Muhammad Ali, said the man who knew and knows him as well as anybody - longtime handler Angelo Dundee - loved birthday parties, Christmas parties, any kind of celebration.

‘’I guarantee you if he went to a party today — Ali’s 65th, if you can believe that flight of time — the first thing he would do is stick a forefinger in the center of his birthday cake, pull the finger out, put it in his mouth and love the icing, making one of those faces Muhammad could make,’’ said Dundee from his Miami home. He and wife, Helen, have one here in Tampa Bay, too, up near where daughter Terri Coughlin lives.  Son, Dr. Jimmy, lives across the bridge in Pinellas and has offices in Belleair.

‘’Muhammad was a clown, you know that,’’ Dundee went on. ‘’He loved to win so we could all celebrate and he could be the center of attention there, too.’’ Dundee, an old friend, as was his late brother, Chris, asked if I remembered meeting the man who may have been the world’s greatest athlete ever, the first. I did, but he remembered it better.

‘’We had been out west (where Ali lives, now, in Arizona) and had a stop at the old Tampa Airport on the way to Miami. We had a little time and I called you and you came out to the terminal.’’

I did. I saw Angelo. He said Cassius Clay, his name then, was walking around, generally unrecognized. Then the impressive young man came up and smiled through the introduction. I notice his fly was down, but I sure didn’t say anything, until he was gone.

Then, I asked Angelo about it. He said, ‘’yes, I saw it. He knows it.’’

We visited for a piece to be written in my newspaper, The Tampa Tribune. Did not mention the fly.

Not much later, Ali met Sonny Liston in Miami Beach and beat him. Bill MacDonald, of Miami, who owned the old Tampa Tarpons, was co-promoter, with New York travel czar, Bill Fugazy.  Naturally, I had good media third-row seats near Ali’s corner in the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Now, hear this from Dundee:

‘’I think that was to Ali what the win was over Ohio State by the Gators, for the national championship — you know what a Gator fan my son Jimmy is — his best. I think it was a perfect Ali fight. I think it was his best fight ever. You saw it.’’

Yes, and it was.  Liston failed to answer the bell in the seventh and Ali won the championship in February 1964.  Liston had won the heavyweight title from Floyd Patterson the year before.

‘’I watched the Gators closely. Always to all sports,’’ said Dundee. ‘’Now this great match up between Ali and Liston. Yes, I was with Ali, Clay then, but it was his finest hour, like Florida at Phoenix for the title. I like the comparison,’’ said Dundee, who will always have an opinion on a sports event and he will tell you what it is.

Like us all, we are dismayed, frustrated and regretful that the great athlete, Ali, so disliked by so many of us for some time, has the problems he does these days — Parkinson’s and spinal maladies. He is not likely to get any better. No, I know of no one who wishes him ill for his philosophical and unpatriotic stands (I thought), when he refused to be included in the draft. He was convicted, served time and fought again. My opinion at the time was he was insincere and a dodger. No more. He did what he did. And he was no better for it.

Frankly, I hope someone gave him a birthday cake today and that he got a chance to stick a finger in it, like Angelo said he surely would do.

‘’The experience of a lifetime, being with him through his good and bad times — in New York, in Zaire, in Manila, in Miami, hey, in Tampa,’’ said Dundee.