Sport: We Wuz Robbed

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Along Manhattan's Jacobs Beach—a babbling little strip of sidewalk outside Boxing Tsar Mike Jacobs' 49th Street ticket office—there was gloom one day last week. Promoters, matchmakers, managers, trainers, seconds and the miscellaneous collection of has-beens and hangers-on who make a daily appearance at pugilism's trading post, shook their heads, dumfounded. For "Yussel the Muscle." their most picturesque colleague, and only 43 years old. had died of a heart attack the night before.

"Yussel the Muscle" was Joe Jacobs, no kin to Mike. He was not only the most colorful but the smartest manager in the prizefight business. Son of an immigrant Jewish tailor who settled in Manhattan's hurly-burly Hell's Kitchen, puny little Yussel Jacobs had to live by his wits to defend himself against his tough Irish neighbors. By the time he was 16. he commanded so much respect that he managed two neighborhood pugs. Dave and Willie Astey.

In 1923, smart Joe Jacobs got Battling Siki, a coal-black African, to defend his world's light-heavyweight championship against his own boy, Mike McTigue. as Irish as the Blarney stone—not in New York, but in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day. In 1928. still smarter, he snitched Max Schmeling from the German manager who had brought him to the U. S., publicized him as the "German Dempsey," and, by storming into the ring and yelling "Foul" when Jack Sharkey hit Schmeling a questionably low blow, is generally credited with winning the world's heavyweight championship for Schmeling in 1930. Five years ago, Jacobs got hold of hog-fat, washed-up Tony Galento, ballyhooed him into a national celebrity, into the position of No. 1 challenger for Joe Louis' heavyweight crown. Had Louis stayed on the canvas nine more seconds, Joe Jacobs would have had his sixth world's champion.*

Sportswriters liked little Joe Jacobs. He was generous, gregarious, made good copy. They liked the taunts he put into beer-bibbing Tony Galento's mouth: "I'll murder dat bum" (Joe Louis). They echoed his casual remarks until they became part of Broadway's vernacular: "We wuz robbed" (when Schmeling lost to Sharkey in their second fight for the heavyweight title); "I shoulda stood in bed" (when he found himself among the shivering spectators at a World Series game one frosty day in Detroit).

Last week, while sportswriters moaned "We wuz robbed." the prizefight fraternity wondered what effect Joe Jacobs' passing would have. With Arturo Godoy and Tony Galento in line for another shot at Joe Louis' crown (Galento is scheduled to meet Max Baer in a tuneup at Jersey City May 28), it looked as if Galento might drop out of the picture. In his crepe-draped saloon, Two-Ton Tony blubbered: "I can't go on widout Joe."