SPECTATOR SPORT
Gone but not forgotten
Frank Keating
I WAS shocked to hear that Billy Wright had died. He was the first footballer I nabbed for my cricketer-filled autograph- book, and many years later I worked with him when he was head of sport for Lew Grade's ATV. During the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, I had a row with him about some meaningless and long-forgot- ten 'production value' — as you do all the time in television — and, the tequila speaking I suppose, I told him he didn't know what he was talking about and we'd be better served by him 'balancing those one hundred and five tasselled caps on your head'.
Everyone said I was shamefully out of order and I grovelled an apology next morning. Bill said `no worries', and he took me downstairs at the Maria Isabel and we shared an expensive bottle of champagne. For years thereafter, on my birthday, Bill would send round a bottle of bubbly. He was a heck of a nice chap, a contented smiler.
It has been an obitty couple of weeks. Also dead is another hero from boyhood, whom I never met till years later, Rex Alston, the wireless commentator. So the Times finally got it right, nine years after it had inadvertently published Rex's obituary in 1985, a glowing one too. The old boy thought it a heck of a hoot, and in 1991, when he and his wife were planning his 90th birthday party, he said he was going to invite, as guest of honour, the Times obits' editor. I never asked if he did.
Two old prize-fighters also died last week, Ike Williams and Jack Sharkey. Williams was 71 and flat broke. He was a star witness in the 1951 Kefauver inquiry into boxing and the Mafia. When he came over to defend his lightweight title against Roy James in Cardiff in 1946, it was the first time my pa let me stay up and listen to the commentary in my dressing-gown. Williams apparently had patented his `bolo' punch, a savage right uppercut to the body, and he duly dispatched James
with it. Next day Peter Wilson wrote in the Mirror that the Welshman had been `almost cut in half by the greatest body punch I have ever seen'. In that equally greatest-ever boxing book In This Corner, Williams writes, 'My last shot was the right hand to the body. He went down slowly. He was as gone as any fighter ever was.'
Ike was also philosophical about his money. 'I had so many fights, I made so much money. In 1948 alone I made almost a quarter of a million dollars. Then I did a first-class job of managing my money real bad. Gambling heavy on golf — playing golf you can lose as much as you want to lose. I gave an awful lot away, too. At least if you give it to them, you're not looking for it.'
Jack Sharkey kept his small fortune and shared it out among his 14 grandchildren. He would have been 92 next month. After boxing he became a champion fly-fisher- man. He was the only man who fought both Dempsey and Louis. Who hit him the hard- est? 'Jack hit me hardest because Jack hit me two hundred and eleven thousand dol- lars' worth while Joe only hit me thirty-six thousand dollars' worth.'
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