The True Rookie Card of Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali???

[Writehooks]

Intriguing question ... and you make good arguments. For my money, the true Clay/Ali rookie is the b&w photo card (3.25" x 8") that was mailed out to fans who wrote to him when he turned pro with the Louisville Sponsorship Group after the 1960 Rome Olympics. Hank Kaplan was brought on board as Clay's publicist, and when young Cassius moved to Miami in the fall of 1960, Kaplan was put in charge of answering fan mail.

I was fortunate to have corresponded with Kaplan periodically until his death a few years ago. As he explained in the letter that came with the card he sent to me in 1996: "Regarding the photo of young Cassius Clay, I posed him for the photo. It was a few days after he arrived in Miami for the first time. It was also on my typewriter that I typed in his name. We took 3 shots of him and printed up 100 for his fans. This is one of the originals. It was probably in December of 1960. It was before his first fight here, at any rate."

Kaplan remained part of Ali's team for the next two decades, and later served as treasurer and boxing consultant for Ali's "Champions for Life, Inc."