Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July! I worked as a digital photographer of the annual Americana Parade in Centerville, Ohio this morning for the local public access television station, also called the Miami Valley Communications Council.

I've been thinking about a suitable post for this day, and remembered a couple of American Horatio Alger type stories in a book I read last year and covered on BlogTalkRadio. "Cinderella Man" by Jeremy Schapps is pure Americana!

"Cinderella Man", Jeremy Schapp's 2005 chronicle of professional boxing, its rules and culture during the Great Depression, is an eye-opening account of the sport when it was much rougher and less regulated than it is today. In the backdrop of that era, Schapp profiles two world heavyweight champions with contrasting backgrounds.

Max Baer, grew up working on ranches building up his muscles, but was afraid of fighting. Whenever schoolmates bullied him, his sister Frances defended him, and whenever she was absent, young Max fled his tormentors!

That changed at a dance when he was seventeen. Baer and his friends were having fun, Prohibition style, when a big lumberjack, in a bad mood and angered by Baer's friends' boisterousness, took off after them. The others escaped, but the lumberjack caught Baer and punched the lad with his hardest right. Surprised but not hurt, Baer reflexively fired back with his right, and the lumberjack crumpled at his feet.

This started Baer's boxing career. Heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey was a cultural icon idolized by young Max and his generation during the 1920s, and young Baer suddenly realized he could follow Dempsey into professional boxing. And he did, winning the world title a few years later during the early 1930s.


James J. Braddock won the same title in the middle 1930s, and became known as "The Cinderella Man". Hence the book title, although both fighters' stories are equally covered in Schapp's book. Braddock spent his childhood fighting in schoolyards, and his best friend Joe Gould, would later become his fight manager. James J. had early success in professional boxing, then lost fights, and most boxing experts considered him washed up. But he came back to win the world heavyweight boxing championship.

Besides telling the fighters' stories, this engrossing book also guides the reader through Depression-era professional boxing and its cast of characters-managers, promoters, and the boxing press. An interesting slice of American history!