by Rick Folstad
I remember 1967. That was the year I asked Diane Knutson to my first high school dance. Vietnam was kicking into high gear that year and the Miracle Mets were still two seasons away from finding a miracle. Man had yet to walk on the moon, and you could buy a nice house with a white picket fence for $15,000 and a firm handshake.
``In the Heat of the Night'' won the Academy Award for best picture, Jim Ryun set a new world record in the mile run (3 minutes, 51.1 seconds), and the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10, in the first Super Bowl.
Gary Beban won the Heisman Trophy that year, Johnny Unitas was voted the NFL's most valuable player, and Roberto Duran, a little 15-year-old bantamweight out of Panama City, broke into the grown-up world of prize fighting with a four-round win over Carlos Mendoza on March 8.
Seven presidents, 32 World Series, (remember the strike), 34 Super Bowls, 100,000 right hands and 34 years later, 50-year-old Roberto Duran isn't so little any more, and he's still fighting, though maybe only Duran himself can tell you why.
Maybe Duran thinks prize fighting is like selling insurance or working at the post office. You do it until someone forces you into retirement, until the boss pulls you aside one afternoon and tells you to quit coming to work, that it's time to retire.
Roberto. Quit going to work. It's time to retire. Fighting isn't like sorting mail or explaining term life to newlyweds. The consequences of a bad day are a little more severe. And in the fight game, your skills begin to diminish about the time you have to start shaving every day. At 40, you're half the fighter you were at 20. At 50, the only reason you should be climbing into the ring is to shake someone's hand, wave to the crowd or tell someone else how to fight.
It's like this. I'd like to meet Sandy Koufax, but I'd rather talk to him about pitching than watch him try to do it.
Duran's 34-year career continues next month when he fights another dinosaur - 39-year-old Hector Camacho - on July 14 in Denver at the Pepsi Center.
You've got to hand it to these two. They want to keep playing until it's too dark to see the ball, until mom turns on the porch light and tells them it's time to come in.
They're like your Uncle Fred who stops by to visit and stays. He was great to have around for awhile, the funniest guy on the block, but the same jokes are growing old and now you wish he'd just go home.
How do you tell a man who doesn't know any other way of life that his services are no longer needed? How do you tell him his skills have slipped and all he's doing now is making everyone forget how beautiful his work was 25 years ago?
Maybe you don't. Maybe you just smile and let the man go on with his life, let him earn a buck any legal way he can, hope he doesn't hurt himself.
But eventually, people are going to realize they're watching a shadow of what used to be, and that won't be enough. Eventually, commissions are going to quit okaying 50-year-old fighters, and then it will be over. That's the boss pulling you aside and telling you to go home.
I don't know whether to laugh at Duran's fight with Camacho or shake my head, whether to think of it as high comedy or tragicomedy. These are two of the biggest names in boxing in the past 20 years, two of the sport's greatest fighters, but they just won't let go of the tail, won't turn the tiger loose, even though it quit growling a long time ago.