The Nation's Pulse: Year of the Ruptured Duck
Gold, Victor
"The Nation's Pulse: Year of the Ruptured Duck" by Victor Gold Year of the Ruptured Duck With the boys safely home, 1946 saw American sports...
...As it was, he was a hero to his lower East Side neighborhood tt The men were back, nolonger boys, and thesports scene was aperfect metaphor forwhat was happening ina year of high hopesand great expectations...
...What Neil and I remembered, from the distance of decades, was the noise of the crowd drowning out the announcer, with Zale on the ropes, apparently finished...
...Called "The Man of Steel," he was seldom knocked off his feet, much less knocked out...
...Born ten years later, Graziano would have been an icon to the James Dean-Marlon Brando generation, a rebel in black leather, burning rubber on a Harley-Davidson...
...Attend a class reunion...
...From the moment Leahy returned from service to South Bend, this is the one game football has awaited...
...Though the experts had predicted a close fight, Louis-the-puncher caught up with Conn-the-boxer at two minutes, nineteen seconds of the eighth round...
...He charged out at the bell, as one writer said, "like a wild boar that hadn't had a meal in a week...
...Two punches: one to the body, the second to the jaw...
...1 / that Army coaches saved their best plays and players...
...Louis as prohibitive 7-to-2o favorites...
...I t was a small brass lapel pin, the likeness of either a vigilant eagle or an angry mallard, circled by what was intended as a wreath but looked more like a sling: the ruptured duck, worn as a badge of service by millions of returning veterans...
...The result was that Army, apparently invincible, came into its 1946 match with Notre Dame boasting a fouryear winning streak, including 59-o and 48-0 drubbings of the Irish the two previous years...
...In February, about the time Detroit moved into full-scale production of its first postwar models, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, and Bob Feller headed south for pre-season baseball camp...
...The Army-Notre Dame game had been an annual classic played at Yankee Stadium since the Rockne era of the Twenties, a grudge match between two of the best college football programs in the country...
...It was at half-time in an Army game that Rockne urged his players to "win one for the Gipper...
...T H E NATION'S P U L S E by Victor Gold Year of the Ruptured Duck With the boys safely home, 1946 saw American sports...
...Turn out the lights at Caesar's Palace...
...Anticipation ran so high that promoter Jacobs set the tab for ringside at an unheard-of $loo-a-seat, a figure 60 October r996 • The American Spectator the Times called "the heaviest impost in all the history of boxing...
...but bad discharge aside, it was hard for sports fans to dislike him...
...Slaughter was the hero, Boston shortstop Johnny Pesky the goat...
...A string of savage knockouts had made him the top contender for Tony Zale's middleweight title, and he entered the ring at Yankee Stadium as the betting as well as local favorite...
...Once in the ring, however, Graziano underwent a drastic personality change...
...Louis, a devastating puncher, had been expected to make short work of Conn, a flashy boxer with no more going for him than Celtic moxie and a quick jab...
...nine...
...ddly enough, of the four most riv eting sports events of 1946, the only one that didn't take place in Yankee Stadium was the World Series...
...Inside," Glenn Davis "Mr...
...Boston, with Ted Williams, Rudy York, and Dominic DiMaggio back from service, had won the American League race over the favored Yankees with surprising ease...
...During the war years the service academies had dominated the college football scene, skimming the cream of the country's high school recruits while traditional powers like Notre Dame had to settle for what were known as "war babies" -players who in former years would have been consigned to the scrub team...
...Founder of the Nostalgia Book Club, he was a connoisseur of cultural memories framing the period 19zo-1960...
...At first, it didn't seem possible that Slaughter could score on the hit, but the Carolinian they call "Country" rounded second, third and then sped for home while a bewildered Boston shortstop, handling the relay from the outfield, spun around, could not believe his eyes, and made a futile throw to the plate...
...You'll find that memory doesn't simply fail, but as Neil McCaffrey once pointed out, it often lies...
...In the fourth, Conn's foot slipped and he was sprawled out helplessly in front of that killer who was trying to destroy him...
...The experts had predicted a high-scoring game...
...But Harry Walker followed with a line drive double and for the next few seconds the gathering was to witness an electrifying spurt that doubtless will linger for many years with those who saw it...
...Not only would Army be beaten that autumn afternoon, they argued...
...Sometimes nostalgia is exactly what it's cracked up to be...
...Patiently he waited on first while Bob Klinger, veteran relief hurler, retired the next two...
...Leahy has a wealth of dangerous running backs in Cowhig, Sitko, Mello, Simmons, Livingstone, Brennan, Panelli, Gompers and Zaleski...
...This was all that Louis, the famed "Brown Bomber," could ask for...
...Peace, as fight promoter Mike Jacobs told the press, would be good for the game: There would be no more cheese champs fighting main events at the Garden...
...Would it be a sentimental journey or another reminder-like the high-school sweetheart turned henna-ed grandmother-that some memories are best left in peace...
...But that September night in 1946, the star would be Zale, in one of boxing's most dramatic comebacks...
...Boston hadn't won a world championship since 1918, inspiring a certain amount of sympathy...
...If nothing else, it told us the service teams were no longer invincible and that Notre Dame was back...
...Surprise had been the ingredient that set 1946 apart from other memorable years in sports-Billy Conn plodding, Tony Zale surviving, Country Slaughter going from first to home -and Army-Notre Dame would be no exception...
...Long before Ted Turner made colorization an article of progressive faith, my friend from Pelham had circled the wagons 'round black-andwhite, the Silver Screen...
...For Chicago sportswriters, at odds with their arrogant New York colleagues, ZaleGraziano was a postwar morality tale: a clean-living if colorless champion from the American heartland who had served his country, against a cocky, colorful bigcity street fighter with shady connections...
...In the event, the final score would read: IRISH -0, ARMY-O...
...That's why folks idolize him with almost reverent fervor...
...And show it all on scratchy film in black and white...
...Together with a massive line and two-deep reserves, they had won twentyfive straight games...
...That it began with a Joe Louis title fight was only fitting...
...That the streak was coming to a violent end was a given among Notre Dame fans-the New York subway alumni who lit candles to the memory of Rockne and swore by his disciple, Coach Frank Leahy...
...Later, Graziano, a gracious loser (we had them in those days), would tell reporters that what they had just witnessed wasn't a prizefight, but "a war-and if there wasn't a referee, one of us would have wound up dead...
...He has a fine quarterback in John Lujack, with two capable reserves in Ratterman and Tripucka...
...What happened then is the stuff of nostalgia, still remembered by millions who were listening to Clem McCarthy's call on radio: Having out-boxed Louis, the challenger, Irish self-confidence overriding his trainer's plea to "jab and move," pressed his luck and closed in for a knockout...
...Ah, for the great old days...
...A risk, of course...
...The message was clear: not only had Boston's infamous Curse of the Bambino survived the war, but baseball, as God and Alexander Cartwright intended it, was back...
...the human race...
...Outside," Arnold Tucker the quarterback, and Barney Poole the all-purpose end...
...Its four main events loom even larger today...
...the Black Knights would be routed...
...wo months later, Yankee Stadium was again the scene of a long-await ed title fight, this one between an aging middleweight champion just returned from the war and a cocky young challenger who had avoided lengthy military service by the simple expedient of decking an officer...
...but at age 34, rusty from four years of ring inactivity, the champion was given little chance to survive against Graziano, an opponent ten years younger with a penchant for finishing fights early...
...Nostalgia isn't always what it's cracked up to be...
...Never movies, however...
...In mid-October, the Cardinals, led by Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter-with a 2oyear-old rookie catcher, Joe Garagioladefeated the Dodgers in two games and headed for Fenway Park to meet the Red Sox in the Series opener...
...A sustained and rising crowd roar, then the announcer shouting, "Graziano is out, the fight's over...
...There was talk-around Boston, at least-that the Red Sox might be the greatest team of all time, equal to the '27 Yankees...
...11 and the New York press, a Runyonesque figure always good for a quote on a dull news day...
...Zale and Graziano would fight two more times, Graziano winning the second, Zale the third...
...that we could not simply pick things up where we had left them five years before...
...it was for Notre Dame-second only to Navy 44 Oddly enough, of thefour most rivetingsports events of 1946,the only one thatdidn't take place inYankee Stadium wasthe World Series...
...Both delivered, it turned out, with a broken right hand...
...The game has the revenge motif," Allison Danzig had written in the Times...
...Set up the ring at Yankee Stadium...
...The world had changed, the boys we had known were no longer boys, and the Louis and Conn we saw that night were not the same fighters we had seen five summers before...
...It told us, first, that the war had been more than a nasty interlude, on the order of a rain delay...
...I needn't have worried...
...He stepped back and permitted Conn to recover his balance...
...The rematch took place five years later, June 19, 1946...
...It would be, Danzig concluded, "two of the finest coaches in America matching wits, twenty-two of the most talented players in the country matching skills, a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object...
...His conduct in and outside the ring was held up as a model for young athletes, both black and white...
...History was also made when the fight was telecast to four East Coast cities, including Washington...
...A fair description of what we'd heard over the radio: two brawlers trading blow-for-blow for five rounds until, in the sixth, Graziano's youth and stamina finally took over...
...62 October 19 9 6 • The American Spectator...
...N of long after that session at Neil's, I visited the library to check the sports pages of our favorite year...
...The champion had a clear-cut shot for a blow that the rules permit...
...One, two, three rights to the chin, and Conn was counted out at two minutes, fifty-eight seconds of the thirteenth round...
...V1croR GOLD is The American Spectator's national correspondent...
...1938, the Year of Louis...
...The war, we gathered, was really over...
...The perfect ending...
...The Times' headline the next morning told the story: LOUIS PROVES HIS OWN PREDICTION...
...and our favorite-offavorites, 1946, the Year of the Ruptured Duck...
...But the '46 Cardinals had been season-long underdogs with a history of winning ball games in unlikely ways...
...The colorless Zale, to the shock and chagrin of the New York press, had somehow managed to put things right: Clean living vindicated, the heartland triumphant...
...When Hollywood made the movie ten years later (Somebody Up There Likes Me) it was of course about Graziano, with Paul Newman playing the lead...
...Here's how the Times described it: With the score deadlocked at 3-all, Enos Slaughter fired a single into center field...
...Or so it seemed...
...Baseball was a daytime sport in the forties, with radios turned up in offices, factories, and homes across the country as interest in the Series rose with each passing game...
...We compared notes, and after thirty minutes of winnowing came down to three finalists: 1934, the Year of the Gashouse Gang...
...F finally, there was the Game of the Century, played against the traditional gray November sky in a stadium filled with 75,000 fans either influential or lucky enough to get what were the equivalent of Super Bowl tickets...
...The closest any New Yorker came to a championship game that year was an unprecedented play-off between the Brooklyn Dodgers and St Louis Cardinals that broke a tie for the National League pennant...
...As the first major sports event of the post war era, the Louis-Conn rematch was instructive...
...At age 27, the heavyweight champion had held the title longer and defended it more often than anyone since John L. Sullivan in the 189o's...
...No more war-time fill-ins, as Walter Winchell wrote, masquerading as "the real goods," in the first year of what promised to be a golden age of sports...
...In any case, they went into the 61 The American Spectator . October r 9 9 6 Series opener against St...
...Still, when the movie My Favorite Year came out in 1983, I thought its premise interesting enough to raise a question during our annual kvetch over the bastardization ofAmerican sports by network television: Which bygone year, of all our years as sports fans, was our favorite...
...Rocky Graziano, the challenger, was anything but a role model for young Americans in the 1940's...
...Schmeling II...
...Neil-thepurist was totally uninterested in any film made after 1940...
...In the event, however, Conn was not only on his feet but ahead on points at the end of twelve rounds, well on his way to winning the title...
...When on one occasion a ring announcer patronizingly introduced the champion as "a credit to his race," it was Jimmy Cannon, in his daily column, who added the line, "Yes...
...But Louis is bigger than the rules...
...which is precisely what happened in the eighth inning of the Series' seventh, decisive game...
...The men were back, no longer boys, and the sports scene was a perfect metaphor for what was happening across America in a bull year for high hopes and great expectations...
...With the passing of baseball's Lou Gehrig, Louis emerged from the army as America's most-admired sports figure, a remarkable tribute to a black athlete, given the ingrained prejudice of the time...
...A month later, Joe Louis and Billy Conn went into training for the rematch that fans had been waiting for since June 1941...
...take off...
...Neil, in his time, was known to friends as the country's premier nostalgist...
...then the sound of the count, "eight...
...Zale, too, was a puncher, a former steelworker from Gary, Indiana, with a punishing body attack and a granite jaw...
...Members of the Cabinet and Supreme Court, along with wounded war veterans from Walter Reed hospital, gathered in "a series of smokefilled rooms" at a downtown hotel to watch what later reports described as "tiny spots, barely distinguishable against a background of dark blobs...
...CONN COULD RUN, BUT COULDN'T HIDE...
...Doc" Blanchard was "Mr...
...The second lesson learned was that an old trainer's maxim was as true in 194.6 as it had been in John L. Sullivan's day: As fighters age, the maxim told us, a boxer's legs go first, the puncher's punch goes last...
...Reread, if you can plow through the first ten pages, any Hemingway or Steinbeck novel...
...Whether it was the real thing or merely an illusion spawned by Movietone newsreel highlights, those who saw the Army team coached by Earl Blaik in the early 194o's still speak of it in awe...
...Good fights, but Hollywood and Paul Newman to the contrary, nothing close to matching the drama of that first war between the veteran and the delinquent, September 27,1946...
...From the New York Times, June 2o, 1946, this vignette: There was one small incident in the fight that was truly typical of the Brown Bomber...
...The first Louis-Conn fight had been widely regarded as the most exciting heavyweight title match since Dempsey-Tunney in 1927...
...And indeed it was...
...Until his death in 1994, I would visit him each autumn at his home in Pelham, New York, to chew over politics, religion, literature, music, but most of all, sports...
...A month after that, Coach Frank Leahy threw open the practice field at Notre Dame, and a hundred behemoths, veterans who had spent the war on service teams, showed up for spring practice...
...No more one-armed outfielders playing in major league parks...
Vol. 29 • October 1996 • No. 10
