Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [59]
Joe Louis and Sugar Ray as slaves? Sugar bowed to no man, led a private and public life the envy of most whites. There had been no greater symbol than Joe Louis, even for many whites who were with him against Billy Conn. He towered over the racially criminal times with nobility and, while on symbols, he was the physical repudiation of white supremacy. He was a slave only to a bad golf score, to which he lost thousands, and a terrorizing IRS (so rank and callous that it made the injustice toward Ali look like a prank). Hounded by the IRS, his mind often sizzled by cocaine from “friends” to ease his worries, Louis had to be hospitalized for clinical paranoia. When he regained his balance, he went under the sinecure of Caesar’s Palace in Vegas as an official greeter to high rollers. A saving, not a demeaning role; Mickey Mantle years later would have the same function in Atlantic City.
Inwardly, Ali admired Louis, but expression of his feelings came hard. His ego would not allow space for anyone (except for Sugar Ray, a middleweight) who might be as large as himself. He could be unkind to Louis, serving him up as a model to be pitied and not emulated, or did he see in Louis the future that was always possible? He often ridiculed Louis’s shuffling, the slow cadence of his speech, turning him into a freak without dignity; years later he would offer Louis $30,000 to stay with him for ten days before a fight with Ken Norton. But mostly Joe was poor, old sick Joe. “He’s gotta stand round,” Ali said, “like a statue in a place full of Roman ones. If I go down, it’s gonna be in a big jet goin’ to visit some head of state. If I ever end up lookin’ sick, ain’t nobody gonna see me in public. I’m leavin’ the ring with all my faculties—and all the money. I’m gonna take every quarter out of this game, then sit back and collect the interest.”
The big jet was in reference to the death of Rocky Marciano. “Look at Rocky,” Ali said. “He’s gotta go ’round diggin’ up chump change in Nebraska, wherever. Gets himself killed in a dinky old plane doin’ it.” Rocky never went for much luxury. If it was cheap, it was good, a line of thought he picked up from the parsimony of his manager, Al Weill, who never called him by his name; always just “get the fighter” or “tell the bum he’s workin’ five rounds today.” Or, perhaps, it was from the tutoring of Charlie Goldman, who often explained the perils of being a sucker, whether for a right hand or an open palm. Marciano didn’t trust banks, and when he died his family could barely find a dime and spent years trying to locate his “lost treasure.” There was nothing volatile between Rocky and Ali. He had been an early critic of Ali’s style (imagine, Rocky a connoisseur of technique!), and sometimes muttered something about flag and country; controversy gave him hives. He was once involved with Ali in a moronic computer fight, and Rocky showed up with a toupee and quite serious; he won. “Too much,” Ali responded. “Men in toupees beatin’ me now!” Marciano seemed to sense the pain in Ali. He told Belinda: “Tell him to stop torturing himself. Get him out of boxing, forget the whole thing.” With the death of Rocky, Ali had lost an historical playmate, and white America its last stalwart, its obstinate link to a time that surely was no more, and shot glasses were said to have been raised to his picture above bars, next to Louis, the undefeated free-swinger of dessicated nose and inviting eye.
Another soon-to-be prop for Ali’s historical sweep was Jack Johnson, long dead. He and his father had watched films of Jack in action, and it speaks to his analytical genius that he took away from those grainy strips the one thing that Ole Jack could give him—the art of defense; unglamorous and the hardest gift to perfect in the ring; Jack was a master, Ali would have no equal,