George, Being George

Edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr.

Courtesy of Random House

Excerpted from GEORGE, BEING GEORGE, edited by Nelson W. Aldrich. © 2008 by Sarah Dudley Plimpton. Reprinted by arrangement with the Random House Publishing Group.

George Plimpton is best known for taking to the arenas of professional sports and surviving to write about his experience -- with grace, urbanity and considerable humor. But such classics as "Paper Lion" and "The Bogey Man" are only the most visable instances in a body of writing as remarkable for its bredth and diversity as for its elegance. What follows is an excerpt from George, Being George, a book that details what made Plimpton an iconic figure to athletes and journalists alike.

Ray Cave: Most of sport is what the people competing are going through, what they're thinking, what they're doing, and nobody approached George's ability to write about that inside of the game. It takes a George to ask the question "What's it feel like, if you're the quarterback, when you put your hands up under that guy's ass? How'd you do that?" People find that sort of question irresistible. You'd spend an hour telling him how you did it, right?

Pat Ryan: I followed Ray as George's editor at Sports Illustrated in the seventies. With his distinctive voice, it's really ludicrous to say you edited George. You'd agree on a story and cheat on his deadline so it got delivered on time, but after that you didn't mess with his distinctive voice. You might ask a question, and he'd immediately rewrite the sentence or paragraph. He loved clarity.

Robert Silvers: He didn't want to be an outside observer; he didn't want to be a reporter, although he could write superb pieces for magazines if he wanted. His idea was to go into the secret world of the professional; the reporter would stop at the locker room door, then go to his perch in the press section, while George would be in the locker room putting on his uniform and going out with the players. Completely different. On the other hand, he did an enormous amount of research for each piece, on each sport. He tried to pick up everything he could.

Dear Mr. Commissioner [Pete Rozelle] -- I have sent you under separate cover a copy of Out of My League, an account of an afternoon I spent in the Yankee Stadium pitching to some of the best players in the business. The book grew out of a series of articles I was commissioned to do for Sports Illustrated, a series describing what happens to the average week- end athlete competing at the highest possible level of athletic prowess. In this capacity, during the past two years, I've suffered not only at the hands of the baseball players, but in the ring against Archie Moore, on the golf course against [Sam] Snead, on the tennis courts against Pancho Gonzalez, and in a number of other contests, all of which, I need hardly say, have been equivalently unequal. I have experienced, however, what everyone imagines himself doing from time to time -- getting out there and trying it -- and I have put it down in words as truthfully and seriously as I can.

It is my hope, of course, to do something for Sports Illustrated (and a second book) on professional football, and it's to this end that I'm taking the liberty of writing you.... But anything I do with the League, before tackling the owners and coaches, must start with your permission. I hope that can be forthcoming. The point is, I think, that I'm doing this series not as a stunt, but as a serious inspection of a world of great athletes, which, while carefully observed by reporters, is rarely described by participants -- and hardly ever by a representative of those myriads of onlookers, devoted to the game, who often imagine what it would be to train with a team and try it for an afternoon.... [July 29, 1961]

Tim Seldes: I think the first time I became aware of this participatory journalism that George had in mind was when he told me, "I'm going to do some rounds with Archie Moore and write about it." He was the middleweight or heavyweight champion at the time. We all said, "You've got to be joking," but not at all. We all showed up at Stillman's Gym, and Archie was very nice and sort of bomped him around, and that was the beginning of George's amateur- among-the-pros thing. I wasn't his agent at the time; he called me as his friend to come and carry him away if necessary.

Blair Fuller: Archie Moore was at the absolute peak of his career, the light heavyweight champion of the world after many a year in the boondocks. He had just won a terrific bout up in Montreal, defending his title against a French-Canadian fighter named Yvon Durelle -- by a knockout, I think, in the eleventh round. So people began to collect at Stillman's Gym. George had asked some, and Archie some, Miles Davis, for one, who was dressed in a camel's hair coat. George had asked me to be in his corner with George Brown, a gym owner who taught boxing, a good guy. Hemingway had put George in touch with him.

Eventually Archie comes into the gym, just beaming. We go back to the dressing room, a plastic cubicle with a bench over here and a bench over there. Archie is in his fight clothes; he just takes off some sweats, and there he is. He starts taping his own hands; he didn't need anyone to do it for him. George did. George Brown is taping his hands, and Archie says, "Kid, I just wanna tell you something. Just go out there and do the best you can. I'm gonna make you look good."

Finally we go out to the ring. There is a clock -- three-minute rounds. There is a ref. People were in both corners with their buckets and sponges and stuff. And the bell rings. And George simply goes out there, no little dance you see boxers doing at the outset of a fight, he just goes forward toward Archie Moore, sticking his left hand out. Trying, in fact, to box.

For quite a while in that first round, Archie clowned. He wasn't really trying to make George look good, but he was trying to make him look like an amateur, when he wasn't even that. Archie, on the other hand, was a great professional. When George tried to hit him with a left jab, Archie would just knock it away. And then he would just kind of tap George, showing that he could do it, you know. It seemed to me a very, very long round, and toward the end of it Archie's clowning really wasn't so funny now, because George kept coming at him. I mean, George didn't enter into the spirit of the joke, shall we say. He simply went on doing what he could, which was to keep moving forward. The second round was more of the same, with George moving forward, still forward. But then -- I couldn't see what happened -- but then suddenly the champion of the world slipped onto one knee. In other words, he's down. That's terrible, of course, and George stood there looking surprised.

So up gets Archie with a smile and breaks George's nose. Blood is streaming out of his nose, but George does not stop. On he went doing this forward shufûe. Archie did not go any farther, thank heaven, because he could have put George away.