Harold Lederman On Al Gavin

I must have known Al Gavin for thirty years, maybe more. He didn't only like me cause he thought I knew a little about the game, he liked me because, like him, I was a good eater.

Funny thing about boxing judges and cutmen...they both wind up in a lot of God forsaken places with tons of time on their hands and no place to spend it waiting for the first bell to ring.

I remember one time Al and I wound up, in of all places, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Not a heck of a lot to do in Tulsa. Al was working some corner, and I think I was working for HBO, probably when Tommy Morrison was fighting Michael Bentt. Al and I found a little place to eat breakfast and lunch, owned by a nice lady named, "Jeannie". Of course the name of the restaurant was "Jeannie's".

Every morning and every afternoon Al and I would hop in my rental car and go to Jeannie's for breakfast and lunch because the food was good and Jeannie didn't charge L'Cirque prices. Well, as fate would have it, every time we went there there was a cowboy looking person wearing blue jeans sitting at a corner table having his meal. I kept telling Al, "I know this guy". I just couldn't place the face. Al thought I was a total whack job. "How could you know a guy sitting in a greasy spoon in Tulsa, Oklahoma?", asked the world's greatest cutman.

Well, finally I could not take it no more, so I went over to Jeannie, who by this time had become a friend of ours, and said "who is the cowboy who's always sitting in the corner?"

After that, Al had a little more respect for yours truly. He couldn't believe it when the cowboy turned out to be the recently retired kicker for the New York Giants, Don Chandler. Now kickers aren't the biggest guys on the football field, so when I told Al that Chandler kicked twelve years for the Giants, he had a hard time believing that a guy the size of Chandler could be on the same field as Roosevelt Grier.

Problem was that they don't take off their helmets enough, so although I had seen him kick, I couldn't remember who he was over his breakfast of creamed chip beef on toast.

Ain't too many guys left to hang out with now that Al's gone. Al had a special appeal that just made you want to be with him. A die hard fight guy, he knew the business inside and out, and made it fun to be at the fights.

I miss you Al. I'm sure we'll meet up some day, even if it's not at Jeannies.

Harold Lederman is a longtime in-fight commentator for HBO Sports

The Man In My Corner

by Michael Fetherston

Al Gavin's professional life reads like a who's who of the fight game for the last fifty years. His abilities as a cut man became so legendary that the countless champions, trainers and managers the world over who sought his services referred to him simply as "Big Al". If that name was said out loud in almost any fight club from Brooklyn to Las Vegas, people knew who he was and they knew his presence in a fighters corner could mean the difference between a title belt being won or lost.

Al spent a lot of time on t.v. and in the spotlight and now that he's gone there's a crowd of great men who have a lot of great stories to tell about him, and I'm sure they're all true. I myself was never a champion, and I never basked in the spotlight with Al, but in the moments that I did spend with him I learned that this great man was at his best when it mattered most in life, and that's when no one was looking.

I met Al when I was twelve years old, the day I climbed the stairs to the old Gramercy Gym on 14th St. Walking into that gym for the first time was a hard thing for any kid to do, but as soon as I saw the big man sitting in the beat up old easy chair in the middle of the room it felt easy. Al had his trade mark poker face on when he first looked me over, tight lipped and stern eyes, but that look didn't fool me one bit.

He was one of the good guys, and anyone who ever looked Al Gavin in the eyes knew it. He had only two questions for me- where did I live and was I in school (it occurred to me that he must of been used to dealing with a rough bunch of kids if they were dropping out of school at the age of twelve) and he told me to come back the next day with fifteen bucks and a pair of hand wraps.

Over the next few months, Al taught me to box. Like I said, I never became a champion or even made it past a disastrous amateur career. The fact was, I didn't have "it", that special ability that only a few among us are ever blessed with. I simply didn't have the talent to be a real fighter, and the expert eyes of Al Gavin must have seen that early on. He had to have known that I was never going to make him a dime (not counting the fifteen bucks, of course), I was never going to put him under the spot light and I was never going to add to his legend.

But for some reason, Al Gavin still took the time out to teach me to box.

I'd walk into the gym everyday after school, prime-time for the pros and the champs. Al would be working with a contender here, an up and comer there, and still he'd take the time out to work with me, a scrawny kid off the streets who didn't exactly have 'title shot' written all over him. He was patient and thorough, never accepting a sloppily thrown jab or lazy right, and always gave me an attaboy when I did it right.

He taught me to not sulk when things didn't go my way in a sparring session and not to gloat when they did. He kept track of when my school issued report cards and let me know passing grades were a requirement for gym membership (yeah, I kept my grades up, and yeah, he checked). I was a sullen, slouching kind of kid, but Al didn't accept that either. If I wanted to leave the gym each day without a lecture, I had to do so with my head held high.

Later that year, the Gramercy closed for good. I bounced around to other gyms for a while, but I never trained with Al again. I would stop into Gleason's as often as I could to say hi to him, and he always wanted a full report of my goings-on's.

Over the years, I begrudgingly accepted that my dreams of championship were never to be, but hanging up the gloves was never the end of my friendship with Al. He was always there to support me in whatever endeavors I had in life, and when many years later I became a New York City Police Officer he made sure I met all the right people he knew in that world as well.

Al knew way before I did that I was never going to find what I was looking for in the ring, but he never told me so. He knew that there's no way to explain that to a kid, he has to find that out for himself, and when I did he still continued to work my corner. In the game of life, just like the fight game, everybody needs a good corner man, and some of us are lucky enough to have a great one.

Even now, when the going gets tough and I find myself slouching, I can still see Al's stern face and kind eyes and hear his voice, "Keep 'em up kid, keep 'em up".