Nobody cares much about the Sweet Science anymore, never mind what some scribbler has to say about it?
?How come I?ve got to run into a squirt like you nearly every place I go these days? What are you trying to do? Show off for your friends???The Gunfighter
Boxing writers aren?t fast guns, with some pup trying to prove that he knows more or at least that the grizzled veteran doesn?t know as much as he thinks he knows. Nobody cares much about the Sweet Science anymore, never mind what some scribbler has to say about it. But the guys who work in my building, the doormen and the porters, they know me and they know what I know and they like that I hand over my copy of The Ring once I?m finished with it.
I get back from Keens Chophouse, where they know how to make a Bull Shot, and one of the guys says, ?I got some pictures for you to look at.?
?Huh?? I say. I?d had more than one Bull Shot.
?Pictures for you to look at.?
?French postcards??
?Pictures of boxers.?
?Okay, show me the pictures.?
He?d printed them off the computer on cheap paper. They?re grainy and too dark, but you can tell what you?re looking at. He wants me to look at them one at a time. He wants me to identify the boxers. The first one?s easy. It?s Lou Nova. Then he shows me Sandy Saddler, followed by Barbados Joe Walcott and Marvin Hart. I have a little trouble with the last one, but I?m pretty sure?Peter Jackson.
?You got ?em right,? he says. ?Would other boxing writers?? Sure, I tell him. What about fans, he wants to know. Guys who know their business, sure, I tell him, but not casual fans. ?I don?t think they?d get more than one or two,? I say.
?How ?bout naming their weights?? he says.
?You mean their weight divisions?? I ask. He nods. I tell him Nova was a heavyweight, who fought Joe Louis for the crown. Saddler was two-time Featherweight Champion of the World, as well as junior lightweight titleholder. Walcott held the welterweight title. Hart was Heavyweight Champion of the World. Jackson was a heavyweight. ?This Was a Man,? that?s what it says on his tombstone.
?So what do I get?? I want to know.
?Nothin?.?
?Nothin???
?Nothin?. I knew you?d know. I don?t know these guys. I got somebody to help me pick them.?
?Who did that??
?A guy I know.?
?Well, he did pretty good,? I say. Then, ?Jimmy Cannon was a sportswriter. He called boxing ?the red light district of sports.?? I don?t know why I tell him that. Maybe because I want him to know. It?s education, that?s what.
?What does that mean??
?It means it ain?t elegant,? I tell him. ?That?s the appeal, it?s not being elegant.?
?You mean elegant like the opera is elegant?? he says.
?Yeah,? I say. ?Yeah, sort of. Yeah, well, sort of.?
?Why?s that the appeal??
?Ah, well, that can?t be explained,? I say. ?It can only be understood.?
?I don?t understand that,? he says. ?Do you understand that??
?No, I don?t understand it. I don?t understand it, no.?
?Well, what then??
?I just know it. Ain?t that enough??
?I dunno.?
?It?s all there is, so it has to be enough. That?s what?s known as philosophy.?
?That?s hard stuff.?
?Not as hard as boxing,? I point out. ?That?s the appeal.?
?Another appeal??
?Oh, it?s got all the appeal in the world.?
I take the pictures with me. They?re not worth anything. I have a nice collection of vintage studio and fight photos, some autographed, of John L. Sullivan, Tony Galento, Lee Oma, Arthur De Kuh, Abe Feldman, Nathan Mann, Turkey Thompson, Tami Mauriello, Melio Bettina, Max Schmeling, and Laszlo Papp. There?s also one of Diana Dors that I picked up at the now sadly defunct Movie Star News where the great and glorious Bettie Page got her start when I arrived too early to take Ruth Kligman who?d been Jackson Pollock?s mistress out for mussels and beer at a little Belgian place around the corner that isn?t there anymore. Remind me to tell you one day how she banged away at the piano until I begged her to stop and how she was convinced that a black-and-white kitten was a reincarnated Franz Kline into whose studio on West 14th she moved after his death but before the reincarnation and where I used to pick her up and where she had the piano forsaken by God. She said ?Zowie!? when she saw a painting by Willem de Kooning, so he called it Ruth?s Zowie. She didn?t get that one, but she had a Pollock, Red, Black, and Silver, over her bed. Or did she? Controversy rages regarding its authenticity. I wonder what happened to it. She didn?t leave it to me, despite all the mussels and Belgian beer. I remember her not being at all pleased when I showed her the Diana Dors. She was old enough to be my mother, but women are such vain and jealous creatures, aren?t they? ?Why did you get this? Why did you want it?? And then she takes to the ivories like she?s kneading bread. Looking back, showing her the photo isn?t what Dos Equis? Most Interesting Man in the World would have done. So Diana cost me the Pollock is what it comes down to but she is showing a lot of leg.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The pictures the doorman gave me. They?re not worth anything, and I should just throw them out. But I don?t.
