Site Presented By
Monday, Nov 9, 2009
"Cinderella Man" author and ESPN anchor Jeremy Schaap talks about boxing's greatest upset story -- and how he just didn't have time for Renee Zellweger.
May 27, 2005 | Jim Braddock is hot.
The least likely of all heavyweight champions, dubbed "the Cinderella Man" by no less a scribbler than Damon Runyon of the New York American, captured Depression America's imagination by coming off the relief rolls to win the title, and now 70 years later he seems to be doing it again.
Next Friday a big-time Hollywood movie opens, directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger. Already in stores are two books about Braddock, "Braddock: The Rise of the Cinderella Man," by Newark Star-Ledger sportswriter Jim Hague, unread by this column, and "Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History," by ESPN reporter and anchor Jeremy Schaap.
Runyon wrote that "Braddock's case is much stranger than fiction." It certainly reads like fiction, and Schaap does a terrific job of telling it. His "Cinderella Man" -- unconnected to the movie -- focuses on the fighter and his banty, fast-talking manager, Joe Gould (played in the film by Paul Giamatti). But while the movie's central trio is completed by Braddock's wife, Mae (Zellweger), Schaap uses Baer.
"Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History"
By Jeremy Schaap
Houghton Mifflin
288 pages
Nonfiction
It's a great choice. Schaap's book, as the subtitle suggests, is as much about Baer as it is about Braddock. Baer was one of the more colorful heavyweight champs ever, which is saying something. An Adonis with a powerful right hand that had knocked out two champs and killed a man before he met Braddock, Baer had the talent for boxing but not the taste for it, other than the money, fame and women it brought him.
But he had flair. "That one's for Hitler!" he shouted when knocking out German ex-champ Max Schmeling in 1933, a win that led to a trans-Atlantic pissing match with Joseph Goebbels. Baer was a beauty.
When Braddock, a light heavyweight contender in the late '20s but by now a heavyweight journeyman, got a shot at him in 1935, the public didn't care. Their interest was piqued only when the story came out that Braddock had been on relief. Now, deep in the Depression, he was one of them. You have to remember that unlike now, the heavyweight championship was the biggest thing in the sports world then.
Braddock, strong from working the Hoboken and Weehawken, N.J., docks and with an always-injured right hand healed, fought the fight of his life and upset Baer, who had neglected his training. Braddock held the title for two years before risking it against the great Joe Louis, who knocked him out in eight rounds.
Schaap, 35, is the son of Dick Schaap, who wrote 33 books. He says he wrote his first all over the world as he worked his ESPN job. Covering the Tour de France, he says, "I literally had the computer plugged into the cigarette lighter of the Renault as we were chasing around Lance Armstrong."
I found him by phone in Bristol, Conn., as he prepared for his regular gig, hosting "Outside the Lines Nightly."
I'll start with a criticism, because I grew up in Los Angeles so I know these things: There is no part for Renée Zellweger in your book!
[Laughs.] You're right, you're right. I didn't give Mae enough play. I didn't give her as much as the movie, from what I understand. I guess I'm a typical guy. I focused on the sports stuff.
