November 18, 2003)
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Actually though, my editor is not wrong. There are a lot of people that don’t like Teddy Atlas. He can be arrogant, opinionated, and downright nasty, and he’s made some very serious enemies along the way. Nobody is running around with palm leaves and a donkey looking to lead him into Jerusalem singing Hosanna. But everybody in boxing knows two things. One, whether you like him or despise him he doesn't care, and two, Atlas is Atlas all the time. He doesn't pretend to be something he's not. Ever.

Teddy Atlas is old school. He's a dinosaur. He made his bones in the streets and in gyms that stink from perspiration and moldy water pipes that always drip; where young men pound heavy bags until their hands bleed and hurt so much that tears come to their eyes from pain and old men scream at them to hit it again. Not because they’re cruel but because it might be the difference between life and death when that heavy bag is another man throwing punches at your head and there are three ropes of red white and blue at your back. Where men look each other in the eye and touch gloves before they fight, and embrace when they finish. Men like that live by a certain code of honor, where a handshake is a contract and there's no need to write anything down because betrayal is an unforgivable transgression.

They are men who actually believe that the Leo Farnsworth that Warren Beatty played in "Heaven Can Wait" could actually exist. A guy who would innocently take the tray out of a butlers hand and give him a drink and then tell the "suits" to find a way to catch tuna without killing porpoises and become the "good guy tuna company." It's simple enough, just work it into the ad campaign. "Would you pay a penny more to save a fish that thinks?"

Atlas doesn't own a computer or a laptop. He doesn't want to, and wouldn't know what to do with one if he did. By the same token, the guy who would sell it to him would think a right cross is a politically correct piece of jewelry. Ah, when worlds collide.

A cell phone and a fax machine are about as far as he's reluctantly willing to go. And if he wants to take a picture he'll use a camera not his phone (A camera with film by the way, thanks). He’s just like Joey, who works at Ronnie's Auto Body Shop, or Ritchie, who sweeps the halls at the North Middle School - the fight fans that watch him on Friday nights.

When I caught up with Atlas to ask if he’d do the interview, he was preparing to fly out to Las Vegas for a “Friday Night Fights” show. We talked about some of the matchups on the mega card being held December 13th in Atlantic City and the upcoming “Teddy Dinner,” on November 20th, a benefit dinner that Atlas hosts every year in memory of his father.

I told Atlas I’d put some questions together and call him when he got back. “Yeah, good,” he said, “cause otherwise this is gonna take fifty hours.”

Atlas does not have a lot of patience for bumbling journalists.

It took about ten days for me to be able to contact Atlas again and he was pretty spent when I asked him if we could finish the interview.

"Yeah, but not too many questions OK? I'm kinda tired."

"No problem." I said.

"You do that Internet stuff, right?” He asked me.

Like I said, Atlas was kicking and screaming when he bought his fax machine.

"Yeah, I do that Internet stuff," I said.

"Anyway, where were we?" he asked.

"Last time we spoke we were talking about the 'Teddy Dinner.' I'd like you to tell me about your dad and your life."

There was a very long pause of dead silence. It went on so long that I thought we had gotten disconnected.

"Are you there?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I'm here."

"I thought we got disconnected." I said

He didn't answer and again there was a long pause. He was obviously on the phone, he just wasn't responding. It was very strange and awkward. I didn't understand it then, but I do now.

I had never asked him a question that wasn't about boxing. Atlas is a very private and guarded man and I had just caught him off guard. I didn't want to talk boxing. He doesn't trust many people and his hands are always up. He'd had a rough week. He was tired and his hands were down. There was silence because he was making a decision.

He's known me a long time, and I had inadvertently put him up against the wall. In a roundabout way, after three years, I finally asked Atlas to trust me. And it was either yes or no.

"My dad was the only guy I could ever really trust. The only guy who was the man he said he was and who never lied to me," he said quietly.

For the next three and a half hours I took a fascinating journey as the memories of a young boy guided me through the labyrinth that led to the man we now know as the color commentator of Friday Night Fights.

Dr. Theodore Atlas and his wife Mary raised their family in Staten Island, New York. Their son Teddy was born on July 29th 1956.

Dr. Atlas was the type of character that could have jumped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He was a doctor who loved people and treated them whether they could pay or not. His office was always full and he worked seven days a week, 14 to 16 hours a day. Cakes and Jell-O molds littered the counters as gifts from grateful patients who had no money.

Young Teddy adored his father and whenever possible he used to hang out in his office or accompany him as he drove around Staten Island making house calls. Like most men of Dr. Atlas' generation he was very non-communicative, at least verbally. Yet by his actions he spoke volumes. It took Atlas many self-destructive years to comprehend that.

Once, when Atlas' father made a house call twice in the same week at the home of an elderly woman, the young Atlas was concerned for her and asked his father if the woman was very ill. "She's strong as an ox," his father replied. "So why'd you come here twice?" Atlas asked him. "To have tea," his father teasingly said. His father explained that the woman was very old and alone. He would stop by and examine her and give her sugar pills. She would make him tea and he would sit and talk to her for a little while. "It makes her feel like someone is taking care of her," the father explained to his young son. "Remember, loneliness is a sickness too."

As a teenager Atlas was no longer content to sit with his father as he tended to patients in his office or to ride around with him as he made house calls. He desperately craved the attention of his father, who was still working 14 to 16 hours a day. Atlas wasn't a little boy any more and Staten Island was becoming a tough place. In his mind the kindly doctor that everybody loved just became a workaholic that didn't make his football games. The line that separates right from wrong became cloudy in his mind and if scoring touchdowns didn't get his fathers attention, maybe sticking up gas stations or bars would. Either way, what difference did it make? The "doctor" would fix it just like he did for everyone else. The confused teenager was going to get his father’s attention by any means necessary. Even if it killed him.

Atlas hit the streets with a vengeance. He hooked up with a group of street thugs and started pulling robberies and getting into gang fights. The scar that runs along the entire left side of his face and missed taking out his eye by a millimeter was caused by a knife in such a fight. When brought to the hospital Atlas asked that his father be called to stitch him up. His father only showed up to check up on him after they were done.

He looked, said nothing, and left.

A few months later Atlas showed up at his father's office with his head split open, and blood streaming down his face, courtesy of a guy with a tire iron. Dr. Atlas' nurse frantically rushed Atlas inside where Atlas' father looked and said. "Take him outside, he waits like everybody else."

When it was Atlas' turn the nurse came in with a syringe and Novocain. Dr. Atlas told his nurse, "He doesn't want that, if he's going to live like this, he should know what it feels like." When the nurse left with the Novocain Dr. Atlas looked his son dead in the eye and pushed a needle through his flesh.

Part 2 , Part 3