30 YEARS AGO TODAY, ROBINSON UNLEASHED : A SUGAR-COATED HOOK

If you’re like me, you’re a hopeless sports addict and more likely to remember how many home runs Willie Mays had in 1965--it was 52--than you are to have a balanced checkbook.

You’ve seen some excitement in your life, and the images of some special moments remain fixed in memory, images with a special excitement.

Flashbacks? All the time:

--I’m stuck on the freeway and I’m thinking about Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

--I’m at the grocery store and can’t remember what I’m supposed to be looking for because I’m back in 1958 and Archie Moore is crawling off the deck to smash down Yvonne Durelle.

--I’m watching a bad movie on television and wishing it was 1969 again and I was watching Joe Namath beat the Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl.

--I’m in the barber shop, but I’m really in 1964, watching UCLA win its first NCAA basketball championship.

--I’m on a boat, fishing, but I’m also in the Coliseum on a warm May night in 1962, watching Al Oerter break the 200-foot barrier in the discus.

--I’m trying to talk to someone on the telephone, but I’m distracted by O.J. Simpson, who’s tearing through UCLA’s defense again on that memorable 13-yard touchdown run in 1967.

But my favorite sports flashback, the one that flickers through my mind most often, occurred 30 years ago today in Chicago Stadium.

It’s May 1, 1957. Sugar Ray Robinson has just socked Gene Fullmer with the sweetest left hook anyone ever saw.

Fullmer was a bull, a heavily muscled, powerful middleweight, an indestructible looking brawler. He had never been knocked out in 42 fights.

But suddenly there he was, on the deck. And he wasn’t getting up. I was 17 when I watched it on a black-and-white television. I’ve never forgotten the image of the ox-like Fullmer, so suddenly rendered helpless. I’ve never forgotten the excitement, the dramatic ending.

Several years ago, I learned that classic boxing matches were available on video cassettes. I found one of Robinson-Fullmer. I’ve watched it maybe 50 times, and Fullmer keeps catching that hook.

Writers who covered the fight that night, without benefit of video replays, reported that Robinson set up the left hook with a hard right to Fullmer’s rib cage which, they reported, lowered Fullmer’s hands. On tape, the right to the body appears to have little to do with the left hook that follows.

Robinson’s right is of indeterminate velocity and it does land on Fullmer’s ribs. But it doesn’t appear to faze Fullmer. His hands stay up. In fact, Robinson backs up two more steps and Fullmer advances in several short, shuffling steps, before the final punch is delivered, to the right edge of Fullmer’s jaw.

Robinson has stopped his retreat, rocks back slightly on his heels and launches the punch from somewhere near the middle rope. He delivers it so swiftly, his red gloved fist is barely visible as it passes over Fullmer’s right forearm. The impact, like the crack of a bullwhip, is tremendous.

Fullmer crumples over on his left side and squirms about on the deck, vainly trying to make his legs work. Referee Frank Sikora counts him out.

With a mighty lunge, Fullmer tries to get to his feet at the count of 10, but fails. He is partially held up by Sikora, who is joined in the effort by Marv Jenson, Fullmer’s manager.

At the recent Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler fight, Fullmer and Jenson were in Las Vegas with their new heavyweight prospect, Bronco Billy Wright, who won an undercard fight that weekend.

“I didn’t remember the punch then and I still don’t,” Fullmer said, grinning. “People tell me it was a great left hook, I wouldn’t know. I never saw it.”

For Jenson, 30 years have dimmed the pain.

“When I got to Gene, he eyes weren’t focusing, but he looked toward me and said ‘Why’d he stop it?’ ” Jenson said.

“I held up Gene and told him: ‘Because the referee counted to 10 over you. They’ll generally stop it when they do that.’

“I’ve been in boxing 50 years and I never saw a better left hook than that one. I shouldn’t say better, it was perfect. It was a perfect shot that hit him perfectly. And the thing was, Gene was doing well. He was ahead on all the cards.”

Many students of boxing call the punch one of the greatest in the history of the sport. It’s ranked with the right hand that Rocky Marciano, behind in scoring, used to take the heavyweight title from Jersey Joe Walcott in 1952. Or the right that Max Schmeling caught young, unbeaten Joe Louis with in a huge 1936 upset.

Thirty years ago today, Fullmer was a 25-year-old block of granite. Robinson was 36, and the left hook earned him the middleweight championship for a record fourth time.

Today, Fullmer, at 55, is a heavyweight, with the same jutting, fearsome brow you may remember from the 1950s. He still lives in West Jordan, Utah, as does Jenson. He retired years ago from the mink ranching business and now works as assistant director for Utah’s Parks and Recreation Department.

He’s also a bank director, has invested money in Salt Lake City area real estate and hunts elk in Colorado.

And every night, he’s in the gym, training Wright, his 6-foot 4-inch, 230-pound heavyweight prospect.

For Robinson, 66, the story is a sad one. Afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, his health is fragile. Recently hospitalized, he’s under doctor’s orders for 30 days of “complete rest.” Robinson and his wife, Millie, live in Los Angeles.

The fighters grow old. But the left hook is a legend, and will endure.

Martin Kane, the scholarly 1950s boxing writer for Sports Illustrated, wrote that night: “(Robinson’s) place in history is high and secure and so is the place of that perfect punch, a blood-red streak in the night, that won him all the glory one fighter needs.”