No 134: DAVID WOLF / As a crusading journalist, he was above reproach, speaking truth to power. As a ring manager, he was, to the burned, a cockroach who'd sell them out in a New York second.

The curious case of David Wolf, a guy whose conscience was seemingly replaced by an assortment of hairpieces. Another case of my disillusionment when meeting a boyhood hero in the course of my job.

Left to right: Dave Wolf, former light-heavyweight champion Donny Lalonde and trainer Teddy Atlas. Undated photo, circa late 80s, before Atlas set out to murder Lalonde and almost killed the boxer’s manager by mistake in the latter’s apartment, which I visited.

IN MY MEMOIR for Audible, also titled How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying), I recount a chance meeting one of my sportswriting heroes, the Globe and Mail’s Dick Beddoes, when I was a stammering, starstruck high-schooler. Beddoes was my appointment reading in the daily that I’d wind up working for twenty years later. Beddoes never read a word that I ever wrote—even though I wound up editing a magazine piece by him with disastrous results when he was exiled from the newspaper biz because of blatant plagiarism. He had shuffled off this mortal coil a few years before I started at the Globe.