. When Odessa was in the intensive-care unit and too sick to speak or open her eyes, Ali gently rubbed her nose and spoke to her in a murmuring monologue. “I love you, Bird,” he said. “Are you in pain, Bird? You gonna get up?”

  She died August 20, 1994. Not long after the funeral, Frank Sadlo helped Muhammad clean out his mother’s house. In the basement, they found boxes full of mementos from Ali’s career. Sadlo and Ali sat together on the floor and sorted through it all. Ali laughed as he told stories and decided which mementos to keep and which to toss. Sadlo listened and heard the arc of Ali’s life: Odessa and Cash’s little boy had lost his bicycle, he’d taken up boxing, won an Olympic gold medal, and gone on to charm the whole world with his athletic gifts, with the flair he’d inherited from his father and the kindness that had come from his mother. As Sadlo thought about it, one part of Ali’s biography stood out: his victory in the 1960 Olympics. Winning the gold medal in Rome had been a turning point for Ali. That’s when he had first tasted fame on a large level and first seen the potential of a life lived large.

  For Sadlo, an idea began to form.

  The Olympic games were coming to Atlanta in 1996. Sadlo wondered if Muhammad could be celebrated somehow. Would Olympic officials present Ali with a replacement for the medal he’d lost? Would they let him light the torch that signaled the start of the games? The more Sadlo thought about it, the more excited he became. Ali was an Olympic gold-medalist, an international hero, the twentieth century’s greatest athlete. He was a Muslim grandson of slaves, the embodiment of diversity. He was America — big, beautiful, fast, loud, romantic, crazy, impulsive. Who better to represent his country to the world?

  With nothing but postage stamps, a telephone, and a nine-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, Sadlo went to work. He was holding down two jobs: as a social worker and a waiter at Applebee’s. But he had no wife and no children, which meant he had plenty of time for this project. Sadlo wrote letters to Olympic officials and telephoned the office of the mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young. When a bureaucrat at the Atlanta Committee on the Olympic Games agreed to a meeting, Sadlo drove to Georgia. He was afraid that the officials in Atlanta would think he was a kook, “someone who didn’t have all his oars in the water,” so he brought along photos he’d taken with Muhammad to prove his connection with the legendary athlete. He knew it was a long shot, but he tried anyway. He made dozens of phone calls, possibly hundreds, and mailed dozens of letters. One January evening in 1995, he took Ali out for dinner and told him about his campaign. Ali smiled and thanked him.

  That felt good. If nothing else, Ali would know that he had tried.

  A week before the start of the Olympics, Sadlo put it out of mind. Hi
s work was done. He had never gotten a direct answer to any of his letters or calls. In the days before the start of the games, TV commentators and newspaper journalists speculated about who might receive the honor of lighting the torch. Most bets were on a pair of Atlantans: baseball legend Hank Aaron and boxer Evander Holyfield. The choice was meant to be a tightly held secret. Sadlo assumed nothing had come of his efforts.

  Then, at 2:30 in the morning on July 16, three days before the opening ceremony, Sadlo received a strange phone call. It was Howard Bingham calling from Los Angeles to say that Muhammad and Lonnie wanted to thank Sadlo for what he had done. That was it. Bingham didn’t say what Sadlo had done, only that Lonnie and Muhammad appreciated it.

  On Friday night, June 19, Sadlo was waiting tables at Applebee’s in Clarksville, Indiana, and keeping an eye on the televisions in the restaurant as the opening ceremony of the Olympics filled the screens. Eighty thousand people crammed a stadium in Atlanta. Around the world, hundreds of millions watched on television. Evander Holyfield carried the torch into the stadium and handed it to Janet Evans, the gold-medal-winning swimmer, who carried it up a long ramp. Evans was supposed to hand the torch to its final carrier, who would light the Olympic cauldron and signal the official start of the games.

  There was no one in sight.

  Then, from the shadows, came a large, slow-moving figure, an apparition dressed all in white.

  A roar shot through the stadium. It began with a “Whoooaaaa!” and turned into a thrilled, throaty, rattling cheer. They chanted, “Ali! Ali!”

  His right hand clutched an unlit torch. His left hand shook uncontrollably and shockingly to those who had not seen him in recent years. His face betrayed no emotion. When Evans touched her torch to Ali’s, Ali’s torch caught the flame. He stood tall and held it high. Cameras flashed. The crowd continued to roar. Ali’s left arm continued to shake but he held tight to the torch with his right.

  When he clutched the torch with both hands, his shaking stopped. His face tightened in concentration as he bent over to light the wick that would travel by pulley to the top of the stadium. But the wick wouldn’t catch and the flame from the torch licked at Ali’s hands. For a moment, it appeared Ali would need help, that he might drop the torch, or worse, set himself on fire. The arena fell silent, as if eighty thousand breaths were held. Then, finally, the wick caught. The cauldron was lit. The crowd roared again.

  They cheered because they saw Ali as a rebel again. They saw a man who wasn’t afraid to show his weakness, a man whose shaking hands reminded everyone of what he’d said countless times when he was young and vital and seemingly immortal: that he had no fear of death.

  For Frank Sadlo, the scene was pure joy. He knew how much Ali loved the spotlight and how much he’d been missing it since his retirement from boxing. He didn’t care whether he’d had anything to do with the Olympic Committee’s selection. He knew it was entirely possible that his calls and letters had had nothing to do with it, that some Olympic official or television executive had come up with the idea entirely on his own. That didn’t matter. Sadlo’s wish had come true. And, as he stood on the floor of Applebee’s, gazing up at the TV, fighting back tears, he wished again — wished for Ali to enjoy this moment and all the attention that would follow.

  Two months after the Olympic ceremony, Muhammad and Lonnie sat for an interview with a reporter from USA Today at the couple’s home in Michigan.

  “Ali’s lighting of the Olympic flame,” the resulting story said, “has triggered a renaissance for The Greatest, one of the planet’s most magical, beloved athletic heroes, and a man whose humanitarian efforts are being pushed by some for a Nobel Peace Prize.

  “Since the Olympics, the 54-year-old former three-time heavyweight champion is viewed less as a victim of boxing and Parkinson’s disease than an inspiration to millions of the disabled.

  “After years of ducking the media because his neurological disorder made him self-conscious, Ali has re-emerged.

  “He didn’t just light a flame, he lit the way for others — and, perhaps, himself.”

  Suddenly, Ali was more than an aging sports legend.

  “He’s half real, half folktale,” said Seth Abraham, the president of Time Warner Sports at the time. “I know Paul Bunyan and the blue ox don’t exist, but it’s such a part of Americana. He’s almost Paul Bunyan . . . Muhammad Ali: was there really such a character?”

  56

  The Long, Black Cadillac

  Ali had no one left to fight.

  For most of his adult life, he had been at war — with his opponents in the ring, with reporters who tried to tell him how to behave, with American political and economic systems that relegated black Americans to the lowest social and economic stratum. Among boxers, Jack Johnson had taken the first good shot at American notions of white superiority; Joe Louis had followed, striking blows for integration and acceptance; and Muhammad Ali, during a period of national turmoil, had jabbed and danced and lashed out, unworried about angering the white man, insisting America’s glory had been built by the thrashing of black backs, the destruction of black families, and the smothering of black voices, and that black Americans would never truly be free until they whupped the whole rotten system.

  Now, with his voice but a whisper and no one left to antagonize, Ali grew quiet. He continued to travel, continued to accept awards, continued to perform certain polished routines, as Lonnie and Howard Bingham played along. Ali would scowl as Bingham introduced him as Joe Frazier. Ali would make a handkerchief disappear. He would appear to levitate. He would sit at a piano with Bingham and play “Heart and Soul.”

  The routines were mostly wordless. But the less Ali spoke, the sweeter and more saintly he became — at least in the eyes of white America. He had reputable businessmen and -women surrounding him now. He lived with Lonnie on a farm in Berrien Springs, Michigan, away from the media, away from the struggles of his people, away from the entourage, the sycophants, the con men, the women, away from everything. When reporters came calling, they were impressed that he wasn’t ashamed to let the world see his trembling hands and clumsy gait. They described him as a man at peace. With his hushed voice and simple magic tricks, Ali seemed charming, especially compared to some of the churlish professional athletes who populated the world of the sports in the 1990s.

  Lonnie, who had a master’s degree in business, got rid of some of the shady businessmen who had attached themselves to her husband. She brought in lawyers and marketing executives with new ideas and negotiated better deals. In 1999, a picture of the young Ali appeared on the front of the Wheaties cereal box, where athletes of high achievement and good character had been honored for generations.

  Ali, with Thomas Hauser’s help, produced an inspirational book called Healing: A Journal of Tolerance and Understanding. The book contained quotes from famous figures as well as blank spaces for readers to pen their own inspirational messages reflecting on “tolerance, brotherhood and understanding.” Lonnie and her team worked to stabilize Ali’s finances and polish his image. Along the way, the hard-punching revolutionary became a shuffling, sweet-faced mystic, benevolent and wise.

  At times, the veneration had a spiritual tone.

  “More and more he is like a soul walking,” wrote Frank Deford.

  Ali’s daughter Hana wrote a book in which she called her father “a prophet, a messenger of God, an angel.”

  Writing for GQ, Peter Richmond watched Ali shove a frosted raspberry coffee cake in his mouth and proffered, “As I watch him eat, I have never been more sure of a man’s inner contentment. Except maybe when he eats the second piece.”

  The same writer composed a parable about Ali:

  “For decades,” it read, “Allah had Muhammad Ali doing Allah’s work. Ali was the most remarkable young black man the nation had ever seen, unafraid to take on the mightiest of the white man’s institutions, speaking out, yes, for the black man, but even more for Allah, in a fashion that Malcolm X and Elijah M
uhammad never could have.

  “But the older the disciple grew, the more he began to lose fights to people like Trevor Berbick. And the more he began to lose fights, the more he threatened to fall into the black hole wherein reside all the great athletes who tried to hang on too long. Allah knew that the closer Muhammad Ali got to the ultimate indignity of punch-drunkdom, the less use he was for Allah as an emissary on earth . . . So Allah hit upon a plan. Where Ali’s voice once moved mountains, Allah struck him mute. Where Ali’s swift fists once rained upon opponents with the precision of a surgeon, Allah struck them with terrible tremors so that they struggled to hold a piece of cake . . .

  “And this is how Allah made sure that Muhammad Ali would be doing his work again. Tenfold. For in infirmity, Ali came to mean much more than he had ever been before.”

  It was a questionable notion — that the silent, suffering Ali meant more to the world than the angry young man who had challenged our country’s racist hierarchies and fired imaginations — but it sounded nice.

  Ali continued to give interviews in the years after lighting the Olympic torch, but he seldom discussed race or politics. In 1991, when four Los Angeles police officers were videotaped viciously beating a black man named Rodney King, an act that ignited riots, Ali said nothing. Three years later, when O. J. Simpson was arrested for murdering two white people, one of them his ex-wife, and when the trial turned into a referendum on racism among police, Ali made no public comment.

  He still preferred to talk about himself.

  In 2001, in an interview with the New York Times, he apologized for calling Joe Frazier an Uncle Tom and saying Frazier was too dumb and ugly to be champ. “I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn’t have said,” Ali noted. “Called him names that I shouldn’t have called him. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight.”