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Even after all these years, the thing that I remember most vividly about
that night was the boxing robe. It wasn't the most beautiful thing I had
ever seen, but it was in the top ten. It was an almost black-red color,
the color that cherries have when they're displayed on a fruit stand. On
the back of the robe, in white script, was the legend "Salem Crescent".
Those two words were enough for anyone who knew anything about Golden
Gloves boxing in New York
I was in the corner of a boxing ring in the gym at St Thomas Aquinas
School, almost at the end of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. It was the first
round of the Golden Gloves a long time ago. It was a time before headgear,
it was a time before two minute rounds for first time boxers or as they
were known in the Gloves, sub-novice fighters. If you were in an office
instead of a boxing ring, the label would have been sub-junior-assistant.
We were fighters who had "never done nothin" in a ring before.
I wasn't far from my neighborhood, which was about 20 blocks north, but my
trip to St Thomas was somewhat more complicated than a bus ride down
Flatbush Avenue. It was primarily at the behest of several of the BTOs in
our neighborhood. BTOs, for the uninitiated, and those who grew up "west
of the Hudson", stood for "Big Time Operator"; the guys who ran the
neighborhood, the guys you went to a couple of days before payday if you
were a "little short"; the guys who knew everything and everybody in the
neighborhood and everybody knew them. Soon, they would be called, in the
newspapers, mostly by people who had never been in a Brooklyn
neighborhood, "members of organized crime", later shortened to an almost
meaningless term, "Mafia".
The BTOs had decided that this year, I should carry the prestige of the
neighborhood into the annual Golden Gloves tournament, run by the New York
Daily News. They had "sponsored" several boxers in the past, maybe ten or
twelve neighborhood guys, over the years, whom the BTOs thought "had the
stuff". Only one of them had made it past his first fight, and he lost in
the second round.
I couldn't take my eyes off the robe, it was that beautiful. My opponent,
a tall, Black, middleweight, had a big advantage over me even before the
introductions. In addition to the robe, he had regulation, boxing shoes,
he had two handlers from the Salem Crescent Club, long a power in the New
York Golden Gloves (Sugar Ray, the Sugar Ray came out of the Salem
Crescent Club), I was wearing my EMANON AC warm-up jacket, which came down
to my waist and a pair of Chuck Cooper sneakers. The Emanon AC was our
"social and athletic" club in the neighborhood, although some of the
clergy and law enforcement officials termed it a "gang". The truth was
somewhere in between (the name "Emanon" was "No Name" spelled backwards).
The Chuck Cooper sneakers were actually the "top of the line" brand in
those days, and I had been given them, by my "sponsors", just before
leaving for the gym. They were, however, far better suited for basketball
than boxing, far better.
I had been picked for the Gloves "honor" because of the playground. In
those days, one of the neighborhood diversions were staged fights in the
playground, in our case, Foster Park. The fights were relatively basic
affairs, two guys from the neighborhood, although occasionally, we'd get
someone from "outside", would "box" until one of the fighters was clearly
beaten or gave up. The fights generally didn't last much more than five
minutes, there were no "breaks" just fight until one guy won. The fights
were held in the handball courts for the very utilitarian reason that the
handball wall blocked views from the street and the prying eyes of
neighbors and the police. However, we seldom worried about the latter
group, since usually when a "big" fight was happening, there were several
"uniforms" in the crowd, as spectators. I had been in the playground
fights for about two years, and, by no stretch, did I win all my fights,
but I won more than I lost. I was also a pretty fair baseball player, thus
I was deemed to have some athletic ability and good "hand/eye"
coordination. Thus, this was my year for the Gloves. Looking back, the
absurdity is overwhelming.
The other kid's name was Bobby Huddleston. He, like me, was a middleweight
who had never had a amateur bout. He was a bit taller, and seemed to have
a reach advantage. I do remember that he wore his hair straight. In those
days, it was known as "processed" or "conked" and Kid Gavilan and a guy by
the name of Johnny Bratton, most prominently among fighters, wore it that
way. He didn't seem particularly muscular, this was decades before
weightlifting became a training vogue; in fact, it was felt that "pumping
iron" made you muscle bound. We walked to the center of the ring for
instructions, and the ref, went through the ritual litany. I touched gloves
and went back to the corner, bouncing up and down on my new Chuck Taylors.
I had taken the bus up Flatbush Avenue to St Thomas along with about
twenty people from the neighborhood. About ten of them snuck into the gym,
the others paid the two dollars for a "Night at the Gloves". We got there
early so they got seats up near the ring. I had waited for my fight in a
dressing room with a guy named Pauly Brown. He was going to be my "corner
man", although his only prior experience for the job was logging countless
hours on the corner of Flatbush and Newkirk Ave, in front of a candy
store, watching the rest of Brooklyn go by. I would also have a "house"
corner man who worked with all the "unattached" fighters. When Pauly and I
left the dressing room and walked to the ring, the group from the
neighborhood all stood and "brought down the house". The number had been
decreased by two who, during the evening, had gotten into "a dispute" with
a couple of fellow spectators and had been escorted from the gym.
However, you couldn't tell that from the din that they raised as I walked
to the ring.
The bell rang, we moved to the center of the ring, probing jabs at each
other. We were doing a lot of dancing and I was trying to catch Huddleston
coming in, but his speed was extraordinary. Midway thru the round he hit
me with a jab, hook and right cross and I saw light specks. I held on, he
shook loose, and moved away, before coming back at me. He threw another
left jab, and came across with a right hook to my ribs. I heard myself
gasp, and grabbed him. The ref separated us and Huddleston hit me twice
more with the same combination before the round ended. I came back to the
corner. Pauly shouted "Good round". I gave him my best "Are you kidding"
look and sought out the "house" corner man.
"He killin' you with that right to the ribs". I gave him my best "I had
that part" look. I thought I'm sitting here with two morons and I gotta go
back out there in less than thirty seconds. Then the corner guy says,
"Drop your left elbow, it'll keep that right outta your ribs". Finally,
something that made sense.
Round two and Huddleston's corner had, obviously, told him to keep going
with what worked. He started with a left jab, right to the ribs, but I got
my elbow a bit in the way and the punch didn't do the damage it had in the
first round, it glanced into my ribs. He tried it again a moment later and
this time, I actually blocked it. "Now its my time", I thought. We traded
some punches for about a minute and then Huddleston tried the jab, right
hook again. I was ready. The jab fell short, and I had my elbow down for
the right hook, when amazingly, the lights above the ring exploded. My
first thought was, "Damn, just when I was turning it around. Well, at
least I'll get a rest while they fix the lights". I looked up to see which
lights had broken, and noticed the referee's face inches from mine. I also
noticed that I was on the canvas. The ref was saying something like
"heaven", which I later realized was "seven" and when he got to ten, he
waved his arms. Huddleston had followed the short jab with another right,
but instead of my ribs, he aimed it at my jaw, which, of course, was
largely unprotected, given my perfectly lowered left elbow.
The bus ride back to the neighborhood was quite. In addition to my KO, it
turned out that the two guys who had gotten into a "dispute" early in the
evening had, very unwisely, picked two cops to have their "dispute" with.
They were, at the time, over at the local precinct "discussing" the
"dispute" with a number of other officers of the law. The neighborhood
casualty list was growing by the moment.
Needless to say, it was the end of my ring career. Bobby Huddleston lost
his next bout, a third round KO, to some guy from a CYO in the Bronx. I
guess, if I think about it, I'm fortunate I got Huddleston instead of the
kid from the Bronx. I went around for a couple of months using the line,
"Yeah, I was in the Gloves" without offering much in the way of details.
Then one day, I was in a bowling alley and I was telling somebody about
how I "was in the Gloves" and a friend of mine named Eddie Dillon, popped
up, "Yeah, McCoy was in the Gloves, and as a boxer he makes a
terrific
baseball player, a catcher". Dillon was right, of course, and I stopped
referring, shortly thereafter, to having "been in the Gloves", but I never
really got over the fact that if I had only been a better boxer, I might
have gotten one of those cherry red robes.
Bernie McCoy |
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