Overview
The story of New York in the fifties – of rat pack cool and the fading of the Mob's glamour, brilliantly told through the prism of Madison Square Garden.
New York in the Fifties was the most interesting and most vibrant city in the world. New York gave the world a couple of other things too: one bloody and brutal but the king of sports, the other simply bloody and brutal. The Fifties were boxing’s last real heyday. Never again would the sport be so glamorous or so popular. And that’s where New York’s other gift to the world—the Mob—came in.
Gangsters have been around for boxing’s entire history, but this time it was special. Most of the decade’s major fights took place at boxing’s spiritual home, Madison Square Garden, and most of the deals that made or ruined the lives of the era’s many fine fighters were done on a famous strip of pavement across the road from the Garden: Jacobs Beach. And the man ruling that strip of pavement was a charming Italian murderer called Frankie Carbo.
Editorials
Wall Street Journal
“Brings to life the fight world of that era. Mr. Mitchell’s account is full of memorably drawn scenes, and the stories we haven’t heard before make Jacobs Beach a cigar-chomping read.”Booklist
The sport’s golden age. The book brings a colorful period in sports history to vivid life.— Bill OttBill Ott - Booklist
“The sport’s golden age. The book brings a colorful period in sports history to vivid life.”Independent on Sunday [London]
“A tour de force of reportage and research by an author who really knows his stuff.”The Sun [London]
“Kevin Mitchell, an award-winning Fleet Street sports writer, tells brilliantly the story of that dark and shameful period.”Library Journal
Professional boxing has long been like an umbilical to organized crime. Mitchell, the London Observer's chief sports writer, unfurls that sordid relationship, which culminated in the 1950s with ticket agent "Uncle" Mike Jacobs, whose digs across from Madison Square Garden were dubbed Jacobs Beach. The title is misleading as Mitchell thoroughly chronicles the mob's stranglehold on the fights through its control of the International Boxing Club and the Garden from the 1930s roughly through Mike Tyson's reign of terror in the l980s and 1990s. Each chapter is a who's who of the champs, palookas, ring men, and wise guys like Frank Costello and Frankie Carbo who controlled them. Some fighters/managers resisted, but it was a matter of mob up or shut up if you didn't get good-paying bouts. And you absolutely wouldn't make the Garden—boxing's mecca—without being connected. TV's destructive role (it lured spectators out of arenas and into bars) and Sen. Estes Kefauver's televised investigation into the mob are also covered in full. VERDICT Rich with marvelous anecdotes, this is as much a history of 20th-century boxing as it is a true crime story; it will please fight enthusiasts and mafia mavens equally. Recommended.—Mike Rogers, Library JournalKirkus Reviews
A grab bag of stories about the American boxing world and how the Mob transformed it in the 1950s.
Jacobs Beach wasn't actually a beach, but a stretch of pavement in Manhattan around which the boxing world revolved from the mid-'30s to the late-'50s. There, tickets for bouts at Madison Square Garden were sold, pairings were hashed out, drinks were swilled andmobsters jostledto manipulate the outcome of individual fights. By the end of the '50s, professional boxing was so transparently corrupt that Sen. Estes Kefauver launched hearings on the Mob's control of the sport, attracting millions of viewers through television. Thanks to the scrutiny, London Observer chief sportswriter Mitchell (War, Baby: The Glamour of Violence, 2001, etc.) writes, the boxing world is now more aboveboard but less entertaining than it used to be. The author knows his boxing history, and he delivers plenty of information on people like Mike Jacobs (the ticket-seller for whom the "beach" was named), boxers Joe Louis and Jake LaMotta, trainers and managers like Cus D'Amato and mobsters like Frankie Carbo. Unfortunately, Mitchell shows little interest in adhering to a narrative thread while discussing the world around Madison Square Garden, which makes his book feel like what the old-school reporters he admires called a notebook dump. Paragraphs leap from detailed information about fight purses to the Kefauver hearings to musings on the ring styles of fighters like James J. Braddock and Kid Gavilan. Mitchell also affects a tough-talking tone that's presumably meant to evoke the noirish spirit of the times but too often makes him appear superior to the subject he's discussing. In the later chapters, the author all but abandons any pretense of organization and instead delivers a series of profiles of luminaries like promoter Don King, painter LeRoy Neiman andOn the Waterfrontwriter Budd Schulberg. Mitchell's access to such people is impressive, but the interviews do more to burnish outsize reputations than illuminate boxing's underworld.
A messy entry in a category of sportswriting that's produced much better.