Terror in the City of Champions (27 page)

Cochrane could not sleep. He spent his early morning hours gazing at the sky from his hotel window, pondering what might go wrong next. “Sleeping powders—they’re only a joke,” he said. The following day the team began a five-game stand in New York. The Tigers’ lead over the Yankees had dropped from ten games to seven and a half. If the Yankees swept them, they could turn the final two weeks of the season into a race.

Joe Louis, who had been training at Pompton Lakes in New Jersey, made the thirty-mile trip to Yankee Stadium—where he would soon fight—to see his Tigers. Louis had pummeled King Levinsky at Comiskey Park in Chicago. He was so dominant that the referee stopped the fight in the first round. Still undefeated, Louis was preparing for his biggest bout, against Max Baer, the former champ. He was standing beside the Yankees dugout when Cochrane approached at the request of cameramen. Given the size of Detroit’s lead, most fans felt the Tigers had a lock on the title. Louis was among them. He offered his compliments to Cochrane.

“But we haven’t won it yet,” Cochrane retorted.

“It’s as good as won,” Louis said. “Nobody can beat us now.”

Greenberg, playing in his hometown, noted that Louis’s presence always seemed to jinx him. “In fact, every time Joe comes to one of our games, I have a tough time getting the ball out of the infield,” he said. “Still, I shouldn’t squawk. I don’t believe he has seen us lose yet. He’s luck for the team but not much luck for me.”

The Tigers took three of five games in New York, dropped three of four in Boston, and headed back to Detroit for a Saturday doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns, where they clinched their second straight league crown.

Detroit fans had not grown complacent. They remained exuberant. The winning of the league title brought 100,000 fans downtown on September 21. They crushed onto Woodward Avenue, halting traffic in front of the Hudson’s Department Store. Patriotic bunting lined the street. Fifteen times, once every minute leading up to noon, a celebratory explosion echoed through the downtown area, reverberating off the brick buildings. A deafening cheer rose from the streets when Mickey Cochrane appeared with his darling five-year-old daughter Joan, bow in hair, on a balcony above the gathered masses. Baseball Commissioner Landis and Tigers broadcaster Ty Tyson joined the Cochranes on the platform as little Joan pushed a button, symbolically releasing a sixty by ninety foot banner. It unfurled down the building’s exterior. It featured a colossal illustration of a tiger and the words “Champions—Detroit Is Proud of You.” The crowd cheered. Perhaps caught in the moment, Cochrane discarded caution and proclaimed that the Tigers would win the World Series. The fans responded deliriously.

In the evening after they had officially secured the pennant, Cochrane rose before a thousand men at a banquet honoring Tigers owners Frank Navin and Walter O. Briggs. Business leaders dominated the audience, everyone from the head of Chrysler to the chair of the board of commerce. “These Tigers are not my champions,” said Cochrane, downplaying his own contribution. Looking at Navin—whom the papers had taken to calling “Uncle Frank”—and then Briggs, Cochrane credited them for making back-to-back pennants possible. “These two men,” he said, “gave me the greatest break I ever had in my life, and I am glad to have the opportunity to thank them publicly for it.”

They were heartfelt words, the kind usually said at eulogies. Navin even managed a slight, cherubic smile.

Louis vs. Baer

Most Detroit blacks lived in the areas of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley near downtown and east of Woodward. Though the name Black Bottom derived from its river-enriched soil, it had taken on a double meaning by the mid-1930s, becoming synonymous with the “colored” residents who lived there. The nature of Black Bottom varied by its overcrowded blocks, with some parts offering acceptable housing and others unfairly priced shacks. Hundreds of black-owned businesses operated in the two neighborhoods. The nightclubs of Paradise Valley drew such national acts as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. When in town, Joe Louis visited many of the establishments, including the Frog Club, Club Plantation, and Club Three 666.

On Monday, September 9, weeks before Louis faced Max Baer, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to a section referred to as the East Side Slum Districts to announce construction of the Brewster Projects. Approximately 10,000 people, a majority black, greeted her. Roosevelt listened to a black youth choir and visited with the children. She waved a handkerchief to signal demolition of one symbolic dilapidated building and she addressed the audience. “Housing is one of the basic reasons for many of the social problems we have in rural communities as well as cities,” she said. “Better housing makes for better living standards.”

Louis was in New Jersey at the time. He had spent his adolescent years in Black Bottom. The old neighborhood around Catherine Street brimmed with stories about him. “We all knew him,” said Rosa Lee Kirkman Wheeler, who lived a few streets over and used to go to Saturday movies with one of his sisters. A friend of hers had a crush on Louis when he was a teen. “He used to work on a wagon. . . . So we used to tease her because she liked this boy that rode on the coal wagon.” One young man remembered working with Louis before school at the Eastern Market, where they removed apples and oranges from tissue paper and piled them high on carts. Louis’s friend Fred Guinyard recalled peddling ice with him. They’d rent a horse and wagon for three bucks a day, buy hundred-pound blocks of ice, and go up and down the side streets selling chunks. Saturday was their big sales day “because they churned ice cream on Sunday.”

As Louis’s bout with Baer neared, life in Black Bottom increasingly revolved around the big event. The gambling rackets saw bets placed on Louis’s lucky numbers: his current weight, the round at which he predicted victory, his growing number of knockouts. On St. Antoine Street fans gathered at a large bulletin board and debated the stories posted from the New York papers. Russ Cowans, a reporter for black newspapers, doubled as Louis’s secretary and tutor. He wrote weekly letters from Pompton Lakes updating friend Doc Long about Louis’s life and activities. Long posted the letters in the window of his pharmacy. Men grouped around them to read and discuss the news. Within days hundreds from Black Bottom would be boarding special fight trains to New York. Hundreds of others would be joining the cheaper automotive caravans.

At training camp reporters noticed that Louis had matured personally in his fourteen months as a professional. “What impressed this observer was the marked difference in Joe Louis’s response to questions,” said Harvey Woodruff of the
Chicago Daily Tribune
. His answers were no longer limited to a word or two. “Now, Louis of his own initiative adds whole sentences of explanation to some answer he has given, speaks freely of his coming bout with Baer, and in general shows the advancement in poise and manner which so often corners boxers as they rise from the humbler pugilistic ranks to public prominence.”

Louis was asked repeatedly how he would fare against Baer. One day his Chicago-based trainer Jack Blackburn asked the question on behalf of the assembled reporters. Louis looked at Blackburn and laughed. “What am I going to do to Baer?” he said. “Just what my Tigers is going to do to your Cubs in the World Series—clean them up—and be sure you pay me the ten dollars you’ll owe me when the series is over.”

The world learned that Louis would be marrying stenographer Marva Trotter and moving to Chicago, her hometown and a city where he was spending a good deal of time. Both his trainer and co-manager lived in Chicago, and thirteen of his first twenty-one professional fights had been staged there. Trotter was already buying furniture for their apartment. The news brought a flood of letters to the Pompton Lakes training camp. The writers, mostly women, begged Louis to stay single. Others urged him to remain in Detroit with his family. The local Joe Louis Boosters Club, which planned celebrations and organized transportation to his far-off fights, even adopted a resolution imploring him to stay. Club president Edgar Pitts explained: “We aren’t going to let Joe do it if we can help it. Joe is a Detroit boy and we aim to see that he stays a Detroit boy.”

Louis was in love and talked considerably about Trotter, their wedding, and their future life together.

“When will you be married?” a writer asked.

“Probably a few days after the fight,” said Louis. “We won’t decide definitely until after she comes to New York. . . . Even if I knew, I’d rather not tell for we hope to have a quiet affair.”

Members of the fan club in Detroit tried to get Louis to postpone the date, figuring it would distract him from the fight. Club officer Johnny Tears recalled how nervous he was before his own wedding and imagined Louis might be the same. “Maybe Joe shouldn’t marry for a week after the fight,” he said.

Louis and Trotter decided differently. On the day of the fight, Tuesday, September 24, two hours before the opening bell, they were wed in a New York apartment by Trotter’s brother, a minister. Several friends and a few family members joined them. “Marva was too beautiful and sweet,” said Louis. “She looked like something you’d see in a fairytale book.” Immediately after, he left for Yankee Stadium.

The loss to Jim Braddock had humbled Max Baer. He no longer spouted off about how he would destroy Louis. He respected him. Leading up to the bout, Baer had limited his clowning and trained seriously. He had engaged sparring partners who had faced Louis and had consulted the advisors of Louis’s previous victims. Baer knew that a second straight loss would severely limit his income, if not end his career. In the days before the match Baer had gone back and forth on his projections, sometimes mildly predicting victory, other times being ambiguous about the outcome. More than a few observers thought he was scared. Baer had, after all, seen the Brown Bomber demolish opponents.

At Yankee Stadium, hours before the encounter, Baer threatened to cancel if the boxing commissioner didn’t waive the rules and allow extra padding in his gloves over his knuckles. “These are the gloves we’ll use or there will be no fight,” Baer said before storming off to his hotel with his entourage. Louis had come too far for the fight to be scrubbed. “Give Max anything he wants,” his co-manager Julian Black told the commissioner. “We don’t care.” Later the open-air stadium filled with 84,000 paying customers and possibly an additional 9,000 others, including more than a thousand on-site police officers. Baer worried in his dressing room. He told ex-champ Jack Dempsey, who had been working with him, that his hand was injured. He didn’t want to fight Louis. “He’ll slaughter me,” Baer said. Dempsey told him it didn’t matter if both hands were broken. “You’re not quitting now,” Dempsey said.

The Louis-Baer event was huge, spectacularly so for a nontitle bout. The gate approached a million dollars. Around the ring, which had been erected near second base and was flooded in light, an army of celebrities congregated. There were major stars of sports, entertainment, and politics: former president Herbert Hoover; governors and mayors; Babe Ruth; Ernest Hemingway; reigning champion Braddock; actors James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson; ex-champs Gene Tunney, Jack Sharkey, Primo Carnera, and the blue-bereted, gold-toothed Jack Johnson; and so many more. Among them was Mickey Cochrane, a pair of binoculars around his neck. He had skipped a Tigers game and flown to New York.