Bill McMurray was an outstanding athlete at San Bernardino High School and then junior college, where he played football and ran hurdles on the track team...
Tommy O’Leary was born Portuguese in 1901, with no hint of any Irish ancestry until he began fighting on the Sacramento fairgrounds and a handler thought...
I met Terry Smith about a hundred and twenty seconds before being punched unconscious in my second professional boxing match. This is not a story about...
Greater love hath no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13) Rudell Stitch died on a Sunday –...
If Otis Grimble left a suicide a note when he shot himself in his home on February 14, 1988, that note has not been shared with...
When Benny Paret fell into a coma as he lost his welterweight championship to Emile Griffith in Madison Square Garden on March 24, 1962, he was...
The life arc of Teddy “Red Top” Davis impacted author Glen Sharp, to the point the writer spent oodles of hours poring over old newspaper clips,...
While researching the history of West Sacramento boxer Joey Lopes I came across an Associated Press release in the April 18, 1956, issue of the Sacramento...
Pete Ranzany was scheduled to fight Jimmy Heair on a Tuesday, in December, 1978, and Heair arrived in Sacramento the Wednesday before. His luggage had been...
One of my favorite lines in literature comes from Pete Dexter’s novel, Train, when the shop-worn boxer Plural comments, “The world is a hungry place, man....