Yeshiva boys who never knew from boxing stayed up late and forgot their religious studies for a secular bout of ethnic pride between champions of opposing faiths.
“I’d rather die than lose this fight,” he said, hitting the sandbag again and again, seeing McLarnin’s face as the face of Jew hatred. “I felt like I was fighting for my people.”
McLarnin came into the ring first in shamrock - green satin terry robe, raising a massive arm to the adoring crowd, followed by Ross in his lucky, tattered patch cloth robe that his mother stitched and re- stitched many times before. His eyes gazed at Benny Leonard, a fallen icon sitting under his blue fedora, pleading with him for revenge. McLarnin had knocked him unconscious during a comeback fight. Would Barney grow taller than Goliath to be that little Jew giant killer? All eyes now turned toward him.
There was Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey and Father Coughlin in the crowd of 60,000. In a short time, the Detroit radio announcer would find his life’s work: Jew baiting, Roosevelt hating. LaGuardia turned round and waved and counted votes by the dozens.
But Ross saw only McLarnin’s icy blue eyes, staring directly at him. A life of instinct and training guided his feet to the proper stance without fear or hesitation. He was a lion and he was about to roar.
He went over the regimen again. Step forward with the left, six inches, followed by the right. Turn the right heel slowly for perfect balance. Step back the same way; first with the right foot twelve inches or more. Extend the left toward the opponent, the right held with the forearm and the hand in front of the abdomen. Hunch down by bending the knees and keep the chin tucked under the shoulder. Relax.
Jimmy was bigger and taller and that held an advantage, but Barney knew he could out maneuver him as Jimmy had his body exposed often for blows to the solar plexus, the repeated combinations to the mid-section and the kidneys and the liver, the worst punishment he could give that would bring him down. A solid blow to the liver, he knew, could knock him out. A battering about the heart could take his opponent’s heart, his fire away.
BARNEY ROSS VS JIMMY McLARNIN WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, LONG ISLAND BOWL, N.Y. MAY 28, 1934.
For two rounds circling at long range, Barney tried to concentrate, but he was hooked by those eyes. He thought about Nazis and his frightened people being herded about Europe, being hated in their own country. He circled; saw the body, but wanted blood, wanted to shut those blue eyes.
In the third round, Barney baited him, advancing, sticking out his chin, daring Jimmy to throw the bomb that had clobbered Benny Leonard, the right that had sent so many others off to dreamland. The first came fast, a swish in the air, and Barney was underneath, his left slashing the blue eyed - champion’s face amid the roar of a startled crowd. Jimmy’s counterpunch landed, but Barney tore into his teeth, rattling him with a pepper of punches. He thought he had ‘splattered him like rain on the roof.’
Yes, he thought. The blood was still the great indicator to the referees. The blood mattered, coming from Jimmy’s nose and mouth and head. But then came the massive right cross, and Barney was suddenly sent back to the ropes, dazed again.
On it went with systematic fury and vicious intent. Savage bursts, a wicked right, but Barney countering with combinations until the ninth when Jimmy saw an opening out of a clinch and landed a short left hook that sent him reeling toward the canvas.
The air was suddenly sucked out of the stadium and out of the hearts of the faithful, listening by the radio that their champion was down. But like a jack in the box, he sprang skyward before the referee could begin the count.
“No one had ever counted over me in a boxing ring and they weren’t going to start now,” he said.
Screaming with anger, Barney forgot the lessons about defensive fighting, attacking with cries of rage and a left, then caught Jimmy squarely with a right cross, sending the shocked warrior to the same place Barney had vacated a moment earlier. Sixty thousand folks were standing. Usually quiet mothers of insulated yeshiva boys went screaming into the night, the minions forgetting the teachings of tolerance when they heard the announcer’s voice, exhorting them to swing in pantomime—Jewish mothers in Boro Park and Williamsburg, taking the punches, swinging at the drapery—three lefts, short rights and the lefts again that made the Irishman bloody, face swollen and blackened until “the red ran down my gloves.”
Touching gloves for the fifteenth and final round, they came at each other with vengeance in their hearts. Both felt beaten and robbed of their birthrights. Without thought to boxing science, they went toe to toe and slugged it out. Wild punches like pounding hail fell from the hip, whacked them into the clinches to push the attack into the ribs, the kidneys—with fury, grinding their gloves, giving the last gambit of pain toward a death blow, into the solar plexus. It was Jimmy who buckled and Barney had landed with another right hand at the bell. The announcer said:
“Winner and new welterweight champion……”
And the tears flowed from that little warrior, surrounded by his brother, Georgie, then the delirious crowd. Goliath had fallen, Hitler was silent. For a moment, every Jew hater was vanquished. Even Father Coughlin, a rabid anti-Semite, shut down his broadcast. David was triumphant and the little Jewish ladies and men of the neighborhood, in the alleys and the streets from Halsey to Maxwell Streets danced the Hora in moonlight, shouting with glee that stayed in their memory like prayer.
The grit of their Maccabee, a Jewish warrior, in delirium, was the common cry of the neighborhoods—feverishly; old half dippy housewives of Ripple Street cleaned their kitchens in kimonos, in excited chatter, cackling to each other through open windows while quickly taking their wash off the clothesline. Afterwards, yeshiva bochum in second and third floor tenements, running out of the basement doors, dancing in the streets off South Second, letting out a collective breath, celebrating in the streets, sticking out their skinny ribs.
Who is Hitler? What can he do against Jewish might?
“What can he do? What can he do to us if we stay strong?”
And the answer rang out into star light.
“Nothing, he cannot touch us anymore,” they said, dancing between the sewers and in the alleyways that altogether good night.
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