Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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Schulberg saw some good in him. “He staged 61 championship bouts, promoted 3,000 boxing shows, signed 5,000 boxers, grossed over $10 million with Joe Louis alone, staged approximately 70 percent of all the bouts below the heavyweight division that grossed over $100,000 (totaling $3 million, with a mass attendance of half a million), attracted in a single year (to 34 Garden shows) nearly half a million people, grossed in that same year $5.5 million, and sold tickets over a 15-year period to more than five million people who pushed at least $20 million through Mike's ticket windows.”

In boxing, it's all about the numbers. Mike Jacobs, who had the heart of an accountant, was the number-one Numbers Man, and the Garden was his bank.

The New York that fashioned Jacobs was different from the skyscraper island of glamour we know today. The stench of poverty and sickness haunted Manhattan's poorest, as it had done since the birth of the colony. But every New Yorker, rich and poor, was mesmerized by the bright lights of Broadway.