RIP George Kimball

[Glenn Stout]

He passed away yesterday, a writer and a fighter to the end.

http://www.thesweetscience.com/news/articles-frontpage/12903-george-kimball-1943-2011

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Horrible. So sad. Class act. Will be missed.

 

[Boomer7]

Michael Gee's appreciation from the Boston Herald:

http://bostonherald.com/sports/other_sports/general/view.bg?articleid=1350253&position=1

 

[Smallpotatoes]

First Nick Charles, now George.
It's been a sad few weeks for me.

 

[Dave Kindred]

I'd never met George and here he came, in the Bahamas, Ali's last fight, to the first tee, and I thought, "My God, a pirate!" That red beard, one eye, wild hair leaping off his head, that belly hanging over a tiny waistline, always in jeans, disheveled on his good days. For years, we played golf at every fight. The better he played, the wider his stance got until, I swear, that belly scraped the ground on putts. I saw him, in Perth, chase a kangaroo who'd come onto a green and hopped away with his ball. Last time we played, at a Kentucky Derby, we were partners winning big until the 18th hole where, through some convoluted wagering system that only he understood, we contrived to lose big. He loved the business, loved the column, loved life. A sweetheart in pirate's disguise. The one and only.

 

[jeff.pearlman]

I never really knew George until I started working on my biography of Roger Clemens a few years ago. Clemens had once thrown a hamburger bun at George, and I wanted to hear about the incident. Well, George was fantastic. Funny, cooperative, engaging. In fact, around that time I helped collect auction goods for a fundraiser on behalf of a journalist friend of mine, Brian Hickey, who had been critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. I called George to ask if he'd sign a copy of his (excellent) book, "Four Kings." Well, not only did he sign it—he took it upon himself to call up all the authors he knew and get them to contribute. George had never met Hickey; didn't even know who he was.

It was so wonderfully classy and decent of him.

Anyhow, that's how I remember George.

 

[Ronrapoport]

I was walking down upper Broadway with George and Chuck Culpepper a year ago January when George stopped to pull out a cigarette. "What's the problem?" he said when I remonstrated. "Am I going to die of cancer."

I was able to see George again just a few weeks ago and as Marge and I sat eating bagels and lox, he sipped on a cup of coffee and showed me the table of contents of his new book--a collection of boxing fiction he and his buddy John Schulian were cooking up as a sort of companion piece to "At The Fights," their superb collection of boxing journalism that was just published.

You want to know what the trouble with this damn disease is? He asked. It's so hard to breathe I'm having trouble writing this book review that's due in a couple of days.,

In his swell obit of George in the Boston Herald today, Michael Gee said George didn't fight cancer, he ignored it. It's amazing to me the way he just kept right on going--writing, laughing, living life out loud until the end.

I'd say they broke the mold when they made George, but, hell, who ever thought of making a mold like that in the first place?

 

[Mike Nadel]

I was at the Metrodome the night Clemens starting winging hamburger buns at George in the visitor's clubhouse. The site of a multiple Cy Young winner firing totally harmless "fastballs" at a writer he didn't like remains one of the funniest things I've seen in journalism. I didn't know George, but anybody who could get a dirtbag like Clemens that pissed must have been OK!

 

[wicked]

George was a big part of my youth, and Michael Gee is correct: The guy was mischievous. RIP.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

I was at the Metrodome the night Clemens starting winging hamburger buns at George in the visitor's clubhouse. The site of a multiple Cy Young winner firing totally harmless "fastballs" at a writer he didn't like remains one of the funniest things I've seen in journalism. I didn't know George, but anybody who could get a dirtbag like Clemens that pissed must have been OK!

George once told a friend of mine "If you're not pissing people off, you're not doing your job."

 

[gingerbread]

I'd never met George and here he came, in the Bahamas, Ali's last fight, to the first tee, and I thought, "My God, a pirate!" That red beard, one eye, wild hair leaping off his head, that belly hanging over a tiny waistline, always in jeans, disheveled on his good days.

Dave, that's my exact recollection of meeting George, except instead of your much more glamorous "in the Bahamas, Ali's last fight, to the first tee ..." sub "in the dusty Boston Herald news room, around midnight, as I waited to type in racing results from Raynham Park ..."
Either way, the world with George in it was never dull. I'll miss him dearly. And Michael, what a wonderful tribute to a lovely (yes, lovely) man.

 

[sporting_guista]

You have to appreciate guys like George who are passionate about the sports they cover and it seeps through in every word they write. He became part of the landscape without becoming the story and it was a treat to read him and Borges during 80s when i was growing up and Hagler, Duran et al were huge names. Sad day indeed.

Tremendous tribute Michael Gee; a standard for such pieces. Well done.

My sympathies to George's family and friends.

 

[Dave Kindred]

We should not, cannot, let George go without hearing the music of Charlie Pierce.....this from Charlie's blog at the Globe....
******


In the winter of 1978-79, I moved to Boston and began work at The Boston Phoenix. One day, early in my tenure there, I happened by the late lamented Eliot Lounge -- This would become something of a pattern. -- and met George Kimball, the newspaper's sports columnist, for the first time. I had heard that George had been somewhat instrumental in getting me my chance at the Phoenix after I had been canned from my previous job for disagreeing with my editor's assessment of his own talents. (He didn't think he was a complete dolt. Who knew?) I sputtered out my thanks, not noticing at first that George's head was on the bar. I continued to babble without verbs for a while until George opened up his one actual eye and said, "Hey, got any speed?"

With that, more or less, a 30-year friendship began.

He was wild and profane and an absolute old maid about the rules of golf. He loved Ireland like a native, even though his given name -- George Edward Kimball III, for the love of god! -- made him sound like the last, lost Plantagenet. He drank beer, smoked unfiltered Luckies, and was a strict vegetarian. At a newspaper full of cranks and eccentrics, which is what once made the Phoenix great (ask around, kidz), he was the undisputed king of them all. On the day he quit, I was the only person in the office. He dragooned me to the Park Plaza at nine in the morning, bribed the guy to open the bar, and we stayed there until 3, when he walked down the hall, bought a ticket to Palm Beach, and went directly to the airport without telling me he was gone.

He knew and loved boxing far more than boxing ever deserved to be known and loved. One of his final projects was to put an anthology of classic boxing writing together with the great John Schulian. It is called "At The Fights" and you should buy it today, in his memory and for your own great pleasure.

I could never reconcile all the contradictions and I'm not sure we are ever meant to do so. I am not sure I will ever figure out all of him, but I do know that I miss him already the way that you miss a summer twilight on an edged February evening. I owed him just as much when he passed on Wednesday as I did that afternoon in the Eliot.

Farewell, my friend.
As the auld ones say, we knew the two days.

 

[Bristol Insider]

I was bellied up to the bar at the Eliot Lounge in the process of being overserved by Tommy Leonard when George sat next to me. As a student at BU, I read George all of the time, but this was my first time meeting him. I told him I was a fan and we began to chat about writing, boxing and golf. For the next few hours, he told me countless stories, most of which I believed. I excused myself for a trip to the men's room and when I returned, George was gone. I asked Tommy for my check and received a shake of the head. "George got it," Tommy said. "He said, 'Any kid that knows Ron Lyle's best fights, deserves a few beers."

Godspeed, George. Thanks ...