Читать книгу Rage. The Legend of "Baseball Bill" Denehy онлайн

29 страница из 92

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the priest’s office with my father. The priest told me he’d give me one more chance. I could stay at St. Mary’s as long as there wasn’t another incident. I told my father we should leave.

I left St. Mary’s emotionally scarred, and it wasn’t until years later that I understood the toll those beatings took on my psyche.

Later, when I went to public school, a group of kids who enjoyed fighting came after me.

I enjoyed fighting at first, but I wasn’t very good at it, and I used to get the piss beaten out of me. I didn’t have visible bruises and cuts; I could cover up my face. But one time my clothes got ripped. When my mother told my father about the ripped shirt, my father took me down to the YMCA the following weekend to meet Willie Pep, the boxing champion.

Willie was from Middletown, and my father knew him. He introduced me to the champ.

“Would you say a couple things to my son so he can defend himself a little better?” asked my dad. Willie said to me, “When it looks like you’re going to get in a fight, the first thing I want you to do is grab the guy’s ears and smash the top of your forehead into his nose as hard as you can. That will break his nose, and if it doesn’t, his eyes will water, and he won’t be able to see. And then kick him in the nuts as hard as you can, and after he goes down, just keep kicking him.”