New Hall of Famer Izenberg Always Seeks the Truth, and Usually Finds It

If the four-day induction festivities (June 9-12) at the International Boxing Hall of Fame can be likened to the Academy Awards, then the three new honorees in the Modern category for the Class of 2016 announced last Wednesday -- that would Lupe Pintor, Hilario Zapata and the late Hector “Macho” Camacho -- might be described as joint winners of the Oscar for Best Actor. They, even more so than the other honorees, get the VIP red-carpet treatment and are besieged by fight fans for autographs and photo-ops from the moment they arrive in Canastota, N.Y., right up the time they get to put on their Hall of Fame rings.

You have to figure that the attention-craving Camacho, who was 50 when he died on Nov. 24, 2012, in his native Puerto Rico, four days after being shot while sitting in a friend’s car, is somewhere in the Great Beyond, even now plotting ways to come back from the dead so that he can once again strut in the spotlight while shouting, “It’s Macho time!”

Camacho was a slick-boxing southpaw who compiled a 79-6-3 record, with 38 victories inside the distance, during a 30-year career in which he captured widely recognized world titles at super featherweight, lightweight and super lightweight. Mexico’s Pintor, 60, was a bantamweight and super bantamweight titlist who was 56-14-2 with 42 KOs while Zapata, 57, a Panamanian, is a former junior flyweight and flyweight champ who went 43-10-1 with 14 KOs.

Others whose plaques will be hung on the hallowed walls of the IBHOF include journalist Jerry Izenberg and blow-by-blow broadcaster Col. Bob Sheridan in the Observer category; HBO’s unofficial scorer Harold Lederman, former Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Marc Ratner and New Orleans-based trainer Whitey Esneault in the Non-Participant category, and featherweight Peter Sarron in the Old-Timer category. Along with Camacho, Esneault and Sarron will be enshrined posthumously.

Boxing is, first and foremost, about fights and fighters. That is as it should be. But it is also can be about fights and writers, and especially so if the writer being recognized is a Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammad Ali of the keyboard. Izenberg, 85, has been admired (and sometimes vilified) for his honest, unstinting coverage of all sports, but the columnist emeritus for the Newark Star-Ledger admits to having a special fondness for boxing.

Well, much of the time, anyway.

“I’m very touched by it,” Izenberg said of his impending entry into the IBHOF. “My life is not necessarily tied up with boxing, but boxing has been a major part of the good things that have happened to me. It’s enabled me to meet some of the best people I’ve ever met, some of the cleverest people I’ve ever met. Also, some of the biggest charlatans I’ve ever met.

“Anybody who wants to go out in the world and slay dragons or whatever, I would advise them to get into boxing first.”

Sticking with the parallels between Hollywood and Canastota, writers who get their call to the Hall are like Oscar winners for Best Original Screenplay. They observe those who sweat and bleed for the fans’ entertainment, before during and after the time they actually step inside the ropes, and are charged with the task of trying to make sense of it all to their readers.

Writing well about boxing—or about anything, for that matter—essentially can be broken down to two parts. One is crafting sentences and paragraphs that capture the moment with exquisite clarity. The other is the nuts-and-bolts necessity for solid reporting, because writers need factual backing to buttress their impressions of what they have just witnessed.

But there is also a third element that goes into the creation of an outstanding sports story or column, and it is elusive enough that those who aim for it frequently miss the mark. It is the daunting task of peeling back layer upon layer of subterfuge, behind which athletes often cocoon themselves so that only the image they wish to portray is presented for public consumption.

Izenberg, more so than just about anyone, finds the key that unlocks those carefully concealed mysteries. Perhaps that is because he spends enough time to get to truly know his subject matter, and perhaps it’s because his reputation is such that even first-time interviewees understand that he has not come to them with some hidden agenda or preconceived notion of who they are.

That uncompromising drive to discover the truth, and to convey it to his readers, is part of the gift passed on to Jerry by his late father, Harry Izenberg, who came to America with his parents from Eastern Europe as an eight-year-old so that the Jewish family could escape oppression and, hopefully, have a better life.

Harry did not find the streets of Newark, N.J., to be paved with gold. But the child did discover baseball, and he always said the moment he became an American was not his taking the pledge of allegiance as a naturalized citizen, but the first time he felt a bat in his hands and experienced the joy of hitting a line drive. On the playground, where acceptance of newcomers is always a tenuous thing, if you proved you could play, you could stay.

Harry became competent enough to have logged some good seasons as a semi-pro second baseman. But it wasn’t always fun and games for a man who spent decades as a dyer of fur, inhaling fumes that eroded his lungs until the mere act of breathing became something that no longer could be taken for granted.

Late in his life, when the coughing fits led him to understand that his life’s journey was nearing its end, Harry called Jerry to his side and the older man asked his son to examine the contents of his closet. It contained a sports jacket, three pairs of pants, two pairs of shoes and a couple of shirts.

“Take a good look,” Harry, a World War I veteran, told Jerry. “You don’t have to be too smart to know I don’t have much to leave you except for my good name. Don’t screw it up.”

Through 60-plus years on the job, Jerry has buffed and polished the Izenberg family legacy in a manner that would have had Harry beaming with pride. He has used his time, energy and talent as tools for social justice, bringing attention to causes which weren’t always popular but, when viewed through the prism of history, were shown to be correct. He supported Muhammad Ali’s right to refuse induction into the Army on religious grounds, the injustice of his friend Larry Doby, the first black man to play in the American League and the first to hit a home run in the World Series, being denied entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame (he finally made it in 1998, on a vote by the Hall’s Veterans Committee), and the notion that the coach at a small, historically black college, Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, was as successful and impactful in his own way as, say, Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes were in theirs.

How accomplished has Jerry been, and still is? (He is presently working on his 13th book, Once They Were Giants, which deals with some of the biggest fights in heavyweight history). Consider his Sept. 30 column in the Star-Ledger about his recollection of Ali-Frazier III, the “Thrilla in Manila,” the 40th anniversary of which would be the following day. Trainer Eddie Futch did not allow the exhausted, nearly blinded Smokin’ Joe to come out for the 15th and final round, but Futch’s act of compassion had two beneficiaries; in the other corner, an equally spent Ali barely had enough energy to rise from his stool and raise his hands over his head. This is how Jerry recalled the scene:

In the tunnel of my memory, I can still feel the oppressive heat in an arena with no air-conditioning, still hear the roar of the crowd and still replay every memory of the drama between the 14th round and the 15th round that never happened.

I learned an irrevocable truth that day. What I saw was not a battle for the heavyweight championship of the world. Each man knew a private truth in his heart. They were fighting for the championship of each other. Each had always made the other a little better than he was. They could have fought on a melting ice floe or in a phone booth. They were fighting for their own metaphorical Holy Grail, because their previous two meetings had meant the same to both of them: unfinished business.

In 64 years of ringsides that stretched from Newark, N.J., to the Philippines, I’ve seen so many fights I couldn’t give you an actual count. But I never saw one like this one. Hell, nobody else did either.

But although Jerry always could utilize a sense of the dramatic to maximum effect, his range is such that a lighter touch sometimes is preferable for making his point. Consider this chapter from one of his books, Through My Eyes: A Sports Writer’s 58-Year Journey, which dealt with his time in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) for Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle” with heavyweight champion George Foreman. A cut Foreman had received in training obliged the small army of international journalists to remain in the country several weeks longer than they had anticipated (the government had confiscated all foreign passports, and had made it clear they would not be returned until the fight had been held), during which all outgoing stories were reviewed by a government censor.

Summoned to a meeting with the censor, Jerry entered the three-sided, barbed-wire-enclosed compound which was situated alongside a river.

“This story cannot be sent by you,” the censor said. “In Zaire, there are no dusty roads.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Jerry replied. “This is a way of our people getting to know your people and …”

“No dusty roads!” the censor thundered. “Country roads!” And then he smiled.

“Dusty, country roads,” Jerry countered.

“Pretty country roads!” the official shot back.

“Pretty damned dusty country roads,” came Jerry’s final retort. And then he realized where he was, the only open area being the river.

Large brown logs floated down that river – or at least Jerry thought so until one of the logs opened its mouth.

Crocodiles.

“Pretty country roads,” Jerry agreed, maybe the first and last time he ever yielded on a point of personal artistic expression.

Just a guess, but I prefer to believe Jerry found a way to get his copy changed back to its original form by the time it ran in his newspaper. It would take more than an argumentative censor or a river full of crocs to get sports writing’s most relentless teller of truth to back off.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.