David Wolf

I'm halfway through Foul, the Connie Hawkins story. It's a compelling read. Does anybody know what became of David Wolf, the author?

 

I do know he was a sportswriter for Life magazine and longtime fight manager. Maybe that will help your research.
That book has more to do with me being a sportswriter than any other. My copy is one of my treasured possessions.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Remarkably he became a boxing manager: Boom Boom Mancini his best fighter. I dealt with him when he managed Donny Lalonde. I wanted to shake him by the lapels and say, "Why are you managing this one-armed stiff when you write a book like Foul?" Foul is great -- I re-read a big chunk of it the other day, the stuff with Connie Hawkins being bullied by the feds and landing with the Rens. By accounts of the subject's academic performance, it sounds like Wolf--and I don't mean this to be unkind--didn't have a lot to fear by letting Hawk read the ms. Hard to imagine anyone so naive.

I don't know if he's still alive or not. He wore a hairpiece that looked like John Daly's worst divot at a US Open: Six inches that stood straight up like bamboo or something.

YHS, etc

 

I bought a hardback, in-good-condition copy on Amazon for $30 (and add $10 to have it shipped to Australia). But well worth it. Disappointed to learn he didn't write any more books. Foul is a cracker

 

"Foul" is one of the best sports books ever written.

 

Pete Axthelm skimmed the surface of NY basketball in "The City Game." With "Foul," Dave Wolf went to its very heart.

The book won Hawkins some money, forced the NBA to let him in, probably saved his life. And what a player. I once saw him, in an ABA game, stand in the left corner at the baseline, the ball in one hand extended out of bounds away from a defender, whereupon he whipped the ball behind his back on one bounce to a man open under the basket.

One my regrets in reporting the Ali-Cosell biography is that I never found Wolf; through the '70s he worked in Joe Frazier's corner.

 

"Foul" is a fantastic book. Glad to see others here appreciate it, too.

 

Mr Kindred,

I looked for him at one point not so long ago with no luck.

In his autobiography Teddy Atlas refers to a confrontation with D Lalonde ... going up to the Golden Boy's apartment, knocking on the door, being ready to kill him (literally). Lalonde didn't answer. Turns out Atlast went to the wrong apartment, Wolf's as a matter of fact: 50 Barrow.

http://forums.doghouseboxing.com/lofiversion/index.php/t63725.html

YHS, etc

 

He tried to cover too much ground. I don't think at the time he could have sold 10,000 copies if he had written a book on basketball in Harlem. It was the Knicks stuff that made people buy the book, and with it they got a mini-primer on the hoops subculture in the city, which was probably more than 99 percent of the readers knew before. I bought the book at the time because it had a chapter on each Knick. I'd never heard of "The Helicopter" before, or even the Rucker tournament. It was interesting to me as a kid, but if there hadn't been so much Knicks stuff, I'd never have bought it.

 

agreed - not bad book but failed premis. Better book on Knick era was "The Open Man by Dick Schaap and Dr Z . It was a diary of season kept by Dave Debusschere.

Foul is one of the all time great sports books.

 

A great, GREAT movie could be made out of "Foul."

However, it never will be, because in the courtroom passages, the NBA, and particularly its young legal counsel at the time, David Stern, come off as the villains.

Although Stern could shock the world and make a magnanimous appearance at the end, like Pat Riley in "Glory Road."

 

Sirs, Madames,

As noted elsewhere, Sportscenter was running pieces of a Mancini documentary that's on espn classic next week -- two of the featured stars are David Wolf and his hairpiece. Anyway, he's still with us apparently.

YHS, etc