DOWNTOWN — When Ed Kelly started chatting about his good pal Muhammad Ali, the legendary Chicago Park District boss didn't stop.
“When I talk about him I reminisce and the stories, they never end,” Kelly told me.
Kelly, the former Democratic powerbroker and confidant of the late Richard J. Daley, met Ali the Chicago way — as part of a clouted deal to run concessions in the Park District.
Around 1971, Kelly was fed up with a certain South Side operator who controlled concessions in the parks.
“I threw the guy out and put the Muslims in the concession business,” Kelly said.
The Park District boss became instant pals with Herbert Muhammad, son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad and Ali’s longtime manager.
“Herbert and I were very good friends, and he said he wanted to start a business with Ali. Of course, I wanted Ali to be part of it, and that’s how it started. We had a great relationship,” Kelly said.
Ali and Kelly immediately hit it off. They’d go for breakfast and lunch at the Chicago Yacht Club in Monroe Harbor near the park boss’s Soldier Field office.
Kelly became the regular target of Ali’s unrelenting pranks. Kelly never complained too much. Ali never stopped being a goofball.
They became lifelong friends with quite a few funny stories about their time together.
After Ali’s death, Kelly was nice enough to share a few.
“One time I took him to the Yacht Club. We go there, and there are these two seniors in the revolving door … he pulls their hair and hides behind me,” Kelly said.
“I’m standing there like a big goof. They’re looking at me like they want to know what’s wrong with me. Why is the Park District superintendent pulling their hair?”
Then there’s the time Kelly invited the late Steve Neal, the former Sun-Times political editor, to meet his pal, The Greatest, at a Downtown hotel before a marathon autograph-signing session.
“Steve asks to take a picture. Ali is wearing a white robe. All the sudden as Steve is taking a picture, Ali opens his robe. He’s naked,” Kelly said. “I’m screaming, ‘Don’t take any pictures. Muhammad, cut this bull---- out.”
Ali did not cut out the bull.
Kelly, who was clearly not amused by the stunt, said he wasn’t going to sit with Ali while he signed autographs as The Champ requested.
So, Ali started snapping quick jabs at his Irish buddy.
Kelly, threw his jacket on the floor, and jabbed back.
Neal, according to Kelly, didn’t know quite what to do.
“Steve is wondering what the hell is going on,” Kelly told me. “I throw a jab. Ali falls to the floor like I knocked him out. He didn’t get up. … I left.”
Ali always wanted Kelly around, particularly at his big fights, including the 1974 bout touted as “The Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman in Zaire, Africa.
“I said, 'I’m not going to Africa,' " Kelly recalled.
Ali said, “Why not?”
"I said, “They’ll kidnap me.”
He laughed and laughed.
While Kelly stubbornly refused to follow The Champ around, Ali made special efforts to attend Kelly’s political fundraisers and other functions primarily to mess with him.
“He would crash my parties. At one dinner we were having at the Hilton, he walked in and took the microphone away from the emcee of the show,” Kelly said. “He’d pull that kind of stuff."
Before one of Kelly’s annual “smokers,” Ali called the German joint in Lincoln Square hosting Kelly’s party. He asked Kelly for the address.
“He said, ‘I want to come. I’m coming.’ I said, ‘Don’t start on me now. You’re in California,' ” Kelly said.
That’s when the Northwest Side ward boss passed the phone to the owner of Chicago Brauhaus in Lincoln Square, who was hosting the party.
“I said, 'He wants the address. You talk to him,' ” Kelly said.
A few hours later, Ali pranced into the restaurant.
“The whole place just went nuts,” Kelly remembers. “Nuts.”
At the end of the night, the owners, as Kelly remembers it, wanted a picture with The Champ, who wouldn’t let the evening end without another of his signature pranks.
Out on the side walk, just after they took the picture, Ali ran down the street yelling that they called him the 'N-word," pointing at the owners.
Then, 'he jumps in the car and drives away. He would always pull the craziest stuff. Those poor Germans," Kelly said.
There were many more pranks over their more than 40-year friendship. Too many to count.
Kelly, 92, kept in close touch with Ali even when the old boxer started to really suffer from the effects of Parkinson’s disease.
“I’d call him every two weeks. If I got him in the morning I could understand him,” Kelly said.
Over all those years, Kelly never asked Ali for an autograph.
“That’s why we stayed friends,” Kelly said. “I don’t use him. I don’t abuse him.”
Ali’s son-in-law Michael “Pickle” Joyce says that The Champ made sure Ali's longtime buddy had a few mementos worthy of their friendship.
“I don't think Ed had anything autographed from Ali, or if he did he gave the items away,” Joyce said. “So, Muhammad gave Ed one of three bronze fists that were made when Ali was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame.”
Indeed, two years ago, Ali sent over a pair of boxing gloves signed with the inscription “Happy 90th Birthday Uncle Ed.”
Joyce said The Champ added the personal touch so Kelly “couldn’t give them away.”
Sometimes Kelly’s friends ask him if he understands how much cash he could get for those special pieces of Ali memorabilia.
“I tell 'em I don’t care,” Kelly said. “It stays in the house. None of it’s for sale.”
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