BOXING AND SPORTS IN MY YOUTH

today folks at least younger ones from 50 on down dont realize how lucky they are today with the access to watching sports compared to my time.when we first got a tv it was around 1955.baseball was shown just once a week.the game of the week on a sat afternoon and if it wasnt the yankees or the dogers the brooklyn doogers folks interest in my home town was smaller.during the world series a portable tv a new invention was brought into the school and we watched the series in school after all it was always the yankees playing and usualy against the dodgers.
sports was listened to on theradio since it was broadcast daily the yankee ordodger games.guys you have no idea how much a treat it truly was to hear mel allen or vince skully the two greatest ever to tell you whats going on.even when folks got a tv we turned the sound off and had the radio playing to hear mel or vin call the game.when most of us had no tv we walked to the corner and looked into grazianos furniture store to watch the series in black n white.thats how they advertized there tvs....or at six years old to run home from school turn the radio on and had to wait untill the third inning to hear what the great dimaggio did his first time up.
big fights even back then were not on tv but what was called cloised curcet tv..the ppv of its day..i listened to the basilio robinson fights on radio.marciano vs charles patterson -johhanson cause of that..
i remember the first big fight i ever saw on tv.my dad took me to tony tommanios bootleg joint to view marciano louis..what a treat that was for a 8 year old to stay up past 8.30 at night.
football had its game of the week.one game only.in the early 50s it was otto grahm and the cleveland browns or bobby layne and the lions cause they were top teams.mid fifties it was the colts and unitas or the giant great teams.
dispite that all of us kids 8 -9 10 years old knew all the players in the league there batting average there home runs etc etc cause of radio and we devoured the sport section.
boxing was big.at 5 years old i knew who joe louis was charless zale graziano pep saddler the top fighters of they day.i was almost six when i first heared the name of some guy called sugar ray robinson.
i remember at six years old my mom giving me 15 cents to spend the afternoon buying 3 glasses of coke at tonys sweet shop diner to watch the all star game with dimaggio feller williams musial etc etc.
us young kids were constantly talking sports and playing it dispite the fact our exposure visualy was almost zero compared to today.
i rember us kids talking about a new phenom in basketball.a small guy named bob cousy.our eyes were glued on the cooz when we watched him over someones house that had tv.
i remember playing baseball at 8 years old when the first guy who yelled out dimaggio was joe d for that day at the playground.
you have no idea how lucky today a sports fan truly is.yet i would trade 1000 tommorows to reurn to yesteryear for one day.to yell out first im dimaggio.

In my single digit youth and the last competitive golden era of the sport there were four boxers that mattered: Hagler, Hearns, Leonard and Duran. These men fought each other a total of nine times. My favorite of the four was always Thomas "The Hitman" Hearns the "Motor City Cobra". He was electrifying. I loved his dripping Jheri Curl and the blank look in eyes as he approached the ring. The shotgun piston like jab he possessed and his right hand seemed to almost end all of his opposition. When I was that young I would never think that as a teenager I would outweigh these guys by 15 or so pounds, they just seemed larger than life. I think that most kids in my neighborhood had "Sugar Ray Leonard" replica Franklin Gloves and drank 7up because that's what Sugar Ray did. We were too young to know who Ray Robinson was so for us Leonard was "Sugar Ray". My father was a Hagler guy, he loved all the blue collar workman type guys and Hagler was just that, totally no frills, just a real bad ass. Duran was the absolute wild card, just a savage guy that as I recall looked nothing like a fighter in the 80's but more like a truck driver. He was regularly over weight and with that beard he just struck me as a mechanic or a guy behind the wheel of a Peterbilt. He did manage to win big fights at weights he had no business being at.

As I got older Mike Tyson reigned supreme. It was Jordan, Tyson, Gretzky and Bo Jackson as the best athletes and most visible sports figures. The Yankees and Knicks sucked at the time so Tyson was our local hero/sports franchise. I remember debating with other kids as to why he possessed such power, there were so many crazy theories that 8-12 year old boys can come up with that we'd be here all day if I listed them all. I was absolutely heartbroken when Buster Douglas beat Iron Mike. I destroyed us but it prepared us for his eventual tumble into Bolivian.

Boxing to me has always been the coolest sport. From hearing my father's uncles talk about boxing in the Navy and my grandfather telling me to jab at a guys chest first, to my dad showing me the proper rhythm to work a speed bag, this sport unlike the others that I participated in had me hooked. The pageantry and the excitement that comes with a big fight is better than the Superbowl the Olympics and World Series combined. Great sport that I wish was more available to more people.

dmar5143 wrote:guys you have no idea how much a treat it truly was to hear mel allen or vince skully the two greatest ever to tell you whats going on.even when folks got a tv we turned the sound off and had the radio playing to hear mel or vin call the game.

I still prefer listening to Vin calling the Dodgers on the radio to this day. And I've never liked The Dodgers. A bit of triva, X-Files creator named Dana Scully after Vin Scully.

I agree, sports are a lot more available today then when I was a kid as well. But as mentioned in another thread, because so many options today, everything becoming nich.

When you guys and I was a kid, we all watched the same games and sporting events. So we all talked about them. Super-Bowl really is the only sporting event today similar to that expirance.

Today, you could be watching say a NBA game, whille one of your buddies is watching a golf game, while another is watching the NHL, and another playing video games.

good posts guys.yes i forgot skully is still the voice of the dodgers and still magic ill bet.grant yes its a shame no its a tradgety that friends cant have a great night talking one sport or watching one big game like you said.
again remembering back us kids many a time when talking sports used terms like the duke of flatbush the scooter the man the barber pee wee the springfield rifle the chief the little professer the horse the riverboat gambler nightrain hopalong etc etc and we knew who they were talking about.
hardcore your experience is a perfect example how sports brought a father-son relationship of trust and respect.playing all sports all the time was the greatest babysiter any mother could have.

dmar5143 wrote:good posts guys.yes i forgot skully is still the voice of the dodgers and still magic ill bet.grant yes its a shame no its a tradgety that friends cant have a great night talking one sport or watching one big game like you said.
again remembering back us kids many a time when talking sports used terms like the duke of flatbush the scooter the man the barber pee wee the springfield rifle the chief the little professer the horse the riverboat gambler nightrain hopalong etc etc and we knew who they were talking about.
hardcore your experience is a perfect example how sports brought a father-son relationship of trust and respect.playing all sports all the time was the greatest babysiter any mother could have.

Growing up in BK we were Yankee fans and a minority in the 80's when the Met's were a good team. Listening to WPIX and Scooter Rizzuto, Tom Seaver, Bobby Murcer and Bill White all at different times. I used to love it when the weather was bad, Rizzuto would take off and the Yanks would be without a play by play guy. You could go to a game in those days and buy seats in the bleeders and walk down to field level after the second inning to watch Mattingly play. It was great and I took pride in being a Yankee fan (still do). Sports has totally changed in the last 30 years, it's unbelievable.