Muhammad Ali Day at Yankee Stadium

The New York Yankees will honor The Greatest of All Time at Yankee Stadium with a ceremony before their game with the Red Sox tonight. ↵↵Hal Steinbrenner will present Ali with an Excellence in Hospitality award from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences. The president of that vaunted academy, Joseph Cinque, will also be present.↵

↵↵And yes, you read that last paragraph correctly. Hospitality Sciences. Because unquestionably the first thing you think of when you think of Muhammad Ali is “hospitality.” Talk about your bogus awards cooked up on the fly to get a famous person to come to your stadium. Why not throw in a boutonniere from Good Housekeeping while they’re at it?↵

↵↵Ali, of course, does have some significant historical connection to Yankee Stadium, the old Yankee Stadium anyway. The House That Ruth Built was the site of some of the most famous boxing matches of all time – both Louis/Schmeling fights and the Sugar Ray Robinson/Joey Maxim fight included. And Ali and Ken Norton were the last men ever to fight at the Stadium, staging the rubber match of their trilogy there on September 28, 1976. It was a close fight that Ali won by decision, a decision that is still hotly debated to this day. No doubt somewhere Norton is thinking that hospitality award should be going to him.↵

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