No contender for a title ever entered the ring conceded so little chance. Braddock was regarded by many of the ringsiders as a pathetic figure, as merely a pugilistic sacrifice to the glory of Baer.
—Damon Runyon, 1936
Mae came through the front door, unpinned her hat. The house seemed empty.
“Alice?”
She stepped into the parlor. A lamp was glowing, a newspaper spread open across the couch. A meal was set on the kitchen table, uneaten, and the dining room was dark and deserted. Then Mae heard a voice—muted, familiar. The sound was mingled with the noise of a crowd.
Mae found them in the hallway, gathered on the hardwood floor around the open closet door: her sister Alice, Jay and Howard at her side, Rosy resting on her elbows, staring intently at the radio, listening to the distinctive voice of announcer Ford Bond.
“In the seventh round, Max Baer staged a slashing outburst. He tore into Jimmy Braddock with a series of vicious uppercuts. The crowd was impressed with the champ’s display and waited for big things from Max Baer in the eighth round. But they didn’t count on Braddock’s determination to finish the fight, and it was the champ who took it on the chin…”
Rosy saw her mother in the doorway. “It’s the cops.”
Jay and Howard looked up. Mae loomed over them. Howard’s guilt was all consuming. Jay’s was mingled with defiance.
“…By the ninth round, it was an established fact that Braddock has fought better than anybody thought he could, though some would say that it is only because Baer allowed it. The proof of their assertion came in the tenth round, when Max Baer completely dominated the ring…”
Mae reached for the cord in the wall. Jay caught her eye. “Please, Ma.”
She peered into their pleading faces—including her sister’s. Against such odds Mae couldn’t help but surrender. But she stubbornly refused to listen herself. Wordlessly, she walked away.
On the radio, the bell clanged, signaling the start of the eleventh round.
ROUND 11
Raging mad, Baer stormed out of his corner, his eyes a black abyss. Jim saw him coming, danced to the right. Max stayed with him and ripped away, pinning Braddock with a right-left combination.
Jim tasted the leather, blinked to clear his eyes. Then it came. Baer’s sledgehammer right—the punch that buried Frankie Campbell, that turned Ernie Schaff into a walking dead man. It seemed to Braddock that he’d been lifted off the canvas, that his legs had been cut off. He felt weightless and heavy at the same time. Mind floating, knees unable to support his weight
“Oh,” screamed Ford Bond. “What a tremendous shot by Baer, flush on Braddock’s chin…”
Jim stumbled backward, felt the ropes cut into his back. He heard the crowd’s roar, the announcer screaming over the chaos.
“…Braddock is reeling against the ropes while Baer stands like a wood chopper waiting for the tree to fall!”
Suddenly, ridiculously, the cry of his youngest son, Howard, popped into Braddock’s frazzled mind. “Timmmm-berrrrr!” With it came the memory of his family, of what he was fighting for—and against. Like an approaching subway train, reality roared back, the howls of the audience battering his ears. Jim felt the ropes, let them carry his weight for a moment. He knew he’d been hit, but it was nothing new. Baer might have smashed him, but no harder than he had been smashed by the Crash of 1929. He’d forced himself to keep going after that knockdown. To get up again. And he got up now. Back on his feet.
Through eyes suddenly focused, Braddock saw Baer hovering near. Braddock grinned. Referee McAvoy stepped aside to allow the fight to resume, but Baer just stared at Jim, an expression of frustrated disbelief on the champ’s broken face.
Braddock shifted his weight, bounced back on his feet. Baer shrugged, tucked his chin into his chest and moved in to finish the job. Braddock lashed out with a sharp right that took the champ off guard. He followed that jab with another—then another.
Baer staggered back, startled as blood burst from his lips. He touched the gloves to his face, they came away red. Baer wiped his gloves on the back of his trunks—the opening Braddock was waiting for. Braddock stepped in as fast as he’d moved in the first round and nailed Baer with an explosive right. Baer wheeled in a half turn, caught his balance.
He turned back to Braddock, insulted that the challenger would interrupt his preening ritual, and lunged with looping rights that failed to connect. With each miss, Jim stabbed at Max. A jab, a cross, another jab. Braddock felt the strength flow back into his limbs with each swing.
The tumultuous screams that filled the stadium drowned out the sound of the bell, and Johnny McAvoy had to pull the fighters apart. As he stumbled back to his corner, Max Baer spat blood.
“Doc, get over here!” Gould screamed. Braddock was hardly on the stool when the cutman started working under his eye, cleaning and closing the deep wound. The gash had been torn by Baer’s sledgehammer, which Braddock had survived, to the champ’s dismay.
Through streams of sweat and blood Braddock focused on Joe Gould. The man’s face was flushed, he seemed close to tears. Jimmy tried to cheer him up with a wisecrack—“Do I look that bad?”—but his lips felt like wet putty.
“Jimmy,” said Gould. “Win, lose, or draw…” His voice caught.
Jim smiled under the surgery. “Thanks, Joe. For all of it.”
Gould’s mouth moved, Braddock lifted a blood-stained glove. “Joe. Stop talking.”
Mae gave up pretending. Pretending to relax in the living room. Pretending to read the newspaper article she’d been staring at. Pretending she could not hear the muted sounds from the radio in the next room. Pretending that her husband was safe and fine and not battling for his life.
Finally, Mae threw aside the paper, rose from the couch, and crossed the living room. She peeked around the corner, into the hallway. The closet door was still open, Alice, Jay, Howard and Rosy transfixed by the voice of the sports announcer.
Lurking just around the corner, where her children couldn’t see her, Mae leaned against the wall and listened too.
ROUND 12
Baer and Braddock faced each other, swapped left hooks. The motion seemed futile until Braddock’s lightning combination sent Baer scrambling backward in an effort to escape.
Braddock moved with him to press the attack. Then Baer lifted a gloved fist and stuck it in Braddock’s face—not to strike him, but to blind the challenger to his real swing, a lethal right cross.
From the sidelines, Joe Gould recognized Baer’s trademark move, opened his mouth to scream a warning.
Gould didn’t have to. Joe Jeanette had spied the move while viewing Baer’s fight films weeks before, clued Jimmy to the trick, made him train for endless hours to be ready for just such a maneuver. Braddock deftly slapped Baer’s left aside and stung Max with a sharp jab. Then he circled to the right, out of Baer’s reach.
“He’s slow, Jimmy!” howled Gould. “Dance around him. You know what to do. Baer’s a bum.”
Baer, angry and off balance, threw a futile swing that cut the night air. Jim slipped behind his guard and walloped the champ with two of his own. Baer slapped his glove against Braddock’s face to hold him back. Jim faked right, skipped left, hammering the champ with two more well-placed clouts. Helpless and outboxed, Baer slipped into a clinch. The champ slapped his glove against Braddock’s ruined ribs, eliciting a grunt.
As the referee pulled the fighters apart, Baer cuffed Braddock on the chin with a desperate backhand. Braddock shook it off, found a gap in Baer’s armor and pounded him some more.
The crowd was roaring, driven to a frenzy by conflicting emotions. Joy. Terror. Disbelief. Even the jaded members of the press seemed stunned.
“Am I seeing what I’m seeing?” cried Sporty Lewis.
“It’s a funeral, all right,” shouted the young reporter at his shoulder. “And Max Baer is the guest of honor.”
But Lewis didn’t hear the kid’s words. He was already on his feet, screaming at the top of his lungs—just like everybody else.
Soon the chant rolled down the aisles toward the ring, a tidal wave of sound.
“Braddock! Braddock! Braddock!”
Sporty Lewis joined the chorus.
Through a haze of pain and confusion, Max Baer heard the chanting, the cheers. Gripped by a berserker rage, the champ charged Braddock, left swinging. His blows connected fast and hard—the last one below the belt. The leather glove sunk deep into Braddock’s gut. He folded up around the fist as the air shot out of his lungs in a hiss. Jim stumbled backward as the bell clanged, ending the round.
Joe Gould was over the ropes, lunging at the champ before the sound of the bell had faded. “Why don’t you just kick him in the balls, you asshole!”
Johnny McAvoy intercepted Gould and hauled him back to the ropes.
“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.