Ali And His Entourage

Still, the Manager keeps busy. Between his five trips to the mosque each day to pray, he occasionally brokers deals for Third World sellers and runs a catering business in Chicago. But Ali was, and is, the key, and Herbert knows it.

Now and then the fighter leaves his 88-acre farm, which Al Capone once owned, in Berrien Springs, Mich., and makes the two-hour drive to meet Herbert at a Chicago hotel coffee shop. Ali genuinely liked Herbert and his easy laugh: He was the only nonfamily member Ali said he would ask along if he could take only five people to the moon. On one visit to the city, Ali sat in the coffee shop as the Manager made plans, listening with blank eyes as if the world of money and publicity was one from which he had died and floated far away. And the Manager, sharp and angular beneath the round body and the baggy sport coat with the elbow patches, tried everything to wake him. If Ali were dead, could Herbert feel completely alive?

"I tell him, 'Joe Frazier ain't sitting around,' " he said. " 'If you lost some weight and took your medicine, you could make a whole lot of money. You could even fight.' I know he can't fight, but I say it just to motivate him. He won't take his medicine, he hates to depend on anything. I think his problem is getting worse. He's shaking more. Sometimes it's hard to be in his presence, like someone sick in your family. I love that man. He is quicker to help a stranger, he has more inner compassion than any human being I've ever met. But I'm afraid he's losing the values of this earth. Allah said to do everything in your power to seek an afterlife, but not to neglect your share on this earth. Ali gave away that big house of his in Los Angeles, he gave away cars. He's giving up things too easy. I don't want to push him, but I have got to make him realistic. His mother, his father, his eight children, what will he do about their expenses, the kids' college educations? And he shouldn't dress the way I dress. He should have a suit and a tie, and he should have his hair groomed, because he represents something to people.

"He says, I don't need no car, I'll just ride a bike.' I say, 'That's as crazy as a guy making $400 a week driving a Cadillac' One night when he stayed over in Chicago, he slept on the floor of the mosque instead of getting a hotel. I told him, 'People are going to think you've lost all your marbles or your money—and neither one is good.' The whole world rallied around Islam as a universal religion because of Muhammad Ali. But if he doesn't watch it, he's going to become a monk."

One day last summer the Manager received a call from Mexico City. It was Ali, seeking counsel: Should he chance a new form of brain surgery that might cure his illness? Two of the 18 patients who had undergone the operation—in which adrenal cells are placed inside the brain to help make dopamine, a brain chemical essential to controlling voluntary body movement—had died shortly thereafter, but others had shown marked improvement. Ali might be Ali again!

Ali's fourth wife, Yolanda, cried on the telephone and begged him not to risk it. Herbert Muhammad closed his eyes and thought. He so hated to see Ali hurt, he used to keep his head down and pray during fights.

"I felt if he put his trust totally in God, the operation would be a success," said Herbert. He looked down at his hands. "But I didn't tell him that. If he turned out like a vegetable, it would be seen as my decision. People would think I said yes just because I wanted more paychecks from Ali. So I told him to listen to everybody but to make up his own mind."

Ali decided to wait until American doctors had become more familiar with the surgery. Part of him was afraid to be what he was again, filled with an energy that needed lights and action and other people's eyes. The illness, he sensed, was a protection against himself. And because of this, the Manager closed in on 60 feeling the way Ali did toward the end of his career, still able to visualize himself doing what he wanted to do, but unable to do it.

"Not just 50 mosques," said Herbert Muhammad. "But 50 mosques with day-care centers and schools and old-folks' homes attached to them. I keep telling Ali, Let's get back in the race. How could I have ever dreamed I'd have to beg Muhammad Ali to go?"

THE MOTIVATOR