Negro was in training for his fight with Jim Jeffries at Reno. Tad was
the only fistic expert in Reno who picked Johnson to win by a knockout.
Joe Gans was dubbed “The Old Master” and Harry Wills, he called “Ol Har.”
Pete Stone, one of the favorites in Stanley Ketchel’s camp when Hype Igoe
was Ketchel’s manager, Tad nicknamed “Pete the Goat.” He called Jack
Dempsey, “The Manassa Mauler” and “The Killer” and these “titles” have
been identified with Dempsey ever since.
The stories about Tad are so numerous that it would take a volume to
tell them. His escapades in “Jack’s,” a famous New York restaurant of
pre-prohibition days, are frequently told in sports circles. The story of
how two song writers picked up his expression, “Yes, we have no bananas”
and made a million out of it, is an old one.
If making millions laugh every day qualifies a man to call himself an
artist—and I know of no higher art—then Tad was an artist. I enjoyed his
company and was proud to have been numbered among his friends. Not only
did he bring laughter into the world with his “Silk Hat Harry,” “Judge
Rummy,” “Indoor Sports” and other famous drawings, but created words that
Webster never dreamed of.
Tad was the “Emperor of Prince Regent,” and “High Commissioner” of
the sports gatherings in New York. He loved that bawdy life and he
understood it as few others did. His greatness lay in his understanding
of humanity. Shams never fooled him. He looked behind them, and saw
human emotions—petty, silly, or noble. He loved Broadway and the sports
world with a passionate intensity which he transmitted to others in the
journalistic profession.
Several years before heart trouble made it impossible for him to attend
fights, I saw him in Tex Rickard’s office and we discussed old times.
“I don’t go to as many fights as I used to,” he said. “It’s the same old
thing—fight after fight; fouls, holding, referees interfering with the
boys and poor decisions. I’m fed up on it, Nat. The boys rush in headlong
and then slap their way through the bouts, round after round. They either
have their eyes shut or their hands open.
“Remember the old Barnum saying, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute?’
The population is bigger now so that the sucker crop is much greater than
in his day, but they’re still falling.”
We discussed Johnson, Jeffries, Tom Sharkey, Ketchel and a few others
among the old time greats and compared them with the fighters of this
era. Tad challenged me to name eight topnotchers who came to the front
since 1916. I started but he cut me short.
“What’s the use?” he asked. “Even if you name fifteen, you won’t find
four equal to those I’ve named. I like to talk about the stars of
other days because they were the real masters. Their names will go on
forever, just as those of the great actors, musicians, painters and
writers—Dickens, Cruikshank, Leech, Shakespeare, Balzac, Dore, Kipling,
O. Henry and Jack London. Birds like that will continue to be chatted
about. They were the cream in their specialty as were Corbett, John L.,
Jeffries, Fitz, Ryan, Sharkey, Johnson, Choynski, Walcott, Gans, Dixon
and Attell in theirs.”
We had attended a show a few nights before in the Garden at which about
16,000 persons had crowded the arena, but the main event was marred by
repeated holding and waltzing and Tad, turning to me, remarked:
“Just because 16,000 fight fans saw that bout and only about 800 saw
some of the ring classics of the past, some of the stirring contests we
used to attend, doesn’t prove that the boxer of today is better than the
fellows of twenty years ago. Where do they get off to compare these birds
to men like George Kid Lavigne, Bat Nelson, Gans, Jack McAuliffe, Frank
Erne, and many others of their brand I can name? A magazine writer today
gets ten times what Dickens got fifty years ago, but that doesn’t mean
anything so far as comparative ability goes. Half of the fans of today
think that they’re seeing great fights, when as a matter of fact, they’re
just being entertained by dubs.”
Tad knew his fights and fighters. He had the facts. The day before the
Berlenbach-Delaney fight, I sat with Tad and we discussed the coming
battle.
“Is a great left better than a great right hand?” he asked.
I thought for a moment and then replied that I thought the best fighters
in recent years were those who possessed good, powerful lefts.
“Let’s see,” Tad answered. “Take a pencil and jot down these names.”
Both Tad and I got our pencils out and we started to name good fighters
who could hit hard, and we found that the man with powerful lefts rated
higher than those who had a good right. Tad remarked that Billy Delaney,
the old-time trainer who handled three champions—Corbett, Jeffries,
and Johnson—said that he wouldn’t handle a man who didn’t possess a
good left. “The left,” according to Delaney, “is the best fighting hand
because it is the natural hand for hitting purposes.”
Tad recalled Jack Johnson’s telling him that a fighter is never off
balance or out of position after leading with the left, whereas he is all
wet after the right is shot.
Among the fighters with great rights whom Tad named were John L.
Sullivan, Peter Maher, Bert Keyes, Gunboat Smith, Joe Choynski, Aurelia
Herrera, Georges Carpentier, Australian Billy Murphy, Willie Fitzgerald,
Young Corbett, and Jack Delaney. Those with powerful hitting lefts were
Stanley Ketchel, Bob Fitzsimmons, George Dixon, Dal Hawkins, Frankie
Neil, Fred Fulton, Jim Corbett, Nonpareil Jack Dempsey, Paul Berlenbach,
and Kid McCoy.
Tad’s favorite fighter was Gans, with Jack Johnson rating a close second.
He thought that Dempsey was a great scrapper, but he told me on several
occasions that Dempsey never saw the day when he could whip “Lil’ Artha.”
He saw Dempsey at Toledo and watched Jack beat Billy Miske in Benton
Harbor. That was the last fight he viewed from ringside. Thereafter, he
listened to them on the radio.
He often remarked that the radio was a God-sent gift to him, and it
undoubtedly prolonged his life. Always a great hand for forming likes and
dislikes for figures in the sports world, he got to taking impressions
from the radio and on many occasions his follow-up story and drawings
on a great fight event which he didn’t see but to which he listened were
amazingly accurate.
In covering a fight or other important sports event, Tad’s ability to cut
loose with a flow of descriptive writing that spread the picture before
the eye and the mind of the reader surpassed that of any other writer of
his time. He was uncanny in the accuracy of his description.
I recall the first time the word “hard boiled egg,” was used in a sports
story. The expression was coined by Tad following a heated discussion
over the division of a fight purse, in which Harry Pollock and Dan
McKettrick played leading parts. When an agreement could not be reached,
Tad came forth with a cartoon depicting the wrangling and a caption
beneath the cartoon of Pollock read:
“How a hard boiled egg looks when fighting for the dough.”
That expression became extremely popular in a short time and soon was
used as a gag on the stage and in stories of crime to indicate a tough
character. Still later he dropped part of the expression and simplified
it to just plain “egg,” and thereafter that word took its place in
English slang, meaning ordinary, useless, unfit.
There never lived a more ardent fight-fan than Jack London; as a matter
of fact, Jack, though he never boxed in public, was a nifty hand with the
gloves. The first time I met him was in Jack Cooper’s New York Gymnasium,
the place where Mike Donovan, Theodore Roosevelt, and many other noted
New Yorkers gathered. London was exercising with the mitts, and he
surprised me with his skill. I asked him where he learned to spar.
“I was a pupil of the greatest teacher in the world,” he responded. “Old
Professor Hard Experience drilled me. When I was a kid I traveled with a
tough gang, and had to learn how to scrap, or get my block knocked off
every day,” he said. “Then in my hobo days, riding on freights in box car
pullmans, I was up against a still tougher game. A young fellow needs to
know how to handle himself if he elects to carry on in the tramp life.
“But I picked up a lot of glove knowledge sparring with Battling Nelson
when Bat was lightweight champion, with Jimmy Britt, Young Corbett, and
other cracks. I always liked the game.”
London wrote some of the finest fight fiction ever published. He had the
gift of making a reader actually see and feel what he described within
the ring. Jack had some newspaper experience on San Francisco papers,
but the reporter phase didn’t last long, as his talent for fiction soon
transferred him to a more lucrative field.
Even after he became famous as a novelist, the newspapers and syndicates
often paid him big money to act as ring correspondent for championship
matches. It was while covering the Battling Nelson-Jimmy Britt match
for the world’s lightweight championship in 1905 that London coined the
phrase “abysmal brute,” applying it to Nelson’s seeming insensibility
to punishment. The iron-jawed Dane took everything Britt could give him
in the punching line, until he wore Jimmy down and kayoed him in the
eighteenth round.
London greatly admired the clever Britt and wanted him to win, but it
wasn’t in the cards for Jimmy to come out top-dog. Jack also was anxious
to see Jeffries whip Johnson. He was engaged by a newspaper syndicate to
cover the Jeffries-Johnson battle at Reno, Nevada, in 1910, and he was
hurt as much as Jeffries when Johnson knocked the big Californian out.
London was Jeff’s most ardent rooter.
* * * * *
Like Tad, Bill McGeehan, famous Sports Editor of the New York _Herald
Tribune_, was a coiner of phrases. While Tad made friends through his
cartoons, McGeehan gained an army of readers through his unique style
of sports journalism. His sarcasm, often biting to the marrow, held the
attention of his readers to the very end. He was a master of satire, and
founded a school of sports writers in this vein which now numbers among
its clan some of the best scribes in America—men like Westbrook Pegler of
the _Chicago Tribune_ Service and Joe Williams of _The World-Telegram_.
They, like McGeehan, are members of the school of sports debunking.
However, McGeehan’s coinage of sports epithets led the field, his
phrases far outnumbering those of Tad. The fight game was McGeehan’s
richest source, although his dubbing of Notre Dame football players
as the “Fighting Irish” is probably the most memorable nickname he
ever created. Among his most popular descriptions of boxing were “The
Manly Art Of Modified Murder,” and “The Cauliflower Industry.” The
“Scrambled Egg Brigade” he applied to fighters in general. In the area of
particularization, one of his best-remembered tags is the one he hung on
Primo Carnera: “The Tall Tower Of Gorgonzola.” “The Battle Of What Of It”
he applied to any fight that he judged to be worthless.
“The Ex-Millionaires Hole,” was the name he gave to the Madison Square
Garden Bowl, after the Depression depleted the fortunes of many of
the directors of the Garden. “The Boy Bandit,” was his epithet for
Jimmy Johnston, while “The Exploiter of Pachyderm,” was Jack Curley’s
designation.
* * * * *
When boxing was attacked in the New York State Legislature in 1921, and
it looked like the sport would receive its death blow from the Governor,
McGeehan, Damon Runyon, Bill McBeth, George B. Underwood, Charles F.
Mathison and I, went up to Albany to plead for the continuation of
boxing. We were fortified with facts to prove the sport was conducted on
as high a plane as any other.
McGeehan, known in our circle as “the Sheriff,” made the hit of the
meeting when he spoke up:
“Prize fighting, Governor, is not a sport. It is a gigantic business. As
a business, I dare say it is conducted as honestly as American politics
or the average business, and I venture to say, a little more honestly
than the stockmarket. Every profession has its crooks, its gamblers, its
undesirables, even the profession of politics. Then why condemn boxing
and whitewash all other business?
“Prize fights today are merely entertainments staged for the box office.
The sporting element went out when the business became legal and
respectable. If this legislature should kill boxing, it would do a gross
injustice to hundreds of boys who are engaged in it as a profession; to
managers who handle them; and to the promoters who hire them for the
public’s entertainment. Such action will result in only one thing—boxing
will go back to the bootlegging days.”
So impressed was the Governor with that statement that you could read his
thoughts as he absorbed every word McGeehan uttered.
McGeehan was dubbed by his fellow writers as “the man with the fighting
pen.” He waged war on crookedness in every branch of athletics, as do my
good friends Dan Parker and Jimmy Cannon today.
Probably the best informed sports writers of my time, among those with
whom I was well acquainted and with whom I worked, were Charles F.
Mathison, my boxing critic on the _Press_, _Sun_, and _Telegram_, and the
man who formulated the rules of boxing which became known as the Walker
Law; Ed Smith of Chicago, and Arthur Lumley, who handled the _Illustrated
News_ and was several times manager of John L. Sullivan. He also wrote
for my _Ring_ magazine.
Mathison, who at one time was the editor of the Detroit _Free Press_ and
also of the New York _Globe_ and the _Morning Telegraph_, had a vast
acquaintance in the boxing world. He, like McGeehan, was a tough man for
the crooked element in boxing. Neither showed any mercy. It was their
vitriolic writings that did much to save the sport at a time when it was
in danger of annihilation.
McGeehan was a very heavy drinker, and he frequently ran into trouble
when he was assigned to cover a fight story of national importance. I
recall his arrival the day before the Sharkey-Stribling fight in Miami
Beach.
As I remarked in a previous chapter, Steve Hannigan, Sid Mercer, and I
handled the publicity and hotel accommodations. I reserved rooms for the
most prominent reporters from New York and other big cities, including
the British visitors, in the George Washington Hotel, where my wife and I
occupied a suite.
McGeehan reached Miami Beach with Don Skene, his protégé, and Graham
McNamee, then America’s outstanding sports announcer, working for the
National Broadcasting Company. Graham was to do the broadcasting. All
three had imbibed too much, and I quickly realized that I had a job on
my hands. McGeehan walked into press headquarters supported by Skene and
Graham, and in a gruff, commanding tone he demanded to know where his
room was. When I told him that he had a reservation in the Fisher Estate
where Bill Carey was living, he shoved me aside and walked down the
corridor. My wife Trudie had emerged from her room and as the door was
open, Bill stopped in front of the room, walked in, opened the window and
started to toss out our trunk and handbags. I rushed in as he was about
to throw out my suit and remonstrated with him. But it did no good. He
dispossessed us and took over. Within a short time, he and Don Skene were
fast asleep, and my wife and I had to find new quarters.
On the day of the fight, McGeehan was nowhere to be found and Skene was
so far gone that he couldn’t see the typewriter keys. After the contest,
messages kept pouring into our headquarters asking for the New York
_Tribune_ stories. To cover the absence of the reporters, Sid Mercer
tackled McGeehan’s yarn, while I wrote one for Skene. We tried as closely
as we could to imitate their style, a mighty tough task. After Mercer had
filed McGeehan’s story, the editor sent the following message:
“What happened to McGeehan’s report? What we received was not written by
him.”
* * * * *
Batting for a fellow writer was nothing new in the sports field in those
days. My friend Warren Brown, in his excellent book, _Win, Lose or Draw_,
confirmed that. He has a good yarn in that book on McGeehan.
“At Benton Harbor, Bill had particularly rough going the night before the
Dempsey-Miske fight and on the day of the contest, he was almost as bad.
He made his way by forced march to the press headquarters to finish his
story. When he got there, the only typewriter available was one of those
old-fashioned Olivers on which the type faces rose from left to right on
slender ovals.
“As McGeehan thrust his fingers on the keyboard, coils of these type
faces rose from both sides and met in the center in an appalling knot.
Bill shuddered as he surveyed the scene, rose unsteadily, and made his
way out of the place. He was next heard from when he arrived in the
press box in the Cleveland Baseball Park two days later. His clothes and
personal belongings were forwarded to him. His story on the fight reached
his paper on time. It wasn’t pure McGeehan, but it got by!”
In Miami, where we had more than 450 newspapermen from all parts of the
world on hand for the first fight promoted by the Garden without Tex
Rickard’s help, many such yarns were telegraphed without aid from the
reporter whose name was signed without ever seeing the copy. Sid Mercer
and I often worked fourteen or more hours daily to write specials for
visiting writers who for six weeks were having the time of their lives
while we two were slaving to meet their deadlines. Even some of the
British newspapermen soon caught on to the American style of covering a
fight camp, and I had to send special cables out for them as well.
In most cases newspapermen assigned to camps in the years preceding
the Jim Norris regime, were from an entirely different school than the
present day boxing writers. The majority were more thorough in their work
and possessed a keener knowledge of boxing than the writers of this era.
They knew the game from A to Z, were more familiar with the techniques,
knew the background of the characters who were the hangers-on in the
camps and didn’t depend on the stereotyped reports of the publicity
bureau for an angle.
Today most of the boxing reporters are copyists who take what is handed
out to them on a silver platter and merely elaborate. Few investigate.
The majority take for granted what is given to them by the press bureau.
Few go in for digging feature material as we did daily.
How different the old school was! The most prolific of all fight
publicists was the late Francis Albertanti, who for many years was my
star boxing reporter on the _Telegram_. He prepared more fighters for the
opening bell than any one I knew, and his camp reports, when he was in
charge of the ballyhoo, were tops. I know of no writer who could beat him
in obtaining human interest material. He often had the other reporters
tearing their hair because of the number of “scoops” he scored for our
paper. Many a bonus Francis received from our Managing Editor, Fred
Walker.
On one occasion when Francis was out of work, Mike Jacobs asked him to
take charge of Billy Conn’s camp when Billy was preparing for his second
fight with Joe Louis. Mike offered him $1,200 for three weeks work plus
all expenses. Francis turned it down. “You need the money more than I
do,” he replied in a huff. “I’ll take the job for $5,000—nothing less.”
Then he added: “You’re a millionaire; I’m an ordinary working man. I can
get along on ham and beans. You need steaks daily.”
So Mike and Francis parted, and for the first time in years, they were
not on talking terms. But Francis was a frequent visitor in Conn’s camp,
and one day after Billy’s workout, a mediocre one, Joe Williams, who took
my place as Sports Editor of the _Telegram_ asked Francis for his opinion.
“Billy looks great,” said Francis with a straight face. “He’s full of
energy. He is fast, sharp, hits well, punches with accuracy. He’s clever
and game. He’s determined to win.”
Then after a short pause, Albertanti wound up his commentary with a
knockout punch at Uncle Mike’s ballyhoo: “But I pick Louis to take the
kid out any time Joe wants to. He’s a cinch in my book to keep the title.”
* * * * *
Ed Smith was another scribe who played a dominant part in American sports
for half a century. The by-line of Ed Smith, so well known to readers
of _The Ring_ for which he wrote for many years, was known throughout
the world of sports. For twenty-six years he wrote for the Chicago
_Chronicle_, the Chicago _American_ and the Los Angeles _Examiner_.
Back in the “good old days” it was sacrilegious to stage a fight or a
wrestling match of national importance without Smith acting as referee.
Recognized as one of the best referees, there was never a complaint about
his honesty or his ability. He was third man in the ring when Luther
McCarty fell dead in his bout with Arthur Pelkey in Calgary. He also
officiated at the memorable international wrestling championship match
between Hackenschmidt and Gotch at Dexter Pavilion in Chicago in 1911.
He took part in thousands of other famous contests, a complete list of
which would fill a record book.
Lumley, Mathison, Bat Masterson, and Smith were among the last of the old
school of sports writers, which also included Joe Vila of _The Evening
Sun_ of New York, one of the most fearless boxing writers in America.
Like Lumley, Smith and Mathison revelled in the past. They saw the
romance that ended with the commercialization of boxing, and they kept
the old days alive with thrilling and absorbingly interesting tales.
Arthur Lumley was editor of the _Police Gazette_ fifty years ago. He
came into the spotlight at a time when the writers wore long beards,
curling moustaches, high boots, and other disguises when they went to
cover a fight. I visited Lumley just before his death a few years ago.
He had broken his leg in a fall, and this injury, combined with another
ailment, had left him an invalid. His failing sight could hardly discern
my presence.
“Come closer, Nat,” he said to me. “I won’t treat you like they used to
treat reporters fifty years ago, when I went the rounds to do my work.
You know, prize fight promoters and fighters didn’t want newspapermen
about, then. It was too dangerous. Everything had to be kept quiet so
that there couldn’t be a give-away to the cops.”
He then told me the story of his attempt to cover the fight between Paddy
Ryan and Joe Goss in 1880, at Collier’s Station, West Virginia.
“I decided that I would report that fight and I went along with the few
who knew where it would be staged. When I got to the scene, those in
charge drove away every member of the press except me. I seemed to be a
privileged character.
“They let me stay because I stood in well with several bank robbers who
were associated with the promotion. We had an awful time getting to the
scene of action and still worse a time convincing the principals that it
was all right for me to remain and report the fight for my paper. We took
a boat and started across Lake Michigan for Canada, but when we got to
the Canadian shore we found a company of British soldiers and six cannon
facing us, so we decided it was best not to attempt to land.
“We turned back, but before we reached the Michigan shore, the Governor
had been tipped off that we were on our way and he had a posse after
us, so we couldn’t land there, either. We ran into the same trouble in
Indiana and later in Ohio, but we finally made it into West Virginia.
“It was a tough fight to stage and tougher to handle because of constant
danger of being discovered by the law. The fight lasted eighty-seven
rounds, with Ryan the winner. It was the first big event I covered after
becoming sports editor of the _Police Gazette_ in 1879.”
Speaking of the old _Police Gazette_, which the author of this book
bought in 1932 when the Fox family, because of heavy losses, decided to
give it up after controlling it for half a century, Lumley remarked: