On the night
of June 13th, 1935, 29,000 patrons filled an outdoor stadium in Queens, New
York to watch a prize fight. It was not just any prize fight. It was a title
fight between the challenger, James J. Braddock and the Heavyweight Champion of
the World, Max Baer.
A 10 to 1
underdog, Braddock shocked the sports world by beating Baer in a unanimous
decision, capping what boxing aficionados consider to be one of the greatest
comeback stories of all time. The champion may have had the most powerful
right-hand punch of any heavyweight in boxing history. Two fighters had died as
a result of Baer’s right-hand blows.
Braddock, at
191 pounds did not match-up well to Baer’s 219 pounds, or to Baer’s 6-inch
reach advantage. What Braddock did have was a cast iron jaw and a fear in his heart
greater than death. For 15 rounds, Braddock was the relentless aggressor. He
took the champ’s punishing blows and never stopped coming at him.
Greater
fighters and greater fights preceded and followed this 1935 bout, rendering
Braddock vs. Baer an obscure piece of boxing history, and there it would have remained
if actor, Russell Crowe had not decided that he needed to play the role of Jim
Braddock in a movie, and if director, Ron Howard had not said: “Let’s do it!”
That
collaboration resulted in the 2005 film, Cinderella Man, which had
plenty of relevance at the time it was made, but not nearly as much relevance
as it has right now, living in a nation fighting with its heart and soul to
survive the human wreckage of Trumpism.
1935 was
just about the half-way point of the Great Depression. In 1929 the stock market
crashed, banks failed, and millions of Americans became jobless and homeless.
The 29,000 fight fans who showed up to see the fight, were the fortunate ones
who could afford a ticket. The stadium was built to hold 70,000, and boxing was
as popular then as professional football is today.
For most Americans, poverty and desperation had become the new normal. Hundreds of thousands of shanty towns, known as Hoovervilles − sarcastically named for President Herbert Hoover, whose policies were blamed for causing and deepening the Great Depression, had sprung up in cities and towns across the country.
Homeless men,
women, and families lived in shacks that they made from wooden crates,
cardboard, scraps of metal and glass, or just holes in the ground with some
facsimile of a roof. Some shacks stood out for their craftsmanship. Plenty of skilled
tradesmen were among the homeless.
Hoovervilles
were often located near soup kitchens, so those residents could be first in
line for their only meal of the day. Photographs show us that many of the men
standing in soup lines and breadlines wore business suits.
The barriers
between living a happy life and plummeting into dire poverty proved more
fragile than anyone could have imagined.
A vintage photograph
shows a man, standing in an endless breadline in New York City, holding this
sign:
WHO WILL HELP ME GET A JOB?
I DO NOT WANT CHARITY
A sign posted at the entrance to a small rural town delivered a cold, hard, and common message:
JOBLESS MEN KEEP GOING
WE CAN’T TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN
Seemingly in the blink of an eye, America had run out of luck, immortalized not just in photographs, but in the music of the day.
They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
(Try singing
this out loud to fully capture the anguish.)
Once I built a railroad, I made it run
Made it race against time
Once I built a railroad, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime
Once I built a tower, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
This was Herbert Hoover’s America − an America that crushed the spirit of the strongest souls.
Before the
Depression hit, a young Jim Braddock was making a name for himself as an up and
coming fighter, but not as a heavyweight, which he aspired to be. He couldn’t
make the weight. As a natural middleweight and then a light heavyweight, he was
just about unstoppable.
In 1928, the
top contender, Tuffy Griffiths was next in line to fight the Light Heavyweight
Champion, Tommy Loughran. First, Griffiths needed one more fight − someone who deserved a shot but could be easily beaten. He
mistakenly chose Jim Braddock, who ruined Tuffy’s plans by knocking him out.
With that
huge upset, Braddock earned his shot at the light heavyweight title. On July
18th, he climbed into the ring with Tommy Loughran, the smartest, toughest
fighter he had ever faced. But 1929 turned into an upset year for Jim Braddock
and for everyone else.
Braddock
lost by a decision and, in the process, broke his right hand. His dream was shattered,
and he fell into a deep depression, but he kept fighting. And he kept breaking
his hand. He lost 18 of his next 30 fights. His performance in the ring was so
bad that New York revoked his license, ending his boxing career.
And before
the year was over, the stock market crashed, banks went under, and Hoovervilles
and breadlines became part of the new reality. Jim Braddock’s new reality was
one of hopelessness and fear. He was dead broke with a wife and three young
kids.
Despite the
Depression, the ports of New York and New Jersey still had ships to be loaded
and unloaded. So, Braddock worked as a longshoreman, but only the days when he got
lucky. Each morning, he would walk miles to the docks, hoping to get hired. If
he didn’t get lucky, he would walk miles to the next port, and if he again
didn’t get lucky, he would walk home and hope to find any odd job.
When, he did
get lucky, he would work a 16-hour day for four dollars, sometimes having to
kick back a dollar to a corrupt hiring boss. The once proud man then faced his
worst humiliation. He went to the welfare office, stood in line alongside his friends,
neighbors, and strangers, and applied for relief. He was paid either $17 or $24
per week. The records aren’t clear. What is clear is that he still could not
pay his bills or feed his family.
Jim Braddock,
like so many others, had hit rock bottom. Of all the Great Depression comeback
stories, where individuals found a way to use rock bottom as a springboard to
the top, the Jim Braddock story is nothing short of amazing.
How did a washed-up
fighter with a smashed-up hand, end up back in the ring, fighting for the
Heavyweight Championship of the World?
Well, it started
with a window of opportunity − a very narrow window of opportunity.
In 1934,
“Corn” Griffin, known as the Ozark Cyclone, was a fast rising contender in the
heavyweight division who needed a fight to add to his resume − a fight that he could easily win − just a stepping-stone on his way to the championship.
Braddock’s
manager seized on the opportunity. The “washed-up” Braddock had enough name
recognition to justify a match and to be served up as a sacrificial lamb to
keep Griffin’s career on track.
So, with
zero fight preparation, Jim Braddock walked off the docks one day and into the
boxing ring the next day. The only question was: How many rounds could he
possibly last? But, somehow, this had become a different man and a totally
reinvented fighter. He wasn’t depressed. He was on fire. Braddock ruined the
Ozark Cyclone’s plans by knocking him out in the third round.
This
remarkable upset was naturally seen as a fluke, resulting from a lucky punch.
But the fluke made him an even more valuable stepping-stone for the top
contenders vying for their chance to take on Max Baer. The talented John Henry
Lewis would be the next beneficiary.
Or so he
thought, and so the experts thought.
Braddock had
other plans. In yet “another fluke,” he beat Lewis in a 12-round decision,
clearing the way for the tough ring veteran Art Lasky to fight Max Baer. All
Lasky had to do to get his shot at the title was to end Jim Braddock’s
improbable comeback. And the tough, ring savvy Lasky was just the man to do it.
Except that underdog
Braddock wasn’t quite finished with his comeback, which Lasky learned when a
perfect Braddock right hand punch broke his nose.
Within a
span of 9 months, the man who never stopped being the aggressor, never shied away
from absorbing the blows, and never listened to the experts, became a hero to
every American caught in their own personal Great Depression.
This most
improbable of comebacks prompted the popular writer, Damon Runyon to dub him
the “Cinderella Man,” but that was never the nickname used by the people who
knew him best. To them, he was known as Plain Jim. The quiet, soft spoken,
modest, humble, man of a few words was the perfect hero for Americans huddled
around radios across America and the globe, rooting for him as though they were
rooting for themselves.
But how on
earth did he pull it off?
Back in the
days when New York revoked his license, he wasn’t just losing fights. He was losing
to bad fighters. The fights were so bad that patrons booed and demanded their
money back. Then suddenly he walks off the docks and begins beating the best in
the world, and in a higher weight class? Seriously?
The answer
is actually quite simple. At least part of it is.
When
Braddock was losing all of those fights, he was fighting with a broken right
hand, forcing him to begin learning how to use his left more effectively, while
at the same time trying to conceal the uselessness of his right hand from his
opponent, who would have exploited that weakness. This made him a craftier,
more multi-dimensional fighter.
So, while he
was losing quite pathetically, he was actually becoming more skillful. It was
just that no one bothered to notice.
Then, performing
long hours of grueling dock work without using his right hand had strengthened
his left hand and allowed his right hand to finally heal. And the long walks to
and from the docks kept his legs strong. For Braddock, the cold hard world became
his gym.
And he had
one more thing.
Novelist,
John Steinbeck said this about the men of the Depression:
“How can you
frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the
wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him. He has known a fear
beyond every other.”
Jim Braddock
knew that fear. For him, facing Max Baer, the man with the killer punch, paled
compared to the relentless, haunting memory of being powerless to feed his
family.
The movie
did a disservice to Max Baer by portraying him as a villain. He in fact was a
nice guy, a fun-loving guy, who enjoyed nightclubs and women. What he did not
enjoy was training hard for a fight. He had no need to train hard for the match
with Braddock who, as usual, was handpicked to be easy prey, and should only
last for a few rounds.
In the ring,
Baer was not so nice. He was a master of distraction. He threw low blows and
illegal back hands, all meant to have Braddock look to the ref to call the foul
and momentarily drop his guard. None of that worked. Even landing his lethal
right on Braddock’s jaw did not put him on the canvas. Braddock’s eyes stayed
fixed on his target, and his feet kept moving forward, never yielding an inch
of ground to his opponent.
Nobody would
have knocked out Jim Braddock that night. Nobody.
On June 22,
1937, in Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Braddock defended his title against Joe
Louis. All of the fighters beaten by Braddock were supposed to be part of
boxing’s future. Braddock had temporarily put the future on hold. But Joe Louis
was another matter.
Facing, perhaps
the greatest heavyweight of all-time, Braddock fought valiantly, even knocking
the challenger off his feet early in the fight, but Louis, aptly nicknamed the
Brown Bomber, won by a knockout.
Joe Louis
would hold the title for an incredible 12 years. For Braddock, it was a
lucrative deal that left him financially set for life.
I would like
you to know that I never intended to go into this amount of detail about Jim
Braddock. I wanted to stick to the highlights and lowlights, but the more I
probed, the more detail I found indispensable.
The more I
learned about Braddock, the more he came to life, and the more relevant his
struggle and his triumph became. From one perspective, we are all a story of
the punches we’ve thrown − those that landed and those that
missed, and of the punches that landed on us, especially those that rocked us.
Whenever I
hear a candidate for public office, tell us that if elected, “I will fight for
you,” I cringe. The promise always rings hollow − empty, off-the-shelf, irritatingly
patronizing politician-speak. I am happy to hear about their victories, but
only when balanced by a candid account of their personal defeats. And such
honesty is rare.
I want a
candidate to tell me what knocked him down, what nearly robbed her of hope,
what made them a better, smarter fighter − if and how they became reinvented,
and what they did to deserve their shot at the title.
Seven months
ago, Joe Biden’s campaign was dead broke. For him, the early contests for the
nomination were a string of pathetic losses. Democrats were desperate for a
fighter with a knockout punch, a big right hand that could put Trump face down
on the canvas, where he would lie motionless and unconscious. Joe Biden was
yesterday’s news, a feeble version of his old self, with nothing left in his
tank.
For me, the
real story of Braddock’s comeback does not come through by simply hitting the
highlights and the lowlights. Braddock got better when no one was bothering to
notice. Being underestimated and remaining underestimated through his bouts
with Corn Griffin, John Henry Lewis, and Art Lasky was essential to his comeback
story.
In the Iowa
Caucuses, Joe became an object of pity, with scene after scene of rooms teeming
with excitement, but no one to be seen in the Biden section.
His fifth-place
performance in the New Hampshire Primary was considered a disaster. No
presidential nominee had ever finished below second place.
Then Bernie
beat him Nevada.
Politically,
Biden had hit rock bottom.
Even after his
comeback in South Carolina, no candidate would be able compete with Bernie and Bloomberg
in the Super Tuesday states, where their ad buys dominated the airways. Democrats
were facing the realistic possibility that the Party was headed for a brokered
convention.
Only one
thing could turn the tide, and it wasn’t money. It was the ringing endorsement
of Black America. With it comes the Democratic nomination. And so, they spoke. They
had already parked their support with Biden, and after reviewing the field, their
votes made it official. The only one they trusted to beat Trump and to remain
loyal to them was the 77-year old battle-tested, battle-scarred, and battle-hardened
veteran.
Now it was
up to him to lead, and there was little room for error. He had to clearly
present his case, while avoiding Trump’s onslaught of distraction and character
assassination. He had to keep moving forward, never losing sight of what he was
fighting for. And that is exactly what he did.
He looked
like a reinvented Joe Biden.
But then
came the debates. You have to admit that you were scared to death. Trump would
do to Joe what he had done to Rubio, Cruz, Jeb Bush, and any contender that
dared take him on. He pounded each of them with insults until they backed off. Only
Hillary stood toe to toe and beat him. It would be others that robbed her of
the victory that she had earned.
Trump did
not bother to train for the first debate. His handlers gave him talking points,
which he chose to ignore. Instead he led with distractions and low blows. He stepped
on the referee/moderator and on the entire debate process. The punches he
landed on Biden failed to draw blood. The punches that missed landed squarely
on his own jaw. Seniors and suburban women continued leaving his corner.
For the past
4 years, it appeared that, in the age of Trump, temperament didn’t matter, manners
were a thing of the past, and bullying at the highest level was now acceptable.
How shocking that seniors and women − even those who leaned Republican − would find it unacceptable for a president to be so rude,
especially as he sends illness, death, and chaos in their direction!
Biden did
train for the debate. He trained to go the distance. He stayed on message. This
was not the Biden of the Democratic debates whose answers were often unclear
and rambling.
Trump toned
it down in the second debate, but his performance was way too little and way
too late.
In the 15th
round of this second championship fight, moderator Kristen Welker asked the
final question. It was the single most important question of the debate. Here
it is:
This is
about leadership, gentlemen. Imagine this is your Inauguration Day. What will
you say in your address to Americans who did not vote for you?
Trump went first. He blamed China for “the plague.” He praised his performance as president. He falsely credited himself with improving the lives of all minorities, giving them “the best unemployment numbers in history”. And he said that if Biden were elected, he would raise everyone’s taxes and send the economy into depression.
Joe Biden, the president-in-waiting, said
this:
I will
say, I’m the American president. I represent all of you whether you voted for
me or against me. And I'm going to make sure that you’re represented.
I’m going
to give you hope. We're going to move. We're going to choose science over
fiction. We're going to choose hope over fear. We're going to choose to move
forward because we have enormous opportunities, enormous opportunities to make
things better.
We can
grow this economy.
We can
deal with systemic racism.
At the
same time, we can make sure that our economy is being run, and moved, and
motivated by clean energy, creating millions of new jobs. And that's the fact,
that's what we're going to do.
And I'm
going to say, as I said at the beginning, what is on the ballot here is the
character of this country. Decency. Honor. Respect. Treating people with
dignity.
Making
sure that everyone has an even chance.
Now, I'm
going to make sure you get that. You haven't been getting it the last four
years.
He hit every
point that he needed to hit. In both words and tone, he nailed it.
I have no
doubt that your previous favorite Democratic candidate, had he or she won the
nomination, would also have nailed the answer to the leadership question. Pete,
Amy, Liz, Bernie, or Bloomberg would have delivered a parting address that
spoke to all of us − a message that would have inspired,
reassured, and united us.
One of them
might have delivered a more rousing or a more eloquent speech. Biden’s speech
is rather plain. And yet it is perfect because it is perfect Joe.
In a news
conference before the big fight with Max Baer, a reporter asked the question: Jim,
you couldn’t win a fight for love or money. How do you explain this comeback?
From the
part of his soul that still ached from being powerless to feed his children, Braddock
answered that this time around he knew what he was fighting for. He told the
reporter he was fighting for milk.
In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Biden spoke from the depths of his soul to comfort those who had lost loved ones to Covid-19.
On this
summer night, let me take a moment to speak to those of you who have lost the
most.
I know
how it feels to lose someone you love. I know that deep black hole that opens
up in your chest. That you feel your whole being is sucked into it. I know how
mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes.
But I've
learned two things.
First,
your loved ones may have left this Earth but they never leave your heart. They
will always be with you.
And
second, I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find
purpose.
In a few
days, we will be engaged in our modern-day version of huddling around the
radio, rooting for our favorite fighter like we are rooting for ourselves and
this time, we will be rooting for ourselves and for everything we hold
sacred.
Judging from
his ever-rising poll numbers, a suffering and fearful nation has again chosen a
perfect hero. I think that when the votes are tallied, this Cinderella Man
should be given a more fitting nickname.
How about President Joe?
Bruce Coltin
Surviving
Trump Two Minutes at a Time