Six word legacy on HBO’s Sport in America: Our Defining Stories
“We wish we were forever young” – part of a closing montage of 25 fans in the final minute of HBO/Sports Illustrated documentary Sport in America: Our Defining Stories, speaking about the meaning of the great sporting events that we’d witnessed.
My telling the tale my experience attending the Muhammad Ali – Ken Norton fight in San Diego, March 30, 1973 after almost an hour of taping at End Game Productions/HBO over a year ago didn’t make the final cut, but I was still nonetheless honored to be a small part of the first documentary of its kind on Sport in America. The thought came spontaneously to mind from the classic 1974 Bob Dylan song and the beauty and poignance of great sport memories.
Here’s a link to the story which I published in the Eureka Times Standard Sept. 20, 2013 in memory of Ken Norton.
http://www.times-standard.com/guest_opinion/ci_24138127/day-ken-norton-broke-muhammad-alis-jaw
Here’s the cover of Ring Magazine that I bought in Mac’s Smoke Shop in Palo Alto in 1964 with my dad when I became an Ali fan for life:
This picture was taken before the Ali Norton Fight II in my apartment in Burbank, CA, where Ali won a narrow split decision at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, CA in September of 1973 after I’d witnessed Norton breaking Ali’s jaw earlier that March in the San Diego Sports Arena -the basis for my story about the amazing resilience of Ali.
Doc Stull, November 29, 2013