<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In honor of Sports Illustrated's 60th annivesary, SI.com is republishing, in full, 60 of the best stories ever to run in the magazine. Today's selection was \"O Unlucky Man,\" a brilliant profile of Sonny Liston by William Nack. It first appeared in the Feb. 4, 1991 issue. SI.com associate editor Ted Keith spoke to Nack about the story, his writing process and what he thinks caused the death of the former heavyweight champion.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: How did this story come about?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK:&lt;/strong&gt; I had started to do historical pieces for the magazine, and the focus groups had found that there was a lot of interest in them. And they kept asking me to do it. I enjoyed it. At one point [around 1990] Steve Robinson, a senior editor who loved this historical stuff, said \u201CWould you be interested in doing a piece on Sonny Liston?\u201D I said, \u201CYeah, I\u2019d love to do that, he sounds like a good subject.\u201D He said, \u201COK, can you get it here in five or six weeks?\u201D I said, \u201CYeah, I\u2019ll do my best.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I went into the library at SI and I spent an entire day reading clips of Sonny\u2019s life and Xeroxing them. I did this for like 12 hours. That was my usual procedure. One of the clips said that upon his death his wife, Geraldine, had discovered the body when she had returned home from a trip. And the first thing I thought of when I read that was, &lt;em&gt;This is my lead. I want to lead the story with Geraldine discovering Sonny\u2019s body.&lt;/em&gt; I liked the device because it would allow me to establish where I was with this character and then flash back to his entire career and then end with the funeral and visiting his grave. It all kind of flashed to me how I wanted to organize it.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I thought if I could start here a flashback would be able to encompass his entire life and then I could bring it forward. I knew that he was buried in Las Vegas, that was in the clips, and I knew that the procession had been down the strip. I thought that was interesting. I figured I could find people who had witnessed it or could talk about it.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: How did you track down his former wife?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK:&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;It took me two or three weeks to find Geraldine. All sorts of trails had run out and I just couldn\u2019t find her. And I really tried. People said, \"I think she\u2019s in St. Louis,\" but there was no listing for her. At some point I contacted a film production company that was trying to do something on Sonny\u2019s life. I got ahold of this guy and he said, \"I know where she is.\" I said, \"Oh my God, can you give me her number?\" He was a little reluctant but he finally gave me her number. \r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I had all my demeanors prepared, and I called her on the phone and she answered. I said, \u201CI\u2019m Bill Nack from &lt;em &gt;Sports Illustrated&lt;/em&gt;, and I\u2019m doing a long story on your late husband.\u201D She said, \u201COh really.\u201D I said, \u201CI\u2019m really interested in what he was like as a person.\u201D I didn\u2019t go right into the death. She said he was a great guy, loved kids but \u201CI don\u2019t know if I want to talk about him.\u201D I said \u201CI\u2019m not doing a book or anything. This is a chance to talk about Sonny for a very large audience.\u201D I used to say this to people:&amp;nbsp;&lt;em &gt;Sports Illustrated&lt;/em&gt; had the longest reach of any magazine in America because it has such a long shelf life: 20-25 million people. She said \u201COK, I suppose enough time has passed, but this is still painful for me. What would you like to know?\u201D I said, \u201CI understand you discovered his body. I\u2019d like to know the circumstances.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And she went into this long description, and she said, \u201CWell, I came home and all these newspapers were in the driveway, and all the lights were on and I had our child, and the lights were on in the pool and I thought that was all peculiar.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We talked about this for quite awhile. I asked if there was anything peculiar about the house when she came in. She said yeah, the odor was terrible. And my heart sank and leaped at the same time. Because this was a great fighter who had died and she discovered him with her child in hand. I said, \u201CI\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m a journalist. What did you do then?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI went into the kitchen I found food that had been rotting in the kitchen.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThen what did you do?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI went upstairs and I looked in the bedroom and there he was.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I said, \u201CWhat about the child?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;She said, \u201CI said 'Let\u2019s go, let\u2019s leave.' And I got him out of there.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then we talked about a dream she\u2019d had in the shower and how she\u2019d had a premonition of this. I found it all very eerie and strange. I'd been in this business long enough to know you don\u2019t make this stuff up. Her breathing changed, she was obviously emoting it, feeling it. It was a substantial part of the story.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As things went on it all just unfolded perfectly.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;strong&gt;SI: What were your impressions of Sonny Liston&amp;nbsp;before you started this story?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK:&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;One of the interesting parts is that Las Vegas is a schizophrenic town. According to a book I had read called &lt;em&gt;Vegas&lt;/em&gt; by John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion\u2019s late husband, there are more churches in Las Vegas than anywhere. And on the other hand there\u2019s the strip, there\u2019s hookers walking around, you know what I mean?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I found is that Sonny lived a schizophrenic life. There was the boisterous, heavy drinking, hard living Sonny that Geraldine didn\u2019t know, because he never revealed that half of it to her.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 1990, I had been divorced and I was living with somebody here in Virginia, and so my life was kind of settled actually. From 1988 until 1994 or '95 when I did the [Rick] Pitino story were the most productive years in my life at SI. The story that changed my life at the magazine was about Ernie Davis. Peter Carry, the executive editor, said he wept when he read it. It was a really poignant story. He was the first black Heisman Trophy winner and he died of leukemia before he ever played a down in the NFL.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That was for the 25th anniversary of Ernie Davis\u2019 death. He died in May of 1963 and here it was around May of 1988 and somebody, I think Steve Robinson again, asked me, \u201CWould you like to do a piece on Ernie Davis?\u201D I\u2019d never done a history piece for the magazine before. I said, \u201CIs anybody alive who could talk about him?\u201D He said, \u201COh sure.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wrote this story and it really kind of wrote itself and it was really kind of richly done and I organized it starting off with when he was sick and knowing he had leukemia and he was dying. Then I went out to Jim Brown\u2019s house and I tried to ask him questions and he said, \"Don\u2019t ask me questions, let me tell you what I think and remember.\" Oh my god was he poignant.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I took a leave of absence and I came back and I did Pitino in 1995 and then I started to feel redundant. Those were really my key years at the magazine. But&amp;nbsp;I was on a roll, I was very confident, I knew what I was dong organizing stuff. I was living a very good life with a lady out in McLean and it was good for my working life. I really kind of blossomed and Sonny was one of those stories that was an expression of what I was going through.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: How did the rest of the reporting work?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK: &lt;/strong&gt;Lem&lt;strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/strong&gt;Banker, a gambler, was a little reluctant to start with but then he was OK. You know whose interview I liked was Johnny&amp;nbsp;Tocco&amp;nbsp;[Liston's former trainer]. He said Sonny always seemed to be coming in or out of alleys. Every once in awhile [as a reporter] you\u2019d say, \"That\u2019s getting it.\" No question that gets it.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I\u2019ve always done a lot of reporting because, as I told an audience not too long ago at a panel, I tried to write non-fiction that sounded like fiction but &lt;em&gt;you can\u2019t make anything up&lt;/em&gt;. It\u2019s against the rules. That\u2019s how I looked at it. I didn\u2019t take license. Everything I wrote I can back up with a fact, a story, something I reported. You had to make the whole thing sound like a short story in literature with theme, dialogue, whatever makes fiction, but it\u2019s got to be non-fiction.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;strong&gt;SI: What was the editing process like on this story?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK: &lt;/strong&gt;They didn\u2019t touch my stuff that much. I used to tell them, \u201CDon\u2019t mess with my meter.\u201D I counted the beats when I wrote. I wanted it to read like iambic pentameter. If something is two syllables and you change it to one, f--- you. It reads smoother with two, it communicates better. The best compliments I ever had were when someone would say, \u201CHow long was that story you wrote?\u201D \u201CFive thousand words.\u201D \u201CReally? It read like two.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would count the beats, so if I had a one syllable word in a sentence that needed two syllables I would find one. Sometimes I found a better word. l worked hard at that stuff and I worked real hard at transitions.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A review of [my anthology] from Kirkus said, \u201CNever has sportswriting veered so close to poetry.\u201D That to me is a huge compliment. Some might say who cares. I like my stuff to read real smooth. That\u2019s hard work.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: Did you do a lot of drafts?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK:&lt;/strong&gt; No. In every story that appeared longform -- which is all of my bonuses, every single one of them -- I can tell you almost without exception that they were usually due on Monday and I tried to get my deadline pushed forward because I wanted to organize it better in my head. I\u2019d fight for more time because I didn\u2019t want to just knock it out. I kind of circled the pieces before I wrote them. I would start writing on Sunday morning at 9 o\u2019clock. And everything was lined up very anally. And I indexed every single note. I would have interviews that were 10 pages, eight pages, single spaced and as I would transcribe my tapes I found I\u2019d start writing and I couldn\u2019t find the quote and it would drive me nuts, 20 minutes to find a g------ quote. So each person I interviewed I went into Microsoft Word and I\u2019d put: \"One: index:&amp;nbsp;Pitino\" and then I\u2019d put \"Numeral 1, page 1\" and all the stuff that was on the first page, good quote on so-and-so. Number two: his life on the farm. Number three: quote on his mother. The whole page would be filled with references to what was inside and I\u2019d say, \"Oh here it is\" and I didn\u2019t have to search for stuff.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Saturday night I\u2019d get it all lined up, get a good night\u2019s sleep. I'd sit down at 9 the next morning and start writing. And I would not finish until 9 on Monday morning. I wrote 24 hours straight and all I did was drink coffee and pop Sudafed. I don\u2019t know what was in Sudafed but it was like a very mild stimulant. I would drink coffee until 3 am the next morning, I\u2019d have 5,000 words done and have another 1,500 to go. Then I\u2019d go pop one of those little red things.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: Did you eat at all?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK:&lt;/strong&gt; No, oh no. Can\u2019t eat while I\u2019m writing. I\u2019d have an occasional glass of water, but by 9 in the morning I\u2019d have 7,000 words done. If I couldn\u2019t find an ending I\u2019d sometimes fall asleep at the typewriter or computer. Didn\u2019t matter when I finished on Monday, the editors just wanted to take it home with them on the train and then read it over their weekend.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I usually finished before noon and then I\u2019d make myself a stiff drink, a couple of vodkas, and totally decompress and then I would go to sleep for 12 hours or 13 hours.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: Now that it's been almost 25 years since he died, what do you think happened to Liston?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK:&lt;/strong&gt; I think he was murdered. Ash Resnick, a guy we mention in the story, I think either killed him or had him killed. That's what Martin Dardis told me.&amp;nbsp;He said that\u2019s what the cops thought. Ash was dead by the time I did this story and so you can\u2019t libel a dead man.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I worked with Martin, an &lt;em&gt;SI&lt;/em&gt; contributor and a lawyer who was played by Ned Beatty in the movie&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;All The President\u2019s Men&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;and had&amp;nbsp;subpoenaed the checks of the Watergate burglars. I said, \u201CMarty, could you poke around Las Vegas with the cops?\u201D He was really good with them, knew their language, knew what to ask. He had done something on the death of&amp;nbsp;Liston&amp;nbsp;several years before, something that wasn\u2019t published. So he was familiar with the case. He went back and he talked to cops who had been around and he told me who they believed had killed him.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: What was the reaction to the story?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK: &lt;/strong&gt;It was huge. Very positive. One of the most positive responses I ever got to a story. People ask me today, \u201CHow did you organize that?\u201D so there must be something about the way it was organized.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SI: Where does it rank for you among all the pieces you wrote for SI?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NACK: &lt;/strong&gt;Sonny is second behind only \"Pure Heart\" [EDITOR'S NOTE: That story, about Triple-Crown-winning horse Secretariat, will be included in the SI 60 at a later date].\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/boxing/2014/08/22/si-60-qa-william-nack-sonny-liston-o-unlucky-man>