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| Muhammad Ali, My Father and Me | Muhammad Ali, My Father and Me |
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| The photograph might be mistaken for a Norman Rockwell print: a fighter kitted out in safari gear and boxing gloves landing the gentlest of blows on the head of a small girl in a flared blue skirt, a cherry red turtleneck and a pair of exceptionally cool little sneakers worn with neither socks nor tights. No rope-a-dope for this kid: She’s got one small, clenched fist raised. | The photograph might be mistaken for a Norman Rockwell print: a fighter kitted out in safari gear and boxing gloves landing the gentlest of blows on the head of a small girl in a flared blue skirt, a cherry red turtleneck and a pair of exceptionally cool little sneakers worn with neither socks nor tights. No rope-a-dope for this kid: She’s got one small, clenched fist raised. |
| The big guy is Muhammad Ali. I’m the kid. | The big guy is Muhammad Ali. I’m the kid. |
| The photographer Carl Fischer snapped the picture during a shoot for the cover of the September 1974 issue of Sport magazine, scheduled to hit the newsstands just weeks before what would become one of the most legendary matchups in the history of boxing: the Rumble in the Jungle, in which Ali would face the heavyweight champ, George Foreman, in Kinshasa, Zaire. (The fight was originally slated for Sept. 25 but was delayed until Oct. 30 because of an injury Foreman sustained while training.) | |
| My father, Dick Schaap, was the editor of Sport at the time, and wrote in an editor’s note about the story and the photo shoot: | My father, Dick Schaap, was the editor of Sport at the time, and wrote in an editor’s note about the story and the photo shoot: |
| I certainly was too young to grasp, at the time, the subversive brilliance of staging Ali in the costume of one of the most famous archetypes of white privilege and power, given his unapologetic identity as “a race man,” his potent pride in his blackness. I wish I could remember more about that day, but after more than 40 years, the memories have inevitably faded. I recall it now in a softly spectral way: I somehow knew, even if I wouldn’t have said it this way at the time, that I was in the presence of a great human, who was also very funny, and who took the time to play with children and seemed to enjoy it. I remember his physical presence, so vast compared with my toddler smallness. My mother once explained to me that the reason my legs are bare is that I’d been horsing around with Ali’s kids before the shoot, and tore up my nice woolen tights so badly she had to remove them. | I certainly was too young to grasp, at the time, the subversive brilliance of staging Ali in the costume of one of the most famous archetypes of white privilege and power, given his unapologetic identity as “a race man,” his potent pride in his blackness. I wish I could remember more about that day, but after more than 40 years, the memories have inevitably faded. I recall it now in a softly spectral way: I somehow knew, even if I wouldn’t have said it this way at the time, that I was in the presence of a great human, who was also very funny, and who took the time to play with children and seemed to enjoy it. I remember his physical presence, so vast compared with my toddler smallness. My mother once explained to me that the reason my legs are bare is that I’d been horsing around with Ali’s kids before the shoot, and tore up my nice woolen tights so badly she had to remove them. |
| I also remember how deeply my father loved, and delighted in the company of, Muhammad Ali. On ABC News in 2001, less than a year before he died, he recounted the story,one I had heard him tell often: | |
| The story, which I couldn’t love more, says much about both men: My father never lost that interest in pretty women, and never lost the love he felt for that young Louisville boxer. Ali’s wit grew only quicker and more luminous until it was quieted by Parkinson’s disease, and his commitment to telling tough truths (even if in this case the truth was exaggerated) only deepened. | The story, which I couldn’t love more, says much about both men: My father never lost that interest in pretty women, and never lost the love he felt for that young Louisville boxer. Ali’s wit grew only quicker and more luminous until it was quieted by Parkinson’s disease, and his commitment to telling tough truths (even if in this case the truth was exaggerated) only deepened. |
| Just a few years after the picture was taken, after the issue of Sport was published, after Ali bested the fearsome, favored Foreman in Kinshasa and regained his World Champion title, my parents’ marriage ended, and ended badly. Many years of conflict and hurt and misunderstanding between my dad and me followed. But one steadfast bond was our love for Muhammad Ali. For my father, it was personal and undeniably mutual. For me, it was more distant, more abstracted, but still very real. | Just a few years after the picture was taken, after the issue of Sport was published, after Ali bested the fearsome, favored Foreman in Kinshasa and regained his World Champion title, my parents’ marriage ended, and ended badly. Many years of conflict and hurt and misunderstanding between my dad and me followed. But one steadfast bond was our love for Muhammad Ali. For my father, it was personal and undeniably mutual. For me, it was more distant, more abstracted, but still very real. |
| There were times when I was dismissive of both the world of sport and my father’s engagement with it, especially in my long phase as an angry adolescent activist and would-be poet. I got over it. And never for a minute was I dismissive of Muhammad Ali — who was, after all, an athlete who also happened to be dazzlingly deft with language, and one of the boldest, most fearless, most radical fighters for social justice our country has ever known. | There were times when I was dismissive of both the world of sport and my father’s engagement with it, especially in my long phase as an angry adolescent activist and would-be poet. I got over it. And never for a minute was I dismissive of Muhammad Ali — who was, after all, an athlete who also happened to be dazzlingly deft with language, and one of the boldest, most fearless, most radical fighters for social justice our country has ever known. |
| I often think that my childhood was wasted on me. So many other kids would have appreciated having a sports reporter for a father — and all the outings to baseball stadiums, Madison Square Garden and Flushing Meadows, and the countless encounters with the star athletes of the era, that it made possible — much more than I did. In truth, I usually resented it. For the brief time my family was together, my father’s work often took him out of town, cut dinners short and occupied, it sometimes felt to me, more space in his head and his heart than I did. In the ideal make-believe family I fantasized about as a kid, my mother was Donna Summer, and my father owned a bookshop. | I often think that my childhood was wasted on me. So many other kids would have appreciated having a sports reporter for a father — and all the outings to baseball stadiums, Madison Square Garden and Flushing Meadows, and the countless encounters with the star athletes of the era, that it made possible — much more than I did. In truth, I usually resented it. For the brief time my family was together, my father’s work often took him out of town, cut dinners short and occupied, it sometimes felt to me, more space in his head and his heart than I did. In the ideal make-believe family I fantasized about as a kid, my mother was Donna Summer, and my father owned a bookshop. |
| But this photograph is my greatest treasure. I’ve taken it with me from home to home in my youth, dorm to dorm in college, and everywhere I’ve lived as an adult. It is my talisman, my big brag, my stalwart conversation starter. It’s proof that at age 3 I went one round with the greatest of all time. It’s also the most tangible connection I have to my father, gone now almost 15 years, and a reminder that, really, I wouldn’t trade my childhood, or him, for anything, or anyone. | But this photograph is my greatest treasure. I’ve taken it with me from home to home in my youth, dorm to dorm in college, and everywhere I’ve lived as an adult. It is my talisman, my big brag, my stalwart conversation starter. It’s proof that at age 3 I went one round with the greatest of all time. It’s also the most tangible connection I have to my father, gone now almost 15 years, and a reminder that, really, I wouldn’t trade my childhood, or him, for anything, or anyone. |