Cinderella Man

by Marc Cerasini

  Jim struggled to find the right words, then turned and slowly shared them. “I have to believe I have some say over our lives, see? That sometimes, I can change things. If I don’t…It’s like I’m dead already.”

  Mae bit her lip, seeing the stubbornness in her husband’s face. “I need you to be safe…so much.”

  Jim lifted his chin. “Look around, Mae. Nothing’s safe anymore.”

  Mae’s anxiety shrank and her rage rose. Her husband appeared to be brushing off her fears as inconsequentially as snowflakes from his sleeve. In her mind, he was treating her the very same way he had last summer, when she’d stood in this very yard and pleaded with him not to return to the ring. But she wasn’t backing down this time, she told herself. This time was different. This was his life.

  “I stood by until now. For all of it.” Mae’s eyes, damp with tears of fright had turned to stone. “But not for this, Jim. I just can’t.”

  “Mae—”

  “So you train all you want. Make a show of it for yourself, for the newspapers. But you find a way out of this fight, Jim.” Mae’s voice went cold. “Break your hand again, if you have to. But if you set foot out of this door to fight Max Baer, I won’t be behind you anymore.”

  On June 13, 1935, Joe Gould pulled his roadster up to the curb, cut the engine. He stepped onto the sun-washed sidewalk, blinking against the glare. It was early—too early for reporters to show, to ask endless questions and take endless photographs. Too early, even, for the milk man. But it was already uncomfortably hot on the streets of Union City, outside Joe Jeannette’s gym and Gould knew it was bound to get hotter as the day progressed.

  He paused at the gym’s front door to savor what remained of his morning cigar. Though Gould hadn’t crossed the river in three days, he had been working harder than ever. Full time, and then some. All for Jim Braddock.

  While keeping the public happy and hungry, and the fistic press close and at bay at the same time, Gould was also trying to line up contracts to secure Braddock’s future. Not fight contracts, either—these were deals for testimonials, endorsements, appearances, for advertisements and speeches. Lucrative contracts signed in advance and set to pay off in the event that Braddock won the championship title.

  Boxing tradition allowed the heavyweight champ a two-year grace period before he was required to fight another challenger. That unwritten law allowed fighters who battled their way to the top spot an opportunity to make real money, provide for their retirement from the ring. With odds running ten to one against Braddock, Gould wasn’t having an easy time securing the best deals. But he refused to accept anything less.

  “When Jimmy wins the title, you’ll be back,” he’d told anyone with doubts. “And by then the price will have doubled—tripled, even.”

  Gould’s goal was to make sure that at the end of the day, Braddock received one of the biggest paydays of all times. It was the least he could do for the man who would step into the ring with Max Baer that very evening, the man he had pushed to the limits of his physical and mental endurance each and every day for the past six months.

  An example of this intensity had come early on, with the manager’s choice of sparring partners. Though Gould retained Joe Jeannette’s picks—including George Robbins, the quick and wiry welterweight—he also recruited a quartet of sturdy sluggers from across the country. The biggest of the bunch was Paul Pross, a two-hundred-ten-pound German boxer whose father died on the Western Front the day he was born. Not only did Pross outweigh Braddock, he also had a longer reach.

  Norm Barnett was another heavyweight. A former University of Maryland fullback who came in at 205, he ducked and swayed better than most champs, and he punched like a mule kick.

  For stamina, Gould found Jack McCarthy, a beefy Massachusetts Irishman who’d sparred with Jack Sharkey and was still quick on his feet after hours of grueling work. For quickness and hitting power, Gould hired Don Petrin, a speed artist who’d been kicked out of Max Schmeling’s camp for showing up the German in front of the national press.

  “Together they formed the best set of sparring partners to prepare a heavyweight since Dempsey’s days,” wrote Lud, sports reporter for Union City’s Hudson Dispatch. Similarly, in his own column, Sporty Lewis compared the preparations for the Baer versus Braddock bout with the hoopla leading up to the Dempsey–Tunney title fight of 1924.

  Gould thought it an apt observation. Back in 1924, after studying Jack Dempsey’s technique on film, Gene Tunney easily evaded the champ’s rushes to be crowned the new heavyweight champion. It helped that Dempsey was overconfident and out of shape as a result of his playboy lifestyle, and there was a parallel here too. Max Baer had not stopped making outrageous statements to the press about how easily he was going to defeat Jim Braddock. His latest demand—that an ambulance be posted at the Madison Square Garden Bowl to rush Braddock to a local hospital—was only the latest in a long string of contemptuous stunts. To Gould, Baer’s hot air sounded an awful lot like overconfidence, which was something Braddock, like Gene Tunney, could exploit.

  Also in the spirit of the Dempsey vs. Tunney bout, Braddock had made good use of Max Baer’s fight footage provided by Jimmy Johnston. At the start of training, Braddock, Gould, and Joe Jeannette reviewed those films daily for hours at a time, often watching two or three fights in the same sitting.

  “Watch him,” said Jeannette when they viewed the Primo Carnera title fight. “After all this time, Baer’s still a sharpshooter. Dempsey tried to fix him but it didn’t stick. Madcap Maxie still telegraphs every move.”

  Jeannette, as intent as Braddock in going for Baer’s jugular, ran the footage back and forth until the film broke. While Jeannette and Jim talked strategy, Gould—who’d watched Baer’s power punches with mounting dread—secretly concluded that strategy could get Jim Braddock only so far. Probably not far enough.

  After that, sparring became all-out war with both sides taking punishment. By early May, the workouts at Jeannette’s gym had become furious punching bees with six, seven, even eight three-minute-round bouts mounted every afternoon around four o’clock. During these grueling marathons, Gould alternated sparring partners so that Jim faced a fresh fighter every single round.

  The press was surprised to find there was real boxing going on at Joe Jeannette’s gym, and flocked to see more. In the early going, Braddock’s performance did not impress those who witnessed it. Heavyweights Pross and McCarthy connected regularly with right handers—so many that one newspaper reported that Braddock had been “hit fifty times on the lug in eight rounds.” Other sportswriters wondered whether the challenger and his manager had gone complete crazy. Things had become so brutal that Braddock’s training camp became known as Murderers’ Row.

  But if Gould was crazy, there was a method in his madness. Every day Braddock was learning how to withstand right-hand punches, and how to block them too. In the long run, these harsh tactics paid off in spades. By the beginning of June, less than two weeks before the fight, Gould and Jeannette both agreed that Jim Braddock was in the finest shape of his boxing career. Though Jeannette voiced doubts about Jim’s ribs, both agreed that Braddock could easily go a full fifteen rounds.

  That same afternoon, Murray Robinson of the Newark Star Eagle had heard Gould, in a burst of exuberance, crow, “Look at Braddock, will you! He’s going to be in wonderful shape, if he lives!”

  Gould had laughed when he saw his words printed in the paper the next morning—until Lucille reminded her husband that Mae Braddock would be reading them as well.

  The honk of a passing newspaper truck interrupted Gould’s revelry. He sucked on his cold stogie, then tossed it into the street. At the top of the stairs, Gould found George Robbins in the ring, punching air while Braddock sat alone in the corner, face grim, a flak jacket wrapped tightly around his torso.

  Gould frowned and approached Joe Jeannette. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Came in. Warmed up. Hasn’t said two words.”

 
; Gould studied his fighter, unhappy to see the flak jacket. “So, how’s he doing?”

  Jeannette shrugged. “He’s in the best shape of his life. But he’s old, he’s arthritic, and his ribs aren’t right since Lasky.”

  Gould knew about the ribs, fretted about them, too—just like Joe Jeannette. But he also sensed something else was bothering Braddock. Maybe it was money, which was bothering everybody. Or maybe it was personal. Braddock had a wife who wasn’t particularly happy about his choice of profession, and a family he had to clothe and house and feed. Thankfully, Joe Gould could only imagine what that was like.

  Well, whatever the issue, Braddock sure didn’t have time to deal with it now. Not with the title fight just hours away.

  Braddock stood just then, faced his manager. But before they could speak, a bucket boy hurried up to them, spoke into Gould’s ear.

  “The press is here,” said Gould. “Peel that rig off or Baer’ll see you got a rib problem.”

  Jim stripped off the flak jacket and the bucket boy hustled it out of sight. A crowd of jostling men rolled up the steps and burst into the gym. A few began barking questions as soon as they spied the challenger. Gould watched, frowning, as Braddock turned his back on the clamoring mob and climbed into the ring.

  After the morning antics staged for the press had ended, Gould was summoned to Jimmy Johnston’s office for a last-minute powwow concerning what the press called “the referee problem.” The issue started when the New York Boxing Commission named Jack Dempsey as referee for the title fight. Braddock objected—not on personal grounds, as he was a great admirer of the former champ. Jim was upset with the choice because at one time, Dempsey had trained Max Baer, and had owned a piece of the fighter once too.

  Jim and Joe Gould both doubted they would get a fair shake. Gould told the commission that any ref they named was fine with Braddock, so long as his last name wasn’t Dempsey.

  Meanwhile Baer’s manager, Ancil Hoffman, objected strenuously to the commission’s second choice, an experienced ref named Arthur Donovan. Donovan had refereed the Carnera versus Baer fight. Though Baer was declared the winner hands down, both Baer and Ancil thought Donovan shortchanged them with his final score. During the weeks that the dispute had raged in the press and in the commission, neither side had given in. Despite the hastily called meeting with the commission on the very day of the fight, it appeared that Baer and Braddock were going into the title bout without knowing who their referee would be.

  After the press vanished to file their stories and Gould departed for the city, Jim told Jeannette he wanted to spar some more, but Joe refused. “Go home, Jim. Get some rest. You’re gonna get plenty enough sparring tonight.”

  So Jim Braddock went home, unsure of the welcome he would receive. He came through the front door, leaned his rucksack against the wall. The house was empty except for Mae, who stood silently at the kitchen table, the daily newspaper spread flat on its surface.

  Jim smiled a greeting but Mae looked away. Her face was tight, closed. A wall. Her back to him, Mae crossed to the sink, then walked away.

  Alone at the kitchen table, Jim read the headline.

  WORLD CHAMPION FIGHT TONIGHT

  BAER VERSUS BRADDOCK IN

  LONG ISLAND CITY BOWL

  MANY WORRY FOR BRADDOCK’S LIFE

  Jim walked stoically to the bed, began to undress. He lay sleepless and alone as the sun crossed the sky and morning became afternoon.

  At four o’clock a cab arrived and waited on the street, engine idling. Local well-wishers began to gather in front of the tenement house. His kids were out there with them, romping and playing.

  Mae stood at the basement window, her slim form tense, face pale. Something split open inside him as he watched the afternoon sun gleam golden through her brown hair, saw how her blue eyes reflected the sky. At that moment, he longed to touch her, pull her into his arms.

  She followed him out the door, and he made his way to the street, shaking hands and accepting his neighbors’ benedictions.

  “Go get ’em, Jimmy!”

  “Come home with that title, now!”

  “Knock him out!”

  “You show ’em!”

  “We’re behind ya all the way!”

  Howard raced up to him. Jim snatched his son’s belt, lifted the squirming boy, lowered his head and kissed his forehead. Still cradling his youngest son, Jim bent lower to kiss Jay too. The boy smiled up at him. His smile was proud, but his brow was crinkled with worry. Little Rosy was next. Jim caught her up in a bear hug, buried his face in her sweet dark hair.

  The crowd grew even bigger, the shouts more zealous. Finally, Jim released his daughter and faced his wife. For a moment Mae didn’t move. Then she stretched up and kissed him.

  He bent close, his eyes asking, hoping. “I can’t win if you’re not behind me.”

  “Then don’t go, Jimmy.”

  The moment hung into forever, each waiting for the other to relent. Finally, Mae turned and pulled the children close. Jim watched as she pushed her way back through the throng, taking the children with her as the crowd closed ranks, swallowing them up.

  Jim climbed into the waiting car, slumped into the cushioned seat. An hour later, the cab was rolling through the canyons of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. They crossed town along Forty-second Street, passed Times Square and idled at a long Sixth-Avenue red light. Jim sat up straighter in his seat, peered curiously at the sight ahead.

  “What’s that?” he asked the driver.

  “What’s what?”

  Jim pointed.

  “Bryant Park,” the driver said in a “where you been anyways?” tone. Then he laughed. “Sorry, Mr. Braddock. Guess you ain’t been getting’ around much…with your trainin’ and all.”

  The cabbie kept talking. Told Jim that New York City had a new mayor now. Jimmy Walker, that crooked official who’d previously held the office and done little to nothing to help the city’s destitute and unemployed, had been convicted of corruption and run out of town by a crusading judge. Now a man by the name of La Guardia was mayor.

  After the worst winter in recent memory, the new mayor had gone to see President Roosevelt, secured federal assistance, hired a city parks Commissioner by the name of Robert Moses and got six hundred unemployed architects and engineers working again. Then they’d hired field superintendents and unemployed men.

  By the time summer’s warmth sent the people of New York into their parks again, the citizens discovered that something had changed. Those newly employed crews had completed seven hundred different renovation projects. They’d repaved thirty-eight miles of cracked walks, repaired countless broken fences, repainted buildings and benches, reseeded lawns, resurfaced ruined tennis courts, and planted more than ten thousand trees.

  In Central Park there was a new zoo, and one in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park too. More playgrounds and swimming pools were being planned for the future including one in Astoria, Queens, that would accommodate 6,200 bathers. And there were big plans for the New York shorelines, from the Bronx to Brooklyn and Queens—talk of new beaches and parkways, new construction…all of which meant new jobs.

  Jim gazed at Bryant Park, stunned. He remembered only a seedy lot being there—an empty five-acre space of weeds and wandering vagrants with the crumbling remains of a plaster statue at the west end. All that was gone now. In the heart of midtown Manhattan sat a completely green space. A formal garden with two hundred London plane trees, flagstone walkways, and a large, elegant stone fountain. It was a beautiful space, remade by an army of unemployed—for all the public to enjoy.

  The cabbie drove on. As they crossed the East River to the borough of Queens, Jim rode silently, preparing his mind for the fight, running the Baer fight films through his head again and again, hearing Jeannette’s words, Gould’s advice, trying for anything that would block out Mae’s stony face, her cold words.

  Finally, the car rolled down Northern Boulevard and pulled up to the Madison Square Gard
en Bowl, Jim gazed out the window at the mob standing outside the outdoor arena, waiting to get in. Men and women, young and old. Their clothes were worn and tattered, their faces creased with the hard struggles they went through every day of their lives. Yet they had a bright look in their eyes—expectation, possibility, hope. Jim caught a reflection in the car window, saw himself in the midst of all that.

  He studied his face in the window, and recognized something about it. Gone forever was the self-assured man who’d KO’d Tuffy Griffiths with ease. Gone too was the hopeless wretch who passed his hat at the boxing club and accepted relief from the government to feed his family. In its place was every man who’d ever been savagely beaten down by hard times yet wouldn’t stop fighting.

  That’s when Jim knew. No matter what happened tonight—whether he walked away with the title, or perished inside the ropes—Jim would not give in. He would die trying.

  On the streets of Long Island City, Queens, the temperature soared above eighty degrees before noon and continued to rise. In Jim Braddock’s expansive dressing room at the Madison Square Garden Bowl, a clattering fan provided a sultry breeze that did little to cut the torridity.

  Jim sweated in his trunks, robe draped over a chair. He was waiting for the weigh-in ceremony to begin. Thirty minutes ago they had been told “any minute” by one of Jimmy Johnston’s lackeys. Meanwhile the physician and judge had arrived and were ready to preside, the commissioners were on their second cigars, and the press was clamoring. The only thing missing was Max Baer.