Sparring With Hemingway: And Other Legends of the Fight Game by Budd Schulberg Read Free Book Online Page B

German knight should return to our shores and smite down our black-white hope?
    For the next twelve months our heavyweight championship moved out of the squared circle into the political arena of global power. Old Jim Braddock had lifted the title from a playful Baer. Suddenly Braddock’s little manager Joe Gould found himself playing international chess. As the conqueror of Louis, Schmeling had credentials as the No. 1 challenger, and the Garden wanted the match. But crustaceous Mike Jacobs, who played his chess with ringside tickets, had an exclusive on Joe Louis and wanted Braddock and that title for his man. Whoever controlled the heavyweight title controlled the multi-million-dollar business of boxing. But there were even higher stakes and bigger players. This act of the drama comes from Joe Gould himself, reliving his glory days. “I’m just sittin’ down t’ supper when the phone rings and it’s Max Schmeling callin’ from Berlin. He asks me if I signed for Louis yet and I sez No, but we’re gettin’ closer. He wants t’ know how much I’m askin’ and I say three hunnert t’ousand against 50 percentof the gross. Max says if we come to Berlin and fight him instead we c’n do even better. I sez for a Jew to bring his champion to Germany and face all them anti-Semites they gotta do a lot better. He sez wait a minute I’m makin’ this call from the private residence of Reich Minister Goebbels—I’m goin’ to put him on the phone—the German Government is ready to underwrite the fight. Just tell ’im what you want—.
    “So there I am, a little Yiddle who didn’t have a dime until I got the brainstorm of scraping the washed-up Braddock off the Jersey docks an’ bringin’ him back from retirement—Joe Gould talkin’ long distance to the Number Two Man in Nazi Germany. Goebbels is very polite. He says the Germans are great sports fans and we will be treated like royalty when we come to Germany. He says he would like to bring us to Berchtesgaden to meet Der Führer himself. I can see him and Max all smiles on the other end of that phone. ‘Now would you like to tell me your terms,’ he sez.
    “Well for openers I want three hunnert t’ousand in dollars here in the Chase National Bank before we get on the boat,’ I sez. ‘Ya, you haf it’—sez Goebbels. ‘An’ another hunnert thou when we get to Berlin.’ ‘Ya, you haf it,’ he sez. ‘An’ first-class travel and hotel accommodations for six people.’ ‘Ya, you haf it,’ he sez. ‘An twenny-five t’ousand trainin’ expenses.’ ‘Ya, ya, you will haf that also. If you come to Berlin right away we will sign the contract.’
    “Then I take a big breath,” Joe Gould went on, “an’ I sez, ‘Only one more clause, Mister Goebbels. Before we enter the ring we want every Jew let out of your concentration camps.’ ”
    According to Gould, who gave us this for the book he hoped we’d write, the phone went dead. There was to be no demonstration of Nazi Superman over decadent America in the Sports Palast. The coveted title that would have become the property of the neo-vandals of the Third Reich remained in America. Eventually Gould did sign for a fight with Schmeling, but in New York. Wheeling and dealing, he also signed for his resurrected champion to meet Joe Louis in Chicago. Under thetable was a deal for Gould and his fading tiger to enjoy 10 percent of Louis’s subsequent winnings. (It was arrangements like this, plus 40 percent tax-free to his first wife, plus shares to his Detroit sponsors, to Mike Jacobs, to his gambling “buddies,” and to the Treasury Department, that turned Joe Louis into a million-dollar pauper.) While Max Schmeling showed up for his phantom fight with the sought-after Braddock, Gould’s Cinderella Man was gallantly submitting to the quick hard hands of a lithe colored boy, Joe Louis Barrow, born into a large family of hungry mouths in a ramshackle cabin in the cotton country of Alabama.
    So the next