Muhammad Ali remains one of the most famous sports figures in the world, and there are probably hundreds of people who profess to be his friend. And maybe most are to one to some degree. Tim Shanahan, however, has taken things a step further, sharing behind-the-scenes details of his long friendship with the champ. The genesis of the relationship began when both were living in Chicago in 1976 and Shanahan was working with a charity that arranged for athletes to speak to underprivileged children. Shanahan contacted Ali, who wanted to know the details. Shanahan was invited to Ali’s home for what wound up as a two-hour visit. They hit it off and got to know each other better during morning runs. Ali even offered to hire Shanahan, who turned down the offer in order to keep their relationship on a personal, rather than professional, level.
Here’s an excerpt from Running With the Champ:
“Muhammad had once warned me. ‘Nobody knows what I’m thinking,’ and he proved that point again during the 1984 presidential campaign when he endorsed Ronald Reagan. The move angered and confused some of the political figures that Muhammad had associations with: Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, and Andrew Young (I believe Young even flew in from Atlanta to try to talk Muhammad out of the endorsement). Muhammad got a lot of grief for backing Reagan, especially after he appeared in billboard ads that had him, Joe Frazier, and Floyd Patterson standing with Reagan and declaring, ‘We’re voting for the man.’
“I knew that the endorsement didn’t actually reflect any great shift in Muhammad’s allegiances. Despite the strong political stands he had taken in the ’60s and all that he had been through, he never really cared about politics much at all. He had an innocent approach to people in general, and he assumed that most politicians acted out of good intentions. If anyone rose to a position of power, he respected that position.”
