Say this about the often ornery Boston sports columnist George Kimball, he ?closed the show? in an impressive manner.
Like a Sugar Ray Leonard, a Thomas Hearns or a Marvelous Marvin Hagler, realizing it was the last round and the final bell was fast approaching, Kimball wrote books, spoke at college campuses and refused to ?lay down? for the esophogeal cancer which had him on the ropes for six brutal years.
Though he had to cover the Red Sox and the Patriots as part of his job description at The Herald, Kimball really only relished boxing, above all, with golf coming in a distant second. All the other sports were tied for last place.
Like Floyd Mayweather Jr., Kimball was undefeated….in arguments if not in fights. He was a barroom raconteur and he basically wrote it the same way he spoke it.
As a result of a youthful fight with another partygoer on Boston’s Beacon Hill, Kimball took a beer bottle to the eye.
He lost vision in that eye but it always made for a good laugh at the Purple Rose or any other Irish saloon when Kimball would remove his replacement eye and surprise someone.
?Hey, pal, keep a drink on my eye for a minute,? Kimball would say as he placed his glass orb on the bar.
His writing generally entertained and it often provoked. Something Kimball wrote so upset Red Sox pitching superstar Roger Clemens that he threw hot dog rolls at the writer in the clubhouse at Fenway Park one day.
Kimball, fabled barkeep Tommy Leonard (see the current issue of Runner’s World magazine for a terrfic Steve Rushin profile on character of characters and Falmouth Road Race founder Leonard) and the rest of those who imbibed at the fabled Eliot Lounge in the shadow of Fenway must have laughed plenty about that lockerroom assault by soft roll. Advertisement
Kimball was a character in the true sense of the term and it figured that he most appreciated the grifters and scalawags in the boxing demimonde.
He’s gone too soon at 67, even if he was gruff, cantankerous and a curmudgeon long before he reached the age where you can get away with that act.
Say what you will or may but George Kimball made his distinctive mark in boxing and his prose will live on.
Kimball died on Wednesday in Manhattan. Details of a memorial service will be announced sometime soon according to his wife.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Kimball’s remains are not sprinkled across his beloved ?second home? of Ireland.
It would be fitting given his skewed sense of humor.
?Pardon my dust,? Kimball might have said…or more importantly might have written.
RIP, a fight scribe who cared deeply about the fights and the fighters.
You called Kimball an ink-stained wretch, the oldtime newspaperman took it as a compliment, which it was.
Well, look on the bright side, now Damon Runyon will have a new guy to talk to.
