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

83 страница из 92

I thought to myself, They are going to throw us in the brig. But they didn’t.

Instead, they gave us weekend passes. Tony and I spoke at the Little League banquet at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and then spent the weekend in New York City.

Tony, an idea man, was always looking for ways to escape the freezing bivouac.

“If we join the boxing team,” Tony said, “we could get off bivouac for a couple of days. Let’s join the boxing team.”

“I don’t want to join the fucking boxing team,” I said.

“We’ll join the boxing team, and we’ll fight each other, and we’ll just play patty-cake,” Tony said. I was stupid enough to agree.

The boxing program was in the evening. We had to box three three-minute rounds. I was a heavyweight. Tony was a light heavyweight. As soon as we put on the trunks and the boxing gloves for the first time, they split us up.

The boxer I was scheduled to fight came from Europe. He was about five foot ten, 225 pounds, and he looked out of shape. I had seen him around the PX before. He didn’t seem very imposing. I figured that for three rounds I’d shuffle around and jab him.