The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [44]
But another fellow on the same paper took a diametrically opposite view of the situation. His name was Tom Duggan, and he spoke with an authority I had previously associated with only one other name in Chicago, that of Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick. “Jersey Joe Walcott is going to win back his heavyweight boxing title out at Octopus Palace tonight,” Mr. Duggan said, without qualification of any variety. “I think he’ll win it by a knockout within seven or eight rounds … . The press-rows for this fight will be filled to the scuppers with self-appointed experts on the manly-art-of-self-defense. You would do well to remember that most of these guys are familiar with fighting only to the extent of their wives taking a belt at them for sneaking in past curfew time with a load on, garnished with lipstick on their collars … . I have never been in favor of running benefits for anyone, but, in Marciano’s case, I would like to make an exception. After this fight, I think we should all pass the hat for him … . He not only is giving his title away but forcing Walcott to take most of the money along with it … . I’m astonished at the odds the professional gamblers are maintaining on the fight.” This put a different light on the match. As I started for the street, I wondered how Al Weill, ordinarily a shrewd fellow, had allowed himself to be caught in such a trap.
The Stadium, which, as I knew, is not a stadium but a large shed, is about two and a half miles from the center of the Loop, but I had a full hour to spare, so I walked out along West Madison Street, past the Morrison Hotel, which was headquarters for Marciano and the visiting press; past the Civic Opera House, with a sign on it proclaiming the imminent arrival of Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman; across the Madison Street drawbridge over the piddling Chicago River; past the soot-blackened Northwestern Railroad station; and then along the most readable thoroughfare in America, the part of West Madison that has the flophouses and the signs—“Second Shot Your Favorite Whiskey 1/2 Price,” “Mamie’s Day Old & Fresh Broken Bakery Goods,” “We Dare Them! The Largest and Best Bowl of Soup in Town,” “Our 20-Ounce Schooner, 15 cents,” “Jesus Saves—Are You Saved?” “Pants $1.00 Up,” “2 Strickly Fresh Eggs Tost and Buter, 25 cents.”
Before a shack bearing signs that read, “Shine 25c” and “First Class Shine 20c,” I stopped. I knew from the street numbers that I was now at about the three-quarter pole, and any kind of chair looked good. “I want a first-class shine,” I said. “Twenty cents.”
“We sold the last first-class shine yesterday,” the shoeshine man said. “Got only twenty-five-cent shines left.”
Like Mr. Duggan, the shoeshine man picked Walcott. He was a clay-tinted man in a pink shirt. “I think Joe’ll whup the kid,” he said. “I bought two tickets for me and my wife. I also got a hundred dollars up against a hundred fifty that Joe will go twelve rounds. The bell rings for the end of the twelfth round, I win.” I figured he was going to lose four hundred shoeshines.
I got to the Stadium in plenty of time for the weigh-in, which was held in the ring in the center of the arena, before a small mob of cameramen, of all varieties—newspaper, newsreel, 3-D, and publicity-department. The working-press seats were almost as full as they would be at fight time. Either out of good nature, which seemed unlikely, or with a vague idea of stimulating ticket sales, the I.B.C., which was promoting the bout, had opened the doors to anybody who wanted to see the weighing-in rites. At least a thousand of the seats that would be worth fifty dollars that evening were occupied by the otherwise unemployed males of the quarter, mostly colored.
Marciano, perhaps unaware of the fate Duggan had predicted for him, looked friendly and