Did you every find yourself standing helplessly looking at a horrible tragedy in the making -- like a mother holding a baby by the window of a burning building ten stories up --- and you could do nothing to help them?

Well, unless you have a banker's heart, you have to feel this way about former heavyweight contender, Tommy Morrison. His life story reads like a Stephen King manuscript. Mao Tse-tung's diary. Talk about bad breaks, in comparison, Christopher Reeves won "Wheel of Fortune." The Dalton Gang's Coffeeville massacre was an Our Gang comedy with happy memories. This guy belongs in a soap opera not a sport.

Tommy, you will remember, combined a pretty fair career of 46-3-1 with 40 KOs before Dame Fate got through shuffling the cards. Okay, so his list of wins included a marquee of rejects from Bum's Row. Human dynamos who got short-circuited along the way. The Over the Hill Gang; dialing long distance wore them out. I'm talking about Carl Williams (KO 8 rds); Pinklon Thomas ( KO 1 rd); James "Quick" Tillis ( KO 1 rd.). Yeah, he decisioned George Foreman in 12 rounds to win the fringe WBO heavyweight championship. But by that time Big George's get-up-and-go had got-up-and-went.

There was a time when Tommy was considered "The Great White Hope"---- a title previously bestowed on Jerry Quarry, Jerry Cooney, and John Dillinger. This was when he was dispatching opponents with the ferocious proficiency of a contract killer.

When he landed one on your chin you were done for. If you landed one on his chin, he was done for. The public was fascinated by him. Probably because he was a brawler in the sense that Rocky Marciano and Jack Dempsey were. He entered the ring with the cruel, merciless eyes of a dictator. He had no interest in his opponent whatsoever. The other guy was merely a statistic, not an opponent. The fighter of whom the great Lou Duva once said, "He can't dance, he has no defense. All he does is bomb you out or get bombed out."

Da Vinci would have wanted to paint him. He would hang in the Boxing Hall of Fame if it was known in Da Vinci's lifetime. All that changed when Ray Mercer knocked him silly in five rounds. But what a fight. Explosive. Heinrich Muller would have loved it. Talk about a cliffhanger, this fight was made for serial treatment. John Carroll returns to the screen in Zorro Rides Again. A throwback to Republic studio-created pyrotechnics of cars exploding and planes plunging to thunderous conflagrations. Talk about action -- serial scriptwriters were bumbling incompetents in comparison.

After his paper chin was exposed Tommy's bright star went out. It was the worst thing that happened since Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's one-season home run record. Treachery. Tommy was no longer the flower of the white community. He was poison ivy. Ming the Merciless received more cheers from Saturday Matinee Kids.

The only way he would make piles of money now was to become a bank teller. His friends urged him to take a rest and find himself. He did -- and he was disillusioned.

It was even more depressing when a stumblebum named Michael Bentt sabotaged Tommy on his way to a title fight with Lennox Lewis. A one-round knockout? Give me a break. Shame on you Tommy. I mean, Bentt was in the mold of Bonecrusher Smith. Or Lou Saverese. Marvis Frazier could have gone the distance with him. Maybe. The writing was on the wall. The only way Tommy would get up in the world after this disgrace was in an airplane.

For those inclined to turn against Tommy, here was one more excuse for doing so. You wanted to say, "Tommy, Tommmmmy. Change your name to Cliff you big bluff. Hang the gloves up! Leave the game to guys like Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, George Foreman --- guys with chins of granite. Open up a fruit market. A hat-check concession in a nudist colony. Sell fans to Eskimos. But Tommy refused to set a date for terminating his career.

Promoters wanted to pay him for what he was worth, but he wouldn't work that cheap. As it happened, the end was both unforeseeable and disturbingly abrupt. It left an uncomfortable vacuum in the world of Fistana, as if, say, baseball season had been instantly canceled. Another Great White Hope vanished from our lives, and we felt the dim depression of soap opera addicts whose favorite program had been canceled. Lennox Lewis bombed him out in six. We expected the Mardi Gras and got a funeral. It was a melancholy affair for Morrison's followers. As if the team's Little League star pitcher had been confined to his room. It was the end for Tommy. He would drift off and dissipate like steam above a pot of Irish Stew.

Fighters like Tommy Morrison belong to the legion of the damned. It's depressing. Like entering Dracula's castle with a nosebleed. His life reads like Tom Neal's dossier. Look at him now. He comes across as a combination of the prisoner of Shark Island, Joan of Arc and Nicole Simpson. Victims of injustice. Not long ago Tommy "The Duke" Morrison was No. 1. Now he is No. 610788 at the Southwest Arkansas Community Punishment Center. On December 21, 1999 an Arkansas judge refused to grant him bail after he was arrested in September for flashing a police officer a fake ID upon being stopped on a minor traffic violation in Fayetteville. That's not all - he had a concealed weapon, cocaine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia and a fake passport.

Here is a guy whose face is known nationally on TV and magazine covers and he tries to conceal his identify. It was like trying to hide a Rolls-Royce in Ford's parking lot. It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to figure out that Tommy is on a collusion course with Destiny. Everyone sympathizes. He was good. Exciting. No dull ticket. A throwback to Mike Weaver. If you didn't knock him out he knocked you out. The public cottons to sluggers like Morrison. Ernie Shavers. Mike Tyson. It's a sad fact of life, sport heroes can commit rape or murder and their image is no more tainted than it ever was. It's a sin equal to the Dream Team who, in their endless search for technical loopholes discredited the Los Angeles police, thereby disallowing the evidence.

This was the 2nd time Tommy faced similar charges. He was arrested for carrying both a gun and illegal drugs shortly before this incident. This time the judge looked into Morrison's glassy eyes, gave him a standing 8 count, waved both arms, and ordered him to undergo a mental competence hearing to determine whether he was competent for trial. Out on bail, he was again arrested on Thanksgiving Day after he was a passenger in a car crash in Madision County. He was booked for possession of marijuana, public intoxication, criminal impersonation and carrying a concealed weapon. He also had a fake driver's license and a application for identification and application for a passport, which indicated he was planning to fly the coop.

Circuit Judge William Storey withdrew Tommy's bond. According to his record, he received a two-year suspended sentence for drunken driving in his home state of Oklahoma after being found guilty. In 1977, an Oklahoma jury convicted Tommy of driving under the influence and other charges related to a chain-reaction traffic accident that injured three people. He was arrested for drunk driving and speeding in Kansas but avoided jail time. To understand the plight of Tommy Morrison let's rewind the tape.

His childhood perfectly fitted Chandler's famous dictum: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." The former Oklahoman was abused by his father and used as an enforcer in a crime cartel. Today, in prison, he brags about his sexual encounters with an "astronomical number" of women. Errol Flynn would envy him. Charlie Sheen. Maybe Wilt Chamberlin. "Sex became a part of my conditioning program," he says. "I'm serious. It was just all the time...three different women a day for seven or eight straight days."

Morrison denies that he contacted HIV by having sex with so many women. He blames his condition on steroid injections. "I didn't get it sexually," he insists. "HIV is just a dead piece of skin, that's all it is. Every time you pierce yourself with a needle, you are putting the microbes in your body, these little pieces of dry skin. That's exactly how I got it." Several doctors say Tommy is lying like an affidavit. They claim got HIV through sex with a hundred women. A good a way to go as any, I suppose. Morrison says his first sexual encounter was with a 17-year-old babysitter when he was 13. This was shortly before he dropped out of school for a year in Jay, Oklahoma and went to live with his father, who had abandoned his mother. He got into tough-man contests, became an odd-jobber and a headbanger collecting money for an Irish-gangster group. "You say, 'Here's the deal, you owe this much money and what do you plan on doing?" At home his father beat him with a lamp, chair, belt or anything he could find. The Morrison family moved their tiny trailer from Arkansas to Oklahoma, camping in small towns or at the side of the road. Three kids shared one bedroom. Tommy, "the sneaky one," left home and hopped a freight to Kansas City, Mo.

Tommy quickly discovered only a baker can make dough and loaf, so he became a fighter. Tommy has been everywhere with a woman - except to the alter. He has two sons, now 12, by different women. His older brother is in the Missouri State Penitentiary for rape. They say he'll need a walker before he gets out. In retrospect. Tommy abandoned a football scholarship at Emporia State University in Kansas to become a professional fighter. Within three years he got his first shot at a brummagem world title against Mercer. In losing, he gained some valuable advice from Foreman. Big George told him to run an hour at a time to build up his endurance. "Little did I know down the road I would end up fighting him, and the advice he gave me is what got his ass beat," said Morrison.

Now in prison, Morrison has set his goal on selling his life story as a book or a movie. In fact, he wants to play himself in the movie. He reminds people he was cast as a boxer trained by Sly Stallone in "Rocky V." Tommy has more pipe dreams than an organist; he would probably make more money pinning badges on frankfurters and selling them as police dogs. Morrison is upset that prison officials have refused to furnish his room with a television, tape recorder and laptop computer. They turned down his offer to buy a $6,000 weightlifting mechanism for everyone to use. Claiming he is innocent, Tommy says he agreed to plead guilty only because his mouthpiece led him to believe he could wear his own cloths in prison. They lied. He's wearing a corn yellow uniform while picking up trash and cutting weeds. "I didn't do anything wrong," says the man charged with weapons and driving offenses. "I'm guilty by association more or less, but I'm pretty bitter about the whole thing." He received a 10-year-sentence with eight years suspended. With credit for good behavior, he could be released as soon as December. He's hoping for one more comeback. "When you get to a place like this, there's no place to go but up," says Tommy.

Everyone is rooting for you to get ahead Tommy. They don't like the one you have.

A Bit About Bill Kelly