THE CINDERELLA MEN - A TALE OF TWO TENDERHEARTED TOUGH GUYS

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 15^th 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