Great Men Die Twice: The Selected Works of Mark Kram

by Mark Kram Jr.

Overview

A collection of classic essays by legendary sports journalist Mark Kram, Great Men Die Twice covers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, George Best, Cool Papa Bell, and other memorable subjects.

Imagine Mad Men set not in the advertising world but at 1960s Sports Illustrated, a place where the finest sports staff of any generation was attended by an open bar and almost unlimited expense account. This was the world Mark Kram lived and wrote in, along with his peers including Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins and other major talents. A high school graduate with a gift for revealing the hearts of his subjects, Kram would become one of the greatest sports writers of all time, covering the famed rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Negro League baseball star Cool Papa Bell, doomed soccer legend George Best, Olympic gold medal sprinter Edwin Moses, and others.

The New York Times obituary of Kram in June, 2002 saluted his work in Sports Illustrated by calling him one of its "most lyrical writers of the 1960s and 1970s." Great Men Die Twice selects his best work with a moving introduction by his son, Mark Kram Jr., the PEN/ESPN Award-winning author of Like Any Normal Day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250064998
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/23/2015
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

MARK KRAM was one of Sports Illustrated's most acclaimed writers during the 1960s and 70s, and published more pieces on Muhammad Ali for the magazine than any other writer, along with many other features. He also contributed to Esquire, Gentleman's Quarterly, Playboy, and other publications. His articles on boxing have been widely anthologized, including The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam, and The Fights, a collection of essays edited by Richard Ford. His book Ghosts of Manila (HarperCollins, 2001) is the classic account of the third fight between Ali and Joe Frazier. A native of Baltimore, he died in June 2002.

MARK KRAM, JR. is the author of Like Any Normal Day, which received the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. His feature articles have won the Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists and has been published six times in The Best American Sports Writing Anthology. Kram lives in New Jersey with his family.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mark Kram Jr.
I. GREAT MEN DIE TWICE (Muhammad Ali)
II. THE BOXING BEAT
1. At the Bell... (Ali-Frazier I)
2. The One-Minute Angels (Cornermen)
3. "There Ain't No Others Like Me" (Don King)
4. -Manilla-for Blood and for Money (Ali-Frazier III)
5. "Lawdy, Lawdy, He's Great" (Ali-Frazier III)
6. ...But Only a Farce in Tokyo (Ali-Inoki)
7. On the Throne Behind the Power (Herbert Muhammad)
8. Not the Greatest Way to Go (Ali-Norton III)
III. IN THE TELLING
1. A Wink at a Homely Girl (Baltimore)
2. To the Brink—and Beyond (Niagara Falls)
3. All the Best (George Best)
4. No Place in the Shade (Cool Papa Bell)
5. Why Ain't I in the Hall? (Hack Wilson)
IV. GIGS
1. A Hurdler in Inner Space (Edwin Moses)
2. Brando
3. Jerry Glanville's Unbuckled Ego
4. The Betrayal of Michael Levine
5. No Pain, No Game (Joey Browner)
V. DEAD END (BEETHAVEAN SCOTTLAND)
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

The list of sportswriters whose career highlights are worth anthologizing is probably finite: Ring Lardner, Red Smith, Roger Angell, add a few others of your own. But one who shouldn't be forgotten is Mark Kram…his prose was energetic, inventive and, sharing in the magazine mode of the time, slightly gonzo. He was—and as Great Men Die Twice, a new collection of his essayistic reporting proves, still is—enormously fun to read.

The New York Times - Bruce Weber

[Kram] understood the history and the strategy of the ring, and he could describe a jab or a roundhouse right with the precision that made you feel it...his prose was energetic, inventive...and enormously fun to read.” —The New York Times

“Richly created stories...[Kram's] writing forever elevated sports reporting to an art form.” —The Washington Review of Books

“Mark Kram's best pieces can only be described as literature. His elevation of American vernacular and jaundiced native lyricism combined to produce essays that will endure as long as anyone cares to read about sports.” —Thomas McGuane

“Mark Kram was brittle, but he could be brilliant. At his best, as this collection shows, he wrote about sports as well as anybody ever did. At his very best, no one ever wrote nonfiction for magazines as well as Mark did.” —Frank Deford

“There has never been another sports writer quite like Mark Kram, brilliant and haunted, with an eye for the fallen and forgotten and the power to capture Ali and Frazier as they destroyed each other in pursuit of greatness. With prose that was by turns muscular, cerebral, and soulful, Kram painted word pictures that deserved life beyond the magazines they appeared in. Now, thanks to this shimmering collection, justice is done.” —John Schulian, editor, Football: Great Writing About The National Sport

“This wondrous collection of stories will introduce a new generation of readers to Mark Kram's genius…These stories bleed with raw beauty and insight.” —Michael Leahy, author of When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback

From the Publisher

2015-04-01
Edited by his son, Kram Jr. (Like Any Normal Day, 2012), this is the first collection of work from one of the more literary sportswriters of the 1960s and '70s, whose mixed legacy leaves a hole at the center of this volume. As one of the stars of Sports Illustrated during its golden era, Kram became most closely associated with boxing in general and with the fierce rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in particular. His Ghosts of Manila (2001), expanding on his coverage for SI a quarter-century earlier, putting the fight in context, was criticized by some who revered Ali because it showed his darker, meaner, bullying side against an adversary who deserved better in the public eye. The early sections of this anthology seem to write all around that fight without ever zeroing in on it. Kram shows what a complex figure Ali was and is outside the ring, both as a man and as a larger-than-life symbol. As he writes from the champion's hospital bed, in the epigram that gives the book its title, "Great men, it's been noted, die twice—once as great, and once as men." It also applies to Kram, who saw the greatness of his legend tarnished by the effects of alcohol, domestic and money troubles, and charges of ethical misconduct. After SI let him go, he wrote pieces for magazines such as Esquire and GQ on topics other than sports—including an essay on Marlon Brando that ranks among the book's most provocative. Yet boxing and "blood sports" in general brought out the poet in him. He's particularly evocative in a piece on cornermen and in a challenging assignment to profile Ali's Muslim manager Herbert Muhammad, about whom he is warned, "You can sum up Herbert in three words…dull, dull, and dull." He isn't, of course, the way Kram writes about him. A solid introduction to an important sportswriter.

Kirkus Reviews