more on Harry Greb

Number 1 at 160 imo, its a very subjective subject, and 160 is especially tight when ranking the highest tier, but imo,number1

 

No. 1, easy.

 

I'm sure this is off-point, but then alot of my posts are, but for years my father used to regularly visit someone in a retirement home in our neighborhood. Not often, but he never missed for too long either. And I can remember alot of times when I'd be out on the street with my friends and he'd come out our front door and head up the hill on foot. I knew where he was going, but for some reason, just the way kids think or don't think; to preoccupied with their own interests to care much about what adults are up to, I never bothered to ask him why, or who he was going to visit.

One Sunday, I must have gotten old enough to wonder and so I asked him as he passed us, who he was going up there to see. "Harry Greb's widow," he only said, and kept walking. I'd heard of Greb, but that's all. More years would have to go by before I'd know how great Greb was, and just what he'd meant, still means to boxing.

Then it happened it had been a while since I'd seen him make the walk; he was sitting in his stuffed chair, puffing on one of his big cigars when I asked him why that was, why he didn't go up to see her anymore and he just told me, in his abbreviated way, that she had passed away. I asked him how he'd known her, and why he'd made such a point of visiting her, and he just said that she'd been all alone, and had liked him to come by to see her because his visits made her feel a little closer to Harry. And I never found out for sure, but I got the feeling that wasn't the whole of it. I was pretty sure by the end of another one of our brief converstions that he had gotten alot out of those visits too.

 

Harry didnt have a widow. He was only married once and his wife died 3 and a half years before he did.

 

Call me a liar for a technicality? In those days a father would never have taken the time to explain adult relationships to a kid. She was his significant other in today's terms.

 

It is quite good, I thought, but like I said before, it's really not very long of a read. Less than 200 pages, I'm sure, but it is filled up pretty good with a lot of interesting "insider" information that is not easily found anywhere else.

Brenner tells the story surrounding Robinson & Moore, but he also expresses his gratitude in the book when Robinson apparently helped him out quite a bit when Brenner was first starting out in the business, and Robinson did so by taking a ridiculous low purse (like a hundred bucks) for a fight against, I believe, Billy Brown in 1950.

 

I wasnt calling you a liar, just pointing out an inconsistency in the old mans story.