Once They Heard the Cheers

by Wilfred Charles Heinz

  After the weigh-in, we drove up to the Shelton Hotel on Lexington Avenue and Whitey and Billy checked into a room there. Then we went into the dining room, and while Billy was having his breakfast, his mother came in. She was a small woman—four feet ten—with wide blue eyes, and Billy got up and kissed her and she sat down. She didn't say much, just sitting there and watching Billy until he finished and got up to go upstairs and rest.

  "Good luck, chicken," she said when he bent down to kiss her again, and then she turned to Whitey and said, "I hate to think of it. I don't even watch on TV."

  "Don't worry about it, Mom," Billy said. "There's nothing to worry about."

  At three o'clock we walked to the Scribes Restaurant where Billy knew the bartender and where he had the meal on which he would fight, the steak and green vegetables and tea. After he had finished, and the bartender and the waiter had wished him luck, we stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  "I got to get over to the Garden sometime," Whitey Bimstein said. "I got to pick up some tickets."

  "Go now," I said. "I'll walk with Billy."

  We walked back toward the hotel, the afternoon air gray and damp and laden with traffic exhaust fumes, and then up fourteen blocks and across one block and then back. Along the way they kept popping out of the crowd to wish him luck, and at one place one of them came out of a bar to drag him in to meet a couple of others.

  "It's television," Billy said when he came out. "The last couple of years everybody recognizes you."

  "Excuse me," another said, facing us on the sidwalk. "I've been thinking of you for three months."

  He was short and slim, in a camel's hair coat and wearing a gray fedora. He had a small blond mustache with the ends neatly pulled to points.

  "I was gonna write you," he said. "When you throw the right hand, step in with the right foot. You gotta do that. You see, I used to fight. I fought Young Corbett, Frankie Neil. I fought champions. I was no good, but I had Young Corbett on the deck."

  "Is that right?" Billy said.

  "Sure," he said, "and like I said, when you throw the right, step in with it. I'd have written you, but you might never have read it. All right?"

  "All right," Billy said, nodding. "And thanks."

  "And good luck," the other said.

  "Of course we know he's right," I said, as we walked on.

  "Sure," Billy said, "but when you've been doing it the other way for all these years and it's not your style, it's not gonna work, so forget it."

  I know, I was thinking. We start out as initiators and adapters of other's styles, and then we become imitators and prisoners of our own.

  In the dressing room he was as he had been throughout the three weeks and at the weigh-in. Irving Cohen and Jack Reilly, who managed him, came in, and as he sat there in his ring trunks and his robe on the bench against the wall and listening, Jack Reilly lectured him.

  "There are three things you've got to remember," Jack Reilly was telling him while Irving Cohen stood there nodding. "On the break you have to get off fast, because he likes to sneak you there. Second, he's gonna look to throw the right over your jab, so after you jab you've got to weave. Third, you must go to his body, and slow him down. He don't like it in the body. Will you remember that?"

  "Sure," Billy said. "Don't worry, Jack."

  That was the way he fought the fight. Giardello came out as they had known he would. He dropped the right over Billy's jab and when he tried it again, Billy tried to weave under it and his nose banged against Giardello's head. When he came up, there was a cut across the bridge with the blood smearing his nose and his cheeks, and a shout went up.

  Blood always looks bad to the crowd, and when Billy lost the first two rounds they probably thought he was in for it. In the corner, Whitey Bimstein did a good job closing the cut, and from the third round on Billy started to be the boss. Giardello made a fight of it though, and when he won the tenth round it was still close.

  "Now forget the first ten rounds," Irving Cohen was saying in the corner. "You must win these next two."

  "Sure, Irving," Billy said again, looking up at him. "Don't worry about it."

  He turned it on in the last two. Giardello was swinging instead of punching now, his arms pulling his body after them, while Billy, still on a straight line, kept moving inside the swings to punch to the body and then rock the head back with hooks and straight right hands. Now he could do the things they had worked on in camp because the pace and the distance were too much for Giardello, still young then and just in there now on heart.

  "And the winner by unanimous decision," Johnny Addie, the announcer, said, "Billy Graham!"

  Back in the dressing room, Dr. Vincent Nardiello, the Commission physician, put five stitches across the nose. Billy just lay down on the rubbing table with a couple of towels under his head, and the doctor trimmed the edges of the cut and put in the thread, and Billy never moved.

  "You don't need an anesthetic," he was explaining to them later. "You're still worked up from the fight, and you don't even feel it. You didn't see me move, did you? I'd move if it hurt."

  It was an hour after the fight, and he was standing on the sidewalk outside his father's bar. The crowd had overflowed into the street, and they were shaking his hand and slapping him on the back when his wife came out. He threw his arms around her and kissed her, and together they walked into the crowded, smoky bar and into the cheers.

  "These," his brother Robbie said to me, "are his fans. These are the guys who bought the tickets for the four-rounders and the six-rounders and the eight rounds at the Broadway and the Ridge-wood and the St. Nick's, and they've been with him ever since. These are the most important guys in the world."

  He retired two years later, after 126 fights, of which he won 102, with nine draws and fifteen losses by decision. In non-title fights he had out-pointed, at one time or another, three who went on to become champions—Gavilan, Giardello, and Carmen Ba-silio—and I would see him occasionally at fights in the Garden. I knew he was a sales representative for a national distiller, and that he and his wife and their now four children lived on Long Island. I hadn't seen him or talked with him, though, for a dozen years when I called him on the phone one January night.

  "You live up there?" he said. "We're coming up that way in February, to go skiing with Douglas. He's sixteen, and our youngest."

  "You ski?" I said.

  "Not much," he said. "I kind of fool around with it, but Lorraine and I go along with Douglas. He's crazy about it, and we bought this five-day package at a place called Dostal's. You ever hear of it?"

  "Sure," I said. "It's at Magic Mountain, about forty minutes from. us. I'll tell you what to do. You three come up a day early, and stay overnight with us. You and I can talk about the old days, and then it'll be an easy drive over to Dostal's."

  It was about a month later when they came up. It was just before six o'clock in the evening when he called, as I had suggested the night before on the phone, from a gas station six miles down the road. I told him I would meet him in town, in front of the inn and across from the general store, and I parked there against the banks of snow piled by the town plows.

  When the lights of a car came around the corner, I got out and the car stopped. I opened the door on the passenger's side, and under the overhead light I could recognize him at the wheel. He had on one of those houndstooth Sherlock Holmes hats and a fawn-colored suede jacket, and he was wearing steel-rimmed glasses. Their son Douglas was on the passenger's side and Lorraine was in the back. They had been on the road for more than five hours, and as we shook hands they looked at me with glassy eyes.

  I led them out of town and up the mountain, and that night, during dinner and later in front of the fire, while Douglas watched TV, we adults talked about family things, raising children and the struggle to keep ahead of inflation, about the changes in the New York we used to know, and about getting older. He was fifty-six now, his blond-brown hair grayed and thinning, and with just a little ext
ra weight on his upper body. We did not talk much about boxing and his work now, as I was saving that, and the next morning I led him into my study.

  "This is a nice room here," he said.

  "I guess so," I said. "Each time we've moved, I've set up one of these rooms as I've wanted to. Each time I've thought, 'This is nice. It'll be a good place to work.' In no time at all it becomes just another chamber of horrors."

  "I guess writing's not easy," he said.

  "You can say that again."

  "I guess writing's like fighting," he said. "When you're young and you start out, it's all you want to do. Then it becomes just a job."

  "That's the shame of it," I said, "but a writer's not like a fighter. He's hooked for life. Tell me how you made up your mind to retire."

  "To retire?" he said. "You think it's gonna go on forever. I never thought about it, until I lost a fight to Chris Christensen. One day in Stillman's, Irving Cohen pointed out Christensen. He said, 'What do you think of him?' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'He's the welterweight champion of Denmark.' I said, 'He must be the only welterweight in Denmark.' Irving said, 'I just made him with you for the Eastern Parkway.' I thought, 'Oh, boy. I'll do a number on this guy.'

  "I had had my appendix out two or three months before, and every fighter gets tired around the fourth round, but that's in the head, and your condition gets you through. I had that feeling in the second round. I took the fight too soon, and he beat me.

  "I took some time off, and then I started to train, and we went to the West Coast to fight Raymond Fuentes. To me he was just a rough, tough guy—muscled—and I didn't think he had too much then. I had it in my head that I could walk through him—you know?—and I didn't have to do much work. I guess I got to the point where I didn't want to do too much work, the least possible. I guess it happens to everybody. You get bored. You get disenchanted.

  "Then after the Fuentes fight, which I lost, I was okay money-wise, and I took the rest of the year off. I boxed Chico Vejar in the early part of March in the Garden. I went up to the Long Pond, and every morning Whitey would get me up to go on the road, and he thought I was the kind of guy he didn't have to watch. You know?"

  "I know very well."

  "So I'd go out on the road," he said, "and I'd turn right and go north. I'd go about like four city blocks and down the hill and, where the road turned to the left, I'd go into Pat's place. I'd run in and have a cup of coffee and make a little small talk. Then I'd get a glass of water, and under my peaked cap I'd spray the water with my fingers like I was perspiring, and Whitey would be watching for me when I'd come in."

  "I'm smiling," I said, "and I almost have to laugh. To me you were always the complete pro."

  "Yeah," he said, "and it was stupid. When the bell rings, Whitey leaves me and I'm there."

  "I didn't see the Vejar fight," I said.

  "I felt I could handle anything he could do," he said, "but you're not gonna win the fight because you can't do what you want to do. I hated that roadwork because you do that alone."

  "You used to run with Walter Cartier when I was in camp with you."

  "That's right," he said, "but every fighter runs differently, and Cartier ran like a reindeer, one pace and a long, long way. When. I ran with Marciano, he wanted to run up a mountain. I said, 'Hey, wait a minute. This is not for me.' I liked to run three minutes as fast as I could, then walk a minute like the rest period between rounds, and then three minutes again."

  "How was the fight?"

  "I dropped the decision," he said. "Jimmy Cannon came into the dressing room, and he said, 'What do you think?' I said, 'I guess it wasn't one of my best fights.' He said, 'I mean, what do you think of the decision?' I said, 'I thought maybe a draw would be all right.' And he said, 'I had you winning it by a round, but I gave the decision to Vejar.' I said, 'What's that mean?' He said, 'If Billy Graham can't do any better than that, you'd better quit.'

  "Just before the guys came in, though, Irving had said, 'You've had a long career. When the newspaper men come in, I'll tell them you're going to retire.' I said, 'Let's wait a day or so.' Billy Brown was the matchmaker then, and he came in and said, 'You can have him back one month from tonight in Syracuse.' Irving said, 'I'll let you know.'

  "So a day or two later, I said to Irving, 'Let me fight him again. If I don't beat him, I promise I'll pack it in.' "

  "Did you train any differently?"

  "No," he said. "I figured I had ten rounds under my belt, and I was right back in training again, so I still don't have to do road-work, just long walks. I was all right, but up here in the head I couldn't bring myself to drive like when I was a kid."

  "How was that fight?"

  "It was close. I guess he won it. He was just a little speedier, had a little more hustle. Irving said, 'You said you would.' I said' 'Let's think about it, and see what comes up.' Nothing came up, moneywise. I laid off, and the summer was coming on, and I told Irving, 'Let's call it off.' He said, 'Good, and I'll talk to the press.' They got it in the papers, which was nice."

  "So then?"

  "So then, what do I do now? Do I go to an employment agency and fill out an application? Education? That would be great. Two years in high school, but a non-participant. I was in the Paramount Theater more than in school. I was a big-band buff."

  "Benny Goodman?" I said.

  "Yeah," he said, nodding, "and the Dorseys."

  "Charlie Barnett?"

  "And Glen Gray. Harry James. All of them."

  "So?"

  "I couldn't see doing that, so I used to get dressed every day, just like I was going to work. I'd stop in my father's bar, and then go to the West Side to Toots Shor's. I'd talk to some guys, maybe somebody'd have something. Then I got a call from Frances Hogan at the Garden."

  She was stout and middle-aged and always smiling, and she ran the boxing switchboard. She should have been with the FBI, because on request, and working those plugs in and out of that board, she could find anybody anywhere.

  "Frances told me," he was saying, "that she had a call from a secretary, Miss Lynch. She was secretary to Mr. Ohlandt, vice-president of National Distillers. I called Miss Lynch back. 'When can I come in?' 'Tomorrow.' He was a great fight fan, and we sat and talked and got around to the whiskey business. I told him I had worked the bar and did my father's liquor stock when I was in school. He asked me some brands, and I named some of his and some of Schenley, and some of Seagram's and some of Hiram Walker, and he hired me.

  "The job was that you're a distiller's representative. It's a straight salary, and expense account and a car. They gave me a list of key restaurants and bars, and it's to get better distribution of their brands. Ingratiate yourself. Know the product. You know?"

  "Were you nervous starting out?" I said.

  "The first couple of times," he said, "I was a little apprehensive of asking them, of trying to sell them something they don't have. You try to get as many of your brands as you can on the back bar. The idea was to get one of each category—your Bourbons, your gins, your blends, your scotches."

  "And what are the hours?"

  "In the whisky business, there's no time clock. You can see a guy at eight o'clock in the morning, or nine o'clock at night, stores as well as bars, private clubs, anyone who has a license to sell liquor."

  "And do you have to have a drink at every bar?"

  "If you drink at every place you're in," he said, "you'd get boiled every day, so you have to judge where to have a drink, and where not."

  "Did you ever get loaded?"

  "At the beginning," he said, "you're trying to be a good guy, and you're happy they gave you an order. It's like being a fighter. You have to learn to pace yourself. You can't go all out and throw everything in the first couple of rounds and save nothing for the later rounds. You'd blow your wad in the first couple of bars.

  "I'm not saying I never got high," he said. "That would be ridiculous. But I got to handle it okay. I stayed with National for thirteen years, and then
the president of Calvert Distillers, Arthur Murphy, he and I were acquaintances and we used to make small talk, and he said, 'Let's have lunch.' I was with them for six years, and then I moved over to where I am now at Seagrams."

  "And when you go into these places, do they still remember you as a fighter?"

  "The name like rings a bell," he said. "I was in a bar about a week ago, and there was a change of management. The new guy said, You wouldn't be the fighter, would you?' I said, 'Yes, I am.' It's some time ago now, but one night I was in P. J. Clarke's, and there was this guy at the bar, a super star. Women were getting his autograph, and I figured I'd like to meet him. On the way back from the men's room, I stopped and I said, 'I'd just like to shake hands with a great actor.' He said, 'And what's your name?' When I told him, he said, 'Billy Graham, the fighter? When I was a busted actor, I won $800 on you when you fought Art Aragon.' We talked for hours. It was Richard Boone, and he'd had, I think, about fourteen fights."

  "Billy Graham, the fighter," I said. "Growing up, that's what you wanted to be known as. You wanted to be like Popeye Woods. I remember you telling me that after you'd beaten some other little kid at some club tournament you put tape over your eye before you went to school the next day. You weren't cut, but you wanted to look like a fighter."