(GARY PETERSON COLUMN FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 21)

Where has the old Ali gone?

The neatly folded placard bore the name of the guest of honor. As if
there was any mistaking Muhammad Ali, the most internationally recognized
athlete of his time.
And, to be sure, the man sitting at the folding table of Concord's
Little C Athletic Club, signing one autograph after another, had Ali's
familiar round face. Dressed simply in an untucked white shirt, gray
slacks and black shoes, this was undoubtedly the former heavyweight
champion of the world.
But even the casual observer couldn't help noticing that there was a
gaping hole where the Ali charisma used to be.
His eyes were glassy and hollow. His mouth was rigid and
expressionless. The face that launched a thousand legends looked more
like a mask than a mirror of the soul.
His signature oozed slowly from his once-lethal right hand. For anyone
even remotely familiar with the animated Ali of yesteryear, the contrast
was shocking.
In his prime he lunched with presidents and dined with kings. He rose
above boxing's cruel stereotypes to dominate the sport, and finally to
transcend sport altogether.
He appointed himself spokesman for a restless generation. He
sacrificed three precious years of his athletic life to protest a war he
believed unjust. When he was finally allowed to re-enter the ring, he
rewrote boxing history.
Articulate and sassy, he became an event large than most of his
fights. His wars with Joe Frazier and George Foreman rank with the
greatest spectacles in sports history.
Retirement, at age 40, seemed only to signal the start of a new
direction for Ali. Though the jab was gone, the jive remained. If his
body had let him down, he still had that fabulous mind.
Then came a horrible discovery. Two years ago, Ali was diagnosed as
suffering from Parkinson's syndrome.
Its cause is a matter of debate it may or may not be the residue of
23 years in the ring. Doctors claim the only way to find out is to
perform an autopsy, and nobody, understandably, is in any hurry for that.
But one thing's for sure. The resultant slurred speech, trembling
hands and muscular rigidity have all but muffled the voice of a
generation's spokesman.
At 44, the Ali shell remains the same. But from a distance, that
appears to be all that's left of this dazzling showman.
Nothing, however, can dim the Ali presence. The mere sight of him was
cause for delight for the several dozen fans who attended Wednesday's
autograph session at Little C.
Another attribute Ali still enjoys is patience. He signed pictures,
posters, boxing gloves and casts for close to 90 minutes.
He posed for enough pictures to keep Fotomat in business through the
end of the century. He held babies in his lap, held his fist to the chins
of his admirers.
Through it all, however, his expression never changed. You kept
waiting for him to leap to his feet, proclaiming himself to be the
greatest of all time. But he didn't.

You kept waiting for him to primp and preen, telling you how pretty he
is. But he didn't.
He showed only infrequent flashes of life, usually when someone struck
a boxing pose against him. Then, a small fire would flicker in Ali's
eyes. Clenched fists would rise instinctively and briefly flail the
evening air.
Then, just as quickly, both hands would drop, end he would continue
signing photos like an assembly line worker punching rivets into a new
Buick.
Then it was time to go, and a weird thing happened. Ali insisted on
doing a magic trick. "The champ's going to levitate!" proclaimed members
of his entourage.
Ali turned his back on the crowd. "Watch the back of my feet," he said
in a hushed, raspy voice.
Standing with feet together and hands held straight out at the sides,
Ali rose slowly up on his toes, his heels lifting barely off the floor.
The crowd went crazy. Ali seemed pleased, and performed the trick again
before being shunted off to a waiting limousine.
Impromptu press conferences failed to materialize, both at Little C
and the Concord Hilton. Confusion reigned. Would he spar, or wouldn't he?
Would he talk, or not?
Ali's entourage whisked him from one place to the next. Ali shuffled
along woodenly at their behest.
Manila, Zaire, even Lewiston, Maine, seemed a long way away and a long
time ago.
Aside from a few snippets of conversation, the Champ said nothing,
answered no questions. And there were so many questions to ask.
Does the old Ali still exist somewhere inside the fragile new one? Is
there a raging, brash Ali unable to escape from Parkinson's prison?
Does the fire still burn inside this great man? Does the butterfly
still float and the bee still sting, if only in the figurative sense?
Those unable to speak with Ali cannot tell. even those who do are left
wondering.
In an interview published in a Dallas paper last year, Ali spoke at
length. But his conversation rambled wildly from one topic to the next.
At one point, he contemplated his age.
"I'm 43," he said. "Forty-three is old. I'm tired."
To another reporter he spoke of the publicity his illness has
generated. "Sometimes I wish I wasn't so popular," he mused sadly.
But he is, and there's no changing that. Last year he was mobbed by
Chinese on a visit to the Great Wall. Indeed, it seems his name is in
headlines nearly every day for one reason or another.
If it's not flying to Beirut to seek the release of American hostages,
it's talk of fighting world hunger. Failing that, it's the endorsement of
a new line of cookies.
He seems determined, if what you read can be believed, to use his
celebrity to whatever advantage it will gain, for reasons that stretch
back to his childhood in Louisville, Ky.
I always wished Joe Louis would walk the streets of my town, Ali
once said. He never did.
This week a new, strangely silent Muhammad Ali walked the streets of
Concord.