Late in 1957 I was wandering the hallway outside the main studio on the top floor of 17 Clinton Avenue South, from where Tom Decker and I did the nightly 11 pm News, Weather, and Sports, when I ran into the middleweight champion of the world, Carmen Basilio, a hometown boy who had just beaten Sugar Ray Robinson for the crown.

“Come on my show first,” I begged him. “Show me some basic moves on how to defend myself in the fine art of boxing. It will make a socko weather bit.”

To my surprise, he agreed. ‘Whaddya wanna know?” he asked.

“Just some basic things,” I told him. “How to, you know, stand and hold my fists, you know—just don’t hit me. I hurt easy.”

“We gonna, you know, rehearse?”

‘Rehearse what? Naw, just show me some basic points—you know, how to stand and, you know, position myself so we can, you know, spar a little, like you do for Dundee in training, you know, for a big fight.”

“Okay.” he agreed. “But we should rehearse first.”

“No time,” I told him, looking at my Bulova. “Less go!”

I ushered him into the studio and once on the weather set, I quickly outfitted him with a mike, and despite the venomous glances from Decker as he wrapped up the News—“I’ll be right back with Sports after Bob Mills and What Goes With the Weather, and my special guest tonight will be the reigning Middleweight Champion of World, none other than Canistota’s own Carmen Basilio!”—we got ready to display the intricacies of the fine art of boxing for my millions of viewers.

All went well during the first thirty seconds. But, as we sparred about in the confined area of the set, my dialogue running a plaintive descant with the action of pretend fisticuffs—“Notice how I keep moving, bobbing and weaving, my hands held high, protecting myself at all times, my fists cocked, waiting for an advantageous opening”—I somehow opened my fingers with an unplanned reaction and accidentally struck Basilio’s cheek a passing blow, a feather - like brush.

It was enough to enflame his boxer’s instincts.

His right fist shot forth as if fired from a rifle, and he caught me flush on the chin. I tumbled backwards against the flimsy weather set. The rest is a blurred memory, and I can report nothing beyond the visual phenomena of many stars and a sharp pain deep within my cranial caverns. When I came to, both Decker and Basilio were bending over me, Decker flicking cold water in my face from a paper cup.

“He aint gonna sue me, is he?” Basilio was saying. “This whole thing was his idea! He should never have hit me!”

From the rubble of the collapsed plywood set, Decker and some floor techy helped me to my feet. “Why’d you ever touch him?” Decker, always an investigative reporter, inquired. “Don’t you know he’s a pro? His fists are lethal weapons, for chrissake!”

“You aint gonna sue me, are you, kid?”

Later that night at the Eggleston, Decker made me promise never to steal a guest again, without his permission. With my fingers crossed behind my back, I promised.

*I was saddened to learn last autumn, thanks to an email from my Rochester contact Eddie Musicus (a former boss) that Carmen Basilio had passed, at 85, across the border from which no one ever returns.



Robert A. Mills
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