Sweet Thunder Page 4

  Young Walker Smith was tall for his age, and rangy. In the Salem basement, Gainford, his attention seemingly always on another fighter, began to gaze over at young Walker. He was becoming impressed with the manner in which the boy worked out, the way he attacked the punching bag; the look of quickness in his hands. “At first he didn’t look like much [of a] fighter,” Gainford would come to reflect. “All he did was hit and run, but he had one thing. He wanted to learn. He was the first kid in the gym and the last one to leave. He’d say to me, ‘Suppose I do this, what the other guy do?’ I’d tell him and then he’d say, ‘And then suppose I do this and this? Then what happens?’”

  The novice figured he needed a mental understanding of boxing, of strategies and defensive postures. He’d ask Gainford questions in the basement gym, and questions when they got back out on the road; there were more questions whenever Walker watched another Salem fighter in the ring. Then he would scoot up alongside the fighter and ask him still more questions—no matter if he won or lost—about the fight just finished.

  In little time, young Walker realized he had found something unique. A traditional school setting couldn’t hold his attention, but a boxing ring could. He was hyperactive and dreamy. With his father still in Detroit, the boy also seemed starved for a male adult figure, and Gainford and the church deacons at Salem gave him a sense of being looked after. For the first time in his life, he knew the constancy of mature male voices. These were churchmen, proud and unbent. Some had been robbed of their own childhood dreams, and now, with the chance to pour those dreams into others, they puffed themselves up with measurable pride. They leaned on Scripture, promising the first shall be last, the last first; they slipped quarters to the Salem boys who looked particularly hungry; they introduced those same boys to Harlem police officers, a not-so-sly warning about the ramifications of mischief. They built a cocoon around the boys because, with the odds so heavily against them, this church setting—the dreams inside a boxing ring—echoed a financial reality: One of the few ways for a black man in America to approximate a version of being rich was to fight professionally and win. A black man wearing a pair of maroon gloves inside a boxing ring could excite the blood rush of others without getting himself killed. And pocket the kind of money Negroes only dreamt about. The great Jack Johnson had commanded $30,000 for some fights—a figure that exceeded the salary of every U.S. senator during his reign. Young Walker was a willing listener.

  On the AAU circuit the Salem team traveled, there were trainers who were not beyond bending rules and even outright trickery. Gainford believed he was as nimble of mind as any of his fellow trainers. There were plenty of moments where eyebrows were raised in the back rooms of small fight venues: Some fighters appeared too old; others were so skilled it was believed they must have fought for money—a violation of AAU rules—in unknown places. It sometimes appeared that fighters had been switched, with a new fighter borrowing the identity of an injured one at the last minute. Trainers would justify the ethical lapses to themselves because they wanted to get their fighters experience. Gainford always had a handful of AAU cards stowed in his back pocket; he wisely kept more cards than fighters, because fighters sometimes simply didn’t show up at the church for the out-of-town journeys, giving him the chance to promote a second-or third-string fighter right on the spot.

  One evening in Kingston, New York, Gainford and his fighters had been impressing the crowd, displaying their typical prowess. The bout’s organizer had a flyweight he wanted to match up against one of Gainford’s fighters, but Gainford informed him he had no flyweight on his roster. Then Walker Smith—his voice had almost become a constant echo in Gainford’s ear—quickly pleaded with Gainford to give him a chance to fight the opposing flyweight. Gainford thought for a moment, huddling briefly with Smith. He couldn’t ignore the eagerness in the boy’s eyes, the same boy who was always pummeling him with questions about fighters and strategies down in the Salem basement. Gainford made up his mind then and there: “Here’s my flyweight,” he told the organizer, pointing to Walker. The organizer needed the kid’s AAU card, which George didn’t have, because he’d not yet thought of getting Walker Smith—untested and unproven—an AAU card. But Gainford did still have a card for another one of his former fighters, Ray Robinson, a Virginia-born boxer who had become bored with the sport and left the team. Thinking on his feet, Gainford told the organizer that his young flyweight’s name was Ray Robinson.

  The quick name-shifting was just fine with Walker Smith: He was going to fight, on this night, away from family, and adrenaline was rushing through him. He was going to have the chance to prove he’d been listening to Gainford when the trainer took time to answer his incessant questions. Gainford told the boy to hustle off to the dressing room and get dressed. (George always carried a couple of extra satin robes.)

  “Ray Robinson”—né Walker Smith—was surrounded by other fighters in the dressing room, all waiting to take their place in the ring when summoned. Sitting alone after getting dressed, he fretted but tried to conceal his nerves. No one moved when the name Ray Robinson was called, fighters looking all about. Finally, he snapped to attention. Minutes later, he found himself in the ring, surrounded by noise and lights and the whispering which suddenly seemed loud and George Gainford standing over him and his Salem Crescent boxing mates cheering him on. “As scared as I was,” he would recall, “I was happy.” He swung; some of his punches were wild, but more often than not he connected. Gainford yelled from the corner; his boxing mates yelled; the lights got in his eyes, but he moved about the ring with a quickness that surprised even Gainford. He was antsy between rounds, like someone who had been wound up. In the third round he let loose with a barrage of jabs that excited the gathered boxing fans. The judge had seen enough; “Robinson” was declared, at the end of the third, a unanimous winner. Gainford was happily surprised, grabbing his fighter, wrapping a towel around his neck, grinning wide.

  It is that first amateur victory that the prizefighter remembers with nostalgic rapture. And it is that victory in which the living element of fear—a thing that Gainford and the old Harlem fight trainers were so practiced in spotting—vanishes, as if shot down with a lethal arrow. In its place something else takes over, an even more profound sense of invincibility than any young street ruffian might possess, and with it a soaring hunger. And it is not a hunger that can be sated by heaps of hot food. It is the kind of hunger that can only be satisfied beneath the lights, by widening eyes and the smiles of old men and while standing over yet another defeated foe. With each victory, the winner reduces his world of rivals by one, believing that the universe now sits in a more manageable state of affairs. The hunger becomes a heady mixture of need and pride—and also a sensation extremely difficult to escape. And now the teenage Robinson was possessed by it. He had done something solid and enviable with his hands; he was flush with talent and knew it. He did not know exactly how he had done it, for his fists had been flying so fast, and it was all removed from mathematics or any type of diagramming. That was the magic and sweetness of it: It was almost beyond explanation. For years and years afterward, Robinson would regale writers with the story of this fight in Kingston, as if it were the beginning of his realization of being on earth.

  In the days and weeks afterward, Gainford began taking “Ray Robinson” more seriously. Other team members noticed. The Robinson-Gainford conversations, in and out of the ring, were now longer, intense one-on-one sessions. Gainford lectured about defensive strategies, about how to navigate space in the ring. (To stave off any scandal, they both decided to keep the name Ray Robinson for the time being.)

  That night in Kingston would prove to be no aberration. Gainford’s newly discovered fighter would do the same thing in the following months: Again and again, he would step into a ring and outperform his opponents. Now, when he reminded fellow Salem pugilists that he had known Joe Louis, they began to believe him. And he got a better seat in Gainford’s Model T as it rambled over t
he rural roads of eastern America.

  Back home in Manhattan the young fighter would run through Central Park, then run right back into the Salem gym, where he’d pepper Gainford with yet more questions—questions that had come to him while running. All through 1936 he won—knocking out some opponents with vicious left hooks that stunned the closely watching Gainford and becoming, just like heavyweight team member Buddy Moore, a Salem mainstay. He won wristwatches for his victories; church members at Salem, who knew of his family’s struggles with poverty, slipped him dollar bills; predictions were made that he’d someday make the local Golden Gloves team. He felt confident enough that he began visiting the famed Grupp’s Gym in Harlem, standing around and staring. He skipped school to go to boxing exhibitions around Manhattan, finally dropping out of DeWitt Clinton High. His mother, Leila, did not protest, not with her son having stashed away over $900 in earnings from being out on the road. Now he could help with family bills. Leila began to help her son prepare for fights—washing his satin robes, rubbing his muscles. He worked on his balance, his speed in the ring; he worked on moving backward while punching. All of his daily pleasures seemed derived from grappling with the mysteries of boxing.

  He no longer feared neighborhood bullies or ruffians. Old men in Harlem restaurants began nodding in his direction as he strolled by. Leila and his sisters recognized a deepening of his voice. His new maturity kept him away from back-alley games of tossing dice. New members on the Salem Crescent team now looked at him with measured respect. Gainford’s trust in him grew as well, so much so that he chose him as Salem’s team captain. Gainford would often make a few hundred dollars on his outings, delivering fighters to these amateur contests, and he’d share some of the money with his protégés, Robinson and Buddy Moore, often receiving the biggest share. The crowning delighted Robinson, and he now alighted from Gainford’s automobile with a little more authority in his step, pushing through the doors of small-town arenas as if his victories were all but assured.

  Sometimes, out on the road, they slept in abandoned barns, fighters spread-eagled on heaps of hay. Other times they slept in Gainford’s car. They were too proud to complain, believing in the dreams that turn young fighters into contenders. Their comings and goings kept church members intrigued, and their exploits were occasionally broadcast from Rev. Cullen’s pulpit.

  Jack Case was sports editor and a writer at the Watertown Daily Times. He had joined the staff in 1920, becoming sports editor nine years later. He seemed to have contacts all across the upstate New York region. Watertown was a small town that sat thirty miles from the Canadian border and had once been a main way station for those on the Underground Railroad. In the 1930s—despite the harsh economic times haunting much of the country—it had a reputation as a kind of millionaires’ row. Men who ran companies lived and prospered there. Its bucolic charm was partly cultivated; Frederick Law Olmstead, who had designed Central Park in New York City, designed one of Watertown’s parks. But the town still delighted in its small-town virtues and could even remind visitors of the tenderness of Thorton Wilder’s Our Town, which had opened on Broadway in 1938.

  The local newspaper was full of intimate little stories about who was coming and going down at the train depot, about the pie festival and the celebrated county fair. And sometimes stories about the Negro boxers who traveled through town. They were an unusual sight, fit-looking Negro youths in a town with very few Negroes among its own population. In the beginning, the locals stared at the fighters but finally became accustomed to their pilgrimages and offered them friendly and welcoming gestures. Jack Case—stout of body, often seen with a cigar in his right hand, fond of three-piece suits—was fascinated by boxing. He covered as many of the local events held at the Starbuck Avenue Arena as he could for the newspaper. The arena was a converted downtown building that had once served as a cafeteria for munitions workers during World War I. With the rise of amateur boxing, townsfolk were eager to find a large enough venue to showcase regional fighters as well as fighters from Canada, and the Starbuck fit the requirements. Jack Belden, a local Watertown promoter, listened on the phone that first week of January 1939 as Gainford bragged about his Salem boxing team, particularly Ray Robinson. Belden had heard many such proclamations about fighters; but Gainford was unwavering in his praise, telling Belden he wouldn’t have to pay his team’s expenses if Robinson proved to be a bust.

  The Robinson-led Salem Crescent team arrived in Watertown on January 5 for scheduled bouts that evening. Robinson’s opponent was Dom Perfetti, an Eastern states champion known to be a rugged brawler. Perfetti was the highest-ranked foe he had faced. The small press contingent, Case among them, was seated ringside: “Cauliflower Row” they called that section, owing to its close proximity to the fighters’ bruised faces.

  Shortly after the bell rang for Robinson and Perfetti, Case realized he might be witnessing a special arrival in Robinson. The fighters had started out in the first “at top speed, showing some clever boxing and hefty punching,” Case would report. A volley of punches in the second round had fans on their feet as the fighters “tossed leather with reckless abandon,” landing blows to the head and body. Robinson exhibited some dazzling moves that kept the fans riveted: “He tossed his right hand in a peculiar style, seeming to ‘cook it’ momentarily before delivering his blow,” Case recounted. “The motion apparently threw Perfetti off guard and time after time the bantamweight king would absorb two telling blows without being able to strike one in return.” Perfetti wasn’t just any local fighter; he was the Eastern states champion. Robinson would be his undoing. “The little Negro,” Case wrote, “traveled at top pace from the opening gong until the final bell sounded. He not only outboxed the rugged eastern champion, but he also outpunched him whenever the two collided in the center of the ring to swap leather.” Case—and all the others at ringside, including Belden, the promoter—flinched throughout the bout as they watched the punches land. It was over in the fifth, the champion Perfetti beaten. There were murmurs throughout the crowd, long gazes focused on Robinson. Gainford had become accustomed to seeing his young fighter’s quick dispatch of opponents and simply moved into the ring with a towel to drape around Robinson’s neck as he offered congratulations. Audience members crowded toward the aisle as fans tried to get a closer look at Robinson. They chattered and whispered within earshot of him and Gainford; there were compliments and disbelieving eyes. A gaggle had formed as Robinson descended from the ring. Case rose up to greet him.

  “That’s a sweet fighter you’ve got there, a real sweet fighter,” Case said to Gainford as they paused next to him.

  A nearby woman piped up: “As sweet as sugar.”

  Case looked out over the gathering before leaving the arena and sensed an awe still hanging in the air from the Robinson bout.

  As Jack Case excitedly made his way back to the newsroom to write up his story that night—passing the brick buildings and the Fords and Packards parked along the street—all the boxers he had seen swirled in his mind. Robinson clearly stood out. Case was a writer, and newspaper writers remembered little details, phrasings that the uninitiated might miss. The anonymous woman’s “sweet as sugar” comment stayed with him, and he used it as he typed out his story for the next day’s morning edition. It began: “Sugar Robinson, clever little New York mittman, proved to be everything his nickname implied at the Starbuck avenue arena Wednesday night where he boxed his way to a five round decision over Dom Perfetti … eastern states champion. Those who watched Robinson perform [declared] he was one of the ‘sweetest’ pieces of fighting machinery that has been seen here in many months.” Case saw no need to inform readers that it was he—Case—who had slipped the moniker Sugar on Robinson during the very writing of his article. The Watertown Daily Times headline writer picked up on the emotion in Case’s story. It was a one-column article, but it had four headlines stacked atop one another: RAYMOND SCORES WIN OVER CHAMP, it began. Then, below: NEW YORK NEGRO MITTMAN TRIUMPHS OVER DOM


  PERFETTI HERE. Below that: GOTHAM SCRAPPER PROVES SENSATION AT LOCAL CLUB. And below that: OUTCLASSES AMSTERDAM

  BOXER IN FIVE ROUND MAIN BOUT AT ARENA.

  It was an effusive tribute to young Robinson, and he hoarded some of the newspapers. His fellow Salem fighters teased him about the “Sugar”—not to mention the use of “Raymond” in the headline, a name no one actually called him. But he liked Sugar, very much. It quickly caught on. The rhythm of it, the near-musical quality of it, was what delighted him so much: Sugar Ray Robinson. It rolled almost liltingly from the lips, as if the three names were a stitched-together appellation of something elegant and athletic. He said the name to himself over and over again. His father had seemingly forgotten him, so he felt he owed nothing to the name he’d been given at birth. He was his own man now. His mother, Leila, no longer mocked him, questioning his courage on the streets. The kid in the mirror, the kid who had tramped along the streets of Black Bottom in Detroit, the kid who had sat staring out over Manhattan’s East River wondering about his fate, began to feel as if he had reinvented himself. Boxing program profiles would claim he had been “born in Virginia”—due to his AAU card and the birthplace it specified for the real Ray Robinson—but he didn’t mind. The name was his now and it made him smile when he heard it uttered. “Walker Smith Jr. was a forgotten man,” the young fighter would declare.

  Neither Case nor promoter Belden could forget Sugar Ray Robinson, and they went about turning him into a local marquee sensation. Case even took to the local radio airwaves, trumpeting Robinson’s skills. Two weeks after his debut there, Sugar Ray was back in Watertown to face another opponent. He beat Harvey Lacelle. It was a victory that could hardly go unnoticed: Lacelle had been a Canadian contender. After the bout, Lacelle praised Robinson and said he had never faced a tougher foe. Four months later—on May 3, Robinson’s eighteenth birthday—Robinson squared off in Watertown again, this time against Larry Zavelitch, another Canadian. It was a rough and challenging first four rounds. But the fight was called in the fifth when Robinson unspooled a bolo punch that sent Zavelitch reeling. That night Case and Belden cornered Gainford, inquiring about plans for Robinson’s future. Gainford kept mum, exchanging pleasantries without revealing plans of any kind. The locals would see Robinson one more time, in June of 1939, when he would defeat a fighter from Binghamton, New York. The string of victories had cemented a feeling of confidence within Robinson. Gainford shared his young fighter’s emotions: “Ray’s going to be world’s champion some day,” he predicted while in Watertown.