I meant to write about former Cub Ryne Sandberg getting to manage the Philadelphia Phillies back when he was named interim manager a few weeks ago, but it was during my crazy busy period. Since replacing Charlie Manuel, Sandberg’s Phillies have gone 18-17, but that was enough for the team to take the “interim” part of his title, signing him to a three year contract to manage the Phillies.
Around here, Cub fans have been fairly pissed at the Theo Epstein/Ricketts family front office/ownership team for “betraying” Sandberg by not hiring his as manager when the job was open the last three times. While not a Cub fan anymore, I have to say that the Cubs did Sandberg a favor.
First, the Hall-of-Famer was given the opportunity to manage in the Cubs minor leagues, not glamourous assignments, but he was given the opportunity because of his long years toiling for the Cubs on his way to the Hall of Fame. He was given the chance to learn how to call the shots, plus how to teach young players. I worked at Wrigley Field many years during his playing career, and while he seemed nice enough, I took his shyness as being stupidity or vapidity. I never thought he would say anything if someone had a gun in his bad.
But I must admit my surprise and having much more respect for Sandberg as a result of his Hall of Fame induction speech in which he talked about respect for the game, his team, his teammates, his coaches. It wasn’t enough to make me think he was ready to be manager, but this was the first time I realized there was a deep thought in that head. But he has shown some success in the minors, and he deserved a shot.
Here in Chicago, we fall in love with our sports heroes – we fall very hard, and we fall in love for life. I admit to being in awe the two times I’ve met Dick Butkus; I have a Butkus jersey in my closet just like I have one of former White Sox first baseman and MVP Dick Allen. I have met Gale Sayers several times, and we did two “Back Table” shows with the late Walter Payton. Unfortunately, the owners and fans feel that they should get the opportunity to coach/manage the teams. All too often, they aren’t ready for the job, or worse, they are put in a position to fail because the team doesn’t have enough talent to win.
In the first case, we have Denis Savard – hired by “Dollar” Bill Wirtz to coach the Blackhawks. Savard is a Hall of Famer, one very nice guy, and when he started on the bench, he had a lot of youngsters, and some veterans who weren’t very good. But by the time Wirtz passed, the team had drafted Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and Rocky Wirtz actually wanted to win. Just four games into the 2008-2009 season, the Blackhawks fired Savard who had a 65–66–16 record with the club. They hired Joel Quenneville, and of course, he has led the team to two Stanley Cups.
For the Cubs, the reincarnated Casey Stengel or Billy Martin, or the still very alive Joe Torre couldn’t successfully manage this team. Filled with young players and depleted of veterans because the Ricketts overpaid/poorly financed the purchase of the team, so the big market team has to spend money in the non-revenue sharing world of Major League Baseball like a small market team. Sandberg would have been under more intense scrutiny here in Chicago than anywhere else, and Cub fans would have expected Sandberg to work the same miracles he did on the field. It wasn’t fair to the team or fair to Sandberg.
So, good luck Ryno –you have your work cut out for you in Philly, a tough town on sports figures, and an aging former world championship caliber team trying to rebuild. But at least you don’t have to stomach more bad baseball in Wrigley Field.

According to most studies, people learn by watching other people then usually by doing. While I do not condone bad behavior by athletes nor do I absolve them of responsibility for those errors, I do shake my head at the people they are around, often adults, from the time they appear to be talented athletes.
The coaches, the “scouts,” the parents, other relatives and “hangers-on” all have their agendas, and mostly it has dollar signs on it. The colleges and universities often show a young athlete how to skirt NCAA rules: “tutors” working to keep athletes eligible at all costs to the point of writing papers for the athletes; the young women pimped by programs to tempt prospective players and to placate the current players; not to mention the women who see the athletes as a potential meal ticket; and of course, the payments being made under the table to athletes. In light of that, how can anyone be surprised that athletes believe that the rules don’t apply to them, and when they do, try to hide their guilt, especially with millions of dollars at stake?
So, I can’t say I was very surprised by the news that Von Miller, the Denver Broncos All-Pro linebacker who is serving a six-game suspension for use of performance enhancing drugs tried to cover up his PED use. According to a report by ESPN, the NFL discovered a plot between Miller and a drug collector (yes, one of the guys the league hires to collect the samples) to outwit its drug testing system. Miller and the drug collector colluded to submit a sample that didn’t belong to Miller, presumably a clean one. The scheme was uncovered when another collector discovered that Miller was not where he was supposed to be during a scheduled test.
According to sources, the league wanted to impose a yearlong suspension, but since the collector, who has since been fired, was as complicit as Miller, it backed off. The league ultimately decided to suspend Miller for six games, instead of the standard four, for his violation of the league’s substance-abuse policy.
Also according to the sources, the drug collector tried to help Miller since he was enamored with the Pro-Bowl player. Which brings up another issue – often “ordinary people” working in team or league positions can also get as star-struck as your average person. The player can give him/her access, money and other things. Not to mention the possibility of these people using their access to assist in gambling and other ways to undermine the game.
Finally, is Von Miller responsible? Of course he is, and he will pay the price with the suspension and he has to viewed as a cheater and attempted liar for the rest of his career and beyond. But considering he played at Texas A&M University where current quarterback Johnny Manziel was videotaped signing mini-helmets and talking about money for the deed, but couldn’t be proved that he actually took money (not that Texas A&M is any worse than many other programs around the country), and that Miller is from Texas, where football is king and people have taking ridiculous steps to boost sons’ chances of playing high level football, should we really be surprised?

Work and family have kept me away from the site this week, so I have to catch up on a couple of things and hope to be better going forward.
There was a scathing expose in Sports Illustrated over the past couple of weeks detailing how money was being funneled to football players at Oklahoma State, and today, the SI.com website has an interview with a Tennessee player where he admits to taking money while in school.
This is news like saying that the United States has an African-American President, which is, this is not news. Money has found its way from boosters, coaches and others since time immemorial. It is implicit in the hypocrisy of college sports, especially football. Athletes can’t work; often the athletes are from very poor backgrounds who have no money, and until a couple of years ago, schools couldn’t (more likely wouldn’t) increase the scholarship amount to include a stipend to cover basic living expenses. But the NCAA, the conferences, and the colleges and universities are reaping billions of dollars each year on the backs of these athletes for free. So, money finds its way to these young men in various ways; but if the athlete starts finding ways of earning money themselves through autographs or other means, they are suspended. If the money making is illegal, the kid is kicked out of school, a “problem” case who has nothing: no education, no prospects of playing profession sport. And the colleges and universities give less than a damn – you’re on your own kid.
In actuality, this is widespread in college football, its just OSU and Tennessee’s turn. Perhaps the SEC may be the most egregious conference, but if you think your alma mater’s program is clean, you’re deluded. Even my Northwestern probably does something that is against NCAA rules.
An article in the 1905 New York Times stated:
“Take away the gate money and the game will revert to its proper status of an innocuous pastime. The great public jousts and massacres yield fifteen or twenty thousand dollars each from the sale of seats. The money is all expended in the training and equipment of the team. So large an amount could not be obtained by subscription or a college tax. The game would be played for exercise, not for money; for the olive crown of recognition with the student body, not for the plaudits of bawling mobs of the unlettered and the dubious distinction of rough-hewn portraiture in yellow journals. A young gentleman engaged in getting an education ought not to exhibit himself for money and he and his fellows ought not to raise a mere sport to the dignity of an occupation. The tremendous loss of time which overattention to football occasions is its worst feature, though the brutality and maiming are serious evils, too. Both will be cured by cutting off the money supply, which the Faculties can do by two-line resolution.”
Sound familiar? Has anything changed? Will it ever? Probably not.

While music has “charms to soothe the savage breast,” some music I guess can drive people to violence.
A 54-year-old North Charleston, South Carolina woman was charged recently with cutting her housemate with kitchen knives because he wouldn’t stop playing music by The Eagles. The woman was arrested and booked on “criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature.” In plain language, polices say she knifed her former boyfriend because he wouldn’t stop playing the band known for hits including “Hotel California,” “Heartache Tonight” and “Desperado.” The 64-year-old victim suffered lacerations on an arm, elbow and hand, police said in a report, but was not seriously injured.
The man was listening to The Eagles when his housemate told him she didn’t want to hear the band anymore. Their disagreement escalated when the man told the woman to “shut up.” At that point, the woman then went to the kitchen, grabbed a 14-inch serrated bread knife and started to swing it at the man, police said. The man was cut several times before he and a friend restrained the woman. The two men eventually let her go, only to have the woman grab another knife and cut the victim several more times, police said.
Of course, police added that “all parties involved were intoxicated,” but a police spokesman said that he didn’t know if there was a particular song that set the woman off.
Most bands that I hate induce cringes, usually followed by boredom and sleepiness. Although listening to “Black Betty” by Ram Jam makes me homicidal….

I know that TIFF isn’t finished yet, but I have completed my 13th sojourn to the film festival that my wife introduced me to back in 1998, and this year was a good year at the fest. I saw 10 films, and I supposedly missed the film with the biggest buzz so far “12 Years A Slave” but since I had watched “42” on video a few weeks ago and found myself getting angry, I decided against this film. The other film I wanted to see was “Gravity” the sci-fi film from Alberto Cuaron starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, but since the only showing I could attend was a “premium” showing and since I don’t give Piers Handling and the money-sucking TIFF management thousands of dollars, I wasn’t able to go to that. It is a big budget, studio film, so it will come out soon, but it is still annoying to be treated like 8th-class citizens. Anyway, seven out of the ten films were worth seeing. Let’s talk about them…. (Needless to say – there will be some spoilers so this is the one and only SPOILER ALERT.)

Thursday, September 5, 2013

For the first time, I am here on the very first day of the festival. A business trip by the Indignant Wife made me move up my trip or cancel it completely (and I sure didn’t want to do that). While this made picking up tickets very easy, there aren’t vey many films to choose from, especially during the day. So, I bopped around downtown Toronto until my first film at 6:00 PM.
Long term readers of my TIFF articles know that I love Asian action films (as does the Indignant Wife since she is of Chinese ancestry). I should mention however, that I am no fan for Mixed Martial Arts, which, to me, is just a cage match of barbarity. But I chose “Unbeaten” because it looked interesting. The film, directed by Dante Lam, is the story of Chin Fai, a former boxing champ who dishonored himself by throwing matches. Now a cab driver, he owes bookies thousands of dollars who try to kill him. To escape for awhile, he is stashed in an apartment with a young girl and her mother. Being an Asian film, these characters have their own tragedies. Fai takes a job in a boxing gym and eventually takes a young man under his wing whose father’s business has crashed in the economic crisis. The young man sees MMA as a way to make money and prove himself to his father.
Tragedies occur to all of these characters, but for once, there is a happy ending that ties everything together. The fight sequences were very well done, and it does have it’s “Rocky-esqe” portions, but the human story is more the focus of the film and that makes it more than your average fight film.
I ended the evening with a highly anticipated film from director Asghar Farhadi who directed 2011 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language film, “A Separation.” “The Past” follows a man Ahmad who comes to Paris from Tehran to finalize his divorce from Marie. When he arrives, Marie’s two daughters have a little boy as a playmate, who is living with his ex-wife. He finds out that Marie is engaged to be married to another man and is pregnant with his child. Ahmad is constantly trying to fix things – from bikes, to spills, and eventually he gets involved in the melodramatic goings-on.
This is another one of those films in which there would have been much less drama if people said more of what they meant, and some characters, especially Ahmed, took some time to research what they had been told before passing it on. Still, this was a fine film and Bérénice Bejo who played Marie won the Best Actress award this year at Cannes, was very good.

Friday, September 6, 2013

For only the second time, TIFF has shown long form television mini-series during the festival. This year, they chose “Southcliffe” directed by Sean Durkin (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) – one of the best pictures I’ve seen this year. It is the story of a small English town, and being a small town, everyone knows one another and everyone’s lives interact with everyone else’s. The first episode opens ominously with a woman getting shot in her front lawn. The rest of the episode introduces most of the characters, especially a young man just returning from Afghanistan. He falls in with a local handyman, who says he served in a military. The friendship spirals out of control and the handyman begins a spree-killing.
The second episode is more or less a breakdown of the murders, introducing more characters (including the fine British character actor Eddie Marsan in a very different type of role). We start to find out who dies and the outcome, as many of our characters find out who lived and who dies. I should mention that overlaid on top of this is the media coverage of the killings, both before and afterward, and one of those reporters, played by Rory Kinnear (Tanner in the last two James Bond films). The third episode shows the immediate reaction of the survivors to the tragedy and the fourth episode picks up the story one year later.
The acting is very good, and it does a “Pulp Fiction” type of cross-cutting, showing different times for the characters, some scenes shown more than once which is to be expected in a mini-series instead of a feature film. While there is no explicit violence, this is a very sad story, but one worth watching. If it comes on BBC America or elsewhere, it is well worth investing your four hours.
The length of “Southcliffe” made me catch a cab to make it in time for the next film = “Beyond The Edge,” the only 3D film of my festival. This is a documentary financed by the government of New Zealand to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reaching the summit of Mount Everest. There have been many films on this subject, but director Leanne Pooley tried to place the audience inside the expedition, first by using only interviews with Hillary and Norgay and others on the expedition, and interviews with Hillary’s and Norgay’s sons along with other expert Everest climbers to give you a feel of what they were going through. And even though we know the outcome, each setback made the trek more suspenseful. “Will they make it” your emotions ask, even though your mind knows they made it.
The 3D was mostly arbitrary until they showed the view from the top of the mountain in 3D. It was truly breathtaking and amazing to see the sights (filmed by an actual crew who went to the summit with cameras along with the other tons of gear needed to make it to the summit). As always, one of the best things about TIFF is the ability to see the filmmakers. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but so far, the director of every film attended the showings to introduce the films and for Q&A. This Q&A was special because it included Sir Edmund’s son Peter, and Norgay’s son also.
The day finished with a very strange film – “Caníbal.” This is a Spanish film that opens on an almost deserted gas station seen from far away. There is a man filling the car with gas, and a woman smoking and coming out from the gas station store. They drive off and it is only then that you see a car window being rolled up – we have been watching along with another person.
Without telling too much, the man is able to capture the woman and then we are taken to a nearby challais in the mountains and the woman is placed on a mortuary type table and we hear cutting. Later, we see the well dressed, quiet man wrapping cuts of meat and placing them in a bag and taking them back to his house in Granada when he places them in his refrigerator.
Carlos is a tailor of fine suits (and the suits in the film are exquisite), but suddenly a woman moves into the apartment above him. She enlists his help in putting an announcement of her massage services in his shop. She brings the quiet man out of his shell a little by constantly asking for help including with her seeming abusive boyfriend. He ends up watching her (she knows it) and here the film is like the French film “Monseur Hire,” and he is attracted. Does he woo her, or kill her and eat her?
Eventually, she does disappear and her twin sister, who we’ve only seen and heard through the window shot, enlists Carlos’ help in finding her sister and dealing with her problems.
This was a creepy story directed by Manuel Martin Cuenca and it brought up one of mankind’s oldest taboos. It was well shot and the actors were good, but it fell a little short to me because the twin girls were manipulative and annoying and I didn’t care whether they lived or died, which is the most important factor in a successful thriller. Antonio de la Torre was very good as Carlos, giving you the “banality of evil” and not giving up the Hannibal Lector approach to acting. As fascinating and almost compelling as Carlos was, as I said before, the women were annoying enough to make me want to see them as dinner.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Every other day, we had beautiful, sunny, cool, fall weather, but there is always one day that is rainy and cold, and this was it. As it turned out, it was perfect for the mood of the first film…..
This was inadvertently Japan day – both films involved or were set in Japan. The first film is one that would have gotten big buzz if it weren’t for “12 Years A Slave” and “Gravity.” “The Railway Man” stars Academy Award winners Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. Firth is Eric Lomax, a man who knows a lot about trains and rides them everywhere. Other than that, Lomax’s life revolves around meetings with a group of other British military veterans.
One day, he sits near a young woman (played by Kidman). She is taking a trip around England to get over a bad marriage, and Lomax charms her by telling her about the history of various places she is visiting and also explains alternative trains to get her where she wants to go. To the amazement of his British cronies, he jumps out of the meeting and goes to meet Patti as she gets off the train he suggested.
The first part of the film is a sweet story of the romance of these two people. But after they get married, Lomax starts to fall apart – bad dreams, bad attitude toward his wife, failing to pay bills. Patti goes to the group for an answer, but the men, at first refuse to cooperate, but the leader played by Stellan Starsgard eventually explains what all these men suffered.
They were all stationed in Singapore when the British surrendered to the Japanese in 1942. They were part of the slave labor building the railroad to Burma (“the Death Railway”) in which terrible hardships: heat, hard labor to cut away the brush and hack through the mountains, along with the beatings from their captors led thousands to die. Lomax (played as a young man by Jeremy Irving who starred in “War Horse”) and the men were mostly acting as engineers, but they stole components to build a radio to lift the men’s spirits. Lomax put the radio together and would pass on the news from the BBC to the others. Of course, eventually, the radio is discovered and Lomax is identified as the ring leader, which led to tremendous abuse.
Starsgard’s character finds out that the Japanese translator, who was instrumental in Lomax’s torture, is still alive and living near where the railway runs to this day. Lomax and his wife go back to Thailand to confront his tormentor. Firth is very good as Lomax late in life confronting the translator, but this is much more than a simple revenge film.
This was a gala the previous night and there were lots of pictures of Ms. Kidman and Mr. Firth; for the second showing, Ms. Kidman had left, but Mr. Firth, Mr. Irving, the director, producers, writers, and the Japanese actors who played the translator at different times in their lives all showed for a panel Q&A. More poignant was the fact that the real Patti Lomax showed up to see people’s reactions to her late husband’s story. It was quite powerful and very worth watching.
In the past, I had seen two films from director Hirkazu Kore-Eda: “Nobody Knows” and “I Wish” films about modern day children dealing with life. Both of those films were from a child’s perspective; “Like Father, Like Son” deals with similar subject matter but from the adult’s perspective. Ryota and Midori Nonomiya live with their only child, Keita in a Tokyo high rise. Ryota is a workaholic who pushes his son to be the best. All is going as one would expect until the hospital tells the family that their son had been switched with another boy at the hospital six years ago. The other father is a shopkeeper living in a modest apartment with his wife and three children
This story of nature vs. nurture plays out with the parents meeting, swapping the boys for one night a week, before finally switching them permanently. The drama for the boys causes problems, but the parents also are forced to question blood vs. the love they had for the other boy they raised as a son for six years.
At the Q&A with the director, it was said that Steven Spielberg was negotiating to purchase the American rights for this film which had won a jury prize at Cannes, but I have a feeling that Western-ized, there will be a lot of shouting and emoting. This Japanese version had parents who were basically decent people in a tough situation, and it had all of the power necessary without the grandstanding that will be inevitable in any American version. I suggest you see the Japanese version.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Instead of “12 Years A Slave” or the Nelson Mandela biopic starring the great Idris Elba, I really wanted to see “Parkland” the story of the people around the JFK assassination. Coming up on the 50th anniversary of the event, there will be lots of television specials and documentaries shown, but this is a very good film. Director Peter Landesman’s debut (supported by producers Tom Hanks and Bill Paxson) follows the medical staff at Parkland hospital starting on November 22, 1963 and the three days afterward. Zac Efron plays Jim Carrico, the lead resident who first tries to save the President and then his assassin, Lee Harvey Osward a couple of days later.
Not only do we follow the medical staff, but we get more of the story of Abraham Zapruder who took the famous 8mm film of the assassination, Forrest Sorrels, played by Billy Bob Thornton, the head of the Secret Service, and FBI agent James Hosty, played by Ron Livingston, who had investigated Osward before the assassination. Most poignantly, we follow James Badge Dale playing Robert Oswald – Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother and their mother who was trying to bask in the notoriety.
As a fan of Oliver Stone’s “JFK” this is a fitting docudrama that tells a side of the story that most of us do not know.
Long time readers and friends also know that I am an Anglophile. My daughters are named after British monarchs, my favorite television is Doctor Who and Monty Python; I was raised on the James Bond films. So, I chose a film called “Le Week-End” directed by Roger Mitchell whose previous films include “Notting Hill” and last year’s “Hyde Park on Hudson.” This film followed an older couple played by Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary in Paris where they honeymooned.
As in any English film, there are some cracking barbs between the characters, and the trip brings out the inner conflicts between the characters in often comic moments. We are hardly ever sure if the characters are going to remain together of break up, often in the same sentence. The pair have a destitute son; Broadbent has career issues; the couple have money issues; and all of this comes out as the pair dash about Paris.
As they are sharing a passionate kiss, the couple is identified by a former colleague of Broadbent’s character played by Jeff Goldblum (where’s he been?). Unfortunately, Goldblum is basically in “Goldblum –schtick” playing a similar character to his character in “The Big Chill” (which was also shown at TIFF for free, but with much of the original cast and director Lawrence Kasdan appearing).
Beautifully shot with sharp writing, and with Jim Broadbent having an inherent likeability, this should have been a fine film, but it fell short in my opinion. First, I was never sure I liked the characters enough to care whether or not they stayed together. Goldblum was fine, but we’ve seen it before; and finally, there is no resolution of the issues addressed in the film. I don’t necessarily need all of the loose ends tied up, but there were so many loose ends hanging that I would have liked some idea as to where it was leading.
My final film of the festival this year was “The Sea.” Irish author John Banville, who had penned screenplays for “Albert Nobbs” and “The Last September,” adapted his own 2005 book into a film directed by Stephen Brown. This film follows Max Morden, played by the great Ciarán Hinds, a retired art historian attempting to write a book on French painter Pierre Bonnard.
To do that and try to deal with the recent death of his wife, Morden returns to the seaside hotel that used to be the home of the affluent Cedars family, where Mordan spent an eventful summer as a youth. The film flashes back and forth between the present day, flashbacks to time with his wife and his daughter, and the days he spent playing with the Cedars’ daughter and mute son.
Hinds is always good, as is Charlotte Rampling as the keeper of the inn, pained watching Morden descend into alcoholism. As always, there is a revelation of a tragedy of that long ago summer, but it didn’t strike me as something that would scar the Morden character and how it would tie into his grief over the death of his wife (other than the overall feelings of sadness, and grief).
Despite the solid performances, the film was too sedate and moved too slowly. It was well made and not a bad film, just not a good one.
We are once again at the end of my trip. By shortening it and moving it forward a lot of movies I would have seen normally (I would have seen more, for sure), I didn’t have the usual festival experience this year, but it was a good festival. Annually, I list the films in order of my preference and here it is:

1. The Railway Man
2. Parkland
3. Southcliffe
4. The Past
5. Like Father, Like Son
6. Unbeatable
7. Beyond The Edge
8. Canibal
9. Le Week-End
10. The Sea

Every year, I talk with people who read this article and I always suggest that people come up to TIFF. I suggest that for anyone who loves film and if you have any questions about coming next year, contact me. I’ll be there (assuming there are no physical issues). Join me!

Well, a delayed flight notwithstanding, your friend and humble narrator has arrived in Toronto for his 13th Film Festival. My first film is not until tonight, an Asian action film (par for the course for me), then tonight, the new film from the director of Academy Award winning “A Separation.”
I’ll try and keep you informed

I hadn’t heard anything about boxer Tommy Morrison in some years, but if you had bet me if this would be the next headline the former heavyweight champion would create, I would have bet on what happened this past weekend. The former heavyweight died Sunday. He was 44. The family would not disclose the cause of death.
To many (myself included), Morrison was yet another in a long line of “great white hopes” who many wished would wrest the championship from African-Americans. Unlike many of the others, Morrison did have some talent to go with a tough chin. In 1993, Morrison beat the aged George Foreman to win the WBO heavyweight title and it looked like a multi-million dollar heavyweight unification payday awaited Morrison against Lennox Lewis. Partying probably had a lot to do with Morrison losing to unheralded Michael Bentt. Morrison would fight Lewis a couple of years later for a lot less money, eventually getting knocked out in the sixth.
Morrison was nicknamed “The Duke’ in part because he was a distant relative to John Wayne, whose real name was Marion Michael Morrison. But Morrison did have a short lived film career of his own, appearing in “Rocky V” alongside Sylvester Stallone. And perhaps most memorably, Morrison tested positive for HIV when the virus still carried a significant stigma, only to declare later the test was false.
After testing positive Morrison made most of his headlines away from the ring, including a prison sentence that stemmed from weapons and drunk driving. Morrison won his first 28 professional fights, beating faded champions such as Pinklon Thomas along the way. His career reached its apex in the summer of 1993 with a unanimous decision over Foreman, himself in the midst of a comeback, to claim a vacant title.
In February 1996, while training for a fight, Morrison’s blood test came back positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Morrison’s license was quickly suspended by the State of Nevada, and the ban was, in effect, upheld by every other sanctioning body.
He had already run afoul of the law in 1993, when he pleaded guilty to assaulting a college student. He also dealt with weapons charges and multiple DUI incidents over the years. He was finally sentenced to two years in prison in 2000, and another year was added to his sentence in 2002 for violating parole.
When he was released, Morrison said his HIV tests had resulted in false positives, and he wanted to resume his career. He passed medical tests in Arizona – even as Nevada stood by its decision – and returned to the ring. Morrison fought twice more in his career.
Tommy Morrison was another casualty of the fight game. Yes, that led to hard partying that probably led to contracting the HIV virus. His unwillingness to deal with that reality probably had something to do with his death. He could still be alive and well like Magic Johnson who also contracted the virus in the 1990s.
I didn’t think that Tommy Morrison was a bad fighter; he was a brawler in a era where some speed and moves helped keep a fighter from being hit so often. Morrison was another bull in a china closet, but without the elusiveness of Mike Tyson in those days.
It’s sad.