REMEMBERING BOXING WRITER GEORGE KIMBALL

July 9th, 2011 By Pedro Fernandez

HEAVY SMOKER, HEAVY DRINKER, HEAVY WRITER

San Francisco, CA- When Ron Marshall, owner of Pugilibri Boxing Books, the foremost purveyor of boxing books in the world told me he had been chatting with former Boston Herald boxing scribe George Kimball, I had heard he was sick so I inquired. “He’s in hospice care,” said Marshall. Ron went on to tell me that Kimball, 67, had cancer and wasn’t long for this world. That saddened me as Kimball, although he possessed a gruff Grizzly Adams type of physique, was anything but.

DRINKING CONTEST BACK WHEN I WAS “TWO CAN DAN”

I’m pretty sure it was the night Mike Tyson slew Carl “The Truth” Williams in 93 seconds, this in the summer of 1989 when at about 2 AM I walked into a bar on the boardwalk, the infamous Irish Pub. Hall of fame writer Jack Fiske, then with the San Francisco Chronicle and the reigning Godfather of boxing writers, had skipped the bar, as was his custom, and went straight to bed upstairs in the Irish Pub’s Hotel. While ordering something to eat, Kimball, sitting alone called me over and offered to buy me a drink. While taking him up on the offer, I must say that i was not much of a consumer of alcoholic beverage.


“I’LL BUY YOUR FOOD AND ALL YOU CAN DRINK”

Kimball’s offer was gracious, but I really didn’t know him, this was 1989, with the exception of reading his stories that Jack would give me on occasion. We talked about my fighting days, I had retired one year prior, and I still weighed less than 150 lbs. After some food and three shots, I was done! Kimball knew it, laughed a bit as I went upstairs to sleep. When I came back downstairs for a Coke at about 5:30 AM, George was still in the same spot. He induced me into having one more shot with my Coke, cracked a couple of lame jokes and he again sent me off to bed. I was beyond buzzed, as I don’t ever recall drinking that early (or late) in the morning before.

TOLD HIM ABOUT MY MOM’S SMOKING

Rather than quitting smoking, my mother, diagnosed with Emphysema, was still puffing away. I relayed this to Kimball who told me that he too had tried a couple of times to quit smoking, but he couldn’t. Over the next two decades, I’d see George here and there, and one thing I remember was that he almost always had a cigarette. When I told him that my stepfather was dying from smoking, circa 1996, he told me he was sorry, “But, we all have to go sometime.”

MARSHALL SENT THE BOOKPLATES GEORGE HAD REQUESTED

It seems that in his final weeks of life, Kimball, who has two books in the works for which he was looking for publishers, contacted Pugilibi’s Marshall, as he did on occasion, but this time he wanted Ron to design and send him 100 bookplates, which Marshall does for most of his authors. It allows them to sign the name plate which is then inserted in the book. Sort of like an autographed book, only via a bookplate. George died at home on Wednesday, Ron who had Tuesday mailed the the bookplates, they arrived via Priority Mail on Thursday.

LOOKING OUT FOR HIS FAMILY TO THE END

Kimball wanted these two books published and for the money to go to his family. He had been struggling mightily for six years with cancer of the esophagus, but told Marshall he thought he had a “couple of months left.” Although he was on death’s doorstep, George was still trying to provide for his family. In closing, that’s just the kind of guy the great writer George Kimball was.

Pedro Fernandez