Million Dollar Baby (10 page)

“Wait,” she said. “You did something with your breathing, too.”

“You noticed.”

“How’m I supposed to breathe?”

“We’ll get to that when”—he caught himself. “No, we won’t. I don’t have time, honey, honest.”

“I told you we had a problem,” she said.

“Go on,” he said. “Show me how good you are.”

“I can’t do all that. I know I can’t.”

“You want balance, you will,” he said, taking his bag down and walking away.

“Dang!” she said.

The next day she bought a speed bag just like Frankie’s. She’d be on short rations for a few days, but she didn’t care. She waited until Frankie left late in the afternoon, and then she went after the speed bag, in absolute slow motion at first, and then, as her switch in balance became fluid, she was able to speed up. She worked until the gym closed at eight.
Bip
-bip-bip,
bib-
bip-bip,
bib
-bip-bip,
bip-
bip-bip.

She was ready for him in a week and was so good he had to grin.

“Okay,” he said, “now show me what you can do on the big bag.”

She tore it up, moved, bobbed, and weaved, rotated her shoulders and fired her shots without having to do something before she did something. Stepped to her left and in when she threw her right, and drove with her ass, her balance on her front knee.

“Not bad,
macushla.
Keep movin that behind.”

“You won’t regret trainin me,” she said. “I promise.”

“No,
I said.”

She worked on both bags, getting better each day, her punches so quick and sure that fighters and trainers stopped to watch her bang.

On the following Monday she was ready for Frankie again. She handed him a dated document, handprinted on lined paper ripped from a spiral notebook.

To who it may concern Mr. Frankie Dunn has my OK. to use any word he sees fit. That means all 3 letter words and 4 letter words and 5 letter words and 6 letter words and 7 letter words and 8 letter words and even 10 and 12 letter words too and any other words he sees fit. I am in sound mind and body and these are my true wishes that come from my heart and my mind and my soul.

Signed,

Her signature was a scrawl he could not decipher. He stared at her, and she stared right back.

He said, “Who trained you for the fight in K.C.?”

“Me.”

“You got a manager?”

“You.”

“You got a job?” He didn’t want somebody looking for a Santa Claus.

She said, “Waitressin breakfast six to noon on out by the beach.”

He said, “What’s your record?”

“Nine and three, but only one knockout.”

“You never had a trainer?”

“I tried workin with some at first, but what they wanted was to bed me, men and women both. Hail, I wanted to learn how to fight, not the dirty leg.”

He said, “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Margaret Mary.”

“Margaret Mary what?”

“Margaret Mary Fitzgerald. But my daddy called me Maggie.”

Fightin Maggie Fitzgerald,
thought Frankie, turning away. “Ah Jaysus.”

“Here’s my deal,” said Frankie. “You do what I say. I don’t do what you say.”

“I do.”

“I show you moves and you can’t do them, that’s okay. But I give you moves you can do but don’t want to do, that ain’t okay.”

“I do.”

“You don’t like workin with me, quit me at any time, no hard feelins,” he went on. “I don’t like workin with you, I quit you anytime, no hard feelins.”

“I do.”

So it began, Frankie stripping her down to the bare wood. She worked so hard he wished his boys worked the same way. He tested her power and stamina by taking her round after round on the punch mitts. He went with her to make sure she ran right. He taught her the correct stance, how to keep her legs under her the width of her shoulders, instead of spread wide and dug in.

“Why?”

“Balance—with balance you’re free, and because your reach is longer when your legs are under you than spread wide apart.” He proved it to her.

He showed her how to move in and out, and side to side. He taught her how to fight backing up. For her legs, he randomly tossed the punch mitts to the canvas one at a time and had her scramble to pick them up. She lasted a minute before her legs gave out the first day. In two weeks she was going three 3-minute rounds and learned how to use her thighs, glutes, and leg biceps the way fighters use them.

He taught her how to stay on the balls of her feet, how to generate momentum off her right toe; how to keep her weight over her left knee, to flex on it when she fired her jab; how to double up and triple the jab, which would keep the opponent backing up on her heels. He taught her how to cut off the ring, how to slip punches and counter off lefts and rights. No matter how hard he drove her, she was always ready for more. His heart went out to her,
macushla
—
mo cuishle
in Gaelic: darling, my blood.

“You got a bad habit of dropping your left hand, like so,” he told her. “Joe Louis had that problem, even though he had won twenty-seven fights in a row, twenty-three by knockouts. That was before Max Schmeling came over the top of Louis’s lazy left and knocked Joe out.”

“Louis beat him the second fight.”

“Yeah, but they’re one and one in the record book,” Frankie said. “It’s okay if you’re baitin someone, gettin her to throw a lead right so you can slip or counter—it’s okay because you’re ready for the froggy to jump. Sugar Ray Robinson would do it, then he’d take a short step back and
yop!,
fire a good-night hook. But you ain’t there yet.”

“Protect myself at all times.”

“It’s a rule.”

He had her spar with the other girls in the gym. As he suspected, she held her breath under pressure and got tired. So he taught her how to breathe. Breathing correctly allowed her to shoot quicker shots at will, and she whacked the punch mitts relentlessly. When he had her spar with the girls again, she ran them out of the ring.

“How’m I doin, boss?”

“Better.”

“I’m down to one-thirty.”

Just right, Frankie thought, tall and rangy for her weight, with reach and power. He smiled to himself as he turned away—and she’s getting so slick she can fight in the rain and not get wet.

When Frankie couldn’t get sparring for her with the girls, he put her in with boys to toughen her up, to get her system used to shock. The boys weighed the same and had the same experience, and usually she’d take a pounding. But sometimes it went the other way, and one day she knocked a boy down with an uppercut off a jab, followed by a straight right-hand, picture-book stuff. A gym rat called up to the boy. “Hey, man! You gonna let a girl beat you?”

Frankie said, “That ain’t a girl, that’s a fighter.”

The rat put his hands up and backed away.

In the beginning, given Maggie’s mediocre record and apparent lack of power, it was easy to get her fights, especially since promoters were eager to put on fights with girls—club fights in Reseda and Sacramento, casinos on remote Indian reservations. Maggie was to fight four 2-minute rounds at two hundred dollars a round. Frankie dressed her in traditional kelly-green, a big gold shamrock on the back of her robe beneath MAGGIE in white, and she kicked ass. Four fights and four kayos, two coming in the first minute of the first round.

A week after her last fight, with her record now at 13 and 3 with 5 kayos, Maggie was offered a shot in the 130-pound Junior Lightweight Division in Hamburg against Billy Astrakhov, “the Blue Bear,” for twenty thousand dollars. Frankie turned it down, though he had to cash in some savings bonds.

Maggie asked, “Why, boss? I coulda bought a car.”

“We ain’t ready.”

In her last fight, Maggie had dropped her left hand and got a black eye off a lead right-hand.

“You got Irish skin. What I say about keepin your mitts up?”

“I didn’t even feel it,” she said.

“Wait till you start playin with the big kids,” Frankie said. “Tell me when you’re ready for six rounds.”

“Yesterdee.”

Going up in class, Maggie won her first and second six-rounders by decision but knocked out her next three opponents, all in the third, sending one of them to the hospital with a broken eardrum and a concussion.

“Welcome to boxing,” Frankie said.

“Will she be all right?” Maggie said.

“Probably. But what if she ain’t?”

“Guess she’ll hafta git herself a ol’ hairy leg and have a batch of kids,” she answered. Having said it, she saw herself at thirteen standing barefoot in the dirt in a faded little dress, impetigo spreading across her face. “Naw, I don’t mean that.”

Now her record was 18 and 3, with 8 knockouts, and Frankie was getting her eighteen hundred a fight. She was beginning to get attention in the media, and several articles about her had appeared in the fight magazines. But other managers became afraid to put their girls in with Maggie, not wanting to risk their fighter’s record for the short money the small-time promoters could afford to pay. So Frankie sweetened the pot on his own, pulling cash from his savings account to pay as much as three thousand dollars extra to the other girl through the promoter. Maggie’s record became 19 and 3, with 9 knockouts, which was less than a 50 percent kayo ratio. But her record with Frankie was 10 and 0, with eight opponents being counted out, a knockout ratio of 80 percent.

“Let me pay at least half of what you gotta pay,” she said.

“Nah, I’ll get mine back. Quit your job.”

They took an eight-round fight in London for eight thousand dollars, and two thousand in training expenses. They were on the undercard of a featherweight title fight, and for the event Frankie had a new outfit made for Maggie, the green so pale it was almost white and would sparkle under the lights. On her shorts, in kelly-green Celtic lettering, was MAGGIE. On the back of her robe was a gold Irish harp. Above the harp, in kelly-green Celtic lettering trimmed in gold, was the Gaelic MO CUISHLE. Frankie had her wear the robe at the weigh-in, and when the Irish press saw it, news of her immediately went on Irish TV and into the newspapers. The English media followed, and the Irish living in England filled the stadium. Frankie had pipers in kilts escort her to the ring at fight time, and the crowd was chanting
Ma-cush-la!Ma-cush-la!

The fight was shown in the States on Wide World of Sports, and Maggie stopped her opponent—a tough Jamaican girl in dreadlocks with a record of fourteen straight knockouts—on cuts in the sixth. When Maggie got back to Los Angeles, all the TV stations wanted her for interviews. Her price went up, and Frankie got her fights in Vegas and Atlantic City for fifty thousand dollars, which was more than most top male contenders were getting. Now all the promoters had pipers march Maggie to the ring. The Irish, who had laid low for so long, began to strut. Based on her last two wins, one of them by knockout, Frankie signed a conditional contract with a New York promoter for two 10-round fights in Madison Square Garden. For the first fight Maggie would get an unprecedented seventy-five thousand. If she won that fight, the purse would be a hundred thousand for the second. Irish fight fans from Boston filled chartered trains down to New York.

Maggie’s first New York opponent hit the canvas in the fourth. The other quit in her corner after eight. The headlines on the sports page of
The New York Times read
MACUSHLA FIRST MILLION $$$ BABY?

Another offer for the title came from Atlantic City, but Frankie turned it down because of the money split.

“No way we’re takin less than the champ,” said Frankie. “We’re the draw, not that Russian kraut, whatever she is.”

Frankie and Maggie were putting money in the bank. And now all the managers of all girl fighters everywhere, because of the big money Maggie generated, wanted to fight her. Frankie knew she could beat them. But by then they’d been working together almost three years, and he also knew that time was running out for Maggie, that her body could only take so much punishment. Her brothers and sisters were writing and calling for money. She began sending five hundred dollars a month to her mother, Earline. Between fights, Frankie went with her back to Missouri, where she bought and furnished a comfortable, two-bedroom brick house for her mother as a surprise.

“But how’ll I get welfare and my food stamps?” said Earline.

“Can’t you and Roxanne git a job?”

“Your sis and me watch late movies and sleep too late for that.”

“Then sell the damn house.”

“Can you spare a little cash, honey?”

“Here’s two hundred,” said Maggie.

“When you come home next time, leave your boyfriend behind.”

“Mama, what have you become?”

She fought in Johannesburg and Paris. Frankie had taught her to stick and move, to rip and tear, to keep her opponents out at the end of her punches, instead of letting them get in close. Both girls quit in the corner. From Paris, she went to Dublin, where she sparred with three girls—two rounds each—in an exhibition to raise money for Ireland’s amateur boxing program. The lord mayor proclaimed it Maggie Macushla Day and gave her the key to the city. The streets were packed with cheering fans.

“Money in the bank,” said Frankie.

Though Frankie now devoted much of his time to Maggie, he never shorted his other fighters, working with them daily and traveling with them when they had fights out of town. Jet lag killed him, but he was always back at the gym the next day. His fighters, eager as baby birds, never knew how tired he was. Girls from as far as Brazil showed up wanting Frankie to train and manage them.

“I’ll split the money fifty-fifty,” they’d offer. One of them offered a seventy-thirty split and showed him nude photos of herself, the implication clear.

“I know you won’t understand,” Frankie would tell them, “but I don’t train girl fighters.”

More than one called him a male chauvinist pig.

When Maggie’s ten-round title fight with Astrakhov was finally made, it was to be held at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, and to be shown on HBO. Frankie negotiated a two-fight deal that gave $225,000 to Maggie. If Maggie won that fight, the contract for the second title fight, against an unnamed opponent, stipulated that she’d get $500,000.