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

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It was a marketing man's dream. Joe was fighting for every good guy who ever lived. His autobiography, published in 1947, was a whitewash typical of the genre of lighthearted and wholesome accounts at the time. The final chapter, entitled “P.S.—WHAT AMERICA MEANS TO ME,” reflects the enormity of the task assigned to him as a mere fighter.

He recalls meeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House just before the rematch.

“You know, Joe,” the president said to him, “America is never supposed to lose.”

“I know, Mr. President,” Joe said. “And I'll take care of that this time!”

The media frenzy, from left, right, German, black, and Jew, was unrelenting. After so many postponements, so much hassle, so many tactical maneuverings and double-crosses, it had to go ahead. There was no avoiding the German now.

And so Louis–Schmeling II took place in New York on June 22, 1938. Joe's purse was $349,228, a remarkable amount of money—for a remarkable fight.

The 124 seconds it lasted were burdened with greater poignancy than anyone then or since has attached to a mere boxing match. And the “wider significance” of the occasion was not lost on the 70,043 fans who paid to get into Yankee Stadium that humid midsummer's night, nor on the millions who listened to English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese commentaries on radios around the world. If it were possible to re-create an event of vaguely similar global consequence today, a fight between two men representing good and evil in such simplistic, cartoon terms and in circumstances of such heightened international tension, there surely would be billions entranced all at once.