The Long Count.
Friday, September 23, 1927: New York City
“Babe Ruth is a lot like Dempsey, which is why they get along so well. They’re both great big kids — with great big punches. You could say the Yankees are a team of big boys and big punchers, so almost all of us are picking Dempsey.”
Schoolboy Hoyt’s on the radio talking about the rematch between Jack Dempsey and the man who took his heavyweight crown from him, Gene Tunney. It’s part of his new weekly radio segment on WEAF, the National Broadcasting Company’s station, down on 195 Broadway.
Schoolboy’s been doing a regular Monday evening segment since just after Labor Day. He was only supposed to do one interview but he was so good the station booked him for the rest of the season.
“So who are you picking?” asks the show’s host, Andy Distler.
“Well, it’s hard to go against the Babe. Aside from being Dempsey’s pal, the Babe’s a big fight fan and he really knows his stuff.
“You know, he was right there in the front row when Dempsey punched Firpo through the ropes! Firpo landed right in the Babe’s lap! That sure was worth a ringside seat.”
“Now, I think George Bellows is a helluva painter, but he didn’t get his facts right in that painting of his — ’cause he didn’t put Ruth in the front row. He also didn’t paint the fighters particularly realistically, in my opinion.
“Personally, I like abstract art — I’m a big fan of the Cubists, I love Braque and Picasso — Hey, did you see the show of the modern artists at the Brooklyn Museum last year? It was quite eye opening — I’ve got no trouble with interpretive paintings. I mean, jeez, I sure would love to see that Spaniard Picasso paint this week’s fight! Wouldn’t you, Andy?”
Andy says, “Yes,” but I’m not sure he’s following Schoolboy.
I know I’m not. And God knows what the radio audience is thinking. But it’s all part of Schoolboy’s charm.
“Or just imagine if Picasso or Georges Braque had painted Harry Greb, the Pittsburgh Windmill!”
“So you’re picking Dempsey?” asks the show’s host, sounding like he needs a standing eight count.
“Well, while the Babe and the boys are picking Dempsey,” says Schoolboy, “our manager, Mr. Miller Huggins, is picking Tunney. He says the Fighting Marine is the greatest tactician and most scientific fighter he’s ever seen.
“Mr. Huggins has seen a great deal of Tunney’s fights, as have a bunch of us Yankees. We saw Tunney fight Tommy Gibbons in the Polo Grounds in ’25, and Carpentier there in ’24. And we saw Tunney’s three fights against Greb in the Garden, including the first one — that was Tunney’s only loss in his career.
“Our radio audience may remember that Ring Magazine called that the fight of the year. It was certainly the bloodiest. In the first round, the Windmill fractured Tunney’s nose in two places…”
Schoolboy raises his fists to throw a pair of mock jabs, stopping a couple inches short of his host’s face.
“Then Greb cut him over the eye — I remember the referee stopping the fight a couple of times to wipe the blood off of Greb’s gloves — but Tunney didn’t quit. And Tunney hasn’t lost again to Greb in their four fights since.”
“So, you’re picking Tunney over Dempsey?”
“That’s my pick, Andy. I’m not going against Mr. Huggins.”
On our drive back uptown, Schoolboy tells me the real reason why he’s going with Huggins’s pick and betting on Tunney.
“Hugg’s managed our team as well as any manager has ever managed any ball club. And he’s also done a great job with my stock portfolio. He knows how to pick winners.”
I haven’t told Schoolboy about Bill Powers getting out of the stock market. Nor have I told him, or anyone else, about Steven’s death. All Schoolboy knows is that Billy P. has moved out and left me his conjoined suites in the Plaza Hotel as a parting gift till the middle of October.
After the radio show, Benny Bengough joins us at the Plaza for a moonlit room service dinner on the balcony, and to listen to the fight on the radio.
Bix, who’s basically moved in with me, is out by the time we get in. He’s in a new band that’s going to be the house band at a new club on Broadway, the New Yorker, which used to be called Club Whiteman, when it was owned by the “King of Jazz” Paul Whiteman.
Bix and the other band members, most of whom were also in Jean Goldkette’s band with Bix until a couple of weeks ago, have spent the past two weeks practicing night and day. They’re sensational.
But tonight is hardly the best night to open up a new club, since the fight doesn’t start in Chicago until 10, which means it might not be over until midnight here in New York. And no one wants to miss the fight.
Over the past week, Bix and some of his bandmates have done some redecorating of the suites here at the hotel, moving all of the couches, the big chairs and the radio console out onto the balconies. And that’s where Schoolboy, Benny and I have set up shop to listen to the fight.
An hour before the fight, our dinner is brought in by a colored porter who looks very familiar. I can’t tell if I know him just from the hotel or elsewhere. After he finishes setting up our dinner on the balcony, I hand him a tip. Then just before he leaves, I ask him.
“Excuse me. I think I know you from some place other than here. Have we met before?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Thomas.”
“Where?”
“On a ball field, sir.”
His name is Bill Robinson, but he tells me to call him Newt. He’s played for both the Hilldale Giants, down in PA — where he tells me that I pitched against him in ’25 — and the Lincoln Giants, here in New York.
“Who do you have in the fight tonight, Newt?” I ask him.
“I got Tunney, sir. One of the boys downstairs used to be a sparring mate for Jack Johnson, and he’s pickin’ the Fighting Marine, so I put my money on him, too. We’re all listening to the fight down in the kitchen tonight.”
I nod my head toward the balcony and say, “If I can convince my pals, we’d like to join you.”
“Oh, I don’t think management would like that too much, sir.”
“First off, it’s Myles. Second off,” I say, first shrugging my shoulders, then showing him a pair of jazz hands, “I pay my rent. I’m sure management will understand, if they even find out.”
Newt instructs me on how to take the back elevator down to the kitchen.
“See you at the bell,” I say to him on his way out.
I tell Schoolboy and Benny, and somewhat to my surprise they’re both up for it.
When we get downstairs a little before 10, I introduce them to Newt, who tells Schoolboy that he’s played against him, too. Schoolboy acts like he remembers Newt, but he doesn’t.
“Except for the best colored players, like Oscar Charleston and Biz Mackey,” Hoyt tells me, “when it comes to these boys, I’m like Ruth trying to remember their faces. Everybody looks the same to me.”
“Really?”
“That’s just the way it is,” he says.
Newt introduces us to an older, gray-haired porter named Rabbit Smith. He’s the one who used to spar with Jack Johnson. It’s a little hard to believe though, as Rabbit is only about 5’10” and I doubt he’s ever weighed more than 170 pounds, even in a soaking suit of clothes.
“I was a welterweight, but Jack used me to work on his quickness. That’s how I gots my name.”
Rabbit tells us how Johnson was a crafty, smart fighter, much more so than he’s given credit for.
“Jack was lightning fast, not just with his fists but with his feet. He wasn’t scared of no man, but he would dance and weave to makes his opponents miss, and tire themselves out.
“Now, Tunney knows how to do that. Dempsey, he can only fight one way. I was up at Johnson’s house on Striver’s Row last week, and we was talking about the fight, and we done both agreed that Tunney will be too elusive for that Manassa Mauler.”
On the radio, Graham McNamee announces that there are 105,000 people inside Soldiers’ Field for the fight, including in the front row, my old pal, Al Capone, and Billy P.’s new pal, Charlie Chaplin.
As the fighters walk out to the center of the ring for their instructions, Rabbit Smith stands on a chair, holds his arms apart and begins to loudly pray:
“Dear Lord, we humbly beseech you in your beneficence. Please do your best to keep anyone from ordering room service until the end of this here fight. Amen.”
The forty or so cooks and porters in the kitchen all shout, “Amen!”
The Lord answers Rabbit’s prayer. And he also answers the prayers of boxing fans everywhere by delivering one of the greatest fights ever. And one of the most mysterious.
In the seventh round, Dempsey gets Tunney against the ropes, and Tunney has no way out. Suddenly, Graham McNamee is shouting.
“TUNNEY IS DOWN! TUNNEY IS DOWN FROM A BARRAGE OF LEFTS AND RIGHTS TO THE FACE.
The fight is going on.
Tunney is down. They’re on the other side of him.
They’re counting — 6, 7, 8 and 9 and Tunney is up!
And now they’re at it again!”
Thanks to McNamee’s uninformed call, all of us in the kitchen — along with millions of other Americans listening on the radio — think Tunney has just survived Dempsey’s barrage simply by being a resilient boxer.
We have no idea that we’re listening to the most controversial fight in the history of the sport, and maybe the most controversial sporting event ever, until we all wake up the next morning and see the headlines splashed across every newspaper in America.
The next morning in the locker room, all anyone can talk about is the fight, and what The Brooklyn Eagle has labeled, “The Long Count.”
By all reports — except for McNamee’s live call of the fight — Jack Dempsey made a fatal mistake after he knocked down Tunney by not immediately going to his neutral corner. It’s a new rule that was just put in, and apparently both Dempsey and McNamee forgot about it.
The referee now doesn’t start his count until the fighter on his feet retreats to the neutral corner. So Dempsey’s pacing over Tunney last night ended up giving the fallen Marine as many as eight extra seconds to recover from his being knocked down and almost out.
“Graham McNamee is a clown,” Schoolboy says, looking over a transcript of McNamee’s radio call, published this morning in the New York Times. “He didn’t even mention the long count while he was calling the fight. Look right here at the transcript. He even says at the end of the broadcast:
‘There were no fouls in this fight. And there’s nothing questionable that I saw.’
“My God!” moans Schoolboy. “It was only the most questionable and confused result in the history of boxing! They should take away the bum’s broadcasting license.”
I guess Schoolboy’s now an expert on broadcasting, having done three radio shows for WEAF.
“You know what Ring Lardner wrote about McNamee after listening to him call his first World Series game, a couple of years ago?” he asks me.
“No, what?”
“Ring wrote, ‘I don’t know which game to write about, the one I saw or the one I heard Graham McNamee announce.’ What a clown.”
Schoolboy lights a cigarette and reaches for The Daily News, to read yet another account of the fight.
Dempsey and his manager have protested the fight, but I doubt they’ll get anywhere with that — not if boxing protests are anything like baseball’s.
While Schoolboy and the rest of the locker room continue reading all about the fight, I scan all the newspaper obituary sections, just as I have for the past three days, looking for some mention of Sunday night.
This morning, I finally see it.
- BIX Beiderbecke
- George Bellows
- BENNY Bengough
- Jack Dempsey
- Luis Angel Firpo
- Harry Greb
- SCHOOLBOY Hoyt
- MILLER Huggins
- Jack Johnson
- Graham McNamee
- BILL Powers
- Bill “NEWT” Robinson
- BABE Ruth
- STEVEN
- Gene Tunney
- 1927 Yankees
- “THE DEFINITION OF SUICIDE”
- Jack Dempsey vs. Luis Angel Firpo
- The Long Count Fight
- NEW YORK TIMES, September 23, 1927: “Gene Tunney Keeps Title By Decision After 10 Rounds”.
