A Flame of Pure Fire by Roger Kahn

Author:Roger Kahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

Jack Dempsey

Knocked Out

In One Round!

Around the world, British colonialism, dominant throughout the nineteenth century, was coming under pressure. The first Indian parliament convened at New Delhi. It didn’t do much, but its very existence was significant. In Persia a general named Reza Khan booted out the British and formed an independent, if autocratic, government. Newspapers reported “clashes between Arab and Jewish workers” in the Palestinian city of Jaffa. At issue was a British promise, in the Balfour Declaration, to provide a homeland for Jews.

Americans, moving toward implausibly prosperous times, were fascinated by electricity and its latest offspring, the radio. Westinghouse opened the first commercial station, KDKA, in East Pittsburgh on November 2, 1920, just in time to report the Harding landslide. Someone in Florida heard signals from Havana. In high excitement, a newspaper observed that now “there is radio music in the air, every night, everywhere.” In New York Tex Rickard began negotiating with broadcasters and told the sportswriters that Dempsey—Carpentier would be the first fight ever broadcast on the radio. “People will hear it coast to coast,” Rickard announced. His enthusiasm surpassed existing technology. The fight could be carried live only as far west as Buffalo.

Atlantic City was crowded with sportswriters, covering Dempsey, and actors day-tripping down from New York. On June 4, Dempsey told Kearns that he wanted to play one more game of ball against the actors before the onset of his final and most demanding training siege. The men negotiated.

“None of that wild base-running that could turn an ankle,” Kearns said, as reporters eavesdropped.

“You’re the doctor.”

“And no sliding, Jack. Sliding could bust your leg.”

“I won’t slide.”

“And you can’t pitch. A line drive up the middle busts your nose and then where are we, Jack? A little bit short, Jack. Around three hundred thousand dollars short, not counting the newsreels and radio rights.”

“I’ll play third. I can handle a glove. The baseball ain’t gonna bust me in the nose or anywhere else.”

No newspaper reported the score and years after, when I asked, Dempsey had forgotten. “But,” he said with a quick smile, “I know I hit some shots to left field. Long shots. They tell me I used to hit with pretty fair power.”

That same afternoon, disaster stumbled into the Carpentier camp. Sparring with big Paul Journée before a select group of reporters and press photographers, Carpentier clinched. Journée shoved and both boxers fell. C. F. Fitzgerald reported in the Tribune, “Carpentier’s head hit the padded canvas with a thud that was audible to every spectator, and his arms stretched out full length.” Before Carpentier rose, the photographers took twenty or thirty pictures.

Deschamps, Fitzgerald wrote, “became a wild man. He leaped madly through the ropes, waving his arms. Then he turned on the photographers. ‘You will give me every plate [press cameras used individual plates, not rolls of film]. Every plate, gentlemen, if you please.’ “ Meek as the old cartoon character called “the Timid Soul,” the press photographers complied. If there was one thing the ticket

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