Shortly before three in the morning, the sound of military music came over German radio. Then Hellmis’s first words from New York crackled through. “Hallo Berlin…. Hallo Deutschland…. Hallo Deutschland. Hier ist das Yankee Stadium in New York,” he began. “The moment has finally come,” he went on. “This isn’t a stadium anymore…. This is an overflowing, feverish melting pot full of passions let loose, and if one should throw a match I am sure the whole stadium with all its people will be blown up into the air with one single explosion…. A fever rages in the veins of all these people.” In fact, the fans had quickly tired of the preliminaries, and were shouting for the main event. Once Al Bray and Abe Simon finished poking each other in the ring, the crowd roared with delight and rose to stretch, as if readying itself for the serious business at hand. Two boys selling sodas spotted a pair of empty seats at ringside and abandoned all thoughts of work.
Before most bouts, Louis shadowboxed for five or ten minutes in his dressing room; this time he did so for forty minutes, hoping to enter the ring revved up. Blackburn put a terry-cloth robe on him, then on top of that the familiar one of blue and red silk, with “Joe Louis” stitched on the back, so that Louis would retain as much of that heat as possible. Roxbor-ough, who smoked and chewed his way through numerous cigars during most fights, had come well stocked tonight. “You’ll need only one,” Louis assured him, “and you won’t have time to light it well. That Schmeling is going to think he’s in there with a tiger tonight.” Mike Jacobs stopped by Louis’s dressing room; reports of what he said there differ. In one version, he recounted a promise he’d made to the anti-Nazi protesters: that they’d be pleased with the outcome. “Don’t make a sucker out of me,” he then told Louis. “Give this guy the beating of his life—but quick.” In another version, he called Schmeling “a Nazi son-of-a-bitch” and added, “Murder that bum and don’t make an asshole out of me.”
Louis made his way to the ring, “prancing and dancing as a Man O’ War at the bit.” He was the first to enter, at two minutes to ten, preceded by handlers in white sweaters, encircled by bodyguards and policemen. His reception was rather tame, perhaps because so many of his fans were so remote. “Did you hear the applause when the world champion appeared?” Hellmis gloated. Louis sequestered himself in his corner, the closest to third base, flexing his arms, rubbing his feet into the resin. With him, as usual, were Blackburn, Roxborough, and Black; joining them were Henry Armstrong’s manager, Eddie Mead, along with trainers Larry Amadee and Manny Seamon. To Hellmis, Mead’s presence showed how insecure Louis felt. But two years earlier, Louis had entered the ring languidly, nonchalantly, indifferently. Now, drenched from his exercising, he radiated a tense, febrile energy.
Then it was Schmeling’s turn. Years later, he compared his walk through Yankee Stadium’s infield that night—out of the dugout, down the baseline toward home plate, then straight over the pitcher’s mound toward the ring—to running a gantlet; though twenty-five policemen escorted him, he wrote, he was pelted by cigarette butts, ashtrays, banana peels, and paper cups, and pulled a towel over his head for protection. All of this weighed heavily on him once he got into the ring, he was to claim, and upset his concentration. But in fact Schmeling would have had to walk through only the most expensive seats; anyone inclined to heave something would have been too far away. Certainly no reporter present that night saw anything of the kind, nor any such hostility when he stepped into the ring. “No challenger in memory of the oldest scribes was ever given such a welcome,” one veteran fight writer reported. “Everyone is shouting and applauding,” Hellmis declared. They were, one Berlin newspaper explained, the cheers of every white in the stadium. Schmeling looked positively cheerful when he climbed between the ropes; Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post described him as “the picture of suavity, condescension and confidence” as he acknowledged the ovation. He bowed gallantly to the four corners of the crowd, then went over to Louis, whose back was toward him, nearly hitting the hanging microphone along the way. He tapped him on the shoulder playfully, then tapped him again. Louis finally turned—“expressionless, unmoved,” Hellmis told the radio audience—and briefly shook Schmeling’s outstretched hand, before quickly turning back away. “Max sits in his corner, unusually serious and composed after he first greeted the masses with his smile,” Hellmis observed. Schmeling stared ahead, he said, “darkly, decidedly, energetically.”
Harry Balogh took his place in the center of the ring and began his introductions. He called for Tony Galento, then Sharkey, then Dempsey, then Braddock and Tunney and Tommy Farr. And then, “last but far from least,” the man who was to meet the winner, Max Baer. Baer received loud cheers, Bronx and otherwise. “Do you hear the booing?” Hellmis asked his listeners. “The public does not want him.”* Though both Jack Johnson and John Henry Lewis, the light-heavyweight champion, who was black, were at ringside, neither was introduced; again, only the black press seemed to notice. Louis danced, flexed his arms, punched the Bronx night. Normally, his face was round, soft, babyish, emotionless. But now, it seemed older and more taut—taut with rage.
Representatives of the opposing camps—Blackburn for Louis, Doc Casey for Schmeling—looked on as the gloves were placed on the two fighters. This allowed Hellmis to remind his listeners how Louis had pressed unsuccessfully for gloves with larger thumbs, the better to gouge out Schmeling’s eyes. Hellmis explained that Schmeling’s American manager—unnamed, as usual—had been disqualified; Jacobs had been placed in a front-row seat behind a neutral corner, presumably to keep him out of kibitzing range. The bell rang twice, and Balogh announced the ring officials, including, once more as referee, Arthur Donovan. Then, in his portentous, stentorian bellow, as if he did not fully trust the microphone, sprinkling ellipses liberally between his hyperenunciated words, he got to the principals. “This is the featured attraction, fifteen rounds, for the world’s heavyweight championship,” Balogh began. “Weighing 193, wearing purple trunks, outstanding contender for heavyweight honors, the former heavyweight titleholder, Max … Schmeling.” He got the German pronunciation right: “Mox Schmayling.” The German arose from his stool, gathered his bathrobe, walked forward a few steps, put his gloved right hand over his chest, and bowed in courtly European fashion to two sides of Yankee Stadium. The crowd roared. Predictions that Schmeling would get “the biggest Bronx cheer in the history of the Bronx cheering section” didn’t materialize. Eyewitnesses—white and black, German and American—were struck instead by how warmly he was received. Schmeling smiled at what was clearly an unequaled and, in fact, rather surprising display of American sportsmanship.
The bell sounded two more times, sternly summoning the house back to order. “Weighing 198 and three-quarters, wearing black trunks, the famous Detroit Brown Bomber, world’s heavyweight champion, Joe Louis.” Louis arose, skipped out a few steps, then turned around. There were lots of cheers, but mixed in were some boos—some undoubtedly racial, some just the usual raspberries for the favorite, some from Schmeling boosters, some for Louis’s recent, disappointing performances. The crowd, one embittered black reporter wrote afterward, “saw fit to give Schmeling, a Nazi, a greater hand than it did an American-born world champion.” Balogh then pointed to Donovan, who tugged at his trousers, made his way to the center of the ring, and readied himself for another ring ritual, one that now reverberated throughout the stadium and over the air. Louis, Black, and Blackburn huddled around him on one side, Schmeling, Machon, and Casey on the other. As they assembled, Thor-gersen handed the microphone to McCarthy, who, unlike Hellmis, had no time for pleasantries, or even a greeting. “Aaaaaaaaand, boxing fans, Arthur Donovan has the two principals in the ring,” he growled. “I want you to listen to their instructions. Arthur Donovan speaking to the two fighters, with their seconds surrounding them.”
“Now how do you men feel? All right? Fine,” Donovan said quickly, mechanistically, without waiting for any response. “Now I want to impress upon you men now, of the terrific respon
sibility that you have in this ring tonight.” He talked about how the fans in the stadium, plus the untold multitudes sitting by their radios, expected one of the greatest fights ever. “Now let us not disappoint them,” he said. He warned them about low blows, then turned to the seconds. “Now at no time now in this contest do I want anybody in this ring, outside of the minute rest,” he said, pointing his finger for emphasis. “The first man that even sticks his head through those ropes, something drastic is going to happen.” Schmeling looked directly at Louis; Louis did not look back. Blackburn removed Louis’s blue robe, only to reveal the white robe underneath. Hellmis thought it a fashion statement rather than a reflection on Louis’s state of readiness. “Oh, how pompously Joe Louis is dressed up,” he told his audience. “First a white woolen dressing gown and over it a blue-silken robe.” “Now, let’s go,” Donovan concluded, “and may the best man win.”
“The old slogan of boxing, ‘May the best man win,’ and she’s about to start, with this Yankee Stadium packed to the doors! There isn’t an empty seat!” McCarthy croaked, even though it wasn’t quite true. As the ring microphone was elevated and the two men retreated to their corners, a reporter near ringside heard a contented sigh. It came from Mike Jacobs, who was, for the moment at least, at rest. The skies had cleared, his house was nearly full, his two fighters were healthy and at hand. His show could now get under way, and the tensions that had, as one British reporter said, “wrinkled his forehead like a washboard” could begin to flow out of him. For a few seconds, the only noises came from the crowd. “Unchain them!” someone shouted. “Kill that Nazi, Joe! Kill him!” another voice rang out. In the distant seats, fans struggled simply to see. “It seemed that each man and woman was straining forward to peer at a colorful puppet show,” Richard Wright later wrote. Louis continued to dance about. He “had the look of a murderer in his eye,” one eyewitness later recalled. “He didn’t lick his lips or do anything.” To Ernest Hemingway, Louis seemed “nervous and jumpy as a doped race horse.” “They’ve got that guy hopped up,” someone remarked. Schmeling stood still, taking last-minute instructions from Machon. Hellmis reminded his listeners that Louis expected to win in two rounds. But to Schmeling that was just talk, he explained; after the beating he’d taken the last time, surely Louis would be careful, get a sense of things, wait a few rounds before trying anything drastic. “They’re ready with the bell just about to ring,” McCarthy said. And ring it did, at precisely the moment McCarthy uttered the word, at 10:08 p.m. To the radio audience, it sounded loud and clear and true; to the boxers themselves, it was still not quite right. “And there we are,” McCarthy declared. “The gong!” said Hellmis. “The fight for the world heavyweight championship is on.”
For one brief, immeasurable interval nothing happened, except an ineffable surge of mass anticipation. Baseball had its innings; football, hockey, soccer, and basketball their clocks. All of them had teams, and all lasted a couple of hours, come what may. Here, two men were about to square off, in something that could end at any moment. There was no sitting back. “This is the million-dollar thrill of sports,” one reporter explained. “This is a second pregnant with drama and suspense, and no matter how often it occurs you never forget the strange shivers that sweep over you. This is The Big Fight.” And after two years of anticipation, this was the biggest big fight of them all.
Throughout the stadium, people leaned forward. “One hundred and sixty thousand knees became uncontrollable,” one man wrote. To one apprehensive Louis fan, Schmeling suddenly looked too fierce and powerful for anyone to handle by himself, and the man felt like jumping out of his seat, springing into the ring, and lending his hero a hand. As the action was about to begin, wrote a reporter for the Philadelphia Tribune, “a silence, like the calm of Heaven, prevailed over Harlem.” And not only there, but all over America, and especially black America. “Fourteen million brown men, women and children cussed and prayed in 14 million ways for Joe to come through,” wrote Frank Marshall Davis. “Probably never before in American history were so many black voices silent.”
Schmeling walked out of his corner matter-of-factly, like a businessman going to an appointment. Louis, who normally came out slowly, shuffling, feinting, jabbing, all but bounded out now, as if eager to complete something he relished, meeting Schmeling three-quarters of the way across the ring. The two had feinted for only seven seconds before Louis hit, and hurt, Schmeling with a left jab, then threw two more that snapped the German’s head back. Then came a left hook to the body. The two then fell into a clinch. Already, Donovan could see that Louis was keeping up his left after jabbing; he seemed to have learned the only thing he had still needed to know. Louis’s chastened fans assumed nothing. “Look out, Joe!” they shouted. “Watch out, Joe!”
Barely twenty seconds had passed—Machon was not even fully down the steps—when there came a deafening roar. In a flash, Louis had Schmeling against the ropes, connecting with a series of devastating blows to the head and body, so fast that the human eye, let alone the voice, could not keep up. “And Louis hooks a left to Max’s head quickly!” McCarthy exclaimed. “And shoots over a hard right to Max’s head! Louis, a left to Max’s jaw! A right to his head! Louis with the old one-two! The first the left and then the right! He’s landed more blows in this one round than he landed in any five rounds of the other fight!” Donovan had never seen anything like it: after that first left to the head, Schmeling’s face seemed to swell out of proportion and turn a faint bluish green. Then came the first right. It was so hard that Schmeling’s head seemed to spin, then “bobbed up and down like a Halloween apple in a tub.” The contest was not yet thirty seconds old.
Hellmis had to admit it: Louis had started quickly, and Schmeling had all he could handle just covering himself. But he emphasized the positive: Schmeling had neutralized Louis by clinching, then breaking loose with splendid footwork. And he had gotten in a punch to the jaw through Louis’s lowered guard, but Louis had been backing away when it landed. Some Germans stood up and applauded the punch. So, too, did some white Americans. “These folks at once sensed another victory—not for the Germans but for the white race,” a black reporter noted bitterly. Louis hesitated, but only for a second. Had he remained traumatized by the last fight, were the “Indian sign” still on him, even that single palsied punch might have triggered something. Instead, he stepped forward relentlessly, and kept at the German. It was just as Blackburn always said: if you get hit, hit the other fellow before he can hit you again.
Schmeling’s face was already marked when, nearly a minute into the fight, Louis chased him back toward the ropes once more. They fell into another clinch. Coming out of it, Louis hit Schmeling again. Then he hit the German with two more straight lefts to the face and a right to the temple before they clinched once more. Louis stalked Schmeling, searching for an opening. Back to the ropes, he missed a roundhouse left. Then he delivered a right uppercut, a left, and a devastating right to Schmeling’s suddenly defenseless face. Schmeling staggered backward. As he twisted along the ropes to avoid the blows to the head, Louis, his gloves a brownish blur, landed a series of body punches—to the side, to the stomach, and then to the left kidney. “The Negro swung, hooked, swung and hooked at him as though he were the big bag,” Hemingway wrote. Even in the press box, where partisan cheering was forbidden, there were cries of excitement, astonishment, horror. Schmeling grimaced, letting out a high-pitched cry that echoed throughout the stadium. Some heard “Oh! Oh!” To others, it was “Genug! Genug!”—Enough! Enough! “I thought in my mind, ‘How’s that, Mr. Super-race?’” Louis later said. “I was glad he was hurt. That’s what I wanted.” Many, Louis among them, thought the scream had come not from Schmeling but from a woman at ringside.“Did you hear that?” Hype Igoe of the Journal-American asked the man at his side. “Did I hear it?” he replied. “I felt the punch!” So terrifying was the sound—“half human, half animal”—that some fans reached instinctively for their hats, as if Louis was ab
out to come for them, too. Donovan had never heard anything like it, and it frightened even him. But to others it was welcome indeed. “Sweetest music I ever heard in my life,” Blackburn said afterward. “Sounded like a stuck pig.”
Immobilized by the body blow, Schmeling then absorbed five colossal punches to his face. Framing his target with his left glove, Louis concluded the fusillade with two mighty rights. Schmeling sank, his knees collapsing halfway to the canvas. “Schmeling is going down!” McCarthy shrieked. “But he’s held to his feet, held to the ropes, looked to his corner in helplessness!” A minute and a half had passed. “Hitler’s wilted pet looked like a soft piece of molasses candy left out in the sun,” Richard Wright wrote. “He drooped over the ropes, his eyes glassy, his chin nestling in a strand of rope, his face blank and senseless and his widely-heralded powerful right arm hanging ironically useless.” Hellmis, meanwhile, sounded “like a spinning wheel.” Never had he had to describe Schmeling in trouble, and he wasn’t sure what to do; it was, a Jewish listener in Warsaw wrote, as if Hellmis himself was absorbing Louis’s blows. He, too, had lost his bearings, and he now devoted himself more to rescuing his beloved Maxe than to describing what had befallen him, lapsing into importuning incoherence. “Max is backed up against the ropes … to the right, Max…. Now Louis throws another one, misses … moves to the side…. Bang! Maxe! Go back! Um Himmels willen! [For heaven’s sake!], Maxe! Maxe! Joe Louis! Stop him! Hold on, Maxe! Hold yourself! The rope! Max Schmeling stands at the rope, holds himself. Max is on his knee. Gets up again, stands…” Hellmis’s cries, a listener in Prague wrote, were “like the shrieking of a mother watching her son die.” It was, as the 12 Uhr-Blatt of Berlin wrote afterward, the sound of utter despair, of shock. It was an SOS. Hellmis was making the unimaginable unintelligible; Germans simply could not fathom what they were hearing. “Unmöglich!” they cried. “Impossible!”
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