"He just did so much in so many different realms of life, that I just thought he was a great character to tell a story around," Bouyea said.Īnd tell it, Bouyea did: Years of research, and months of planning, writing and publishing led to his authorial debut this year, and perhaps a new line of work. Morrissey's boxing fame turned into political clout, in the state senate and Congress, and he used that influence to create a race course, which benefits Saratoga to this day. Which is where his biography's title collides: Bare Knuckles & Saratoga Racing. He had become an undefeated boxing champion. "And then within he next 15 years he he had become a millionaire. "This was a guy who didn't have any education growing up he didn't learn to read and write until he was 19," Bouyea said. However, not until he left the newspaper business did Bouyea realize Morrissey's life would make one heck of a book. That "guy" was John Morrissey and Bouyea would end up penning several newspaper features about him. "At the top of one page, it said the whole thing was founded by a bare-knuckle boxer from Troy, who went on to be a congressman and owned a bunch of casinos, and that's all the information they had on the guy." "I didn't know a lot about racing at the time, so I looked in the NYRA media guide," Bouyea said. "I just thought he was a fascinating character to write about, and it was a story I don't think everybody knew about," Bouyea said.īrien Bouyea certainly did not know, when years ago he visited Saratoga Race Course on assignment, as a sportswriter.
Now years later, he has penned the definitive work on the man who defined Saratoga's beginning. Brien Bouyea was just a budding sportswriter at a local newspaper when he began researching John Morrissey.
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