Sport: Rocky Y. 47 States

"When I travel I get moody," says Rocky Graziano. Out in Oakland, Calif., far from his Brooklyn haunts, Rocky was training for a fight with Oldtimer Fred Apostoli when a mood struck him. He wired a friend for $300. When the money came, he hopped a plane, unkempt, unshaven and still dressed in his training clothes. A snowstorm that grounded the plane in Chicago didn't stop him; without bothering to cash the unused part of his plane ticket, he climbed aboard a train for New York.

Rocky Graziano, ex-middleweight champ and boxing's perennial bad boy, had run out on his contract. The...