One of the greatest heavyweight champions Joe Louis glad-handing pitifully from a wheelchair at Caesars Palace

One of the greatest heavyweight champions, Joe Louis, glad-handing pitifully from a wheelchair at Caesars Palace. Sonny Liston, broke and drugged up when found dead in Las Vegas “Even Ali, look at Ali,” Tyson said. “I love Ali but when they introduce him at my fights I look away. Sure, they cheer him, but where’s his beauty now, his speed, his talent? It’s gone, it’s gone.”For some of us McCrae’s experiences have a familiar, disturbing ring The loss of innocence, the onset of cynicism. Only the names are different.Ring tragedies eat into our conscience. “When something like this happens you wonder whether boxing is worth the candle,” Eddie Thomas said when Johnny Owen’s body was returned to Merthyr Tydfil. Bradley Stone, James Murray; the terrible shadow that fell across Gerald McClellan’s life as the result of a ferocious contest against Nigel Benn.

Poor Michael Watson.McCrae got close to Watson, listened while he prepared for the second of two tussles against Chris Eubank, noted his earnest expressions of faith in God – and then saw it happen. More probably the result of cumulative punishment rather than the heavy blow an almost beaten Eubank landed at the end of the 11th round, Watson slipped into a coma from which he will never fully recover.As Hugh McIlvanney states in McIlvanney on Boxing (Mainstream pounds 15.99), an update of two previous collections, “Of course, sad stories are never hard to find in boxing. All too often the game’s cruelties seem too much to be balanced by its exhilarations… I shall spare myself and everyone else another confession about a lifelong enthusiasm increasingly assailed by misgivings.”That McIlvanney, the most celebrated of British sportswriters, admits to shivers of unease about an activity embedded deep in his psyche is certainly far more important than objections based only on the principle that boxing has no place in a civilised society.Over the the last 25 years not much in boxing has escaped McIlvanney’s attention, and nobody in that time has matched the high quality of his analytical prose or been more acutely aware of the sport’s implications.A big advantage, one I shared with McIlvanney, was to be around at the time of figures far more notable than nearly all those McCrae interrogated. What, one wonders would McCrae have made of Ali, Joe Frazier, a young George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran? And on this side of the pond, Ken Buchanan, Howard Winstone, John Conteh, Chris and Kevin Finnegan, Barry McGuigan and others?The publication of Frazier’s autobiography (Smokin’ Joe; Robson Books, pounds 16.95) revealed him to be bitterly at odds with Ali, a man unable to forgive the taunts he suffered throughout their epic saga. Attempts have since been made to bring about a reconciliation.As usual, the sport is well served by The British Boxing Board of Control Yearbook, edited and compiled by Barry J Hugman (Queen Anne Press; pounds 14.99), and the A-Z of World Boxing by Bert Blewett (Robson Books, pounds 22.95) is a well produced work of reference. From Zero to Hero (Andre Deutsch, pounds 15.99), written with Norman Giller, brings the curtain down on Frank Bruno’s career..

Hard on the heels of Fever Pitch comes sales pitch. The unprecedented volume of books vying for our cash this Christmas reflects the fact that, in the aftermath of Nick Hornby’s extraordinary success, publishers have never been more willing to take a chance on football. So fashionable has the game become that autobiographies of two legendary figures are actually enjoying a run among the Top 10 hardbacks. Dalglish, by Kenny Dalglish with Henry Winter (Hodder & Stoughton, pounds 16.99), reveals more of one complex character than Jack Charlton (Partridge Press, pounds 16.99) does of another, without quite demonstrating that the “real” King Kenny is as funny a man as his friends claim.
Dalglish relives the Hillsborough disaster with all the sensitivity he showed at the time, and there is no self-pity as he recounts how the pressure eventually caused his head to “explode”. It is also evident that much of his famous taciturnity comes from his domineering mentor at Celtic, Jock Stein.Charlton, in contrast, was often at odds with Don Revie before Leeds became a force, yet there is more of Revie’s cautious outlook in his approach to management than he lets on. Peter Byrne, Big Jack’s “ghost” and doyen of Irish football writers, might have been better employed penning an objective biography.On to two less “traditional” books, which view football in the way that made Hornby famous: as part of popular culture, linked to the wider world.

Euro 96 inspired two enjoyable examples, Dave Hill’s England’s Glory: 1966 And All That (Pan, pounds 9.99) and David Thomson’s 4-2 (Bloomsbury, pounds 16.99).Hill, by starting his book about England’s distant World Cup triumph with an account of Geoff Hurst handling a question and answer session at Butlin’s in Bognor Regis, makes plain his intention to probe beyond mythology and mere football. The reader becomes as well acquainted with the style of Harold Wilson as the steel of Ray Wilson.Thomson’s book has been described, misleadingly, as the first to focus entirely on one game, the ‘66 final. In fact, the author uses the match as a peg on which to hang the story of his own journey of self-discovery (well, it was the 60s). So the sexual revolution rubs shoulders with England’s wingless wonders, while Alf Ramsey is compared with Philip Larkin. Dull, it isn’t.Pete Davies wrote a classic about the 1990 World Cup, All Played Out. His follow-up, I Lost My Heart to the Doncaster Belles (Heinemann, pounds 14.99) is not, by definition of its subject matter, of similarly epic proportions, but it does not disappoint. Davies followed the fabled women’s team through 1994-95, eliciting the players’ thoughts, about the game and their “private” lives.

Patronise these “ladies” at your peril.Simon Inglis should also figure in any self-respecting fan’s library. An updated version of his Football Grounds of Britain (Collins Willow, pounds 14.99) is particularly timely, what with the old architecture of football disappearing and new stadiums rising everywhere. Inglis gives new meaning to the words “detail”, “research” and “expert”, while his vigorous prose sets him apart from groundhopping anoraks.There is now an indispensable companion volume. The Football Fan’s Guide, by Janet Williams and Mark Johnson (Harper Collins, pounds 8.99), not only gives incredibly precise directions to every ground but also details of which pubs to drink in (and which to avoid), where to get a good vegeburger and even the state of the toilets.Meanwhile, Elegance Borne of Brutality: An Eclectic History of the Football Boot, by Ian McArthur and Dave Kemp (Two Heads Publishing; pounds 15.99 hardback, pounds 9.99 paperback), is an example of how to turn a cow’s hide into a silk purse. From the primitive Manfield-Hotspur to today’s Predator, boots have been an essential yet invariably overlooked facet of the game.