Why ‘The Old Mongoose’ Means So Much To Me

Published

10 years ago

December 8, 2014

The framed poster, from a fight card staged on Aug. 18, 1944, in San Diego, Calif., had yet to be picked up by its owner from the custom frame shop in the leafy Philadelphia suburb of Bryn Mawr, Pa. It was lying against a wall behind the counter when Philly-based promoter J Russell Peltz, an avid collector of vintage boxing memorabilia, saw it and decided it would make a nice addition. So he asked the proprietor, who did all of Peltz’s framing, to whom the poster in question belonged.

As it turned out, I was that owner. Ironically, it had been Peltz who, in response to a question I had posed to him several days earlier, had suggested I bring a boxing item that was near and dear to me to that particular shop.

“I’ll give you $300 for that poster,” Peltz told me the next time we spoke. I presume his offer was in addition to the cost of the framing, which was a bit pricier than what you might expect at a shopping-mall frame shop.

“Not for $300,” I told him. “And not for $3,000.”

Probably not for $30,000, either, although in these difficult economic times, I might have had to consider an offer so exorbitant that no memorabilia collector in his right mind, unless he was Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or George Steinbrenner, would have made. But this poster was special to me, and not just because the main event, in large block print, hyped a main event in which evolving legend Archie Moore was to take on Jimmie Hayden.

It was a name, in smaller print, listed below “The Old Mongoose’s” that set this poster apart for me from so many others made distinguished by the Hall of Fame-level fighters at the top of the card. Two bouts – listed by promoter Onyx Roach as “Double Semi-Final –Each 6 Rounds” — advised would-be attendees that Bill Campbell was be swap punches with Kid Hermsilla, and that Jack Fernandez was paired with Jimmy Hatmaker.

Jack Fernandez’s given name was, in fact, Bernard J. Fernandez. The eighth of eight children born to Lillie Fernandez and her husband Emile Fernandez Sr., Jack’s lengthy and quite accomplished amateur career was forged in large part during the Great Depression, as was the case with so many fighters in those days. His nickname was conferred upon him by observers who thought his crouching, attacking style was somewhat reminiscent of Jack Dempsey’s, and his many friends continued to call him Jack until his death, at 74, on March 4, 1994. For purposes of this story, let it be noted that the fighter’s full name underwent a slight renovation when he became Bernard J. Fernandez Sr., after his only child, a son, was born amidst the howling winds and flooding storm surge of a hurricane (the National Weather Service had yet to begin naming them) that struck Jack’s hometown of New Orleans, La., on Sept. 21, 1947.

That poster is not the only memento I have of my father’s brief professional boxing career, but it is the most treasured and now something of a family heirloom, to be passed down to one of my two sons after I, too, receive the eternal 10-count. There also is a belt buckle with Jack’s name engraved on it, for winning an amateur tournament of some importance in New Orleans, and a raft of yellowing newspaper clippings that have had to serve as the only portals I have into his boxing past, as there are, to the best of my knowledge, no tapes or film clips existing of his six pro bouts (final record: 4-1-1, with one knockout victory). One clipping tells the tale of Jack, then in the Navy and in training in Corpus Christi, Texas, for his World War II sea duties, scoring an electrifying knockout victory over a local fighter, Manny Gonzales.

“Fernandez, fighting in a crouch, literally won the fight with the first punch he threw – a stunning left hook to the jaw – which sent his opponent crashing to the floor for the count of nine,” the story recounted. “Fernandez’s sharp left hooks and powerful rights found their mark repeatedly the remainder of the first round and only the sheer gameness enabled the Corpus Christi idol to last the round.

“Early in the second round Fernandez floored his foe again with a hard right to the left ear. Gonzalez staggered up at the nine count, but the New Orleans slugger tore in for the kill and finished the fight with a right smack flush on his opponent’s jaw.”

Another article, written for a New Orleans newspaper by the paper’s future sports editor, Art Burke, who also was serving in the Navy, read, in part:

“We had a monthly `smoker’ here at the gymnasium (in San Diego) Wednesday (which opened with the returns of the Conn-Louis fight) and one of our New Orleans Reservists, Jack Fernandez, fought on the eight-bout boxing program and scored the only clean-cut knockout of the night. You may remember this boy since he reached the semifinals of the Sugar Bowl boxing tournament in 1940. His victory was all the more thrilling by the fact that the boy he kayoed in the second round was Utah state champion for three straight years and had not been knocked out in 75 fights.”

Perhaps, had he not spent the better part of four years in a desperate fight to avoid being killed by the Japanese Imperial Navy during World War II, Jack might have had more than the few pro bouts he accepted when his damaged ship, a destroyer escort, was in San Diego and being refitted for combat. Perhaps he might have fulfilled the ring promise so many believed he had until the bombing at Pearl Harbor changed everything for millions of Americans.

Then again, my dad was a realist. His window of opportunity as a fighter had closed, or at least was closing, and, besides, his fiancee – that would be my mother – didn’t want him to expose himself to further danger, as would be posed by opponents’ gloved fists. So upon his return from WWII Jack promised her that he would give up boxing and take up a safer pursuit, which turned out to be a 27-year career with the New Orleans Police Department, where he might – and did – occasionally come up against armed felons. Go figure.

I always think of my father – well, at least more than usual – in March, around the anniversary of his death, as well as in June, when the annual International Boxing Hall of Fame induction weekend is staged, and in December, because that is a month that has special significance to me because of his link, however tenuous, to the great Archie Moore. They appeared on the same card just that once, Archie knocking out Hayden in three rounds while my dad – in his final pro bout — and Hatmaker had to settle for a one-round technical draw after an inadvertent clash of heads left both men with nasty gashes that left them unable to continue, at least in the eyes of the ring physician or the referee, as the case may be.

As a child who worshipped his father, and came to love boxing because he loved it so, I remember asking him if he knew Archie Moore, given a moment in time when they shared the same stage at more or less the same time. Jack said no, that the Mongoose was probably having his hands wrapped when he and Hatmaker were butting heads like frisky mountain goats. But I always chose to believe that Archie had slipped out of his dressing room to catch a glimpse of the left-hooking sailor from New Orleans who, in my mind, surely was winning his bout with Hatmaker until the inopportune butt deprived him of the victory to which he surely headed.

Many years later, when Moore was training George Foreman in the second stage of Big George’s remarkable career, I might have had the opportunity to query him about that long-ago August night in San Diego. But those interviews were always in group sessions, with other reporters present, and I thought it unseemly to take up part of the available time with so personal a question. Then again, it could be I just preferred to preserve my own wishful version of what had or hadn’t happened. And in that version, Archie Moore was as big a fan of Jack Fernandez as Jack Fernandez was of Archie Moore.

Until the day he died (more on that a bit later), my father always contended that I had achieved more in boxing that he ever had. It was, of course, a crock. He made his mark with blood and sweat and the kind of courage all fighters have to find within themselves when the going gets tough, while I typed away on a portable word processor, crafting stories about individuals who risked so much more than I ever had, or ever could. Jack was my hero, my role model, and a better man than I was then, or am now.

To repay the debt I always believed I owed him, for basically giving me my career as a boxing writer born of together watching so many “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports” TV fights on Friday nights on our little black-and-white home screen, I flew dad to London, his only trip to Europe, for the Lennox Lewis-Razor Ruddock fight on Oct. 31, 1992. He also accompanied me to Las Vegas, for the rematch of Mike Tyson and Razor Ruddock on June 28, 1991. They were the kind of big fights, on brightly lit stages, that I suspect he always hoped would have been his destiny under different circumstances.

TSS readers know that I sometimes write about the anniversary dates of certain fights that should be remembered regardless of how much time has passed since they occurred. In recent months I have authored pieces on Rocky Marciano and the Spinks brothers, among others. It is perhaps a concession to my senior-citizen status that I more cherish the memory of classic bouts in my rear-view mirror than some that will or might happen in the future. When I sat down to write this piece, it was to have been about watershed events that took place in December during Archie Moore’s long march into boxing history: His death on Dec. 9, 1998, in San Diego; his 11^th-round knockout of Yvon Durelle in Montreal on Dec. 10, 1958, an electrifying rally in which the Mongoose weathered four knockdowns before turning the tide, and his long-delayed winning of the light heavyweight title, after 16 years as a pro, on Dec. 17, 1952, when he outpointed Joey Maxim over 15 rounds in St. Louis, Mo.

Then I looked up at the poster hanging in my home office, and my approach changed, something akin to Muhammad Ali deciding on his own that what later came to be known as the “rope-a-dope” might work better against the heavily favored George Foreman in Zaire than the presumably more sensible stick-and-move strategy that had been laid out by trainer Angelo Dundee.

The International Boxing Hall of Fame’s Class of 2015 was announced on Thursday, which also has special significance to me because there wouldn’t even be an IBHOF in Canastota, N.Y., were it not for the fact that that central New York village’s favorite son is the late, great Carmen Basilio, who happened to be Jack’s favorite fighter in the 1950s. It stood to reason that Basilio was my favorite fighter, too, during my early grade-school years, with Jack and I cheering him from the semi-comfort of our cramped living room whenever the “Onion Farmer” was appearing on those Friday Night Fights telecasts.

Canastota also was a favored destination of my dear friend Angelo Dundee, who was to the IBHOF what the Pied Piper of Hamelin was to the children who were so drawn to the sounds of his magic flute. Every time Angelo, who died on Feb. 1, 2012, returned for IBHOF induction weekend, fight fans surrounded him, in part because of who he was and what he meant to boxing, but also because even in a minute of pleasant conversation he could make everyone he encountered feel like a friend of long-standing.

Jack had his own moment with Angelo, which actually was an hour and a half in duration. During the trip my dad and I made to London for Lewis-Ruddock, we came down for breakfast at the White House Hotel in the Kensington section and ran into Angelo, who was also staying there. The three of us shared a table, ate a little and talked a lot, with Jack and Angelo exchanging tales, as fight people are wont to do. Angelo’s two most famous pupils, Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, were topics of discussion, but not as much as Basilio and two champion fighters from New Orleans Ange had also worked with, Ralph Dupas and Willie Pastrano. It was the happiest I had seen my dad during that trip; by then his legs were giving him trouble, he tired easily and he either couldn’t complete or begged out of standard sightseeing ventures to the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

Whenever I’d speak to Angelo thereafter, he inquired after Jack. One day in 1994, however, I had to tell him that my father had passed away, during the last and worst of his several hospitalizations for cardiac problems. My mom, Alice, had called to say that I needed to get to New Orleans as quickly as I could, that this one was serious. The emergency trip from Philadelphia lasted the better part of six hours before I made it to East Jefferson General for what would prove to be the last hour of Jack’s life. It was then that I was informed that my father, in terrible pain, had refused medication that would have eased his suffering because he didn’t want to be unconscious or unresponsive when his son made it to his bedside. To this day I am convinced he held on in those figurative championship rounds until I got there.

As I recounted the particulars of Jack’s most heroic battle, which he lost only on the ultimate judge’s scorecard, the usually upbeat Angelo turned serious. “I’m not surprised,” he told me. “Your dad was a fighter.”

So it doesn’t matter much whether Archie Moore and Jack Fernandez actually met. They probably didn’t, and I know for sure Jack and Carmen Basilio never spoke. To me, they, and Angelo, are all part of a broader mosaic that comprises the fabric of my life. As far as visitors to the IBHOF are concerned, only Archie, Carmen and Angelo are Hall of Famers. Most wouldn’t have a clue that a fighter named Jack Fernandez ever existed.

But a plaque on a wall shouldn’t be all there is to certify a Hall of Fame life. As I look upon the framed poster that is at once my proudest possession and the standard of personal conduct to which I constantly aspire, I understand that some memories can’t, and shouldn’t, come with an attached price tag.

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Bernard Fernandez

Avila Perspective, Chap. 295: Callum Walsh, Pechanga Casino Fights and More

Published

18 hours ago

September 6, 2024

David A. Avila

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Super welterweight contender Callum Walsh worked out for reporters and videographers at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Thursday,

The native of Ireland Walsh (11-0, 9 KOs) has a fight date against Poland’s Przemyslaw Runowski (22-2-1, 6 KOs) on Friday, Sept. 20 at the city of Dublin. It’s a homecoming for the undefeated southpaw from Cork. UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card.

Mark down the date.

Walsh is the latest prodigy of promoter Tom Loeffler who has a history of developing European boxers in America and propelling them forward on the global boxing scene. Think Gennady “Triple G” Golovkin and you know what I mean.

Golovkin was a middleweight monster for years.

From Kevin Kelley to Oba Carr to Vitaly Klitschko to Serhii Bohachuk and many more in-between, the trail of elite boxers promoted by Loeffler continues to grow. Will Walsh be the newest success?

Add to the mix Dana White, the maestro of UFC, who is also involved with Walsh and you get a clearer picture of what the Irish lad brings to the table.

Walsh has speed, power and a glint of meanness that champions need to navigate the prizefighting world. He also has one of the best trainers in the world in Freddie Roach who needs no further introduction.

Perhaps the final measure of Walsh will be when he’s been tested with the most important challenge of all:

Can he take a punch from a big hitter?

That’s the final challenge

It always comes down to the chin. It’s what separates the Golovkins from the rest of the pack. At the top of the food chain they all can hit, have incredible speed and skill, but the fighters with the rock hard chins are those that prevail.

So far, the chin test is the only examination remaining for Walsh.

“King’ Callum Walsh is ready for his Irish homecoming and promises some fireworks for the Irish fans. This will be an entertaining show for the fans and we are excited to bring world class boxing back to the 3Arena in Dublin,” said Loeffler.

Pechanga Fights

MarvNation Promotions presents a battle between welterweight contenders Jose “Chon” Zepeda (37-5, 28 KOs) and Ivan Redkach (24-7-1, 19 KOs) on Friday, Sept. 6, at Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula. DAZN will stream the fight card.

Both have fought many of the best welterweights in the world and now face each other. It should be an interesting clash between the veterans.

Also on the card, featherweights Nathan Rodriguez (15-0) and Bryan Mercado (11-5-1) meet in an eight-round fight.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. First bout at 7 p.m.

Monster Inoue

Once again Japan’s Naoya Inoue dispatched another super bantamweight contender with ease as TJ Doheny was unable to continue in the seventh round after battered by a combination on Tuesday in Tokyo.

Inoue continues to brush away whoever is placed in front of him like a glint of dust.

Is the “Monster” the best fighter pound-for-pound on the planet or is it Terence Crawford? Both are dynamic punchers with skill, speed, power and great chins.

Munguia in Big Bear

Super middleweight contender Jaime Munguia is two weeks away from his match with Erik Bazinyan at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. ESPN will show the Top Rank card.

“Erik Bazinyan is a good fighter. He’s undefeated. He switches stances. We need to be careful with that. He’s taller and has a longer reach than me. He has a good jab. He can punch well on the inside. He’s a fighter who comes with all the desire to excel,” said Munguia.

Bazinyan has victories over Ronald Ellis and Alantez Fox.

In case you didn’t know, Munguia moved over to Top Rank but still has ties with Golden Boy Promotions and Zanfer Promotions. Bazinyan is promoted by Eye of the Tiger.

This is the Tijuana fighter’s first match with Top Rank since losing to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last May in Las Vegas. He is back with trainer Erik Morales.

Callum Walsh photo credit: Lina Baker

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60 Years Ago This Month, the Curtain Fell on the Golden Era of TV Boxing

Published

2 days ago

September 5, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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The Sept. 11, 1964 fight between Dick Tiger and Don Fullmer marked the end of an era. The bout aired on ABC which had taken the reins from NBC four years earlier. This would be the final episode of the series informally known as the “Friday Night Fights” or the “Fight of the Week,” closing the door on a 20-year run. In the future, boxing on free home TV (non-cable) would be sporadic, airing mostly on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The days when boxing was a weekly staple on at least one major TV network were gone forever.

During the NBC years, the show ran on Friday in the 10:00-11-00 pm slot for viewers in the Eastern Time Zone and the “studio” was almost always Madison Square Garden. The sponsor from the very beginning was the Gillette razor company (during the ABC run, El Producto Cigars came on as a co-sponsor).

Gillette sponsored many sporting events – the Kentucky Derby, the World Series, the U.S. Open golf tournament and the Blue-Gray college football all-star game, to name just a few – all of which were bundled under the handle of the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports. Every sports fan in America could identify the catchphrase that the company used to promote their disposable “Blue Blades” – “Look Sharp, Feel Sharp, Be Sharp!” — and the melody of the Gillette jingle would become the most-played tune by marching bands at high school and college football halftime shows (the precursor, one might say, of the Kingsmen’s “Louie, Louie”).

The Sept. 11 curtain-closer wasn’t staged at Madison Square Garden but in Cleveland with the local area blacked out.

Dick Tiger, born and raised in Nigeria, was making his second start since losing his world middleweight title on a 15-round points decision to Joey Giardello. Don Fullmer would be attempting to restore the family honor. Dick Tiger was 2-0-1 vs. Gene Fullmer, Don’s more celebrated brother. Their third encounter, which proved to be Gene Fullmer’s final fight, was historic. It was staged in Ibadan, Nigeria, the first world title fight ever potted on the continent of Africa.

In New York, the epitaph of free TV boxing was written three weeks earlier when veteran Henry Hank fought up-and-comer Johnny Persol to a draw in a 10-round light heavyweight contest at the Garden. This was the final Gillette fight from the place where it all started.

Some historians trace the advent of TV boxing in the United States to Sept. 29, 1944, when a 20-year-old boxer from Connecticut, Willie Pep, followed his manager’s game plan to perfection, sticking and moving for 15 rounds to become the youngest featherweight champion in history, winning the New York version of the title from West Coast veteran Albert “Chalky” Wright.

There weren’t many TVs in use in those days. As had been true when the telephone was brand new, most were found in hospitals, commercial establishments, and in the homes of the very wealthy. But within a few years, with mass production and tumbling prices, the gizmo became a living room staple and the TV repairman, who made house calls like the family doctor, had a shop on every Main Street.

Boxing was ideally suited to the infant medium of television because the action was confined to a small area that required no refurbishment other than brighter illumination, keeping production costs low. The one-minute interval between rounds served as a natural commercial break. The main drawback was that a fight could end early, meaning fewer commercials for the sponsor who paid a flat rate.

At its zenith, boxing in some locales aired five nights a week. And it came to be generally seen that this oversaturation killed the golden goose. One by one, the small fight clubs dried up as fight fans stayed home to watch the fights on TV. In the big arenas, attendance fell off drastically. Note the difference between Pep vs. Wright, the 1944 originator, and Hank vs. Persol, also at Madison Square Garden:

Willie Pep vs. Chalky Wright Sept. 29, 1944 attendance 19,521

Henry Hank vs. Johnny Persol Aug. 21, 1964 attendance 5,219

(True, Pep vs. Wright was a far more alluring fight, but this fact alone doesn’t explain the wide gap. Published attendance counts aren’t always trustworthy. In the eyes of the UPI reporter who covered the Hank-Persol match, the crowd looked smaller. He estimated the attendance at 3,000.)

Hank vs. Persol was an entertaining bout between evenly-matched combatants. The Tiger-Fullmer bout, which played out before a sea of empty seats, was a snoozer. Don Fullmer, a late sub for Rocky Rivero who got homesick and returned to Argentina, was there just for the paycheck. A Pittsburgh reporter wrote that the match was as dull as a race between two turtles. Scoring off the “5-point-must” system, the judges awarded the match to Dick Tiger by margins of 6, 6, and 7 points.

And that was that. Some of the most sensational fights in the annals of boxing aired free on a major TV network, but the last big bang of the golden era was hardly a bang, merely a whimper.

—

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

—

The photo accompanying this article is from the 1962 fight at Madison Square Garden between Dick Tiger (on the right) and Henry Hank. To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

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Boxing Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2024

Thomas Hauser

Boxing Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser

Adam Pollack has written eleven books about boxing’s early gloved champions including a three-volume study of Jack Dempsey. Volume Three of the Dempsey trilogy (which covers The Manassa Mauler’s ring career subsequent to Dempsey-Firpo) has just been published by Win by KO Publications.

Pollack (a former prosecutor and now a practicing criminal defense attorney in Iowa) is also an accomplished boxing referee. That leads to the question: “Would he have handled matters differently had he been the third man in the ring for Demsey vs. Luis Firpo and Dempsey’s “long count” rematch against Gene Tunney?”

“Unless you’re actually in the moment,” Pollack answers, “it’s hard to know how you’d handle situations like that. And I prefer to let readers decide things on their own. I just lay out the evidence and let readers make their own judgments.”

But when pressed, Pollack offers some thoughts.

The referee for Dempsey-Firpo was Johnny Gallagher. Firpo was knocked down seven times in round one while dropping Dempsey on flash knockdowns twice. Then he knocked Dempsey through the ropes into the press secton with a hellacious righthand before being knocked out himself in the second round.

“The neutral corner rule was in existence at the time of Dempsey-Firpo,” Pollack recounts. “But it was rarely enforced at that time. There was a fair amount of criticism of Gallagher for not enforcing the rule to the extent that he allowed Dempsey to hit Firpo as soon as Firpo’s glove left the canvas rather than making Dempsey wait until Firpo was in an on-guard standing position and ready to defend himself. In fact, that criticism led directly to the rule being highlighted in the referees’ instructions before both Dempsey-Tunney fights. If I’d been the referee for Dempsey-Firpo, using the accepted 1923 standard, I would have made Dempsey take a few steps back after each knockdown and not allowed him to approach until Firpo was totally upright. But I would not have required him to go to a neutral corner.”

“As for Dempsey being knocked through the ropes,” Pollack continues, “back then, a fighter who was knocked out of the ring had ten seconds to get back in, not twenty seconds the way it is today. The consensus is that Dempsey beat the ten-count and didn’t get any help from the writers. Just because someone is pushing you off of them doesn’t mean they’re helping you.”

As for the long-count controversy in Tunney-Dempsey II, Pollack states, “There’s an argument that Dave Barry [the referee] should have picked up the count at four and not started at ‘one’ when Dempsey finally went to the far neutral corner. But Barry was within his rights to handle the situation the way he did. I could go either way on it. And people forget that Dempsey didn’t stay in the neutral corner. He was practically halfway across the ring, coming in for the kill at the count of nine, and Barry ignored it.”

Does Pollack think that Tunney would have beaten the count if he’d had only ten seconds to work with rather than fourteen?

“It’s speculation,” Adam answers. “Looking at the films, I think Tunney could have gotten up within the first ten seconds. But he probably would have been a bit dazed and more vulnerable to Dempsey’s punches.”

“Boxing is becoming a niche sport,” Pollack adds in closing. “So you have fewer and fewer people writing about boxing history today. But I love the research. I love the learning. There are always surprises. The surprises are part of the fun for me. And I love taking readers back in time so they can relive the eras I’m writing about. I put a lot of time and effort into these books. I know there are people who appreciate them, and that’s very gratifying to me. I’m not the one to judge, but I think my books will stand the test of time.”

Yes, they will.

***

SOME WORDS OF WISDOM FROM TRAINERS

Teddy Atlas: “Boxing has its share of beautiful stories. But it has sad ones too.”

Charlie Goldman: “I always say to my guys, ‘Don’t tell ’em. Show ’em.'”

Willie Ketchum (who trained world champions Jimmy Carter, Antonio Cervantes, Lou Salica, Davey Moore, and Lew Jenkins): “They always quit at the wrong time. When it’s too late, they see the light.”

Donald Turner: “There’s a lot of bad people in boxing. And those people should know what kind of person I am. I live an honorable life. When I’m wrong, I admit it and apologize for what I did. But I’ll get in your face if I think you’re wrong. And I’ll come at you with a baseball bat if you try to take what’s mine.”

And then there’s the standard reply that Hall of Fame trainer Ray Arcel gave whenever he was asked about boxing’s many ills: “It was ever thus.”

***

On August 24, a faded, stained, gray flannel shirt sold at auction at Heritage for $24,120,000.

Before you check your closet to see if you have any faded, stained, gray flannel shirts, keep in mind that we’re talking about the jersey Babe Ruth is believed to have worn when he hit his famed “called shot” home run off Chicago Cubs pitcher Charlie Root in the 1932 World Series.

I say “believed” because the jersey has been examined by several respected photomatching authenticators. One of them – Resolution Photomatching – examined the jersey on three separate occasions and each time declined to confirm a match. When Resolution Photomatching went public with its reservations, Chris Ivy (director of sports auctions for Heritage) declared it “unfortunate that a company like Resolution would want to come out and say something like that.”

In recent years, game-worn attire has become increasingly popular among collectors. In 2022, Sotheby’s sold the jersey that Michael Jordan wore in Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Championship Finals for $10.1 million. That same year, the jersey Diego Maradona wore when he scored his “Hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup brought in $9.3 million.

The Babe Ruth jersey in question was sold at auction in 1999 at a time when it was described simply as a game-worn Babe Ruth road uniform. The price was $284,000. Six years later – with the “called shot” designation added to the description – it sold at auction for $940,000. Now the same jersey has sold for twenty-five times its 2005 price.

How do boxing trunks and robes stand up against these numbers?

Far behind.

Craig Hamilton is the foremost boxing memorabilia dealer in the United States. Asked about robes and trunks. Hamilton says that the most valuable piece of fight-worn memorabilia known to exist is the robe that Muhammad Ali wore when he reclaimed the heavyweight throne from George Foreman in Zaire. It sold at auction for $157,000 in 1997 and, in Hamilton’s view, would bring several million dollars today.

“You have to remember;” Hamilton adds, “in 1997, sports memorabilia sales were fueled by collectors. Now the market is driven by investors. They might be fans too. But no matter how much they spend, the biggest spenders have their eye on the longterm bottom line.”

And by the way; Babe Ruth loved boxing. He was a regular at ringside for big fights. There are numerous photos of Ruth in boxing poses (sometimes with his hands gloved) and also photos of Ruth with Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis. When the Boxing Writers Association of America (then known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York) held its first annual dinner at the Hotel Astor on April 26, 1926, The Babe was there.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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