A fond farewell to prolific SI boxing scribe Pat Putnam

	Pat Putnam was a renowned boxing writer for Sports Illustrated from 1968 to '95. John Iacono/SI
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By Richard O'Brien, SI.com

Pat Putnam, who died Sunday at age 75 after a lengthy illness, wrote for Sports Illustrated from 1968 to '95, producing more than 50 cover stories.

Though he reported on everything from pro football to horse racing to track and field, Putnam was first and foremost a boxing writer. In 1982 he received the Nat Fleischer Award for lifetime excellence in boxing journalism, honoring a career that began with The Miami Herald in 1954. While at the Herald, Putnam covered the career of the young Cassius Clay. It was Putnam, in fact, who broke the story that Clay was changing his name to Muhammad Ali.

At SI Putnam continued to write about Ali -- all the way through the end of the fighter's career -- as well as about many other all-time greats, including Larry Holmes, Sugar Ray Leonard and Mike Tyson, and he covered such classic bouts as Pryor-Arguello, Leonard-Hearns and Hagler-Hearns. Even after retirement, Putnam continued to cover boxing, writing regularly for the Web site TheSweetScience.com.

A native of Schenectady, N.Y., Patrick Francis Anthony Nolan Putnam attended Syracuse University and played semi-pro baseball before going into the Marine Corps. He saw combat in Korea, where he earned multiple Purple Hearts and spent 17 months in a Chinese prison camp. He is survived by a daughter, Colleen, and a son, Shawn, and four grandchildren.

On the shelf above my desk, propped up next to a couple of autographed baseballs and a bobblehead Stan Musial doll, sits a 10-inch-by-12-inch chunk of sheet rock. That crumbly bit of debris is a souvenir of the first story I ever covered at SI. It is also a concrete (well, plaster) reminder of all that Putnam meant to me.

It was back in 1988 and I was just a clueless young reporter. I'd been at the magazine for all of two weeks when, because the regular boxing reporter was sick -- and, I assume, no one else was available -- I was dispatched to Atlantic City, N.J., to help cover Tyson's heavyweight title defense against former champion Holmes. Basically, I was to help gather quotes for Putnam, who would be writing the cover story on the Friday-night bout, and then hightail it back to the office by Sunday morning to fact-check the finished piece.

A lifelong boxing fan, I was thrilled at the chance to see the fight, but I was also a little apprehensive at the prospect of meeting Putnam. I'd read and admired his stories for a long time, but I'd also heard that he was a tough, old-school type, and I didn't want to mess up and come across like some useless college kid.