Boxers to Otto: "Stee-rike!"

by Pete Ehrmann

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Editor's Note: Following up on Dennis Pajot's biography of Milwaukee Brewers owner Otto Borchert, contributor Pete Ehrmann brings us this remarkable chapter from Borchert's earlier career as one of Milwaukee's premier boxing impresarios.

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"Louisville Fans Crow In Victory," headlined the Wisconsin News after the Milwaukee Brewers lost their first game of the 1925 season, 3-2 to the Louisville Colonels. But April 14 was a wunderschön day for Brewers owner Otto Borchert anyway. Also president of the Cream City Athletic Club, one of the biggest organizations promoting professional boxing in the country, Herr Otto must've done some crowing himself when the Wisconsin Athletic Commission threw out charges that he had "connived, aided and abetted trickery and deceit in the promotion of boxing contests" and exerted a "baneful influence" on the sport.

In the first half of the decade known as "The Roaring Twenties," there was no bigger story in Milwaukee sports than the knock-down, drag-out feud between the CCAC and a consortium of boxers, managers and rival promoters united in their hankering to topple Borchert as house promoter at the Milwaukee Auditorium.

It resulted in the formation of a labor union for boxers and managers. The "American Boxing League" actually went out on strike against the CCAC, after insisting that Borchert had boycotted local boxers first.

The protracted war, wrote A.J. Schinner of the Wisconsin News in 1927, "almost wrecked the boxing game here."

When Otto Borchert became president of the CCAC in February, 1919, it was already Milwaukee's premier boxing club and had been since the sport was legalized in Wisconsin six years earlier and the Queensbury Athletic Club — it changed its name to Cream City Athletic Club in 1914 — was granted a license to promote boxing at the Milwaukee Auditorium on N. 6th and W. Cedar (now Kilbourn Ave.) Sts.

The guiding force behind the CCAC was Thomas S. Andrews. Born in Canada, Andrews came to Milwaukee with his parents when he was one. He played baseball and football in his youth and at the turn of the century he was sports editor of the Evening Wisconsin.

In those days no code of ethics prevented newspapermen from having a hand in creating the news they reported on, and Andrews openly promoted boxing cards in public when local authorities allowed it (and in private when they didn't). He was also one of boxing's first historians and record-keepers, recognized globally by the early 1900s as an authority on the squared-circle. (Andrews was no slouch when it came to baseball, either, and at various times was mentioned as a candidate to run the American Association and the Federal League.)

While other clubs promoted boxing on the city's south side and elsewhere, thanks to its exclusive lease on the Auditorium, Andrews' CCAC dominated the field and made Milwaukee as renowned a fight town as New York City in an age when boxing and baseball were the deluxe entrees on the sports menu.

The Auditorium was key to its success. Back then the 12,000-seat facility was regarded with the same awe as Miller Park is today. "It is a dream," wrote C.J. Murray in the Buffalo (NY) Commercial newspaper in 1914, "the last word in construction — luxurious to the extreme, a wonderful paradise for boxing fans."

When Otto Borchert succeeded retiring Milwaukee Journal sports editor J.A. Ermatinger as president of the CCAC in 1919, he was identified as "a real estate operator" and a "100% (boxing) fan, having attended local fistic attractions for some 20 years." Years later, Milwaukee Sentinel sports editor George Downer would write, "To tell the truth, we never could quite understand why any man with Mr. Borchert's money should waste even five minutes promoting fights. Otto explains that by saying that he likes the game."

Less than a year after Borchert joined the CCAC, secretary and matchmaker Tom Andrews left for a two-year stint in Australia with a troupe of American boxers. He recommended that Borchert hire a temporary matchmaker to run the CCAC in his absence, but instead Otto took on the job himself. At the end of that year Sam Levy, the Journal's boxing writer, hailed the "proverbial self-made man" for his "colossal success."

In 1920, Borchert bought the Milwaukee Brewers, and a familiar face joined the boxing promotional wars. Cedarburg native Frank Mulkern owned the Yellow Cab Co., and had promoted fights and managed boxers in the first decade of the century. Now he was getting back into boxing with the intention of grabbing a piece of local boxing's crown jewel — the Auditorium.

Over the years the CCAC had used its political clout to keep other boxing clubs out of the Auditorium. But Mulkern had connections, too, and one of them turned out to be Otto Borchert, whose objections to letting Mulkern in were strangely muted. Breaking precedent, the Auditorium's board of directors granted Mulkern's National Athletic Club access to the building in 1922.

Andrews was not happy to come home and find Mulkern with a foothold in his once exclusive bailiwick. Suspecting collusion between Borchert and Mulkern, Andrews sold his controlling shares of the CCAC to Borchert for $3,500, and in mid-'22 Andrews opened up shop at the Castle Ice Garden at N. 35th and W. Wells Sts.

Over the next year boxing flourished in Milwaukee as the rival clubs presented popular cards featuring such local talent as Richie and Pinkey Mitchell, Joey Sangor, Joe Jawson and Johnny Mendelsohn. In terms of overall gate receipts, 1923 was the third most lucrative year for boxing in Wisconsin since 1914.

Andrews' suspicions that Mulkern and Borchert were playing footsie were confirmed in -'23 when Mulkern dissolved the National Athletic Club and became matchmaker for Otto's club, making the CCAC once more the Auditorium's exclusive boxing tenant.

Perhaps because of the glut of boxing cards, in 1924 attendance fell off dramatically. Reasoning that fans had grown tired of seeing the same old faces in local rings — and complaining that the local pugs wanted too much money to fight anyway — the CCAC began using mostly out-of-town boxers on its cards.

In June, Tom Andrews shuttered the Castle Ice Garden and said he wanted to promote again at his old downtown stomping ground.

"I can give Milwaukee the best cards in the country if I have the facilities," he declared. "I was the first promoter to hold bouts in the Auditorium, and nothing should prevent me from having a second lease on the building."

The Sentinel's George Downer agreed, writing on November 12: "Every day emphasizes the need of another club to promote boxing in Milwaukee. The existing Auditorium club has taken a high hand with boxers who have asked more for their services than the promoters in their wisdom (?) have deemed fair. There are today several boxers in Milwaukee who are practically banned from employment here because they have, by asking for what they deemed a fair payment for their services, offended the big club bosses" — i.e., Borchert and Mulkern.

"Rather than give them bouts, the local club put on a show featuring a full card of outside boxers… Cutting out the local lads, in the manner in which it has been done here, is distinctly unfair, but so long as one club holds a monopoly of the local promotion field, there is nothing to be done about it."

Less than a week later, the Sentinel reported that "Managers of practically all the professional boxers in Milwaukee met last night at the Republican Hotel to form an organization for the protection of their interests and for the advancement of boxing in Milwaukee."

Passed at the November 18 inaugural meeting of the American Boxing League was a resolution charging that Otto Borchert "has openly boasted that he can make or break any local boxer that he desires"; that boxers "have been deprived of their purses" by the CCAC; and that Borchert and Mulkern had "entered into contracts with contestants and modified them at will to satisfy their selfish demands."

Heading the new union — which filed for affiliation with the American Federation of Labor — was Billy Mitchell, loquacious manager of his boxing brothers, Richie and Pinkey. "The Fighting Mitchells," as they were known, had been butting heads with Otto since 1919, when Borchert decided that Richie — Milwaukee's most popular fighter and a top lightweight contender — was no longer welcome to fight at the Auditorium unless he agreed to take a cut in his percentage of the gate receipts from 33 1/3 to 25. (In a 1928 memoir, Richie wrote: "Otto was a splendid fellow in many ways, and he did me a lot of favors after I retired from the game. But he was stubborn as a balky mule.")

"The Fighting Mitchells"
L-r in front: Pinkey, Richie and manager Billy.

"Monopoly always leads to abuse," Billy Mitchell told the press after the first meeting of his union. "The (CCAC) promoters are high-hatting the local boxers to death and we have been forced to organize for our protection."

Two weeks later, members of the American Boxing League voted unanimously to go on strike against the Cream City Athletic Club.

Borchert took the high road, at least publicly. "We wish it understood that no matter what's said or published in contravention, the arena of the Cream City Athletic Club is open to any local boxer," he said. "We are always willing to talk terms and it is our endeavor to reach an amicable agreement with any of the local boxing fraternity."

Frank Mulkern was less diplomatic. "The yelp that local boxers are not receiving the proper terms is all applesauce," he snorted.

On December 18, Tom Andrews formally applied for a license to promote fights at the Auditorium. The boxers' union heartily endorsed his application. Every member of the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce recommended its approval, as did Mayor Daniel Hoan and City Attorney John Nevin.

But on January 21, 1925, Andrews' bid was rejected. Auditorium Manager Joseph Grieb said the policy regarding boxing clubs was no different from the one that allowed just "one radio show, one auto show, and one home builders' exposition in the building each year."

Within days, Billy Mitchell appealed directly to Gov. J.J. Blaine, and that's when the three-man Wisconsin Athletic Commission, which oversaw boxing since its legalization, finally intervened in what Journal sports editor Manning Vaughan called "nothing but a mud-slinging contest."

A formal hearing was scheduled at the commission's Milwaukee office on March 10-11. Two days before, Otto returned to town from the Brewers' spring training camp in Sanford, Florida. Though he complained that the hearing had been purposely timed to inconvenience him, Borchert said, "I would have come from China had the boxing commission ordered it. If there is anything wrong with our way of doing business and if it is not legal, we want to hear of it and we want it rectified."

The hearing was run just like a trial, with Borchert and Mulkern as defendants. Heading up their legal defense team were high-powered attorneys Henry Killilea, J.V. Quarles and Raymond Cannon. They called the charges against the CCAC "trivialities and nothings."

On the witness stand, Otto flatly denied ever saying that the boxers would accede to his terms or "I will starve them out."

But when asked if Joseph Grieb, manager of the Auditorium, received stock dividends from the CCAC — a practice actually started by Tom Andrews when he ruled the Auditorium roost — Borchert refused to answer.

He was loud and clear about one thing: "I shall protect the interests of my club. No one else will get a lease in the Auditorium while I have a club in it, and while those who sold their interests to me are trying to get back in the building."

Representing the American Boxing League, Atty. Frank Fawcett urged the commission, "Let it not be said that after you have rendered your decision that the prophecy that 'Otto Borchert can do anything with the commission' be held true."

Commission chairman A.J. Schinner — also sports editor of the Wisconsin News — personally favored opening the Auditorium to a second club, but wrote, "The whole affair is as sordid on one side as on the other, with none of the principals so vitally interested in the dear, patient public that it would not harpoon the hoi-polloi to gain what it wants."

"What a splendid humanitarian organization the boxers' league would be," he added, "if it had any viewpoint in mind other than to increase the percentage of its membership through the medium of a second club at the Auditorium!"

Except for a couple technical points, the commission's April 14 decision exonerating the CCAC was a Grand Slam for Otto. Frank Fawcett called it a "triumph for trickery" and said, "The commission has a double standard — one for the promoter with wealth, one for the boxer without."

Down but not out, the boxers' union lobbied in Madison for a bill that would allow outdoor boxing in Wisconsin. On June 24, Gov. Blaine signed one into law, and with Frank Fawcett in charge the Badger State Athletic Assockiation was formed to promote boxing at State Fair Park in West Allis.

A week before the first card there on August 14, Tom Andrews left Milwaukee for Los Angeles, to become matchmaker for the new Olympic Auditorium.

"My opponents in the promotion field here think that I have thrown the towel into the ring — that I intend to give up my fight for another lease in the Auditorium," he said before departing. "But they're wrong. They'll wake up some morning before next New Year's afternoon and discover another boxing club in the downtown arena."

The two cards promoted at State Fair in August and September were financial busts, and the site was written off as a poor fight venue. But the eight Auditorium cards promoted by the CCAC since January 1 hadn't done so great, either.

When Frank Mulkern said the CCAC would use any local boxer who wanted to work, several members of the American Boxing League defected from the union to fight on Auditorium cards.

On March 31, 1926, Tom Andrews returned to Milwaukee and announced his intention to "obtain a lease on the Auditorium, with intention of running a fight club."

Otto Borchert had a better idea. He granted the Badger State Athletic Association a lease to promote fights at Athletic Field, home of the Brewers, that summer, and didn't even object when Tom Andrews was made matchmaker.

But the three cards held at the ballpark were not moneymakers, and in November Andrews bought an existing boxing franchise operating out of the Empress Theater in downtown Milwaukee. He made it clear, though, that he would keep pressing for a lease at the Auditorium.

"I'll fight them to the end," he said, "and if there is any word like 'justice' left in the dictionary, I'll beat them."

A few weeks earlier, Journal sports editor Manning Vaughn had reported that Otto Borchert wanted out of the whole mess because "the trickery, the petty bickering, the double-crossing and the politics of the sport give him a large pain in the neck."

The bickering continued into 1927. Two years earlier, Andrews and the boxers' union were up in arms because the CCAC didn't use enough local ring talent; now Andrews was upset because the CCAC wouldn't keep its mitts off Milwaukee fighters.

"If the larger club would adopt a hands-off policy and not use small-time windups," Andrews said, "I think I would be able to produce some new fistic talent. The Auditorium club, one of the largest in America, ought to devote its attention to promoting important bouts and leave the 'home-grown naturals' for me and my Empress theater club."

So it went until April 27, when Otto Borchert dropped dead while giving a speech at the local Elks club.

Calling him a "square-shooter all the way," boxing commission secretary Walter Liginger recalled that Borchert "had many tiffs with the boxing commission, but his arguments were always fair and never other than sincere. He did much to increase the interest in boxing as president of the Cream City boxing club, and helped put the game on its present high plain."

Two days later, at Tom Andrews' card at the Empress Theater, the lights were dimmed as the timekeeper rang the ringside bell 10 times in tribute to the late boxing and baseball magnate.

On August 24, Andrews bought controlling interest in the CCAC from Ruby Borchert, Otto's widow (his attorney in the Wisconsin Athletic Commission hearing, Henry Killilea, had purchased the Milwaukee Brewers from her at the end of the 1927 season).

"Followers of boxing in Milwaukee are hoping that the new arrangement in the Auditorium club means the end of the promoters' feud that has held back the sport (here) for nearly a decade," wrote Jim Delaney in the Wisconsin News.

Not for long. In January of 1929, Billy Mitchell, having run out of boxing brothers to manage and his boxers' union having faded away, started promoting fights in the Antlers hotel ballroom. A few months later, Mitchell applied for a lease at the Auditorium. With Tom Andrews egging them on, the Auditorium directors said nothing doing. "Within the desired portals again, Andrews was as interested in protecting his rights as Borchert ever was," said the News.

Boxing's popularity waned throughout the 1930s. Tom Andrews got out of the promoting business and in 1941 he died. In the midst of a resurgence in local boxing, in late -'43 a new owner of the Milwaukee Brewers decided that the sport offered another opportunity to exercise his fertile imagination and "have some fun." He applied for a promoter's license.

By then, three different clubs promoted fights at the Auditorium. The owner of the ball club demanded an exclusive lease there like the ones Andrews and Borchert had in their day. When the boxing commission vetoed that, Bill Veeck said "Applesauce!" — or probably a scatological variation thereof — and stuck with baseball.

Hudson-Bell at the Orchard

by Pete Ehrmann

Even baseball has its shady past (How 'bout them Black Sox!), but probably no sport has a history more replete with baleful underworld forces pulling strings behind the scenes and fixing results to suit their own crooked ends than professional boxing.

Gangsters and fixed fights are staples of ring lore and literature, and according to one expert on the subject on a very hot August night 64 years ago the corruption splattered the ring at Borchert Field.

On August 4, 1947, Cincinnati welterweight Tommy Bell, the Number One-ranked contender in the 147-pound division, stepped between the ropes in the orchard an 8-1 favorite to step back out of them 10 rounds or less later with his second victory in 11 months over Milwaukee's Cecil Hudson.

Cecil Hudson's leaping left jab was in Tommy Bell's face most of the 10 rounds in their boxing match at Borchert field Monday night. The picture shows Hudson (right) executing his specialty. This time, though, Bell got home a left jab, too. Both of Hudson's feet left the mat when he threw this punch.

—Journal Staff

When they'd met on September 27, 1946 at the Milwaukee Auditorium, Bell was awarded a razor-thin decision.

"The sooner the two can be rematched, the better," urged R.G. Lynch, sports editor of the Milwaukee Journal after what he called "the most savage 10-round battle" seen locally in years. "Bell had the punching power and in the end that was the difference. He caught up with Hudson in the 9th round and only a chunk of bone and gristle like Cecil could have stood up under such a beating. Hudson, however, had piled up such a lead that Bell's big round did no more than pull him up even, and when the bell sounded to start the last round they still had to settle it. The winner of the round would win the fight. Hudson seemed to know it and put up a grand finish, but Bell had the range and outpunched him."

Tommy Bell

Bell's very next fight was for the vacant welterweight championship of the world. In New York City's Madison Square Garden on December 20, he knocked down Sugar Ray Robinson in the third round, but at the end of 15 rounds the referee and two judges awarded their decision and the first of six world titles that Robinson, considered by most experts the greatest boxer ever, would win in his 24-year career.

Although he dropped the decision to Bell at the Auditorium (and in his next bout, on November 1, was stopped by Robinson in five rounds in Detroit), 1946 was a better than average year for Hudson. In his eighth year as a professional boxer, the native of San Jose, California had won 10 (including a decision on May 6 over Bell in New York City), lost five, and gained a new hometown. Hudson relocated to Milwaukee after beating local favorites Charley Parham and Jimmy Sherrer in Auditorium bouts.

Cecil Hudson

At the end of '46, both the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel declared Hudson the city's "Fighter of the Year."

In his first fight of 1947, on March 14, Tommy Bell lost a unanimous 10-round decision to a boxer who would eventually become world's middleweight champion, a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and the subject of what is arguably the best boxing movie ever turned out by Hollywood. Losing to "Raging Bull" Jake LaMotta, then the top-ranked fighter in the 160-pound division, didn't affect Bell's standing as a welterweight, and after two subsequent victories in the 147-pound class Bell went into the rubber match against Hudson at Borchert Field as the overwhelming favorite.

"(Bell) has the equipment to beat Hudson," wrote Sentinel boxing savant Ray Grody — "a short, but dynamite loaded right, a fine boxing style featured by a jolting left jab, and more than a touch of ring wisdom."

Bell had withstood the bombs of Jake LaMotta for 10 rounds, and according to Grody he had no worries on that score from Hudson, "a pushing, jabbing 'cutie' who can make the best look bad," but no KO puncher.

What's more, after winning his first four fights in 1947, an out-of-shape Hudson had taken a pasting in his last bout, losing a 10-round decision to Eddie O'Neil at the Auditorium on July 1.

On the eve of the fight at the orchard, Bell told Ray Grody that he was "determined to murder that guy Hudson this time."

"I'm ready to start fast right away and level for a knockout," Bell continued. "I now he's a cutie (and) I've been told he's in very good shape. But I have too much at stake to blow this fight."

It was the first boxing card at Borchert Field in two years, and 3,850 fans braved the fiercest heat wave in seven years (99 degrees at 3 p.m.) to attend. "The combination of heat and lights over the ring (made) it a great night for the bugs," wrote Lloyd Larson n the Sentinel the next day. "The little 'flyers' swarm(ed) all over the place."

Hudson did plenty of swarming himself, boxing as if he and not Bell was the top-ranked welterweight in the world. After 10 rounds, the decision for Hudson was unanimous.

"Bell was willing but not able," wrote R.G. Lynch in the Journal. "He threw plenty of punches in the early rounds but missed time and again. Finally, tired and discouraged, he decided it was too hot to chase butterflies and in the 5th, 6th and 7th rounds Hudson salted the victory away. Tommy found new life near the end and gave Hudson a thumping in the 10th round, but it was too late."

According to Lynch, Bell "seemed acutely aware of the fact that he looked very bad." Twice after the final bell when Hudson tried to shake his hand, Bell refused. In his next day column about the fight in the Sentinel, Lloyd Larson wrote: "…One can't help but wonder what caused Bell's poor showing. Surely he has a lot at stake in every bout if he still hopes to get another shot at Robinson… He won't get it by looking like a chump against any top-notcher, welterweight or middleweight."

(Bell probably couldn't get out of town fast enough. Along with everything else, two days before the fight when he and three friends went to hit golf balls at a driving range on N. 100th St. and W. Blue Mound Rd. in Wauwatosa, owner William Beveridge refused to let them. "I told them that I had no objection to them personally as Negroes," Beveridge told a reporter, "but that if I permitted them to use the range it would ruin my business.")

On September 3, Cecil Hudson pulled an even bigger rabbit out of a hat. At Comiskey Park in Chicago, he scored what was called "the greatest upset boxing has had in several years" by winning a 10-round decision over Jake LaMotta.

"His jolting left jab kept LaMotta off balance most of the time, and when the harassed New York Italian tore loose with desperate rallies in the 5th and 9th rounds, Hudson was ready with two-fisted punching in which he more than held his own," reported the Journal. "The agile Hudson again was the little man who wasn't there."

His successive upset victories over the Number One welterweight and middleweight challengers, respectively, were rewarded when it was announced that Hudson would fight Sugar Ray Robinson for the welterweight championship at Madison Square Garden on December 19.

But then in the September 25 edition of the New York Mirror, columnist Dan Parker, the country's most relentless and influential crusader against corruption in pro boxing, lobbed a grenade at the proposed title fight and the explosion was felt back in Milwaukee. Parker wrote that Hudson was an unsuitable challenger for Robinson's title and said Hudson been maneuvered into that position "principally because he is owned by Frankie Carbo, one of the sinister backstage figures in the boxing racket."

"The sudden resurrection of Hudson as a welterweight contender," wrote Parker, "traces back to two bouts which have all the earmarks of Carbo specials. In Milwaukee, when Cecil was an 8-1 underdog he won a decision over Tommy Bell, and in Chicago, where he was a 3-1 short-ender, he scored the season's biggest upset by beating Jake LaMotta."

Dan Parker

What Parker called a "Carbo special" meant the fix was in, that Hudson was a guaranteed winner before he even laid a glove on Bell and LaMotta.

The gutsy columnist was smack on target on two points: Frankie Carbo owned Hudson's contract, and he was as sinister as mobsters came in boxing or any other racket.

When it came to manipulating, fixing, extorting and otherwise throwing his weight around in boxing, Carbo's best days were still ahead; but in 1947 the man who would become known and feared as "Mister Gray" and the "underworld czar of boxing" already had a lengthy and fearsome criminal record.

Frankie Carbo, "the underworld czar of boxing"

A graduate of the infamous organized crime outfit known as "Murder, Inc.," Carbo committed his first homicide in 1928. "It is hard to know how many murders Carbo committed," wrote Jim Brady in his 2007 book Boxing Confidential: Power, Corruption and the Richest Prize in Sport, "but some said he was one of the 'top torpedoes' of the time. He was arrested a total of 17 times, five of them for murder."

Carbo muscled into the fight game in 1933, and by 1946 an FBI report noted that he was "said to manipulate odds by causing desired results in fights, and to cash in heavily on fixed fights."

By 1950, pro boxing would be Carbo's personal chessboard. From behind the scenes he controlled most of the eight world championships, determined what fighters fought for them, and usually had a stake in both corners. He and his henchmen ruled boxing by threat, violence and pay-off (the takers included some respected boxing writers), and it finally ended in 1959 when Carbo went to jail for a deuce after being convicted in New York of managing boxers without a license. Tried again in 1962 for separate misdeeds in boxing, he was sentenced to 25 years by Judge George Boldt, who said: "Never in his life has (Carbo) been associated with any useful activity. He has been a menace to humanity and a hardened and degenerate criminal."

So, was Dan Parker right in labeling the Cecil Hudson-Tommy Bell fight at Borchert Field and the subsequent Hudson-Jake LaMotta bout as phonies?

At the time, Milwaukee Journal sports editor R.G. Lynch doubted it. In his "I May Be Wrong" column printed the same day as Parker's bombshell in the New York Mirror, Lynch defended Hudson as a "tough, tricky fighter who might beat any man," and said, "it is not reasonable to believe that even Carbo would induce (Bell and LaMotta), or their managers, to lose deliberately and risk their title chances, their reputations and their careers — and all the potential earnings involved."

Lynch also scoffed when reports of another fix swirled in the New York press after LaMotta's four-round TKO defeat by Billy Fox at Madison Square Garden on November 14, 1947, in LaMotta's first fight after losing to Hudson.

"What is the matter with all of those big brains in New York?" Lynch wrote on November 18, referring to the skeptical Big Apple newshounds. "Don't they realize that if it had been a fix LaMotta would have taken the count on one punch without creating all of this fuss? And without taking a bad beating? But he did not."

Thirteen years later, though, LaMotta confessed to a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating corruption in boxing that he had in fact taken a dive against Fox because the Carbo-led mob said it was the only way he would ever get to fight for the middleweight title. And in a 1962 magazine article titled "Honest Fighters Finish Last," LaMotta wrote that he had also "carried" Cecil Hudson in their 1947 bout on orders of the mob, but hadn't expected to lose the decision.

In the article, LaMotta said: "I was a thief. I threw a fight. I did two terms in jail and I'm lucky I wasn't a murderer. But those rats who ran boxing made me look like Little Lord Fauntleroy."

Jake finally became middleweight champion in 1949.

An ailing Frankie Carbo was released from prison in 1976 on "humanitarian" grounds, and died later that year.

Cecil Hudson's career did an abrupt 180 after the Bell fight at Borchert. Not only did he not fight Sugar Ray Robinson for the welterweight title in December of 1947 (thanks, at least in part, by the uproar ignited by Dan Parker), but he won only one of his next 13 bouts.

Tommy Bell did better than that, but he never got another title fight.

No official charges were ever brought against anyone connected with the Bell-Hudson match in the orchard, and the result stands in the record books as a win for Hudson.

But with underworld czar and infamous fight-fixer Frankie Carbo in his corner, it's more likely than not that among the bugs having a high old time there on August 4, 1947 were the slimy ones that infested boxing then.

Pinkey Mitchell Strikes Out

by Pete Ehrmann
Printed with permission of the Author

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Editor's Note: I am pleased and honored to welcome Pete Ehrmann to BorchertField.com. He will be writing about the Borchert Field's history as a boxing venue, and the fighters who fought in the Orchard's ring.

Pete Ehrmann has been writing about boxing for 45 years. His first by-line appeared in The Ring magazine when he was 14 years old, and he has contributed articles to The Ring and many other boxing publications ever since, as well as newspapers and magazines. He lives in West Allis, Wisconsin.

Welcome, Pete!

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The most famous no-hitter in Milwaukee occurred at Borchert Field on August 11, 1928 – but it had nothing to do with baseball. It was a boxing match between the reigning welterweight (147-pound) champion of the world, Joe Dundee of Baltimore, and the only Milwaukee boxer ever recognized as a world champion.

Pinkey Mitchell
(Author's collection)

Myron "Pinkey" Mitchell was also the only fighter in boxing history to win his championship not in the ring, but rather in an election. In 1923, he was proclaimed the first junior welterweight (140-pound) champion of the world after readers of a magazine called The Boxing Blade voted for him in a contest designed not only to anoint a new divisional champion in boxing but also to boost the magazine’s circulation.

Pinkey — called that since his father remarked upon his birth on December 6, 1899, "He’s a pink little fellow!" — was the brother of Richie Mitchell. Four years older than Pinkey, Richie was the most popular boxer in Milwaukee history, called "The Idol" and "Richie the Lionhearted." On January 14, 1921, Richie fought Benny Leonard for the lightweight championship of the world at Madison Square Garden in New York. In the first round, champion Leonard knocked him down three times; but Mitchell got up and then floored Leonard and almost knocked him out. Mitchell was stopped in the sixth round of what boxing historians consider one of the greatest bouts in ring history.

When Pinkey turned pro in 1917, local reporters said he was even better than Richie. But their enthusiasm for the 5'11" Mitchell nosedived as the handsome boxer said to look like the "president of a college debating society" started fighting like one. Pinkey did lots of clinching and stalling, with no appetite for mixing it up in the fashion of his older brother. Richie fought more recklessly than he should have, because he worried about giving the crowds their money's worth.

"(Pinkey) is not a satisfying performer," complained The Milwaukee Journal. "He is a great puncher, brainy boxer and all, but his tendency to hold and to display the tricks of clinching has served to dampen his popularity, and deservedly so."

Oddly enough, fighting anywhere but his hometown Pinkey was a tiger, which helped when The Boxing Blade, published in St. Paul, Minnesota, announced its contest to crown the first junior welterweight champion in 1922. Annual subscriptions to the magazine cost $4. From May to October, announced editor Mike Collins, anyone who purchased a new subscription for half that amount, $2, would be entitled to cast 200 votes for the new 140-pound titlist.

On October 18, 1922, Pinkey Mitchell was proclaimed the winner, finishing in first place with 100,800 votes out of more than 700,000 cast.

For a while, Pinkey's new title changed him. He fought more aggressively, pleasing local fans and critics. "The time has arrived when Richie's kid brother must be accepted as the leading Milwaukee favorite," wrote Sam Levy of The Journal after Mitchell beat Johnny Tillman in a rousing fight here on January 13, 1923. "No longer is Pinkey the lethargic battler of yore. No more does he confine his evening's toil to clinching. He is a true-blue fighter – a pleasing performer."

When Mitchell beat Bobby Harper in Portland, Oregon, on April 8, 1924, the Portland News called him "easily the best fighting machine that has stepped between the ropes (here), as he has class stamped all over him."

It took just one bad fight for Pinkey to louse himself up with Milwaukee fans again. It was at State Fair Park on August 1, 1925 – the first outdoor fight ever held in Wisconsin, and the junior welterweight champion’s first hometown appearance in more than a year. At the end of 10 clinch-filled, uneventful rounds, many of the 6,000 fans tossed their leather seat cushions into the ring to express their disappointment at the lack of violence exhibited there by Pinkey and New Jersey welterweight Willie Harmon.

Chagrined, Mitchell gave his $5,000 paycheck back to promoter Frank Fawcett and begged for a chance to redeem himself. Through the newspapers Fawcett asked Milwaukee fight fans to name the opponent they would most like to see fight Pinkey next. Most of the 1,500-plus respondents told Fawcett they would not pay to see Pinkey fight again at all, and that the only Mitchell they wanted to see was Richie – who'd been retired for two years.

So for the next year, Pinkey fought elsewhere "because the public doesn't want me" in Milwaukee.

Sam Levy seconded that motion: "The only time the junior Mitchell arouses even slight interest these days is when folks hereabouts read of his bouts in other cities. Most of them, as a rule, are disappointed when they learn he has won."

Meanwhile, a new local idol, featherweight Joey Sangor, won the first fight held at Borchert Field, beating Henry Lenard in 10 rounds on July 27, 1926. It wasn’t much of a bout, but nobody tossed seat cushions into the ring because after what happened at State Fair Park the year before the state boxing commission refused to allow cushions (and beer) to be sold at the ballpark.

When Pinkey was finally brought home for another chance, against Mexico's Tommy White at Borchert Field on August 12, he promised to go all out. "If Mitchell is serious, he’ll be forgiven for his lethargic exhibitions in previous years," wrote Sam Levy. "All will be forgotten, regardless of the result against White. Losers are as popular as winners – if the one involved puts forth his best efforts."

This time, Pinkey didn't disappoint. "Local Boy Redeems Himself With Fans" was The Journal's headline the day after the fight in which Mitchell thrilled the crowd of 6,000 by pasting White throughout the 10 rounds. "He rehabilitated himself," wrote Levy. "No more is he the lethargic, clinching, tugging sort of ring gladiator. No more does the ringsider heap abuse upon him. Instead, Myron now has succeeded in reviving the family name which so long blazed the fistic trail in the heyday of Brother Richard, the lion-hearted."

That lasted a whole two weeks. On August 27, Mitchell again stepped into the ring pitched over home plate at 8th and Chambers. He beat Jimmy Finley of Louisville, but it was such a snoozer that "the happiest moment of the entire evening was when the timer sounded the final gong," wrote Levy.

Pinkey left town again. A month later he lost his junior welterweight title to Mushy Callahan in California.

In early August of 1927, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a service organization akin to the Elks and Moose, held its international convention in Milwaukee. Thousands of Eagles came for meetings and special activities arranged for their entertainment. Among them were concerts, a street parade, and a beauty contest at Marquette Stadium.

The centerpiece of the convention, though, was the professional boxing match promoted by the Eagles at Borchert Field on Thursday, August 11, pitting Joe Dundee, the welterweight champion of the world, against Pinkey Mitchell.

It was a non-title fight scheduled for 10 rounds, and in spite of past disappointments by Mitchell local observers had their fingers crossed. "If Pink is game to take a chance today, we see no reason why he should not make this one of the greatest fights ever seen in Milwaukee," wrote George Downer, sports editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel. "Pink is a good fellow, a credit to the game in many ways, but he has never been a gambler. If the other chap 'stung' him, he always knew what to do. As a result, he stands today, absolutely unmarked, after nearly 10 years in the game. You cannot hurt the other fellow much when every punch is shot with the idea of keeping clear of a possible counter…

"It is up to Pink. He alone knows what he is going to do. Certainly this writer does not. But we do know that if he fights as he has in many of his recent engagements here, Pinkey Mitchell will be 'all washed up' in Milwaukee."

The fight lasted six wretched rounds. "A descriptive account of the six rounds is unnecessary," wrote Sam Levy in the next day's Journal. "We tell it all in one word – clinching. Mitchell was the greatest offender."

The 7,000 spectators stood and cheered when referee Dauber Jaeger, disgusted by the fighters' refusal to fight, declared it "No Contest." Up till then, many fans had entertained themselves by singing, "H-O-L-D him, Pinkey! H-O-L-D him!"

George Downer called the fight "a sad 'dance'" and said that after three strikes the hometown boxer was out for good with Milwaukee fans: "We like Pink personally – but he will never be popular with Milwaukee fight fans. They can never forget the fights he has put up, marked mainly by clinching and stalling, nor will they ever fail to contrast his ring tactics with those of his dauntless brother, Richie, who had an abnormally developed sense of his responsibility to his public."

Mitchell and Dundee were both suspended by the boxing commission for "violating all ring rules." Pinkey never fought in Milwaukee again, and the Eagles told Dundee to forget about his guaranteed purse of $10,000. He sued for the money and the case famously went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dundee never did get paid.

Richie Mitchell died in 1949, and when the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame was established two years later he was among its charter inductees. His little brother, boxing's only elected world champion, isn't likely to be voted into that one.

Pinkey notwithstanding, Borchert Field was a strong boxing venue through the late 1940s. More about that in the future.

King Tut at the Orchard, 1929

By Pete Ehrmann

From the first one on July 27, 1926 to the last one on July 25, 1949, 16 professional boxing promotions were held at Borchert Field. They were headlined by such top local attractions as Joey Sangor, Pinkey Mitchell, Doll Rafferty and Jimmy Sherrer, and future Boxing Hall of Famers Max Schmeling, Benny Bass, Gorilla Jones and Harold Johnson.

But the fact is that despite Milwaukee's reputation as one of the country's best fight centers, unlike New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and other big cities where ballpark boxing was a popular staple of hot summer nights, thanks to bad matchmaking, bad planning or just plain bad luck the efforts of local promoters to fill the stands on fight nights at 8th and Chambers mostly struck out.

The closest thing to a pugilistic home run there came on a perfect night 83 summers ago when 9,000 fans were lured to the Orchard by the irresistible spell of King Tut.

His real name was Henry Roland Tuttle, and he was born July 2, 1905 in Wonewoc, a village in Juneau County about 50 miles north of Madison. Then as now, Wonewoc was a magnet for mystics, tealeaf readers and dabblers in swamiism who still trek there to get in touch with their pasts and have their futures foretold at the 138-year-old Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp.

When he was 12 years old, a vision of what his life would be like if he stayed in Wonewoc spurred Henry Tuttle to run away from home and not look back. He headed west and over the next decade worked in Wyoming oil fields and cowboyed in Montana.

The most colorful version of how he morphed into King Tut, gloved scourge of the ring, starts on the day Tuttle and some fellow wranglers visited a traveling carnival whose main attraction was a female wrestler offering $10 to any man or woman weighing up to 140-pounds who could last 15 minutes with her on the mat. Tuttle, then 115-pounds, picked up the gauntlet and promptly found himself imprisoned in a scissors hold by the Amazonian rassler. According to his pal Jack Dempsey, the 1920s heavyweight champion, Tuttle "forgot she was a lady…broke the hold, lifted her up and slammed her to the mat. The fall busted her up so much she had to quit the job."

When the carnival pulled up stakes for its next engagement, its new wrestling champ, rechristened "King Tut" by the owner to cash in on the public's fascination with the young pharaoh of ancient Egypt whose tomb was discovered in 1922, went along.

Tuttle as "King Tut"

Tut beat all comers until somewhere in Iowa a challenger twice went the distance with him and won $20. Tut then offered the guy another $5 if he could last four rounds with him with boxing gloves on. He scored a first round KO, and promptly switched sports and careers. Tut headquartered in Minneapolis and later in Milwaukee, and wherever he fought the 5'5", 135-pounder's frenetic style in the ring left opponents and sportswriters alike gasping.

"There is nothing cute in the King's work," wrote Sam Levy in the Milwaukee Journal on October 18, 1928. "He tears across the ring the instant the gong sends him away and doesn't let up a relentless attack until the bell orders him to take his minute's rest."

Wrote Jim Delaney of the Wisconsin News: "The boxer who is fated to fall before Tut is better off if the undertaker is called in a very early round, for Tut starts to wear them down until they finally collapse from sheer weakness and pain, and they are not any good for a long while after."

Nine days after he knocked out Augie Pisano at the Milwaukee Auditorium, Tut went to Philadelphia to fight a relative newcomer from Hartford, Connecticut named Pinkey Kaufman on March 18, 1929. Not quite two years out of high school, Kaufman had only 24 fights, but had knocked out about half his opponents.

When he added Tut to that list by stopping him in the second round, Kaufman's win was called "one of the season's biggest fistic upsets."

King Tut called it a fluke. "It was a good lesson to me and will do me good," he said of the fight. "I walked out against Kaufman saying to myself, 'Another sucker.' I got what was coming to me. But I learned my lesson."

The stars Pinkey Kaufman made Tut see looked like dollar signs to Benjamin Franklin Steinel. One of Milwaukee's leading boxing impresarios in the early 20th century, Steinel had been out of the game for a decade when he jumped back in with both feet in May of '28 by signing a contract with Milwaukee Brewers vice president Louis Nahin to promote boxing at Borchert Field that summer. His first card on June 20 would feature a rematch between Kaufman and the Wisconsin fighter the Milwaukee papers had christened the "Wonewoc Wasp."

The Sentinel's Ed Dunn called it "the best outdoor boxing carnival yet drawn up for consumption by the Milwaukee and Wisconsin public," and the public seemed to agree. Five days before the rematch, reported A.J. Schinner in the Wisconsin News, "(ticket) orders thick, fast and heavy are flowing in on the Milwaukee promoter from all sections of the state," and Morgenroth's bar/restaurant/betting emporium on W. Water St. that was the city's sporting headquarters reported "the heaviest opening day sale in fistic history."

Tickets ranged from $1 for grandstand seating up to $3 for ringside. "The seating capacity of the park is so large, we can afford to limit the prices and still attract a big gate," said promoter Steinel.

"The entire grandstand will be utilized and chairs will be placed in the infield. The ring will be pitched over home plate and none of the seats in the field will run back further than the second and third base. With the arrangement, we can seat 15,000, which will be a record crowd for Milwaukee if there is a sellout."

Since professional boxing was legalized in Wisconsin in 1913, the largest attendance at a fight had been the 8,834 at the Auditorium for the world lightweight title bout between champion Willie Ritchie and ex-champion Ad Wolgast on March 12, 1914.

"Biggest Crowd in History of Game in State Expected to See Card," headlined the Journal sports section on the afternoon of the Tut-Kaufman fight. The story reported that "practically all the top priced ducats have been sold and there is expected to be a great rush for the one buck seats, 4,000 of which were put on sale at the ball yard early this morning."

The Orchard was two-thirds full when ring announcer Rusty Hagen introduced the fighters in the first four-round preliminary bout at 8:30 p.m., but then the turnstiles started whirling, and the next morning George Downer wrote in the Sentinel that "The jam around the gates…must have made Lou Nahin wish he could trade his interest in the Brewers for a fight club."

Milwaukee Journal photo of the Tut-Kaufman fight, taken from the roof of Borchert Field's third base grandstand

The 9,000 fans packed into Borchert Field didn't match Steinel's best-case scenario, but it was still a new paid attendance record for Wisconsin boxing that would stand until the May 9, 1950 fight between ex-middleweight champion Rocky Graziano and Vinnie Cidone drew 12,000-plus to the brand new Milwaukee Arena.

They all came to see the fighter Sam Levy called "a cruel-hearted warrior with murder in his eye," and King Tut didn't disappoint. Two minutes after the opening bell, he knocked Kaufman down for a count of nine. After that, the visitor expended most of his energy on clinching, ducking and running away from Tut, and though Kaufman stuck around till the last bell "his mind was scrambled and his legs were weary," wrote Manning Vaughan in the Journal. The decision for Tut after 10 rounds was a formality.

The futures of the Wonewoc Wasp and ballpark boxing in Milwaukee seemed as gaudy as the full moon hanging over Borchert Field that night. But like that lady rassler in the traveling carnival, both were headed for an unexpected fall.

Tut's fade started after Billy Petrolle knocked him out at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1931. Within a few years he was back in wrestling tights, grunting in front of small crowds at Milwaukee's Bahn Frei Hall.

He'd gotten $5,000 for beating Kaufman, the equivalent of almost $66,000 today. Kaufman got $3,500. When he was done paying everybody off, Ben Steinel made less than a grand on boxing's biggest night at the ballpark. He tried again on July 10, importing middleweight contender Rene DeVos of Belgium for his next main event at the Orchard. About 2,500 fans turned out for that one, and when only 900 showed up for his third ballpark card on August 28, featuring local hotshot prospect Dave Meier, Steinel lamented that "The boxing game isn't what it used to be" and went back into retirement.

But thanks to him and the two-fisted reincarnation of Egypt's Boy King, the curse on boxing at Borchert Field was lifted for one night.

Gorilla at the Orchard

By Pete Ehrmann

On August 25, 1931, the middleweight champion of the world successfully defended his title at Borchert Field and moved a step closer to becoming the middleweight champion of the world.

It sounds like double-talk, but it's actually true. When William "Gorilla" Jones won a 10-round decision at the Orchard over Tiger Thomas, it was a match for the "colored middleweight championship" held by Jones. And it was also a first-round elimination bout in a National Boxing Association tournament to crown a new 160-pound champion following the abdication of Mickey Walker.

Jones would go on to win the NBA title four months later in Milwaukee—where not much more than a year earlier he was barred by decree of the autocratic commissioner whose decisions about which boxers were fit to grace Wisconsin rings were based on his starkly black and white view of the situation.

"We have a rule on our books that negroes cannot box in this state," Walter Liginger announced upon becoming chairman of the state athletic commission when professional boxing was legalized here in 1913. "Negro boxers have done more to put boxing in disrepute than all the white boxers in the game, and whenever there is a scandal, invariably there is a colored gentleman involved."

Liginger was hung up on Jack Johnson, whose woolly 1908-15 reign as heavyweight champion and unabashed preference for white women of loose virtue caused a lot of frothing at the mouth by people who figured that all black people looked and acted alike.

It was 1922 before there was another black world champion (light heavyweight Battling Siki), and in 1926 there was Tiger Flowers, who held the middleweight belt for almost a year before losing it to Mickey Walker.

When Walker voluntarily gave up the title on June 19, 1931 to fight as a heavyweight. Milwaukee boxing promoter Billy Mitchell proposed to the NBA, which governed boxing in most US states, that a tournament be held in Milwaukee to determine the new champion. Permission was granted on the ground that the Cream City was the stomping ground of two of the top contenders, Tait "The Cudahy Adonis" Littman and Frankie Battaglia, who'd moved here from Canada.

Wisconsin rings had finally been desegregated by Liginger the year before, and there were plenty of black middleweights anxious to joust for the vacant title. In addition to Jones and Thomas, the list included Ham Jenkins, Snowflake Wright, Jack McVey, Roy Williams, Angel Cliville, and Rudy Marshall (who promoter Mitchell thought was white until informed otherwise). "One thing for sure is that there will be plenty of color to the tournament," cracked veteran boxing manager Tom Walsh.

The best and most controversial of the black contenders was the Memphis-born Jones, who had started boxing in 1926 and was said to come by his nickname either because of his dark skin and long arms, or because of his "jungle dance" in the ring, or because there had been another Gorilla Jones from Memphis before him.

"He has never been knocked out," wrote Sam Levy about Jones in the Milwaukee Journal. "His record is studded with KO victories. Several times he and his opponents have been chased from the ring, referees charging the boys with stalling. That's because Jones' style does not meet with the (approval) of some officials and commissions. Then too, there have been times, many times, when Jones has gone into the ring handcuffed. By this I mean he has been unable to open fire because he was under orders not to. If he violated such an agreement, he was threatened with boycott."

In 1936, Dick Collum of the Minneapolis Journal wrote:

"Experts in boxing who judge Jones by form rather than by the record agree he has been the only truly brilliant middleweight since Mickey Walker renounced the championship. He has been a flawless boxer and a terrific puncher. His courage is not questioned and he is high in ring generalship – all in all, a nearly perfect fighting machine.

"Yet, he has seldom fought up to his true ability and he has always been regarded as a safe man for any well known white middleweight to meet, a most considerate fellow who could be trusted. Through the many years in which he has been the world's best middleweight, he has fought below his best in most of his important engagements."

Jones himself didn't deny it. "I've done some business in fights," he told Russ Lynch of The Milwaukee Journal. "A colored boy had hard going. If I wanted a match with a good white boy I had to say 'Yes.' I had to live, Mr. Lynch, and sometimes I said 'Yes,' and I always kept my word."

Since black fighters weren't afforded many opportunities to fight for world championships, they had their own "colored" titles, and Jones won his by beating Jack McVey in 1929.

Many in the crowd of almost 5,000 at Borchert Field thought he was lucky to keep it against Tiger Thomas.

"There were many squawks when the decision was announced," reported the Wisconsin News, "and it was quite a few minutes before [ring announcer Rusty Hagen could go on with his announcements."

According to the News's Jim Delaney, Thomas was the aggressor, "carrying the fight to his 10-pound lighter opponent, but judges saw fit to give Jones a lot of credit for his excellent blocking and his ability to counter Thomas's swings."

He was referring to ringside judges Ben Steinel and Louis Schultz. Referee Julius Fidler voted for Thomas.

The city's other daily newspapers sided with the judges. "Jones gave the fans a treat with his masterful handling of Thomas," said the Milwaukee Sentinel. "At times it appeared as though Gorilla wasn't doing much fighting, but it was only his cleverness that furnished that idea to the fans."

The Journal called it "a close fight" and said, "After gaining an early lead Jones slowed up in the sixth. He tried to coast but the Tiger clawed away, punching the Gorilla all over the ring. Realizing that Thomas was pulling up on even terms, Jones went back to work in the closing rounds."

In the other two 10-round elimination bouts in the orchard that night, Tait Littman beat Ham Jenkins and Clyde Chastain beat Rudy Marshall.

The tournament continued through the end of 1931 at the Milwaukee Auditorium. Jones won successive elimination matches against Chastain, George Nichols, Frankie O'Brien and Henry Firpo, and then won the NBA title on January 25, 1932 by stopping Italy's Oddone Piazza in six rounds.

Richie Mitchell, Milwaukee's greatest boxing idol, probably hit it on the nose when he said that Jones "could have beaten every man in the tournament on the same night. He was that much better than any of them."

But as champion and after, Jones had more fights in which his less-than-full throttle performances left an odor so rank that Journal sports editor Russ Lynch would recall him in 1947 as "the 'crookedest fighter' the ring has even seen."

By then such fulminations were of no matter to the Gorilla. Though he'd lost the fortune he'd made in the ring—along with the big cars, expensive wardrobe and the pet tiger cub he walked around on a leash—on too many unlucky rolls of the dice, Jones spent his later years in the lap of luxury, perhaps literally.

Jones was chauffeur for and according to some a bed partner of Hollywood sex symbol Mae ("A hard man is good to find") West. He lived in the Los Angeles house she bought for him, when the man whose march to the technicolor middleweight title started at Borchert Field died in 1982.

When ramped up to its full wattage, Jones' brilliance in the ring was unmistakable. That's why he's in both the International and World Boxing Halls of Fame today.

A Half-Pound Shy

By Pete Ehrmann

Eighty-one years ago today, Borchert Field came within seven hours and eight ounces of hosting a world championship boxing match.

And no, I don't mean eight minutes.

Thanks to that measly extra half-a-pound registered when Eddie Anderson weighed in for his fight with Benny Bass at 3 p.m. on June 10, 1930, what was supposed to be a 10-round contest for the latter's world junior lightweight title that evening was downgraded to non-title status.

The junior lightweight division was created in 1921 for fighters who would've needed to cut off a limb to make the 126-pound featherweight limit or grow an extra one to be a bona-fide 135-pound lightweight.

Benny Bass—called the "Little Fish," of course—was a hard-punching Philadelphian who'd won the 130-pound belt by knocking out Tod Morgan on December 20, 1929. He'd successfully defended it twice since then, in addition to fighting a couple non-title matches.

Benny Bass
(Author's collection)

One of the latter, on February 22, 1930, had 4,000 fans at the Milwaukee Auditorium in a state of full-blown hysteria as Bass and the same Eddie Anderson fought 10 wild rounds in which there were nine knockdowns—seven scored by Bass, two by Anderson.

Referee Freddie Andrews' verdict of a draw made a rematch inevitable, and on May 23 promoter Tom Andrews announced that Bass's world title would be up for grabs when they fought again on June 10 at Borchert Field.

The Milwaukee newspapers all insisted that it would be the first ever world championship fight in Wisconsin, but that must've come from the overheated PR mill of promoter Andrews, who as the world's most renowned boxing record keeper surely knew that on June 4, 1908, Milwaukee was the site of the Stanley Ketchel-Billy Papke world middleweight title fight.

In any case, it was definitely the first championship fight for Cowboy Eddie Anderson—he was from Wyoming—in a long decade of plugging away in the ring that started when he was 16 and weighed barely more than a hundred pounds.

Eddie Anderson
(Author's collection)

Ten days before the Borchert Field championship match, Anderson was a solid 140. So after he arrived in town on June 5, in addition to his boxing workouts at Tommy Neary's south side gym, the Cowboy ran up to 10 miles at the lakefront every morning.

"This will be the first time in two years that I boxed at 130," he told Jim Delany of the Wisconsin News. " I was down to 131 once, and the effort didn't seem to harm me any, so I guess I won't have any trouble with 130."

Bass also trained at Neary's, and in the final days before the fight up to 400 fans squeezed into the gym to watch the champion and challenger work out. That and ticket orders coming in from all parts of the state had Tom Andrews dreaming of topping the local attendance record for a boxing match of 7,916, set 16 years earlier at the Willie Ritchie-Ad Wolgast lightweight fight at the Auditorium.

Andrews had the ballpark set up to accommodate 18,000 customers. The newspaper guys figured on maybe 12,000, tops, but that would still be one for the record books plus a boon to the Milwaukee Jewish Orphanage on N. 21st St. and W. McKinley Ave., which was down for a cut of the proceeds.

The day before the fight, the Little Fish predicted he would whale the stuffing out of Anderson within five rounds.

"I'm not going to waste any time on him," Bass said. "He'll be blinking before the first round is over, and if we get as far as the fifth he'll think he's on a carousel."

The beatings the champ dished out to his sparring partners at Neary's made him a 3-1 favorite to back up his bold talk; but Anderson, who'd been knocked down before but never out, invited Ed Dunn of the Milwaukee Sentinel to "Tell all your friends who like Bass to stop me to come over to the Schroeder hotel and I'll cover their money. No one is knocking Eddie Anderson out."

That he still weighed one-and-a-half pounds over the junior lightweight limit on June 9 didn't bother the Cowboy, either. "I am surprised at how easy I am making this weight," he told Dunn. "I feel as strong as I do weighing 135, and you can take it from me that after the fight there will be no alibing about the weight hurting me."


So all the stars seemed aligned for the greatest night in local boxing history—until the afternoon of the fight when Cowboy Eddie found himself a maddening half-pound over 130 (to Bass's 128½ pounds). Members of the state boxing commission agreed to give the challenger an extra 30 minutes in which to make the required weight, and Anderson sat in an electrical steam cabinet and was pummeled by a masseur in an effort to sweat and rub the excess ounces off.

Thirty minutes later he was still a quarter-pound too heavy. Anderson begged the commissioners to wink at the difference and let the fight go on. It did—but without Bass's title on the line.

Anderson's weight was the first of two huge dark clouds suddenly looming over the event. After several days of ideal weather, late on the afternoon of the fight it started to rain.

"When the news got around that Anderson failed to make the championship weight the sale [of tickets] went dead," reported Dunn in the Sentinel the next morning. That and "the rain that started at 4 o'clock … kept a number of state patrons from driving in."

When Bass and Andrews stepped into the orchard ring at about 10 p.m., the attendance was a disappointing 4,500, and the $30,000 gate envisioned by Andrews amounted to only a third of that.

Cowboy Eddie came out with both guns blazing, but the Little Fish had called it correctly. After Anderson was counted out in the third round his handlers had to carry all 130-plus inert pounds of him back to the dressing room.

The Sentinel photographer was on the scene when Eddie Anderson sunk to the canvas for the fourth and final time at the ball park Tuesday night. Benny Bass put him there after three punches had floored Eddie and weakened his resistance. Referee Walter Houlchen is the other figure in the picture.

"The Great White Hope" at the Orchard

By Pete Ehrmann

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Editor's Note: Today our resident boxing expert brings us the story of a very unusual event held at the Orchard on July 18th, 1909.

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It's a safe bet nobody yelled "Kill the umpire!" during the semi-pro ballgame between City League powerhouses Sissons & Sewells and the McGreals at Athletic Park 104 years ago today. In fact, the chunky, balding, middle-aged guy calling strikes and balls behind home plate was the one most of the 4,200 fans came to the ballpark at 8th and Chambers Sts. to see.

When they didn't see as much of him as expected, some nasty things were yelled about Milwaukee Mayor David Rose, who prevented guest umpire James J. Jeffries from going through with an advertised post-game sparring exhibition and showing what he had in store for his next opponent.

Given his druthers, the boxer known as "Big Jeff," "The Boilermaker" (his pre-boxing profession) and now "The Great White Hope" would never have left the West Coast alfalfa farm to which he retired in 1905 after his undefeated six year reign as heavyweight champion of the world.

Jeffries before his first retirement

For one thing, Jeffries had beaten all the credible challengers to his supremacy in the ring – or at least the ones on the white side of the color line he and his titular predecessors John L. Sullivan, James J. Corbett, and Bob Fitzsimmons had voluntarily drawn to prevent the most respected title in sports from falling into racially inferior hands.

For another, Jeffries was by nature sulky and grouchy and hated the spotlight perpetually trained on the world's greatest boxer.

After he retired from boxing at 30, Jeff gained 100 pounds, smoked cigarettes and lived the life of an agrarian potentate – until damned fool Tommy Burns violated the heavyweight champion's code and risked the precious title on December 26, 1908 against African-American Jack Johnson, and the worst nightmare of white society came true.

	Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson

Johnson won when police stopped the fight in the 15th round. Writing from ringside in Sydney, Australia, novelist Jack London likened the spectacle to "a playful Ethiopian at loggerheads with a small and futile white man (and) a grown man cuffing a naughty child… There was never so one-sided a world's championship fight in the history of the ring."

London ended his dispatch with the infamous words, "But one thing now remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you. The White Man must be rescued."

The novelist's bugle call echoed around the world and intensified as Jack Johnson jauntily went through a succession of white challengers and white mistresses. Big Jeff resisted until public clamor for him to come back – and the prospect of a $100,000 payday if he did – became too great to ignore.

Without committing himself to anything, in the spring of 1909 Jeffries announced that he would go so far as to see what kind of shape he could whip himself into. He hired fellow Californian Sam Berger as both his manager and sparring partner. After winning the first Olympic Games heavyweight championship in 1904, when boxing made its Olympic debut in St. Louis, Berger turned professional and was viewed as a potential successor to Jeffries himself until a couple fights proved otherwise.

In mid-'09, Jeff and Berger embarked on a national tour to keep the drumbeat for a Johnson fight going steady and loud, as well as rake in some easy dough.

Jeffries and Berger, 1909

Milwaukee was their penultimate stop, after Chicago and before Minneapolis. The plan was for Jeff to umpire the game at Athletic Field and then change into his boxing duds and spar three one-minute rounds with Berger in a ring set up over home plate.

For all Jeff's popularity, the announcement on July 4 of his first-ever visit to Milwaukee two weeks hence was met with skepticism by some sportswriters who wondered if he was serious about fighting Johnson to begin with, and, if so, how dancing around with Sam Berger for three minutes per appearance was helping him prepare for it. Championship fights then were 45 three-minute rounds.

"The Boilermaker is picking up all kinds of soft money boxing one-minute rounds with Berger," wrote Jeff Thompson in the Milwaukee Free Press. "After seeing Jeff spar with his manager, the sharps express the opinion that the big fellow's wind has gone, and that he could never recover it. In fact, they agree that Jeff has no idea of fighting again."

"Just how many Milwaukee people will fall for this it remains to be seen," said The Milwaukee Journal, "but it's a cinch that unless Jeffries shows more signs of activity than he has in some of these other affairs of the same brand, he won't make a very big hit with a Milwaukee crowd, for they are very strong on getting something for their money."

But excitement about – and ticket sales for – Jeff's appearance in Milwaukee took off on July 16 when word went out that while he was in town the ex-heavyweight champion (who some in the media insisted was still the champion because Jeffries had abdicated and not lost the title in the ring) might finally post forfeit money committing himself to fight Johnson [he didn't] – and that Johnson himself intended to show up at Athletic Park for a look at the Great White Hope.

To make things even more interesting, the next day a local man named Billy Miller, another boilermaker-turned-boxer, challenged Jeffries to take him on instead of Berger at the ballpark. "Miller believes he can hold his own with the undefeated champion and would let him extend himself much more than Berger does in these exhibitions," said the Free Press.

A brass band greeted the man a Milwaukee Sentinel editorial called "the most talked of personage in our country at the present time" at the Northwestern railroad depot at 8 a.m. on July 18, and escorted Jeffries and Berger to the Pfister Hotel. The Milwaukee Athletic Club hosted a reception for them before the baseball game, which started at 2:30 p.m.

Jack Johnson wasn't around, and if Billy Miller was he remained incognito. Jeffries probably wished he hadn't shown up, either, when Berger took the field after Sissons & Sewells beat McGreals 6-5 and announced to the crowd that there would be no sparring exhibition to follow because Mayor Rose had refused to grant the necessary permit.

In fact, Rose had denied the permit application three days earlier, but the promoters had conveniently neglected to tell anyone.

There was a state statute prohibiting prize fighting in Wisconsin. Bouts were still allowed at local theaters at the sufferance of the mayor, a boxing fan, but in this case, explained Mayor Rose later Sunday evening, "I had to refuse them because the champion [Jeffries] and his manager were to appear in ring costume. We cannot permit this in the open, especially in a place like Athletic Park, surrounded by dwellings. They can spar for exhibition as much as they like in theaters."

"When Berger announced to the crowd that the bout had been called off there was a whole lot of grumbling," reported the Free Press, "but after he had explained the situation they took the disappointment good naturedly."

(Whether that would've been the case had it been Jack Johnson – routinely denigrated in the local press as a "dinge" and "coon" – who disappointed them is a whole 'nother matter.)

The crowd was further mollified when Big Jeff came out in his workout clothes to skip rope, shadow box and do some exercises.

"The great majority of the spectators had never seen a fighter go through his training stunts and appeared to enjoy it hugely," reported the Sentinel the next day. "The sight of a big fellow of Jeff's size skipping the rope like a schoolgirl caused a whole lot of glee in the stands, but when he discarded the rope and started dancing around and smiting an imaginary foe he brought down the house – or rather the bleachers."

"He was a trifle chubby at the waistline," the Sentinel report continued, "but otherwise he appeared to be in fair condition. Whether he will ever get back into condition for a grueling fight, however, is a question which only time will answer."

Not much for elocution, Big Jeff allowed only that he would "knock the block off that [insert Paula Dean epithet here]" if he and Johnson ever fought.

They did, and he didn't. When the "Fight of the Century" finally happened in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, Johnson gave the Great White Hope a beating for 15 rounds until it was stopped. There were deadly race riots around the country afterwards.