Chapter I: Foreword

If the readers of this autobiography of one of the standout sports reporters of the half century, and a pre-eminent authority on boxing in particular, get half the thrills I enjoyed while going over the advance proofs, it will take its place with the most successful efforts of its kind.

Here we have the eye witness accounts of the Pepys of the ring scene these last fifty years.

This is a story which nobody has produced in the past, and certainly is not going to duplicate in the future.

It is the life story of a man who lived through increasingly exciting eras of the nation’s history, and the nation’s sports annals. The conditions which obtained through those eventful decades will not come again. The man who banged his typewriter through these crowding years will not come again upon a similar sequence in the sports kaleidoscope.

Here are behind-the-scenes pictures, the inside stories of so many developments which have waited, until now, for my lifetime friend Nat Fleischer to reveal them.

Here are pathos, comedy, and intrigue; the seamy, sombre stories, and the funny ones as well. Ring heroes of the past come to life in these pages to reveal themselves in the full panoply of their championship stature, or in the meaner habiliments of the character on the fringe.

It is a fine book, and I thank Nat for having written it.

DAN DANIEL

To Trudie

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