Few sportswriters can match the lyrical and insightful work of Dave Kindred. His aim has always been to take readers with him, and make them feel what he felt. Dave does this for listeners in this episode as he recalls first meeting Muhammad Ali in 1966, covering 17 of his fights, and agreeing to a strange request from The Greatest in one of their 300-plus interviews. There was the time Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp called Kindred a SOB, and that magical moment at the ’73 Belmont Stakes when Secretariat ran like a beautiful machine in motion. He compares and contrasts Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, and reveals who he’d take if they were matched in their prime. And we hear how Dave found a community in the past decade by chronicling a girls high school basketball team in Illinois.

Kindred forged a close relationship with Ali while working as a staff writer and columnist for the heavyweight champion’s hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, from 1965 to ’77. He went on to serve as sports columnist for The Washington Post (1977-84), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1984-89 and 1995-97), The National Sports Daily (1989-91), and the Sporting News (1991-2007). Dave has been a contributing writer for Golf Digest since 1997, and he’s a regular contributor online for the National Sports Journalism Center. He also wrote a news column for several years while at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and he was the Washington D.C. correspondent for the Courier-Journal.

Dave’s started as a sportswriter in 1959 at The Daily Pantagraph in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, while he was a student earning a B.A. in English at Illinois Wesleyan ‘63. He worked there for six years before moving to Kentucky. He went on to write more than 7,000 columns and 12 books, including the memoir, “Leave Out the Tragic Parts: A Grandfather’s Search for a Boy Lost to Addiction,” that was published in 2021. By his count, Dave has covered 75 major golf championships dating back to the 1966 PGA Championship. He also covered 44 Super Bowls, 43 Kentucky Derby races; 44 World Series, eight Olympic Games (Winter and Summer) and eight Wimbledon Championships, and three NBA Finals, He was in Munich, Germany for the ’72 Olympic massacre and in Lake Placid, N.Y. for the 1980 Miracle on Ice. And he likes to say that he’s lost golf balls in 22 countries on four continents.

Kindred’s six-decade career – including how he has written in retirement about the Morton High School girls basketball team in recent years – was featured in a segment of 60 Minutes that aired March 28, 2021 on CBS. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dave-kindred-local-sportswriter-60-minutes-2021-03-28/

His books include:

· “Morning Miracle: Inside the Washington Post: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life”

· “Sound and Fury: A Dual Biography of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell”

· “Around the World in 18 Holes with Tom Callahan”

· “Basketball: The Dream Game in Kentucky”

· “Theismann”

· “The Kentucky Derby: A Great American Tradition”

· “Glove Stories”

· “Heroes, Fools & Other Dreamers”

You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveKindred

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices