A SCRAPPY ONE THOUGH:

Pat Putnam: Ringside observer with soul of a poet (George Kimball, 12/01/05, The Sweey Science)

When China entered the Korean Conflict in the fall of 1950, the Red Army came pouring across the 38th Parallel and quickly overwhelmed remnants of the United States Marine Corps at Chosin.

The massive counter-attack had been directed toward the South Korean army, which had promptly fled en masse, leaving its American allies to be slaughtered or taken prisoner. When Pat Putnam reflected on that experience late one night at the old Flame bar in Las Vegas, he described it as having been reduced to "two million Chinese and one little Irishman."

Already wounded, Putnam, along with several hundred of his comrades, was captured and shipped off to a POW camp in Manchuria, where he spent the next 17 months surviving on a diet of maggots and rice. When he was released, at the conclusion of the hostilities, he weighed 85 lbs.

For the rest of his life he refused to darken the door of a Chinese restaurant, but he harbored even more ill-will toward the Koreans, who had abandoned him to his fate, than to his captors themselves.

Thirty-five years later, Pat was covering a boxing match at Caesars Palace when the promoter, Bob Arum, introduced him to a visiting dignitary from the South Korean Boxing Federation – "Lieutenant General Kim of the Army of the Republic of Korea".

"Turn around," Cpl Putnam ordered the general, "so I can see if I recognize you." [...]

For a quarter-century he reigned as Sports Illustrated's boxing writer extraordinaire. He authored more than 50 cover stories for the world's preeminent sports magazine, and in 1982 he was the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Distinguished Boxing Journalism.

The 1987 "Fight of the Century" between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Ray Charles Leonard was shrouded in some controversy. Sugar Ray was returning to the ring after an absence of three years, and the medical community was divided over the question of whether, having undergone surgery for a detached retina, he should be fighting at all.

When the boxers appeared at a press conference on the eve of the fight, Arum preceded the question-and-answer session with a decree ruling out any questions about Leonard's eye. From far in the back of the room, Putnam raised his hand and was duly called upon.

"Hey, Ray," he asked. "How many fingers am I holding up?"