Cinderella Man Page 22

  “Let me have a shot at him, you son of a bitch,” Gould continued to rage.

  Doc Robb grabbed Gould’s belt, helped the referee hoist the little spitting-mad manager over the ropes, out of the ring. Meanwhile Braddock, puffing hard, sank onto his stool.

  Baer was bleeding from a new cut and his right eye was swollen nearly shut. But he stood in the center of the ring, refusing to move into his corner, until Johnny McAvoy crossed the canvas to face him.

  “That last low blow will cost you the round, Max,” the referee said.

  Baer snarled at the man, waved him away like royalty dismissing a serf, and moved to his corner. Ancil leaped the ropes, pushed his face into Baer’s. “You’re behind. Are you listening to me? You wanna lose the goddamn championship to this nobody?”

  Max shoved his manager aside.

  From her secret vantage point, Mae listened to the thirteenth and fourteenth round with mounting dread. With one final round to go, she moved out of the shadows and approached her children.

  Howard and Jay looked up fearfully—afraid she was going to make them stop listening. Somehow, Rosy understood Mae’s real intentions. The little girl smiled, slid sideways, patted a spot of floor right next to her.

  “Sit here, Mommy,” she said.

  Mae paused for a moment, then sat on the floor to be with her family. On the radio, the bell clanged.

  “It’s the fifteenth and final round,” reported Ford Bond. “The crowd is yelling for Braddock to stay away because Max Baer is going for the knockout…”

  Mae went pale, turned slightly away to hide her fear. Jay and Howard didn’t notice their mother’s reaction, but Alice frowned. Rosy reached out and touched her mother’s hand.

  “…But Braddock is not staying away,” the announcer continued, “and Baer is delivering the biggest punches of the fight—maybe of his life!”

  Howard was pale now, his lower lip trembling. Jay put on a brave face, but Mae could see her oldest boy felt the same as his brother. Both were worried their father would be hurt, would not come home that night—or ever.

  “…But Braddock is not only standing…He is moving forward…Boldly, bravely bringing the fight to his opponent…”

  ROUND 15

  The people in the cheap seats had surged forward, stamping and screaming, completely surrounding the fistic field of battle. The mob was a solid wall of flesh and bone that pinned Joe Gould, the reporters, the judges—everyone at ringside against the edge of the blood-stained canvas.

  Inside that ring, Jim Braddock and Max Baer were knotted, bloodied, battered, and snuffing like winded horses. Sweat streamed down their swollen faces as they gasped for air. Eyes locked on his opponent, each fighter warily circled the other, stalking, waiting for an opening.

  Suddenly they slammed together like charging rams. Max Baer was sailing punches, every last one with knockout power. But the shots were wild, anxious, and ineffective. Braddock was still standing, and more, he was coming on with his signature left jab coiled and ready.

  “Take a walk, Jimmy!” yelled Joe Gould.

  At ringside, Ford Bond, jostled by the maddened crowd, clutched his microphone like a lifeline. “This is not boxing, folks!” he cried. “This is a walloping ballet!”

  To the men in the ring, the final seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity. There was no other place, no other time, no other world beyond this square of roped-off canvas. The howling mob vanished, managers and corner men disappeared, the referee and the judges ceased to exist. Only the other fighter was real.

  Braddock moved forward aggressively, scoring with a string of well-placed jabs that rocked the exhausted Baer. But the champ took the raps, waiting for the opportunity to send his challenger to the mat.

  Braddock danced sideways, but his movements were sluggish. He tossed a jab that glanced off Baer’s bruised chin. But as he threw, Max saw an opening—and that was all the heavyweight champ needed.

  With his mythic right arm, Baer clocked Braddock in the temple. The patented sledgehammer spun Jimmy, leaving him wide open for the second half of the deadly combination—an uppercut that seemed to start at the floor and climb upward to the sky over Queens, with only Jim Braddock’s chin in the way.

  “Baer is swinging with a tremendous blow,” bellowed Ford Bond. “I don’t know how Braddock is going to survive it!”

  A tomblike silence fell over the arena as the crowd waited for the Cinderella Man to topple.

  But Braddock decided to die another day. With a ducking pivot, he avoided the savage uppercut and countered with a brace of hard lefts. Max loomed so close he was practically standing on Braddock’s toes. But Jim dodged a clinch to deliver his own smashing uppercut that lifted Max Baer off his feet. The fighters were still trading blows when the bell clanged.

  “It’s over! The fight is over, and the referee is pulling the fighters apart,” cried Ford Bond.

  It took all of Johnny McAvoy’s considerable strength to thrust the men away from each other. Gould leaped into the ring and dragged Jimmy to his corner. Slapping his back, the junkyard dog of a manager grinned like a satisfied cat.

  Over the chaos, Sporty Lewis reached into the ring, tugged hard on Referee McAvoy’s trouser leg. The ref tried to shake the reporter off, but Sporty hung on like a hyperactive terrier.

  “What!” bellowed McAvoy.

  “How’d you score it, Johnny?”

  McAvoy counted out loud. “Nine…Five…One. I call it even.”

  “Even?” Sporty’s eyes went wide in stunned disbelief. McAvoy hustled away to consult with the judges.

  The chaos inside the Garden had not diminished with the end of the fight. The fans, pressing close to the canvas, waited to hear the officials declare a winner. Bond fired a steady dialogue into his microphone. “The crowd, which was on its feet for almost the entire fight, is still standing, yelling for who they clearly believe to be the winner of this fight…”

  He didn’t even have to hold up his microphone for his listening audience to hear who the crowd was pulling for.

  “Braddock! Braddock! Braddock! Braddock!”

  Minutes later, Braddock was still leaning on the ropes, head back. Doc Robb wiped the blood out of his eyes, worked on closing a deep cut. Gould yanked the laces out of Jim’s gloves, watching the judges the whole time.

  “I don’t like it, Jimmy. Every time they take this long for a decision they’re deciding to screw somebody.”

  A shadow fell over their corner. It was Max Baer, his blood-stained silk robe draped over his sweating shoulders. Gould glared at the fighter. Max ignored the manager, looked Jim Braddock in the eye.

  “You beat me. No matter what they say.”

  Jim broke the stare, fumbled for the right words. Baer was gone before Jim had a chance to say them.

  Pacing only a few feet away, Sporty Lewis missed the exchange. His eyes were on the judges, still locked in a huddle. Lewis slapped the cub reporter on the arm. “They’re robbing him. Stealing Braddock’s night.”

  Some of the fans—toughs from the Jersey docks—overheard Lewis’s assessment. A plug-ugly brute with beefy arms etched with tattoos stepped forward.

  “Make up your minds, ya bums,” he barked at the judges. “We all know who won.”

  A thousand voices joined the chorus. The stamping feet rolled like thunder, shook the stands. At last, the judges solemnly handed Al Franzin, the Garden’s announcer, a small, white card. Without glancing at it Franzin climbed over the ropes, moved to the microphone stand set up in the middle of the ring. The roar of the crowd faded. Thirty-five thousand people watched as the announcer held the card over his head.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. I have your decision!” Franzin squinted as he studied the card. “The winner…and new heavyweight champion of the world…”

  The rest of the ring announcer’s words were lost in an explosion of noise as a roar like Niagara’s echoed across Astoria’s flats.

  On the streets of Weehawken, North Bergen, Bloom
-field, Wayne, and Newark, people poured from their houses. Horns honked, sirens blared. The hot June night was suddenly alive with a riotous celebration not seen since before the Crash.

  In the smoky interior of Quincy’s bar, Quincy himself dispensed free beer to the boisterous crowd. Years of despair were wiped away. Faces creased and worn were suddenly young again. Laughter shook the roof, and hardened dockworkers sobbed like babies.

  At his butcher shop, Sam placed a slab of beef on the chopping block and gleefully hacked away, convinced that if he sold enough meat, he could produce a hundred more champs just like James J. Braddock.

  A blast of air stirred the candles in Father Rorick’s church. The tall doors were flung wide, golden light spilled into the street as the devoted filed out of the church to join everyone else in an impromptu street party.

  Sara Wilson remained inside. She held her baby girl in her arms, tears dewing her cheeks. At the altar, Father Rorick was unable to hide his satisfied smile. He turned his face toward heaven and gave thanks.

  At their usual haunts, bookies sweated. At ten-to-one odds against Braddock, a flock of bettors who stuck with their favorite son were due big payoffs.

  In a tiny shed inside the dockyard, Jake the foreman leaned his rail-thin form back in his chair and listened to the frantic announcer declare Jim Braddock the new champ, happy with the knowledge that tomorrow, one less lean, hungry face would be standing outside the gate, desperate for work.

  It was a start, Jake thought. One step at a time.

  On a quiet little residential block in Newark, Mae Braddock’s cry cut the night, her children’s excited shouts echoed down the block. In the midst of the hysteria, Rose Marie Braddock smiled up at her mother and with little-girl certainty declared, “It’s the meat.”

  At ringside, the reporters were pushing and shoving to escape the mob and file their stories. Sporty Lewis sat alone. Seersucker suit rumpled, feet propped on his typewriter, he stared at the chaos in the ring without seeing it. With arms across his chest, a half smile frozen on his lips, he relived the fight—the miracle—in no hurry to lose the moment.

  Around Sporty, fans surged forward in a mad rush to get a better look at the Cinderella Man. They wanted a chance to shake his hand, to pat his back, to take a little of his fairy-tale magic home with them tonight. But the ring was flanked by the Garden’s security staff, who firmly pushed them back.

  Boxing officials, the judges, and Jimmy Johnston climbed through the ropes to join Al Franzin in the center of the ring. Gould spied Johnston, and the paunchy little manager swept the big, stogie-chewing promoter up in a bear hug.

  Flanked by the commission, by Joe Gould and Jimmy Johnston, Franzin made a victory announcement that was drowned in an ocean of cheers. Finally, Franzin lifted Braddock’s fist over his head and stepped back.

  In the center of the ring, bathed in golden light, James J. Braddock stood with legs braced, arms lifted in victory. But as tears streamed down his battered face, as thousands of crazed fans shouted their adoration, Braddock’s heart was somewhere else, across an island and two rivers, in a little New Jersey apartment, where his wife and three children waited for him to come home; because, in the end, long after all the photos were taken, the articles written, and winnings collected, Jim knew it was that simple fact and not much else that not only made him the heavyweight champion of the world, but the luckiest man in it.

  EPILOGUE

  …When Baer hit me on the chin with his Sunday punch and I took it, I’m the happiest guy in the world. Nobody knew what that fight meant to me. Money, security, education for my children, financial aid for my parents. If ever a guy went into the ring with something to fight for, I was the guy.

  —James J. Braddock, 1935

  JAMES J. BRADDOCK

  HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

  JUNE 13, 1935–JUNE 22, 1937

  And so it was, on June 13, 1935, James J. Braddock, at the age of 29, as a ten-to-one underdog, won the heavyweight championship of the world from Max Baer in a unanimous fifteen-round decision. The general response by press and public was to rule it one of the greatest upsets in boxing history. Most agreed that Baer, who was so confident he had told reporters he was afraid he might actually kill Braddock, was outfoxed and outboxed.

  For two years, Braddock did not box again. Much backroom haggling was done over who would challenge him for the title. Finally, the fight was arranged. Jim would defend his crown against Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” one of the greatest boxers to ever enter the ring. On June 22, 1937, the two met in Chicago’s White Sox Stadium.

  By this time, Braddock had developed arthritis in the left side. The morning of the fight, his doctor gave him a shot in the arm so he could lift it, but Braddock found that he had very little strength in it during the fight. Still, he managed to knock Louis down in the very first round with an uppercut. By round four, however, Louis had gained the advantage.

  According to Braddock, “After a couple of rounds I knew I was in there with a great fighter, and this is going to be a tough fight.” The end came in the eighth round. “I fought as well as I’d ever done, but that Louis…oh, he was good! In the eighth I had nothing left, and when he hit me with that right I just lay there…. I could have stayed there for three weeks.”

  Joe Louis would go on to become one of the greatest heavyweight title holders in the history of boxing. His defeat of German Max Schmeling in one round June 22, 1938, at Yankee Stadium reverberated throughout the world, thwarting a powerful symbol of German dictator Adolph Hitler’s contention of racial supremacy. Like Braddock, Joe Louis, a violin student turned pro boxer, would pay back all of the relief money he’d once accepted.

  James J. Braddock would go on to fight one more match after Louis, in 1938, against the young Welsh boxer Tommy Farr, who’d gone fifteen full rounds against Joe Louis and was favored three to one going into the Braddock match. It was an exhilarating “comeback” victory for the aging Braddock, who’d yet again been rated an underdog climbing into the ring and hailed as an upset winner going out. Less than two weeks after that victorious match, however, when lucrative offers were still on the table, he announced his retirement from the sport, making the decision to go out a winner. Jim Braddock won fifty-one of eighty-five career bouts, twenty-six by KO; his record included three draws, two no contests, and seven no decisions; and boxing histories wrote about him in his epitaph as having gone down a fighting champion.

  “I have won my last fight,” Braddock announced to the press at the time, “and I think I could still beat most of the outstanding contenders for the heavyweight championship, but I have spent fifteen years in the game, and in fairness to everyone, but especially to my wife and children, I believe it is time for me to withdraw…. This is my farewell to boxing, a sport which owes me nothing and to which I owe everything—the many friends I have made, and the means with which I have been able to provide for my family.”

  After his boxing career ended, Jim maintained his friendship with Joe Gould, who had scored Jim a cagey deal. In return for granting Joe Louis the chance to claim the title from Braddock in 1937, Gould required that Louis’s wealthy Chicago manager, Mike Jacobs, agree to pay Braddock 10 percent of his share of the heavyweight championship fights for a decade, should Louis win. The deal is said to be one of the shrewdest ever struck in boxing, because Joe Louis’s supremacy (1937 to 1949, the longest in the sport’s history) meant Jacobs controlled the heavyweight title fights for more than ten years. It provided Jim and Mae Braddock with an annuity that helped secure their financial future.

  He remained “Jersey Jim” till the day he died, residing in the same North Bergen home he and Mae had bought after he’d won the championship. For the rest of his life, Braddock was applauded, admired, and respected by friends, neighbors, and strangers on the New Jersey streets. He was inducted into the Ring Boxing Hall of Fame in 1964, the Hudson County Hall of Fame in 1991, and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2001. As for any
last words, they rightfully belong to James J. Braddock himself, who gave up his crown with the same gracious humility with which he’d worn it.

  “Here’s the situation as far as that goes,” Braddock said in his 1972 interview with Peter Heller, two years before he passed away in his North Bergen home, “having the championship and then losing it. You always got to figure you’re not the best man in the world, there might be somebody better. That’s the way it was. That’s the way boxing is. The champion don’t always stand up. There’s always somebody coming up to take him. That’s a part of life.”

  JAMES J. BRADDOCK

  JUNE 7, 1906–NOVEMBER 29, 1974

  And so Braddock won the big title, and in the time he has held it, he has endeared himself to the American public by his unchanging modesty, his affability, and his sturdy character. His devotion to his wife and family…and withal his attitude as champion of the world that he will fight anybody regardless of color, or creed, has made him the most popular champion in the history of the game.

  —Damon Runyon,

  foreword from Relief to Royalty,

  James J. Braddock’s authorized biography, 1936

  BIBLIOGRAPHY AND POSTSCRIPT

  The screenplay for Cinderella Man, by Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman, is based on the life of James J. Braddock. However, certain characters, scenes and locations have been changed or combined for dramatic purposes in both the screenplay and this prose adaptation.

  In the writing of this novel, the author also consulted source material beyond the screenplay, including contemporary sources such as newspaper and magazine articles, and books written long after the events, such as An Illustrated History of Boxing (sixth revised and updated edition) by Nat Fleischer and Sam Andre, with Dan Rafael, Citadel Press, 2001; In This Corner: Forty-two World Champions Tell Their Stories, by Peter Heller (expanded edition with Introduction by Muhammad Ali), De Capo Press, 1994; and Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel, Random House, 1970.