Atlas (34 page)

“Jeff, are you all right?” I said. The first thing that came to my mind was that the car we had to pick him up and take him home—and that's the only thing we did for him—hadn't shown up. “Whatsa matter?” I said. “The car's not here?”

“No, the car's here…. But so is the gangster.”

“What?”

“How was I supposed to know he was a real gangster?”

I was looking at him, trying to take in what he was saying, but there were all these people hovering around, tapping me and trying to get my attention.

“He's got about twelve guys with him outside,” Jeff said, looking like he was about to throw up, “and he just told me that I'm a lowlife piece of shit that doesn't deserve to live, and he's gonna put two in my fuckin' head and leave me in the Dumpster.”

Despite all the commotion I was focused only on him now. “Who said this?”

“Benny X.”

“Oh, shit. Benny X said that? He is a real gangster. He will put two in your head!”

“Jesus, Teddy!”

“No, no, I'm just saying—look, he's not gonna—nothing's gonna happen to you.”

“You sure? He didn't look like he was joking.”

“Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, anything happens to you is happening to both of us.”

“This is how you try to make me feel better?”

“Don't worry about it, Jeff. Nothing's gonna happen.”

“I don't want to die, Teddy.”

“You ain't dying. C'mon. Just shut up and come with me.” I grabbed him, and as I grabbed him I noticed that his whole body was shaking. I tried to ignore it. I took him outside and, sure enough, there was Benny and his crew of guys. As soon as we walked out, he said, “Teddy, this fuckin' lowlife scum has got no respect for women or children or nothin'. He's a fuckin' piece of shit—”

“Benny, hold on a minute…Benny, why'd you come tonight?”

“For you!”

“Right. And I appreciate it, Benny. I do. I appreciate very much that respect. But you didn't come for me. You came to help me—to help these kids out, for the charity.”

“That's right,” he said. “Because it's a charity you run, and I know what you do. That's why I'm here.”

“Well, that's why he's here, too, Benny. He came for the same reason. He does it different than you, Benny. The way you do it is, you do a great thing—you buy a table. He comes and freakin' entertains people. People come to see him make fun of people. But he does it so I can raise money for the same people that you're helping me raise money for, Benny.” I knew the key with him. I knew you had to play the game a little. I said, “He don't know who you are, Benny. He's got no idea who you are. By the time he's done with you, he's on to the next guy.”

“But he—”

“Benny, he didn't mean nothing by it. He never woulda said nothing if he knew who you were.”

Benny held up a finger and looked at Jeff. “If it weren't for this man…” He had found his way out. “If it weren't for this man, I'd leave you in the fuckin' Dumpster. I'm giving you a pass because of this guy. You understand that, you fuckin' piece of shit?”

“So we're okay, Benny?” I said.

“Yeah. We're all right. You know I respect you.”

“And I respect you.”

He came over, looked at Jeff like ice, then hugged me. I walked Jeff
to his limo. When we got there, I opened the door and watched him get in. I stuck my head in, just to make sure he was okay. There was a bar along one side. I opened a bottle of scotch and poured him a glass. “Here,” I said, handing it to him. “Drink this.”

He drank it.

“You all right?” I asked.

He was still shaking. He looked up at me. Now he knew he was going to live, and it was like I've always said, you are who you are. He was a comedian. “You know,” he said, “if he wanted to fuckin' kill somebody, why didn't he whack the lousy rat bastard who sold him that cheap toupee?”

I laughed out loud. I couldn't believe it. Now he was being cocky. “Listen,” I said, “Benny's got a better sense of humor than he displayed tonight. He's still in the parking lot. Let me fuckin' tell him what you just said—he'll get a kick out of it.”

“Get the fuck out of here! Are you crazy? Shut the door, Teddy. Jesus!”

I was laughing as I shut the door. I heard him yell at the driver, “Go! Go!” And they peeled out.

I didn't talk to Jeff again until close to the next dinner. I had to call him up and make sure he was coming. Almost the first thing out of his mouth was: “Is he gonna be there?”

“Who?”

“You fuckin' know who!”

“No, he's not gonna be here.”

“You're lying. He is gonna be there.”

“Jeff, don't worry about it. It's all done. It's in the past.”

“It's easy for you to say. You aren't the one he was gonna kill.”

He required a bit more reassurance, but I finally wound up persuading him it was going to be all right. Then, on the night of the dinner, just before he arrived, I went over to talk to the guys that did the security. They were all court officers and good guys, but that hadn't stopped Jeff from making fun of them like he made fun of everybody. They were itching to get him back. I walked in and heard one of them saying, “You better okay it with Teddy,” and another one saying, “No, we want to do it.”

I said, “Do what?”

They looked at one another, then one of them showed me a bulletproof vest. Everybody knew the story of Jeff and Benny by now.

“What the fuck is that?”

“A flak jacket.”

“Yeah, I know what it is. What's it for?”

“We want to—When Pirrami comes in, he's gonna be here in about an hour, he always gets here early, we want to go up to him and say, ‘Listen, we can't guarantee your security this year. We want you to wear this. And we're gonna be around you all night.'”

“Get the fuck outta here,” I said. “He's overweight to begin with. He's three hundred and fifty fuckin' pounds. He'll drop dead of a heart attack. Do you understand?”

“Teddy, please.”

“Are you guys gonna replace him when he drops dead?”

“Pleeease…” They were begging.

“No. I ain't fuckin' letting you do it. I'm sorry. I wish you could, but you can't.”

“Aww, shit. I told you we shouldn't have said anything. It's off, guys. Fuckin' Teddy said no.”

They were just dying to get a piece of him—just a little bit.

But you know Jeff was more affected than I imagined. The first year back, he wasn't as funny as usual. Before he went onstage, I gave him a little pep talk, the same way I did with fighters. “Listen,” I told him, “you're gonna be fine.”

“Yeah. You fuckin'—No one was gonna put two in your fuckin' head.”

“Seriously,” I said.

“Where is he?” he asked. The place was starting to fill up, and Jeff was looking around nervously.

“Look, I'm telling you. He ain't here.”

“You're lying.”

“Just, you know, keep the strong jokes to the right side of the room.”

“Oh, fuck! I knew it.”

“No, I'm only kidding with you.”

It took Jeff a couple of years to get back to his old self. It did. The thing with Benny screwed him up badly. But he wasn't a quitter. He knew we were doing good work, and even if it meant putting his life on the line, he wasn't going to let that stop him.

E
ACH YEAR AS THE ANNUAL
“TEDDY”
DINNER AP
proaches, my life grows even more hectic than usual. Elaine has said to me on more than one occasion, “Now I know how you must have felt trying to get your father's attention when you were a kid.”

During most of the year, I fly out of town every Thursday to wherever that week's location is for
Friday Night Fights.
It might be in Las Vegas, Florida, New Jersey, Sacramento, Connecticut—all over the country. Two years ago they asked me to do
Tuesday Night Fights
as well, which meant I was either on the air or in the air practically from Monday till Saturday. Luckily, for the most part, I like what I'm doing.

It was over twenty years ago that I did my first few television broadcasts with Spencer Ross on Sports Channel New York. Later, I did one fight on ABC's
Wide World of Sports.
I also did some radio work for Westwood One with Larry Michaels, and three years of calling HBO fights on the radio. But my career as a broadcaster didn't really take flight until I landed the TV gig on ESPN seven years ago. In the beginning there, I put in marathon hours preparing for each show. When I got behind that microphone, or in front of that camera, I wanted to know that I was prepared. Cus always told me that the first sign of a pro was preparation, and I took that to heart. In fact, sometimes I overprepared.

I was lucky, the first five years, to have a great partner in Bob Papa. (My new partner, Joe Tessitore, is also terrific.) Bob shared his wisdom and knowledge with me whenever he thought I needed it, but he was also incredibly respectful of the work I put in. He knew the kind of hours I spent—watching videotape, making notes and phone calls, reading background materials—and he said, “You know, Teddy, you don't have to do so much, you could just wing it. I mean, I've never seen anyone who from the moment the first punch is thrown knows how the fight will turn out.” Then he looked at me, and said, “But you wouldn't dare not do all the work, would you?”

“I would be too scared,” I said.

I wanted my audience to feel that when they were watching one of our broadcasts they were getting a light shined in places that might have otherwise been dark. I wanted them to not only hear about what was happening, but find out why it was happening. That was the challenge I set out for myself: to let the viewer in on what fighters were thinking, what pressure was causing them to do, and how they were dealing with it.

At the same time, I didn't want them to rely just on my opinion. That was why I needed to watch film and talk to people. I wanted to be armed with as many facts about each fighter as I could gather so that when I explained tendencies, strengths, weaknesses, it had a foundation. The other thing I tried to do was get ahead of the fight—to explain what was going to happen before it happened. If I could help a viewer understand why, the next time he might be able to see it on his own without me. The best compliments I've gotten are when people come up to me at a fight or on the street and say, “You've taught me. You've made it more interesting for me. I never realized these things were going on.”

This past summer when I did the Olympics for NBC for the second time, I worked harder than I've ever worked. People ask me what the Olympic experience was like, what Athens was like, and it's hard for me to tell them much because most of the time I was in my hotel room preparing for the next day, although I did manage to at least see the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the statue of Athena while I was there.

The Olympics were something I wanted to do very badly, in the same way that I wanted to train a world champion. It meant I'd reached a certain level in my profession. The next pinnacle. Beyond the Olympics, I suppose the next peak would be calling the really big fights on pay-per-view
and HBO. (In April 2005 I did actually call my first and ESPN's first-ever pay-per-view fight broadcast from Las Vegas.) Beyond that I'd like to do a show about the psychological dimensions of sports—maybe even taking it into the broader realm of social and moral issues. I realize that it's not likely that I'd get an opportunity to do something like that on television at this point, but a sports talk show on radio might work. I could see that happening.

One of the best things about broadcasting is that it gives me a platform, a forum. As most fight fans, I think, are aware, I'm not timid about saying what's on my mind. It's gotten me in trouble on occasion, but if I see something going on that isn't right, I'm gonna talk about it. It's important to be able to stand up for a fighter who got screwed, and be able to say, “These friggin' crooked bastards. You know, they used to get away with this quietly, but they ain't getting away with it quietly no more.”

Everybody knows that there are a lot of things wrong in boxing. I've been saying for a while now that we've come to the point where we need some kind of outside intervention, the involvement of a federal commission and some kind of national system. The alphabet soup of sanctioning groups is a corrupt joke. I once asked Max Kellerman while we were on the air, “Max, you know what the WBA stands for?”

“What, Teddy?”

“We Be Asking.”

“How about the WBC?”

“We Be Collecting.”

“I'm almost afraid to ask about the IBF.”

“That's easy. I Be Felonious.”

It's not an exaggeration, either. Bob Lee, the president of the IBF, was indicted for taking bribes from promoters and managers in exchange for rigging rankings and sanctioning bouts. Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner, two of the promoters who testified to paying the bribes, were later fined by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. (Despite overwhelming evidence, Lee was convicted only of money laundering and tax fraud, though he was sentenced to twenty-two months in jail with parole.)

A couple of years ago I was asked to go to Washington to speak in front of the Senate. Because of my schedule with ESPN, I couldn't make it on the day they'd set aside. What they did instead—and as far as I know this was the first and only time they'd ever done this—was have
me address the Senate over a speakerphone. There I was in my home, on the telephone, and in the Senate chambers a speaker system was broadcasting my voice. I went over a checklist of things that boxing needed, including universal medical standards and federal rules and bylaws that each state would be required to enforce. I said that we needed a way of making sure that fighters knew what the actual monies were when they signed to a fight, instead of the way things stood now, where a promoter or manager could use fancy accounting to cheat them out of their share of the purse. I pointed out that the landscape of boxing as it was currently constituted encouraged corruption, that there were certain states where the promoters actually
paid
the fight judges, which is insane—it's the equivalent of George Steinbrenner paying the umpires who work Yankee games.

Why aren't other sports run like boxing? Because if they were, the credibility of those sports would be shot. Because somebody with some sense would stand up and stop it from happening. In boxing, those voices of reason and sanity are almost never heard. There is no one at the watchtower. In fact, there is no tower.

That's only a slight exaggeration. Senator John McCain has been speaking up for a while. In fact, he's been promoting a bill to empower a national boxing commissioner or czar, which is something I've been suggesting for a long time, too. The Senate Commerce Committee actually approved the bill by a voice vote, but as of this writing the bill has yet to be passed on the floor. The opposition to a reform that seems only to benefit boxers and boxing fans is odd, but perhaps it's no coincidence that Don King curried favor with Dennis Hastert and other Republicans now opposing the bill by taking a prominent role in the 2004 elections. King also donated heavily and made campaign commercials for President Bush, whose signature would be required to pass the bill.

The funny thing is that if a boxing czar actually were established and put into place, I'd be scared to death. You know the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for.” Well, in this case, I'd be terrified that we'd get the wrong person. Cus always talked about that. He said, I'd never want to see that happen because I don't trust the government. They screw up everything. It could be worse than before, because instead of pockets of corruption you might have a single corrupt guy running the whole thing. But in the end even Cus admitted it would be worth the risk.

Assuming it did happen, and they were looking for a guy, I have some ideas. My top choice would be Joe Spinelli, the former New York inspector general, who was an FBI agent for ten years and was the first guy to bring Don King under investigation. He has a passion for boxing and an understanding of it, plus he's incorruptible. Another guy I'd feel good about is Tom Hoover, who played for seven NBA teams and was an inspector with the New York State Athletic Commission of Boxing. He's a good man who knows boxing, and he's tough. He's the kind of guy who would physically throw someone out of his office if he thought they were hurting the sport. Pennsylvania Boxing Commissioner Greg Serb would also be a good choice. My wildcard pick would have been somebody like the late Jack Newfield, who wrote extensively about the corruption in boxing and was a guy of great character and principle.

Some people have asked me if I would consider doing it. My answer is that a lot would depend on the amount of authority they gave to the job. If the czar was just a bullshit figurehead with a title, I'd turn it down flat. But if the job entailed real power, I do feel that I could do a lot of good in a spot like that.

As I get older, I'm beginning to come face-to-face with the things I've accomplished and the things I haven't accomplished. When I look to the future these days, I think about what I'm going to leave behind.

I'd love for my foundation to eventually open up homes for kids in all of the New York boroughs. A place where kids off the streets and kids who were being abused could go and be part of a cooperative living situation that centered around a boxing program and could give them what a proper home would give them—care, direction, instruction, discipline, accountability, and dreams. I'd like to see that grow—which is why I need to see my foundation keep growing—so it isn't just one house like that, but six, seven, eight houses in different areas of the country helping kids who need a safe, healthy environment that would give them the physical and emotional things they need.

I've been lucky in so many ways. Who would ever believe that a guy who was educated on a corner in Stapleton and in Rikers (and later in a gym in Catskill) would have one kid graduating from college and—my daughter—in law school?

I wish my father and mother were still around so they could see Nicole and Teddy when their graduation days come. I know this is going
to sound funny, but I also wish Cus could see them. As much as there was good and bad about him, I wish that he could have been around as a grandfather type of figure, maybe taught Teddy a few lessons in the gym. I also wish he could have maybe seen me as a commentator. I think he would have gotten a kick out of that. Boy, he used to hate boxing commentators. Howard Cosell would get him so furious, he'd turn the sound off. I'd come in the room and the sound would be down, and I'd say, “What's wrong with the TV, Cus?” And he would say, “I can't listen to him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Sit down and don't touch that knob.”

As long as I'm going in this vein, I also wish Cus and my mom and dad could have seen this house that I built for the kids and Elaine. It's a funny story about the house. The truth is, I waited too long to build it, and when I finally got around to it, I took a huge gamble. I can say that now because it worked out. We went ahead and built a beautiful sixty-eight-hundred-square-foot house eight years ago when I had no big-time fighter and no real money coming in, and if I hadn't been hired by ESPN subsequently, who knows whether I would have been able to keep it? But I just felt like I had to do it. We had been in a small apartment all those years, and if I waited any longer the kids would grow up without ever having what I felt they should have.

As it turned out, it was one of the best things I ever did. Now we've got this great house on Todt Hill in Staten Island, and the kids were able to spend a few years in it before going off to college. It was like a big Christmas gift to them, and to me, too, to be able to give them something so tangible after all the years and all the paydays I've walked away from.

I never had a real family. I mean, I had my mother and father and my brothers and my sister, but we didn't know how to be a family. We didn't know how to take care of each other. I think that's why I have these alternate charges of electricity that run through me. Some people might go numb in that kind of circumstance; with me it just pushed my feelings to extremes. I can be sensitive and compassionate and giving to the point where it's almost too much. If somebody has needs and problems, I get moved and affected so much it almost controls me, that's how much I feel compelled to help. At the same time, if somebody acts disloyal, if they betray me, and then they try to avoid taking responsibility, if they hide behind the excuses of convenience or weakness or selfishness,
I'll go to a place of wanting to hurt them. I'll be ready to give up everything to right what I consider a wrong—even though I know that my response might not be socially acceptable.

I'm very aware of the extremes within me. The caring and the anger. I've gotten better over the years at modulating them and controlling them, but I won't pretend they don't still exist.

I guess in some ways my whole life has been a journey and a search for family. I wasn't some kid from the streets. I was a doctor's son who grew up in a nice house in a good neighborhood. It just goes to show that you can be lost and alone and neglected in any kind of surroundings. Even though I was never able to get what I needed from my siblings or my parents, I've managed to get there in other ways, with the family I've made for myself, with Elaine and Nicole and Teddy.