One Summer: America 1927 by Bryson Bill

Author:Bryson, Bill [Bryson, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781448169542
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2013-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

In 1926, Philadelphia held a world’s fair, called the Sesquicentennial Exposition, to mark the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The enterprise was a fiasco from the start. The site chosen was marshy and difficult to build on. The vision for the fair was grand, but the funding meagre. The state of Pennsylvania declined to contribute anything to the costs.

Construction efforts fell so far behind that hardly any exhibits were finished when the fair opened on 31 May 1926. President Coolidge declined to attend and sent his secretary of state, Frank B. Kellogg, and omnipresent commerce secretary, Herbert Hoover. The park that greeted them was embarrassingly incomplete. An eighty-foot-high Liberty Bell, the exposition centrepiece, was still shrouded in scaffolding. Work hadn’t even started on the New York State pavilion. The tardiest exhibition of all was Argentina’s, which was dedicated on 30 October, just in time for the exposition’s closing.

It rained almost all summer and into the autumn, depressing crowds in every sense of the word. The exposition had just one successful event. On the evening of 23 September, in a stadium otherwise rarely used, Jack Dempsey squared off against an up-and-coming young boxer named Gene Tunney in Dempsey’s first fight in almost exactly three years.

After Dempsey’s long layoff, interest in the fight was huge. One reporter, with just a hint of excess, called it ‘the greatest battle since the Silurian Age’. The paid attendance was 120,000, but it is believed that as many as 135,000 packed in. Tunney was an intelligent boxer but a light hitter, and it was widely agreed that he would be overwhelmed by Dempsey’s power. In fact, Tunney fought a brilliant and perfect fight, jabbing sharply, then wheeling away from Dempsey’s killer right hand. Dempsey stalked him all night, while Tunney stung him repeatedly with sharp but wearing jabs. The effect was cumulatively formidable. By the seventh round, Dempsey’s face was a swollen mess. One of his eyes was sealed shut and the other wasn’t far behind. He chased Tunney all night, but managed to land just one good punch. Tunney won easily on points.

When the bruised and puffy-faced Dempsey arrived home afterwards, his horrified wife asked what had happened. ‘Honey, I forgot to duck,’ Dempsey famously replied.

Dempsey’s defeat caused near universal dismay, but set the scene for the biggest rematch in boxing history. A small round of qualifying bouts was arranged as a way of maximizing excitement while milking the situation for every cent it would yield. The first qualifying bout was between Jack Sharkey and Jim Maloney. (This was the fight, mentioned on p. 106, at which 23,000 people paused to pray for Charles Lindbergh, who was at that moment alone over the Atlantic.) The winner of that fight – which in the event was Sharkey, easily – would then face a grand qualifying match against the ageing but formidable Jack Dempsey on 22 July. The venue for both qualifying bouts was Yankee Stadium – a matter that naturally warmed the heart of Jacob Ruppert.

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