Sweet Thunder Page 34

  But Sugar Ray, for all his fame and accomplishment on American shores, had fallen prey to something in Europe—freedom. And laughter. And the spirit of ease that he felt surrounded by. He could dally in the southern part of France; the southern part of the United States, even for a world champion, was another matter. Now, sitting in the Parisian cafés—as Duke Ellington, Sidney Bechet, the painter Beauford Delaney, and so many other artisticminded Negroes had done and were doing—he had become intoxicated. He made decisions willy-nilly; to go here, or not go there. There were no WHITES ONLY signs; no FOR COLORED signs. Many of the black Americans he encountered in France were former military men studying on the GI Bill and jazz musicians in porkpie hats who told him they just couldn’t understand why America had had such a strong hand in eliminating Hitler’s fascism but was doing little to eliminate bigotry at home. Robinson, who always admired musicians, soaked in the whole scene. When the young novelist James Baldwin had left Sugar Ray’s Harlem in 1948 for Paris with a Rosenwald Fellowship to work on a novel, he too was struck by the freedom he found in Paris. Baldwin soon ran out of money, suffered the indignities of being broke—but he laughed. “In some deep, black, stony, and liberating way,” Baldwin would write, “my life, in my own eyes, began during that first year in Paris, when it was borne in on me that this laughter is universal and never can be stilled.” Gainford and other members of Robinson’s entourage told him of the letter that had appeared in the Harlem newspaper, but Robinson ignored it. He was busy enjoying himself, the air of freedom all around him, the rush of laughter in corner cafés that turned his face and lit his eyes.

  It was several weeks before Sugar Ray arrived back in the United States, but when he did, his catty newspaper friend Walter Winchell, along with New York City Mayor Vincent Impellitteri (“I call him Vince,” said Robinson), made sure it would be a reception with fanfare. More than a dozen limousines awaited him at the pier. Descending from the ship into the summery sunshine, he still looked—as all could see—like the fabulous Sugar, dressed in a lovely cream-colored suit, white shirt, and dark tie. The fleet of limos cut through the sunshine, making its way toward City Hall. And once there, Robinson was greeted by a boisterous crowd of several thousand. They exploded with applause at the sight of him on the makeshift outdoor dais, and he seemed genuinely touched. Office workers peered from nearby windows; strollers at the back of the crowd stood on tiptoes, many wondering if it was some kind of campaign event. Standing before the throng, Robinson gazed out over the masses, nodding to the faces that were familiar—Salem church members, workers whom he employed in his uptown businesses, and of course the boys from the block. Mayor Impellitteri and Winchell presented Robinson with a scroll saluting his concern for “his fellow human beings” in his efforts abroad raising money for the Runyon Cancer Fund. Winchell had put this in motion, and Robinson knew it. This is what Walter Winchell could do—get the mayor on the phone, lay out his ideas for a Robinson reception, tell the mayor how wise it would be for him to personally attend. Walter Winchell could turn a Robinson ring defeat into a welcome-home salute. The power of the press! Robinson’s eyes turned misty looking out over the crowd. He vowed to reclaim the middleweight title and they roared.

  There had been much murmuring in that City Hall crowd about the announced date of the Robinson-Turpin rematch. It would take place September 12, at the hallowed Polo Grounds on 155th Street—in Harlem.

  There were few fighters more relaxed than Sugar Ray Robinson during training camp. Here he awaits the rematch with the dangerous Randy Turpin.

  The governing bodies of boxing, realizing the public’s fevered anticipation of the match, decreed that there would be no radio broadcasts or TV transmission of the looming fight. Instead, and with Robinson’s ready approval since he stood to reap more money, there would be closed circuit viewing on huge theatre screens across the country—in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and many other cities. The fight was being billed as a must-see cinematic event. It was further proof that Sugar Ray Robinson, as a middleweight, had drawn parity with the decades-long excitement of heavyweight champion ship battles around the world.

  Robinson, Gainford, and the rest of the pre-fight assemblage headed for training at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. A tone of seriousness hung over the camp. Robinson still listened to his boogie-woogie in the evenings, but the sparring sessions were longer. He was ever mindful of Turpin’s strength, stamina, and unorthodox fighting style. He put on a few more pounds, believing that his weight loss during his travels in Europe had tested his stamina against Turpin. He seemed determined.

  “The title is only lent,” Sugar Ray Robinson had warned before leaving London.

  Reporters started arriving at Pompton Lakes, more than a dozen at first, then a dozen more—members of the British press. They wanted quotes from Robinson, some kind of insight about the pending battle. “But Ray didn’t want to talk,” remembers Mel Dick, whom Robinson invited to visit him at the camp. “He could be ornery and cocky.” Dick loved waltzing around the grounds, realizing the significance of the bout. One day following his sparring session, Robinson appeared on the front porch of one of the cabins. The reporters quickly huddled together, imagining an impromptu news conference. Gainford stood to Robinson’s left, Dick to his right.

  “Ray,” one of the reporters asked, “what are you gonna do against Turpin?” All eyes went to Robinson. Pencils were gripped.

  Gainford and Dick both waited, looking at Robinson and then at each other. “He stood there for ten to fifteen minutes,” remembers Dick, “and said nothing. He just looked out over all the reporters. It was something else. I think he was just surveying his turf.”

  One evening, sitting around, everyone relaxed, Dick asked Robinson if there was anything he could do—perhaps fetch some groceries, run an errand? “Yeah, why don’t you go over to Turpin’s camp and get some secrets?” They all had a good laugh.

  Randy Turpin had left London with a hero’s send-off. Hundreds had attended a ballroom event—among them the celebrated actress Margaret Lockwood and well-known English comic Bud Flanagan—to wish him well in defense of his crown. In a blue suit, a beret atop his head, Turpin set sail with a large contingent, among them his brother, Dick and manager, George Middleton.

  When his ship docked in Manhattan, the Turpin group was met by host officials and whisked to a midtown hotel. Turpin stared out the car window at the impressive Manhattan skyline as the car sped along. The next day he and his brother insisted on a trip to Harlem, which they had heard so much about. Their eyes widened as they took in the tenements and cacophony of Harlem, at all the bewildering sights. Harlemites were also eager—in homage to the competitive spirit!—to meet the visiting champion who had dethroned their Sugar Ray. A welcoming reception in a private home had been set up for him. Stepping through the doorway, Turpin came up close to the vividness of Harlem—educated men and women, the talk spinning of international affairs and Paris and London, and the mesmerizing fight game. His muscular physique awed many of the guests. Adele Daniels, gorgeous and single, was introduced to the fighter, and soon they were engaged in a low-pitched conversation. Phone numbers were exchanged. George Middleton, Turpin’s manager, winced: He did not want his fighter to be distracted before the big fight by a beautiful young woman. But Turpin was entranced.

  There was yet another reception, this one at Sugar Ray’s nightclub, with the dethroned fighter himself playing the magnanimous host. A huge sign hung over the awning of the club: WELCOME RANDY. The nightclub cooks had prepared fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni salad—and a huge multi-tiered cake. If it was yet another kind of welcoming party for Randy Turpin, it also marked the appearance on the scene of another figure: Walker Smith Sr., Sugar Ray’s father, had relocated to New York City. He had been vigilant about avoiding the spotlight. (Even the Harlem reporters could never get him to sit for an interview.) He was also careful not to disrupt the dynamics of Robinson and Gainford, as Robinson had long thought of Gainford
as a father figure and his real father knew it. So now Walker Smith Sr.—quiet as a whisper when spotted in public—simply basked in his son’s light. Turpin smiled quite a bit inside Robinson’s nightclub, and he thanked his host profusely for the affair.

  Turpin’s party soon left for Grossinger’s—site of a rustic resort in the Catskills nearly 150 miles away from Manhattan—where he set up his training camp. Despite the hubbub around him, he seemed, as he had been in London, quite calm. Following his sparring sessions, he would walk the grounds or play table tennis. Sometimes he sat and flipped through his huge assortment of comic books. Other times he thought of Adele Daniels, the woman from Harlem. Soon the tourists began arriving, many from England, wanting a glimpse of their country’s hero. British sailors on leave showed up one afternoon, singing songs as they paraded about the grounds. No one paid much attention to the young teenager who was strolling the grounds one afternoon, looking around, nodding, smiling, making small talk. The teenager tried to take in the scene and mood of the training camp, imagining himself a kind of spy. Young Mel Dick had taken Sugar Ray Robinson’s challenge about infiltrating the Turpin camp quite seriously. “I had my father take me up there,” he recalls. Dick sensed a loose operation, a kind of constant gaiety. He reported his findings back to Robinson, who could only smile at Mel Dick’s nerve.

  Turpin had, in fact, begun an affair with Adele Daniels, the Harlem beauty, and there were loud arguments within his camp about his disappearances to be with her.

  There were chartered flights in the air, heading for America, two days before the bout. British dignitaries and sportsmen—among them the mayor of Turpin’s hometown—were en route. Prince Monolulu of Ethiopia by way of St. Croix, as it were, who had been living in London doing business for more than twenty years and had become a fight fan, stepped off one of those planes when it landed in New York City and drew a crowd of gawkers. Plumes of feathers adorned the prince’s headdress. “His red vest was adorned with a green shamrock, the six-pointed Jewish Star of David, and other ornaments on the front, while the back had the British and American flags,” a reporter noted. Those who arrived on the Queen Elizabeth disembarked from the ship, pleading with stewards to rustle up as many tickets to the fight as possible.

  Russ J. Cowans, the sports editor of the Chicago Defender, could not contain his enthusiasm over the pending battle: “Not since the Marquis of Queensberry laid down the rules of boxing has a fight below the heavyweight division created as much interest of national and international flavor as that between Sugar Ray Robinson and Randy Turpin.”

  More than 150 workmen assembled at the Polo Grounds, setting up the ring and making preparations for the fight. The ringside seats for Robinson vs. Turpin would stretch back fifteen rows. In the days leading up to the match, tickets were being scalped for $100. Even in the unforgiving and greedy world of scalpers, that was considered astonishing. Radio announcers were billing the fight as the “battle of nations.” Sugar Ray felt the enormous buildup. He began to sense it was his “patriotic duty” now to reclaim the title for America. At the International Boxing Club headquarters in Manhattan—sponsors of the bout—secretaries couldn’t keep up with the volume of calls inquiring about tickets.

  One of the side features of a Sugar Ray Robinson championship bout was the magnetic force with which it pulled in the cream of Negro America—writers, political ward leaders, musicians, Elks members, physicians, dentists, gorgeous fashion models familiar from the pages of Negro publications, big-time Negro funeral home directors, and insurance salesmen. America knew little about them, but among Negro America, they were royalty, (lowercase) kings and queens. Photographers from Ebony and Our World magazines, and newspapers such as The Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, and the Amsterdam News cornered them in hotel lobbies and outside Harlem eateries days before the bout, pleading for a photo—please, please, right over here, that’s right, how wonderful, thank you, thank you.

  The former champion had spent the night before the fight at his mother’s. He had bought her some new jewelry for the occasion. She cooked for him on the day of the fight—he ate lightly. It was late in the day when he climbed into his pink Caddy and rode off toward the Polo Grounds. The air was clear and crisp. Autumn in New York: it was his favorite time of the year—the light, the golden sunshine that turned to velvety darkness.

  The gate receipts had already exceeded $700,000; more than sixty-one thousand tickets would eventually be sold. Both figures topped all previous American-set middleweight encounters.

  Robinson’s Caddy was spotted just outside the Polo Grounds and the yelps erupted into the air; the auto was escorted the remainder of the way. The former champion, given his career achievements, was slightly favored. “Turpin has the youth and strength of a 23-year-old needed to beat a fading veteran,” New York Times columnist Arthur Daley wrote. But then, hedging his bets: “Robinson has the experience of a 31-year-old campaigner to pin back the ears of a callow youngster.” A columnist for The Times of London, feeling that Robinson was edging “towards the end of a long career,” opined that Turpin had a chance at yet another victory if his confidence held steady: “But if Turpin can feel that, having beaten his man once, he can beat him again, even if the job is now a good deal harder, in fact if he is not thrown out of a stride by a faster tempo, there is the chance that his strength and punching power will pull him through.”

  Boxing officials were giddy with delight at news of the attendance: The 61,370 attendance figure bested even the heavyweight title bout between Joe Louis and Billy Conn back in 1941.

  Before the bell rang in the ring that evening, a trio of heavyweights was introduced, their names skittering out into the open air from the throat of the announcer. They each bent through the ropes to stand at center ring in the twilight, giving nods to Sugar Ray before they turned and squinted against the klieg lights, blurry faces in the distance, and applause from each side of the ring. Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles were former heavyweight titleholders; Jersey Joe Walcott the reigning champion. It was a unique moment in fight annals: The three men and Robinson had all, at differing times, battled the powerful boxing commissions that might have stopped them from integrating the top ranks of their sport. And now they stood together: the four horsemen of the fight world who had crashed through barriers.

  The fighters exchanged rudimentary body blows in the first round before Robinson caught Turpin with an uppercut to the face. Turpin countered with a left that connected. It was early, but voices hummed in the overflow crowd anyway. Celebrities and public figures were everywhere in attendance, among them bug-eyed comedian Eddie Cantor, roly-poly magazine writer A. J. Liebling (who was also a gourmand and favored the pork chops at Sugar Ray’s nightclub), Yankee Joe DiMaggio, broadcaster Lowell Thomas, the revered Douglas MacArthur, and nightclub owner Toots Shor, hanging with a grinning Walter Winchell, who was doing what he did best, hoarding tidbits and sightings for future columns. Boxing officials had been stunned at the swelling crowd; kids in the farthest reaches of the Polo Grounds tried hopping atop baseball dugouts until they were shooed away.

  Turpin, who had so successfully used a clinching tactic in London to either slow Robinson or belt him, found the move harder to pull off this time. Robinson simply shoved him away, a keep-away tactic Gainford had pushed during training. A right from Robinson—quick as a shark’s turn—missed Turpin’s jaw. But not so the right to Turpin’s face just before the bell, which stung him visibly.

  In the third Robinson powered shots into Turpin’s ribs, the follow-up blow interrupted only by a Turpin clinch, which referee Ruby Goldstein stepped in to break up. Then, deep into the round, there was a solid right-left combination from Turpin that had the visiting British crowd on the edge of their seats, suddenly believing their Turpin was about to make his move. Robinson wobbled a bit before gaining his balance as both fighters heard the bell ring.

  During training, Robinson and Gainford had decided that Robinson should try for an early k
nockout, feeling that the younger Turpin would only gain momentum the longer the fight went on. But the fourth ended with Turpin still on his feet, hardly looking like a candidate for a flattening. By the end of the sixth, Robinson was firing blows to Turpin’s well-chiseled body, blows that appeared to stymie him not at all. The fight had seemed remarkably even thus far—if it went on that way it would play to Turpin’s favor as the titleholder. Throughout the eighth and ninth rounds, the visiting British crowd had a right to optimism yet again as Turpin unloaded devilish right and left hooks to Robinson’s face. Robinson’s strategy had betrayed him; it was evident that by the start of the tenth he was “smarting under the terrific blows the Englishman had landed in two previous rounds.” Robinson himself realized he was “not really in charge” of the fight.

  Just seconds into the tenth, during a clinch, Robinson suffered a head-butt from Turpin. Blood began gushing from above his left eye. Referee Goldstein closed in for a look. Robinson realized that Goldstein might stop the fight at round’s end and that a decision would likely be awarded to Turpin: It was always the challenger who had more to prove and the champion given the benefit of the doubt. Robinson pushed himself away from the clinch. Immediately—in the time it takes for a bulb to spill light after a switch has been turned on—he slammed Turpin with a shuddering right hook. Turpin went to the canvas. The fall was almost in slow motion, as if Turpin was trying with everything in his power to will himself against touching the canvas—but he could not. The referee closed in for the nine count. Robinson retreated to his corner, resting his outstretched arms on the ropes like a daydreaming matador. Turpin rose before being called out. With dread swelling in them, the English crowd watched Robinson as he rushed from the ropes. He immediately punched Turpin into the ropes with a shocking fierceness—an uppercut, a right, a left, another left, a right, then a follow-up overhand right. Turpin crouched, doing all he could to keep from flying through the ropes. But Robinson held Turpin up himself with his right hand while he fired away with the left. The punches kept coming—another left, another right, a combination. Blood was still streaking from Robinson’s eyes, but no matter; another left, another right—more than thirty punches in less than thirty seconds—and the Polo Grounds exploded. Turpin wheeled and stumbled to the center of the ring as referee Goldstein stepped in; Turpin stared across at Robinson as if he couldn’t believe what had gone so wrong so quickly, as if he could continue, but Goldstein put his arms around Turpin’s shoulders—as a father might a son who has just heard some painful family news. It was all over. Sugar Ray Robinson had regained the middleweight crown of the world.