Cinderella Man (13 page)

On February 1, the day the fight was originally scheduled to take place, Braddock paid a visit to Art Lasky in the hospital, posed for pictures and wished his future opponent a speedy recovery. The next morning, Jim rose early, kissed Mae good-bye, and headed back to the docks to scrounge for work. The fight was rescheduled for March 15, then postponed again by Lasky's trainers and the boxing commission, to March 22.

Gould exploded when he heard the news. “Another
postponement? They're afraid of Braddock, that's what they are. They're giving us the runaround, the dirty snakes.” He complained loudly and long, but in the face of such rank favoritism toward Lasky, he could do nothing but agree to the change. Jim Braddock was again left waiting at the altar.

Two days later, Johnston called Gould into his office to inform him that the fight had been rescheduled yet again—to the original postponement date of March 15!

“Is that so?” Gould cried. “Well, they can go to hell. What do they think this is, anyway? What do they think I've got here, a four-round fighter or something? Well, we
won't
fight on the fifteenth, no matter what the commission recommends. I got a contract and we'll fight on March twenty-second—and that's that.”

Before anyone could stop him, Gould stormed out of Johnston's office, went directly to Joe Jeannette's gym in Union City and instructed Jim Braddock to train for a fight on the 22nd. Then Joe Gould vanished. For the next two weeks, Johnston's men searched all over the city for him, but Braddock's manager could not be found. Only after it was too late to do anything else, and the New York press confirmed the fight's official date of March 22, did Joe Gould resurface at his familiar haunts.

By the time the date of the Lasky vs. Braddock fight arrived, Hamas and Carnera had been eliminated from competition, and Max Schmeling refused to return to the United States to fight Baer. With no one left to promote, Johnston understandably hoped for a quick and definitive Lasky victory, one that would push Braddock out of the competition altogether.

 

From the opening bell, it looked as if Johnston's hopes would be dashed. Braddock easily dominated the first round, beginning with a hard right that threw Lasky against the ropes. In the second and third rounds The Leftie from Minnesota seemed unable to penetrate Braddock's defense. Nose bloody, chin bruised, Lasky absorbed lots of punishment, though he managed to land a sinker to Braddock's chin in the fourth round before eating a left, right, left to the head that forced Lasky to retreat.

But the tide seemed to shift in the fifth round. Lasky flew out of his corner with a furious body attack that knocked the wind out of Braddock. Moving close, Lasky landed a right cross and left jab on Braddock's mug, followed by a body blow with his right. Braddock's response was tepid and misdirected—he was warned by the referee that he was hitting low—and he swallowed another body blow as the round ended.

Things got worse for Braddock in the sixth round, with Lasky planting a hard right to his chin and a left to the gut. As he backed away, Braddock managed to connect with Lasky's jaw, and tossed four shots to his head. But the damage had already been done to Braddock—Lasky came away from the sixth a winner.

Art Lasky's momentum continued in the seventh round, with Braddock continually backing away, Lasky always on the offensive. The eighth round ended with a near technical knockout when Braddock laid open a gouge under Lasky's eye, but the man's fury remained undiminished, and at the start of the ninth, Lasky came out fighting, landing successive hits to the
torso climaxed by a wallop to Braddock's stomach that elicited a loud grunt. Meanwhile, Braddock's punches seemed mistimed and ineffectual.

Announcer Ford Bond was beside himself. “After his dazzling victory against John Henry Lewis, the comeback of Jim Braddock has just hit a wall named Art Lasky in the ninth round…”

Lasky had Braddock trapped in a corner and was pounding him with bone-jarring shots to Jim's ribs. Braddock just managed to escape—and rock Lasky with a right to the chin—when the bell rang.

As Lasky crossed to his corner, he raised his fists in triumph.

A corner man worked on Jim's bruises, and Joe Gould leaned into his face. “He's a bull rusher,” Gould said. “He's going to keep doing this all night.”

Jim looked up. For a moment the lights seemed to descend from the ceiling and explode in his brain. Gould shook him. “Where are you, Jim?” The lights receded. Jim squeezed his eyes, shook the sweat and water out of his hair. When he looked up again, the lights were right back where they belonged.

“Jim!” yelled Gould. “This is Lasky's house. You got to stop him breathing, you get me, Jim?”

Their eyes met, and a shared darkness passed between them.

“You hit him in the nose,” said Gould, eyes blazing. “You keep hitting him there, you get me? Make him bleed—”

The warning buzzer sounded.

“—Fill his face with blood.”

But Jim just couldn't pull it off. Instead, he tried to hold Lasky back with his left, but the ploy didn't work.
In the eleventh round, Braddock found himself pinned into a corner once more. Arms down, elbows in tight to protect his ribs, Braddock's head was totally exposed. Lasky took advantage of the opening with a flurry of punches and jabs.

“Art Lasky is putting an end to a story that's been getting a lot of attention…” Bond cried into his microphone. His rapid-fire commentary was suddenly interrupted when Lasky dished up a right hook to Jim's temple potent enough to dislodge Braddock's mouthpiece and send it sailing across the canvas. It was the most powerful punch Lasky possessed in his arsenal, and the crowd seemed to grow still as they waited for the result.

Jim Braddock just stood there, holding Lasky's eyes, his ferocity undiminished. Without the referee's intervention, Braddock turned, walked calmly across the ring and retrieved his mouthpiece.

“I…I can't believe my eyes,” cried Bond. “Braddock just took Lasky's best punch and it didn't even faze him. He's showing inhuman determination…”

Braddock popped the mouthpiece into place with a gloved hand. Then he grinned to the howling audience and closed on Lasky. Feeling fear for the first time, the man from Minnesota tried to end the round in a clinch, but a savage uppercut from Braddock's right snapped Lasky's head back and put an end to that failed strategy.

His confidence restored, Braddock came out swinging in the twelfth, landing blow after blow on Lasky's temple, his eyes, his chin. Lasky's cut reopened and blood seeped from the wound. Still Braddock pressed, continuing the assault on Art Lasky's cranium in the thirteenth and fourteenth rounds. Now Jim fought from
a distance, employing Gould's advice, repeatedly jabbing Lasky's nose, turning it into a red balloon.

By the start of the fifteenth and final round, both fighters were displaying fatigue. Lasky managed to make a show of charging, but was halted by Braddock's walloping left. With Lasky flailing, Jim landed thudding rights, varying his attack with a feint to the body, and finally a right cross that landed on his opponent's face. Lasky's nose exploded, blood drenched the ring.

“This is incredible,” said Ford Bond. “Braddock will not be denied.”

As Lasky staggered around the center of the canvas, Jim was on him with a series of lethal punches that sent his opponent to the ropes—the only thing keeping Lasky upright as the final bell sounded, ending the fight.

The crowd was on its feet while the fighters were still in the middle of the ring. Through the glare and the tobacco smoke, Jim found Gould looking at him, offering his fighter a respectful bow. Jim winked in reply, then threw his bloody gloves above his head and punched at the Garden's ringing roof.

“And the winner is…James J. Braddock!”

 

The cheers were loud enough to reach across America's heartland, to Branson, Missouri, where their echoes drowned out the sound of manager Ancil Hoffman's labored breaths, the click of heels across hardwood floor. He raced down a hotel corridor, to come to a stumbling halt at the bridal suite.

He tapped the door, then pounded on it. A muffled sound, then the door flew open.

“What?” roared a naked giant. Eyes simmering,
Max Baer gripped the doorknob with a powerful fist, chest heaving, muscles rippling like a pagan warrior god. Traces of crimson lipstick streaked his face, neck, and pectorals like tribal war paint. Behind the heavyweight champ, Ancil saw two young women sprawled across a queen-size bed, one stripped to her lingerie, the other stark naked except for silk stockings. Both were giggling, drunk.

Ancil met his fighter's angry glare. “Max…Jim Braddock just beat Lasky. He just got to be the number-one contender for
your
title.”

Max Baer smirked. The women laughed wildly.

“I'm going to paste that guy,” growled Baer. “He's nothing but a chump. Why not tell his manager to stand him on Fifth Avenue in front of the crosstown bus. If he can take
that
, maybe he can get in the ring with me.”

Max was about to close the door when he paused. “Tell Johnston to get somebody who can fight back.”

“You gonna bust your contract?” Ancil cried. “Too late. It's a done deal, Max.”

Baer slammed the door in Ancil Hoffman's face. Peals of feminine laughter rolled after the fretting manager as he retreated down the hall.

“Ready to face the jackals, Jim?”

Joe Gould stood at the locker-room door. His hand clutched the knob, shoulder pressed against the wood as if he were holding back an angry mob armed with a battering ram.

Braddock, slumped on a wooden bench, could hear the reporters jostling for position in the corridor outside. He was still clad in his trunks from the Lasky fight, robe tossed in the corner, towel draped around his neck. Before he replied, Jim gazed at his bruised hands, immersed in icy water to reduce the swelling. He opened and closed his fingers inside the galvanized steel bucket. Chunks of ice the size of bread loaves bobbed in the clear water.

“Can't hold 'em back forever,” Gould warned in the usual rasping half voice that came from his constant yelling in Jim's corner.

Braddock lifted his arms, shook his hands dry, used the towel to finish the job. “Ready,” he said. A corner man whisked the bucket out of sight. Jim rose and faced the door.

Gould turned the knob and let go the flood. Flashbulbs popping, pens, pencils, and pads waving, the men of the fistic first estate burst into the locker room, filling it quickly, hurling questions—too fast and too many to answer, or even understand. Jim faced the group with a bemused smirk.

Whenever Jim faced the press, he always thought of Dempsey vs. Firpo in 1923. In round one Dempsey had knocked down the Argentine heavyweight seven times, but before the bell clanged, the “Wild Bull of Pampas” fired off an enraged combination that drove Dempsey outside the ring, where his kisser connected with a writer's typewriting machine.

Dempsey got up at the count of nine and finally knocked Firpo out in the second round to retain the title. Nevertheless, after all the bad press Jim had gotten over the years, he figured he knew exactly what Dempsey's head must have felt like smacking against that typewriter.

“Was it an easy fight, Jim?” cried one reporter, loud enough to be heard above the clamor.

Jim raised a bruised eyebrow. “Didn't feel like one.”

“Who do you think will be next, Jimmy?” cried another.

Jim looked to Joe Gould, who gave a little shake of his head. Gould had confided the deal was as good as done, but it wasn't Jim's place to say it, so he shrugged. “Ask Jimmy Johnston.”

“The smart money says Max Baer.”

Jim crossed his arms. “You don't say?”

“Jim, Jim Braddock,” called Sporty Lewis, who'd pushed his way to the front of the pack. “Will you fight Max Schmeling in 'thirty-five?”

“I would. But I hear Adolph Hitler wants Max to do his boxing in the Fatherland,” Jim replied. “Won't even box Max Baer unless he crosses the pond.”

“Yeah, like
that'll
happen,” someone yelled.

“Even Madcap Maxie isn't that mad,” yelled another, producing a ripple of knowing laughter. Since Hitler came to power in Germany, East Coast promoters had been forcing Schmeling out of most venues, though Jimmy Johnston still yearned to pair Schmeling with a number of American fighters.

“To what do you credit your victory over Lasky?” The man from the
News
waited for Jim's reply, pen poised over paper.

Jim thought for a moment. “I guess it's having a great family. A great manager, a great trainer—”

“And a great
left
!” Joe Gould croaked, punching air.

“Yeah, that too,” said Jim.

After that, most of the questions concerned Braddock's future, questions he and Joe Gould both fended off, not wanting to tempt fate. After Jim offered the sportswriter for the
Hudson Dispatch
—the Union City paper—his own version of the Lasky fight, Joe yanked off his fawn fedora and waved the reporters out of the locker room.

“Come on, let Braddock alone now, ya bums,” Gould insisted, pushing them out the door. “Jimmy's got a wife and kids to go home to. Ain't any of you guys family men?”

A string of guffaws was the reply.

“Nah,” muttered Gould, “didn't think so…”

 

“Good job, Jim. I knew you could do it. Won me a quarter. Twenty-five cents!”

A rumpled suit hung from the little man's frame. He had dirty gray hair and missing front teeth. But his expression was Christmas morning.

Most of the fight fans had long since departed. The streets around the Garden were dark and desolate, but the moment Jim Braddock and Joe Gould had stepped out the door, a gang of fifty men closed around them.

The scene was markedly different from the group who'd greeted him after his Tuffy Griffiths KO back in 1928. Gone were the flamboyantly dressed high rollers with diamond tiepins and new fedoras, the flappers with mink-trimmed coats, fringed dresses, and silk stockings. In their place stood a rough bunch of men in tattered work clothes and scuffed shoes. Worn and lean with hunger, their bodies had been stooped by disappointment, toil, and want—yet when they saw Braddock emerge, they straightened. Defeated faces were resurrected, weariness turned to hope.

Jim was stunned by the sight. At his shoulder, Joe Gould grinned and croaked, “You sign a few, leave them wanting.”

Braddock shook his head. “Nah, Joe…You sign them
all
.”

Callused hands with broken fingernails waved press books, newspaper clippings, even betting sheets at the fighter. Jim moved among them, shaking hands and scribbling his name on whatever scrap was thrust upon
him. He signed and talked and joked and shook hands until the crowd dispersed, over an hour later.

“Did I leave them wanting?” he asked, wandering over to Joe Gould. The manager had long ago sat down on some nearby steps to wait for his fighter.

“You sure did,” Gould replied, dusting off his fawn coat. “So we gonna hit the spots.”

“Home, Joe.”

Jim was quiet for most of the drive, so Joe did most of the talking. He recounted the fight in his own colorful way twice when his roadster rolled up to the curb in front of Braddock's tenement building. The motor was still running when Jim opened the door. “Good night, Joe.”

“Hey, aren't you forgetting something? Your cut of the purse.” Gould reached into his coat, produced a thick wad of bills. The manager began to count out the cash and explain the breakdown of expenditures. Jim lifted his bruised hand to silence him.

“I trust you, Joe. You know that. And so does Mae.”

Gould smiled and thrust the cash into Braddock's hand. Jim glanced down at the small fortune, then thrust it into his coat. “I'd invite you in, but it's late,” said Jim. “The kids are asleep.”

Gould opened his mouth to speak, then realized no words were necessary. He waved good-bye, threw the roadster into gear and peeled off down the street, kicking up soot and discarded newspapers like the March winds.

Before Jim entered his tiny apartment, he paused under a naked bulb in the hallway and counted the cash. His aim was to divide the money into two neat piles. When he entered the apartment, he placed one bundle
in the mason jar Mae still used for a bank. The other he tucked into a wrinkled envelope he'd been holding on to for what seemed like an eternity.

Mae and the children were asleep, and he was careful not to wake them. He'd tell them all about his victory over Art Lasky tomorrow. Jim undressed, folding his clothes and draping them over a chair, then slipping between the clean white sheets. Beside him, Mae shifted on the mattress. He gazed at her until he nodded off, but he didn't sleep long. When the first rays of the chilly March dawn streamed through the window, he rose and hurriedly dressed, managing to slip out before Mae and the children stirred.

The windswept sidewalks were empty. He strode toward the center of town along sidewalks damp from an overnight shower. As Jim crossed the square and approached the Newark courthouse, pedestrian traffic increased. Inside the relief office, it was warm. Braddock joined the men and women already standing on line. As he waited patiently for service, several people seemed to recognize him. One man showed a local paper to the fellow at his shoulder. Inside, a three-column article, complete with grainy photograph snapped in Braddock's locker room right after the bout, outlined Jim's surprising victory at the Garden.

Waiting patiently, hands folded in front of him as he wended his way slowly to the front of the line, Jim ignored the curious, sidelong glances. When it was finally his turn, he stepped up to the counter and greeted the now familiar woman with a nod. He drew the official white envelope, which bore the seal of the State of New Jersey, out of his pocket, slid it across the counter. The woman picked it up, peeked inside.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, displaying the cash. “You want to give the money
back
?”

 

Jim purchased a dozen long-stem roses from a florist on his way home—a wildly extravagant gesture, but his way of apologizing to Mae for not waking her the night before, or this morning, to tell her about the fight. He knew his wife would be upset about that, but Jim hadn't wanted to celebrate his victory over Lasky—or even acknowledge it—until he returned all the money the relief office had given his family over the last few months. Now that the weight of that shame had been lifted, Jim felt a hundred pounds lighter. The aches and pains from the fight were forgotten and his steps were buoyant as he opened the door to his family's apartment.

His smile dissolved when he found Sara Wilson there, sitting on their old sofa, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, the baby girl in her arms racked with a hacking cough. Mae looked up when he entered, pale face somber. “Mike's gone missing,” she told him softly.

Jim crossed the room. He dropped the flowers onto the table, spying Jay, Howard, and Rosy huddled in a corner where Mae had banished them, straining hard to hear what was going on.

He crouched down in front of Sara, placed his hands on her shoulders. “How long?”

“Three days,” Sara cried. “I've been staying at my brother's since Jake cut him—”

“Jake cut him?” Braddock gulped. That was bad news. The docks provided the only reasonably steady work around, but not if Jake the foreman didn't pick you out of the pack of hopefuls. “When?”

Sara wiped her eyes with a dirty cloth. “Maybe a week after you left the docks for good. You know how Mike gets. All his talk. So much trouble.”

The baby coughed. Sara caressed the girl's face as if she saw Mike there. “He's been sleeping nights down in the Hooverville. My brother didn't have room for both him and us.”

She looked up at Jim. “He said he was doing some strategy work for you. He had a little cash coming in, down at the gym all the time. It made sense, you being friends and all…” Her voice trailed off. More tears dewed her eyes and Jim could tell Mae had already dashed this fantasy. “Last night, he was supposed to meet me down at Quincy's,” Sara continued. “He never showed…” She clawed Jim's sleeve with clutching fingers. “Something's wrong, Jim. I know it. He'd never miss one of your fights. He just wouldn't.”

Jim looked down at her, surprised by this revelation. Then he faced his wife. Silently, she gestured toward the mason jar that contained his fight winnings—the family's rainy-day money. Jim nodded. “Look,” he told Sara, gently pulling her hand from his arm, “you and Mae go down to Rexall, get something to fix her cough. I'll go—”

But Sara wasn't listening, lost in a nightmare of her own. “I give up,” she said softly, staring into nothingness. “That's what Mike said before he left last time. I should have known something was wrong. ‘I give up,' he said.”

Mae and Jim were startled by her words.

“I'm sure he's fine, Sara,” said Jim, trying to hide the lie. Mae touched the woman's shoulder, a silent re
inforcement. But Sara didn't believe it, and she broke down. Her baby cried too, its tiny face flushing redder than a cutman's rag.

Two strides took Jim to the front door. “I'll…I'll just go round him up…”

 

Braddock thrust a bill into the driver's hand, stepped out of the cab. Sinking below the Manhattan skyline, the sun was a milky ball, casting its feeble rays through passing clouds over a barren expanse of trampled grass and tall, barely budding trees. But Braddock knew that the vast, mock wilderness of Central Park was not so empty as it seemed, that something beyond the chilly March wind stirred there.

Since the crash of 1929, more than a hundred thousand New Yorkers had been evicted from their homes. Tens of thousands of them—many who once considered themselves middle class—were now living in their cars, in empty lots, subway tunnels, or on the street. By autumn 1930, the first shantytowns had sprung up along the banks of the East and Hudson Rivers. This Central Park “Hooverville”—named after the ineffectual chief executive who presided over the crash and its devastating aftermath—was the largest and most famous of these makeshift settlements.

Among the ruins of the half-demolished Croton Reservoir in the middle of the park, men lived in water mains, storm drains, even in ditches they dug into the earth with their bare hands. The more skilled and industrious among them constructed rough huts or tents assembled from scraps of lumber, bits of canvas, plywood, cardboard—any material they could find.

The denizens of this desperate shantytown lived on a
subsistence level. They ate what they could buy, scrounge, beg, catch or steal. In time, no creature that inhabited the park with the starving masses was spared: Pigeons, squirrels, songbirds, and even rats were trapped and devoured daily.

Jim had heard that most of the flocks of sheep who placidly grazed in the area of the park known as Sheep Meadow had been moved upstate by now, but, as he moved farther into the park, he realized a surreal evacuation was in progress. It appeared the last remaining few dozen or so sheep, who'd evaded the previous move, were now being herded out by groundskeepers into immense corral wagons lined up along a wide cobbled trail. Flanks twitching, steam billowing from their nostrils, the baying flock nearly trampled Braddock in their feral panic. One of the many cops on horseback, overseeing this process, whistled a warning and waved Braddock away with his nightstick.