Muhammad Ali

As the Ravens finished up their final full practice before their season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night, they welcomed a visitor who left some of their players in awe. Legendary boxing champion Muhammad Ali took in today's practice at the Under Armour Performance Center. Wearing a purple Ravens' T-shirt, the 70-year-old watched practice from a golf cart. He then posed for pictures with coach John Harbaugh , who traced Ali's right hand on a notepad.

Under Armour founder Kevin Plank tried to think of his perfect dinner party. There'd have to be a Beatle, he said, along with Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and Mother Teresa. But the No. 1 guest, he said, would be Muhammad Ali. Plank and Ali were among those honored by the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation at a downtown gala and fundraiser at the Waterfront Marriott on Friday evening. But Plank was not able to have his dinner with "The Greatest. " Ali was unable to travel from his home in Arizona because he is recovering from a recent surgery.

A day after the Ravens were visited by boxing legend Muhammad Ali at their practice facility in Owings Mills, they hosted another one of the greatest athletes in modern history at Monday night's season opener at M&T Bank Stadium. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps stood on the sideline and watched pregame warm-ups. And as they headed into the tunnel to make final preparations, he slapped hands with running back Ray Rice. Ali also attended the game and watched from a private suite. He apparently left before halftime.

Many English words derive from Latin. Others from Spanish, American Indian, Norwegian. You name a country, an English word probably came from there. But in the grand history of William Shakespeare, some words are invented by brilliant minds. Derrick E. Vaughan, the president of Dunkadelic Sports Marketing, is one of those modern-day wordsmiths. He said he created the term "dunkadelic" in 1997 in order to find a one-word term that would combine the basketball and hip-hop culture fusion (coincidentally, he's also the creator of National Basketball & Hip-Hop Culture Month)

"King of the World," by David Remnick. Random House. 326 pages. $25.On the night of Feb. 25, 1964, in a boxing ring in Miami Beach, one of the most compelling and complicated figures of the 20th century arrived with the whomp of an uppercut.Today, of course, Muhammad Ali is mostly beloved, a heroic icon, an athletic statesman and worldwide ambassador, best remembered in recent years for lighting the torch to begin the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, his hands trembling from Parkinson's disease, the proud warrior refusing to let age or disease defeat him. The world cheered.

The Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation will honor Muhammad Ali and Under Armour at its annual Aspire Gala on Feb. 22, 2013 at the Waterfront Marriott, the group announced Monday. Ali and his wife, Lonnie, will be presented with the Aspire Award. Founder and CEO Kevin Plank will accept the same award on behalf of Under Armour. Robbie Callaway, former chairman of the Ripken board, will receive the Cal Sr. Award. All are being honored for their dedication to community service. Ali's humanitarian efforts are -- or should be -- well known to just about every sports fan. A news release from the foundation lauds his and Lonnie's work with soup kitchens, hospitals, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Special Olympics.

MUHAMMAD ALI: HIS LIFE AND TIMES.Thomas Hauser.Simon & Schuster.544 pages. $24.95. During his 30 years in the public eye as perhaps the world's most famous man, Muhammad Ali has elicited the whole range of emotions of millions of people, from love to hate.He was perhaps, as he had claimed, "the Greatest" -- arguably the best heavyweight and, perhaps, the greatest boxer there ever was. Not only blessed with unusually fast hands and feet, Mr. Ali also possessed remarkable recuperative powers, an iron chin and the strongest will to win.Still, nearly 10 years since his last fight, Mr. Ali remains as much as an enigma as he did when he first achieved international prominence as the young, irrepressible loudmouth who won the world's heavyweight championship in 1964 as Cassius Clay.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- I could have been at the famous Churchill Downs racetrack -- probably this city's most famous tourist attraction -- last Saturday, but I passed. Instead I took a stroll down Muhammad Ali Boulevard."It's a hard ticket to get," Bob Hill, a columnist with the Louisville Courier-Journal, had assured me about getting into Churchill Downs. I didn't doubt him. But this was Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby and the Louisville Slugger Museum. This is where the most beloved Baltimore Colt of them all, John Unitas, attended college at the University of Louisville.

FOR DAYS, I watched the "60 Minutes" promos of the show's interview with Muhammad Ali. Even now, Ali can dependably draw an audience. But when it came time, well, I just couldn't bring myself to tune in.Sundays can be sad enough without watching one of your few remaining heroes losing his struggle with Parkinson's syndrome.What's sadder still is that his condition is apparently the result, in his post-float-like-a-butterfly years, of taking too many punches to the head.As he used to remind us, he was the greatest.

It's been heartbreaking to see what has happened to Muhammad Ali.The greatest boxer of our time, a figure of almost magical charisma, he now drifts through the days like a ghost haunting his own life. Too many blows to the head have resulted in Parkinson's disease.In the June Esquire, Pete Hamill describes a dinner party of prizefighters and celebrities at which "everybody tried to avoid looking" at Ali. But Hamill could not tear his eyes away: He saw the 54-year-old Ali unable to move a piece of chicken 2 inches to his mouth, "the once lithe and powerful body sagging all of him shaking with the Parkinson's disease, with the damage caused by the fierce trade he once honored."

The Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation will honor Muhammad Ali and Under Armour at its annual Aspire Gala on Feb. 22, 2013 at the Waterfront Marriott, the group announced Monday. Ali and his wife, Lonnie, will be presented with the Aspire Award. Founder and CEO Kevin Plank will accept the same award on behalf of Under Armour. Robbie Callaway, former chairman of the Ripken board, will receive the Cal Sr. Award. All are being honored for their dedication to community service. Ali's humanitarian efforts are -- or should be -- well known to just about every sports fan. A news release from the foundation lauds his and Lonnie's work with soup kitchens, hospitals, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Special Olympics.

A day after the Ravens were visited by boxing legend Muhammad Ali at their practice facility in Owings Mills, they hosted another one of the greatest athletes in modern history at Monday night's season opener at M&T Bank Stadium. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps stood on the sideline and watched pregame warm-ups. And as they headed into the tunnel to make final preparations, he slapped hands with running back Ray Rice. Ali also attended the game and watched from a private suite. He apparently left before halftime.

As the Ravens finished up their final full practice before their season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night, they welcomed a visitor who left some of their players in awe. Legendary boxing champion Muhammad Ali took in today's practice at the Under Armour Performance Center. Wearing a purple Ravens' T-shirt, the 70-year-old watched practice from a golf cart. He then posed for pictures with coach John Harbaugh , who traced Ali's right hand on a notepad.

Among top heavyweights Barry Stavro Los Angeles Times Joe Frazier's greatness and immortality can be measured easily because you can't say Ali without saying Frazier, any more than you could say Dempsey without Tunney or Robinson without La Motta. Frazier gave Ali the two worst beatings "The Greatest" suffered in his prime. In their first epic bout in 1971, Frazier, with one of the great left hooks in history, dumped Ali on the canvas in the 15th round to give Ali his first loss.

Plaxico Burress took the first steps to resuming his NFL career last week simply by stepping out of prison for the first time in nearly two years. More than 30 months removed from his last reception, Burress is looking to pick up where he left off. In his last two full seasons, he averaged more than 1,000 yards receiving and scored 22 touchdowns. Restarting his career, let alone playing at a high level, will be far from easy. Two months shy of 34, Burress is not only at a point when receivers' careers generally spiral downward, but he also is facing the struggles that come with a two-year layoff in nearly any sport.

"You see this right here?" Derrick Mason asked, holding up a black shirt. Printed across the front were the words "What's our name?" "You see that? They're going to realize what's coming at them," the Ravens wide receiver said. "Quickly. Everybody out there, the teams that are left, they're going to realize the Ravens are coming." As the Ravens prepare for Sunday's AFC championship game in Pittsburgh, their season-long slogan has never seemed quite so poignant. You see it on T-shirts in the locker room and flashing in lights on the stadium scoreboard.

IN THE 1970s, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met in three epic ring battles that were unsurpassed for their savagery. Ali, the matador, and Frazier, the bull who refused to be fooled by Ali's cape. Their first fight in 1971 was a morality play performed before a nation split by racial strife and the Vietnam War. In 1967, Ali, a Black Muslim, was stripped of his title and banned from the ring for refusing to serve in the military. His return in 1970 set the stage for a showdown with Frazier, the heavyweight champ.

NEW YORK - With the demise of Stanley Kubrick, Michael Mann has taken over as the reigning perfectionist of American movies. So talented is Mann that his invariably gritty and increasingly adult pictures have become events to rival sci-fi blockbusters. This happens even when his movies showcase little-known stars in commercially risky ventures. Think of Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a historically savvy revival of frontier romance, and pre-Gladiator Russell Crowe in 1999's The Insider , a muckraker about big tobacco and broadcasting that's also a paradigm of compromised corporate lives.

The African-American legacy has been recorded in many ways -- on television, in film and in print. But now there is the growing popularity of a new monument to the past -- greeting cards. American Greetings has started its own line of black-themed cards, collaborating with Ebony magazine and companies that represent former heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali and mega-church minister Bishop T.D. Jakes of Dallas. Hallmark greeting cards were the first to jump on the opportunity in the 1960s, with the introduction of the Mahogany line of cards, which are inspirational and cater to life's occasions.

A fellow with two first names won a version of boxing's heavyweight title Saturday night, but Mr. Flip will forgive you if you weren't paying attention. In the fragmented, star-starved heavyweight division, maybe Samuel Peter holds out the hope of at least a unified champion. He defeated Oleg Maskaev for the World Boxing Council belt, and now he apparently must beat a couple of Klitschkos - International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Organization champ Wladimir and former WBC titleholder Vitali - to be recognized as the undisputed champion.