Joe Gans

by Colleen Aycock

  Frames 221 thru 225—Nelson lands left hook.

  Frames 226 thru 230—Nelson lands right as Gans lands left.

  Frames 231 thru 235—Gans lands two left jabs

  Frames 236 thru 240—Nelson in a running motion swings his left from down around his knee.

  Frames 241 thru 245—Gans’ right elbow misses Nelson’s swing, and all of Bat’s weight goes into the left hook he delivers to Gans’ stomach. Gans winces.

  Frames 246 thru 250—Gans’ body jack-knifes around Nelson’s arm, which impales Gans.

  Frames 251 thru 255—Nelson stares, surprised at his work, at a seemingly paralyzed Gans.

  Frames 256 thru 260—Gans doubles over and slumps to canvass.

  Frames 261 thru 270—Referee taps Gans’ shoulder as if he has won on a foul. He then looks around with a confused expression. He starts to count and Gans’ cornermen rush into the ring. Gans is counted out.

  Frames 271 thru 280—Great confusion as the ring fills with people.

  Frames 281 thru 300—Gans is helped from the ring.23

  Gans’ final round as champion, ironically, is quite instructive as to what a fistic genius he was. Cleverly backpeddling from the relentless Dane, the Old Master hit him with over twenty punches in the last seconds of the fight, before Nelson was able to slam a left hook under his heart, ending the bout.

  To an unschooled eye, the last minute of Gans’ reign as lightweight champion may bring to mind a description from Invisible Man. “Once I saw a prize fighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and amazingly scientific.... But suddenly the yokel ... struck one blow and knocked science, speed, and footwork cold.... The yokel had simply stepped inside his opponent’s sense of time.”24 But one must give the devil his due. Nelson was a dirty fighter, but no yokel. Bat Nelson was an extremely dangerous man, a small version of Joe Frazier in his prime. Charging forward, he was able to roll with the punches of Gans and still throw all of his weight into every single one of his own punches. He was drenched in his own blood, and still he charged like a rhinoceros. It is no wonder that many consider him one of the all-time greats of the lightweights. Blows from the Dane, coupled with tuberculosis, proved too much for Gans when a final hook from up and out of hell crashed under his right rib cage.

  Two championship title bouts drew crowds to Colma, California (south San Francisco) on Labor Day 1908. Before his last fight with Battling Nelson, the Old Master sparred with all-time great featherweight Abe Attell (the “Little Champ” had fought Nelson to a draw earlier in the year). Gans spent 19 days of hard training: bag-punching, rope-skipping, “heavy bag flogging,” and sparring with his friend for an unsuccessful attempt to regain his lost title. Attell successfully defended his championship against British champion Owen Moran at Coffroth’s Arena on Mission Street (photograph by the Dana Brothers Studio, San Francisco, courtesy F. Daniel Somrack, boxing historian).

  In the final act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark fights a deadly duel with the brother of his doomed love interest Ophelia. Mortally wounded, Hamlet passes his ruler’s mantle to Horatio, who bids the Dane farewell, “Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”25

  On the stage of California in 1908 a prince of a fighter took on the Durable Dane in two epic struggles for supremacy in lightweight boxing. This time around, the Old Master passed his mantle to the Durable Dane of the twentieth century. On the hundred-year-old film, Gans exits stage left, carried on his shield.

  When the crowd in Baltimore heard that Gans had been beaten, they fell silent, astounded. They had expected him once again to “bring home the bacon.” Inside the Goldfield Hotel, Gans’ former manager, Al Herford, sulked and rationalized, mumbling on and on to anyone who would listen, that “Joe is not the boy he used to be.... I believe Joe was not in fighting trim. It might have been a case of too much confidence. You know it requires good, faithful training to fight a battle, and Joe probably didn’t work hard enough. Then again, Joe is not as young as he used to be, and that counts.”26 As Herford winded down, the player piano began to play a haunting, weary ragtime song.

  A very sick Gans, his body racked with tuberculosis, prepares for his final valiant attempt to recapture the lightweight championship against Battling Nelson. Both Nelson and Gans weighed 134 pounds during their training, the Battler by virtue of his natural weight. Gans had lost much of his muscle tone in his forearms and legs as a result of his illness (photograph by the Dana Brothers Studio, San Francisco, courtesy F. Daniel Somrack, boxing historian).

  Why did the Old Master continue fighting? Gans’ apparent invincibility led him to fight on when his health failed him, even if his boxing skills did not. So strong was his grit and belief that he could still endure a championship bout that he fought on, challenging Nelson again on September 9 in Colma, California, even as his body carried the full viral load of the White Plague. The adulation of an adoring public is an addiction that few have been able to overcome. Indeed, after years of hearing the deafening roars of the crowds and painstakingly turning the jeers and boos into cheers, what could have possibly been the equal for Joseph Gans?

  Whenever a legend arises from humble origins, it has been a matter of both historical fact and artistic license that a childhood event somehow formed a driving impulse that would carry the man to great heights. In the case of Muhammad Ali a stolen bicycle and later, a run-in with Southern rednecks, put zeal in his soul to fight for his people. In the recent hit movie about Ray Charles, few eyes remained dry in theaters when his brother drowned and thereby traumatized the young Ray. In Braveheart, the cruel deaths of his father and young bride at the hands of the English drove the immortal Scotsman.

  We have no accounts of the childhood of Joe Gans that would pinpoint a seminal instance in the formation of his personality. But all accounts of his life reference his strong desire to provide for his loved ones. That Gans revered his foster mother is manifest in the telegraphs and other documents left to posterity. He clearly wanted to provide for her as well as his wife and children. No matter how beloved a foster parent may be, a feeling of abandonment is quite common among foster children. With the Grim Reaper approaching, Gans may have felt pangs of guilt driving him to provide further paydays for his own two children. He knew the indignities of poverty and racism as well as or better than anybody did, and the most basic feeling a father has is to save his children from the pain he has lived through.

  Again turning to Ralph Ellison’s mid-century classic Invisible Man, the author articulates a core aspect of the African American experience when he describes the eviction of an elderly black couple. After fleeing the South to the great northern land of freedom, the narrator is shocked that an old woman resembling his grandmother could be thrown out on the street. The narrator inquires as to what has happened. “‘I’ll tell you!’ a heavyweight yelled, pushing out of the crowd, his face angry. ‘Hell, they been dispossessed, you crazy sonofabitch, get out of the way!’”27

  Gans clearly did not want his heirs to be dispossessed. His constant need for money is perhaps puzzling in that he made so much of it in the prize ring, more than almost any fighter before him. But when crooked managers, gambling, and the go-go Goldfield Club are factored, Gans’ finances flowed into a sieve rather than any secure reservoir. He must have known shortly after the fight in Goldfield that he had tuberculosis, and so was determined to win as many big purses as possible. Newspaper accounts were already noting the frequent visits he received from his doctor.

  After his next bout with Nelson the headline in the Baltimore Sun read simply, “Gans Knocked Out. Battling Nelson Finishes Him In Twenty-First Round. Never Had Chance to Win.”28 Gans went into the ring prepared. He had sparred for three weeks and had come to the weight limit early. Nelson believed that he would get a beating from Gans early on. But as his name implied, the Durable Dane’s strategy was to wear down the Old Master. Gans acknowledged that he had not won the previous match with Nelson because he had become t
oo tired and winded. At least publicly, he attributed it to a lack of training. He told everyone that if he couldn’t beat Nelson this time, he would never ask for another chance.

  The fight went twenty-one rounds before Gans sank to the floor and failed to rise. Realizing that his punches rarely affected Nelson, Gans seemed to lose heart. The papers reported, “Not until the count of 10 was finished did Gans, ashen pale, his face terribly cut and his eyes glassy, attempt to rise. He realized, however, that it was too late and feebly declared: ‘I have positively fought my last battle.’”29 But it wasn’t his last battle. A far more brutal one with the White Plague was yet to come. And he would fight that battle with the same grit that carried him through all the other ones.

  Gans’ last fistic battle proved a puzzle to the members of the National Athletic Club in New York who watched it. What was he attempting by meeting Great Britain’s Lightweight Champion, Jabez White, March 12, 1909? Whatever the answer, the match was described as a cat playing with a frightened mouse. No one doubted that Gans could have knocked his opponent out at any time during the one-sided match, but he didn’t. He simply walked around him, ducked and parried “prettily,” and exhibited his signature chivalry in the ring. He did, however, take several body punches in the fourth round that left him in agony. Some thought that he had simply gotten too old to fight. In several rounds when he sent Jabez to the floor with uppercuts to the jaw, he failed to put him out. It appeared to those in the crowd as if Gans didn’t want to harm his opponent. When the crowd sensed the lagging action, the whistling commenced to “The Merry Widow Waltz.”30 Gans won his final mill on points, but the next day the papers called it one of the strangest bouts ever fought. Perhaps The Washington Post recognized more astutely that Gans had given them the best show he could, noting that “Gans was a shadow of his former great self. He was weak in the legs, had little strength to either take or give punishment, and would have been put to sleep if White had possessed just ordinary hitting power.”31 After the match, Gans went into retirement, and the sportswriters became more sympathetic. A reporter for The New York Times contacted referee Charley White in Denver, who gave the press a definitive statement regarding Gans’ physical condition—the Old Master was suffering from tuberculosis.32

  The Old Master Goes Home

  With his fighting career over, Gans served as a referee in Baltimore at the Eureka Athletic Club; old wounds seemed to be healed between the fighter and his former manager Herford. It was said that at one point in a bout he stopped the fight to warn the men that they needed to step it up, that the spectators had not come to see a gentle fight.33 Before the year was out, Jack Johnson, heavyweight title holder, engaged Gans “to act as sparring partner and chief adviser in his training” for his famous showdown in Reno with the “Great White Hope,” Jim Jeffries, July 4, 1910.34 At this point the papers began to summarize Gans’ career with superlatives, praising Johnson’s decision, and calling Gans the best strategist known, always careful and never overconfident. Gans’ step in the ring was compared to the spring in a wolf’s snap. What had been called a show of “yellowstreak” by the New York papers in his loss to Erne was now definitively defended as a wise move after receiving a brunt to the eye. The press noted that in rematches Gans proved that he could knock out any man at any time he wanted. He was a hard hitter and had a perfect guard. The end of 1909 saw him acknowledged as having held two championship titles, lightweight and welterweight.

  Gans served as advisor and chief second to his good friend, the great Sam Langford, when Langford beat middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel in a six-round non-title fight in Philadelphia on April 28, 1910. It was to be Gans’ last time near the ring. A rematch in San Francisco for the middleweight crown was eagerly anticipated, and Gans was looking forward to attending this match in July. But after Langford’s April fight, Gans’ health needs were so pressing that he left humid Baltimore for Arizona, where the dry southwestern air might improve his deteriorating condition. He stayed the month of May in Phoenix where the soaring heat, between 102 and 120 degrees, pressed against his chest in suffocating waves. Relief from these furnace-like conditions came, when on June 9, a train took him away from the Salt River Valley of saguaro cactus and up and over the Mogollon Rim to the pine trees and cool, crystal air of Prescott, Arizona. Only a few miners, scattered through the surrounding hills, were left from the town’s ore days, sifting the waters and sluicing the streambeds for flakes of gold and an occasional nugget. The old territorial capital’s stock in trade now was its healthy, pollution-free air.

  Doctors had established tuberculosis sanitariums among the sweet smelling pinion pines, drawing the afflicted from around the country who needed to give their “lungs a rest.” Prescott was a national draw for those with tuberculosis. The most famous hospital was Pamsetgaaf Sanitorium which opened in 1903 on West Gurley and Willow Strand under the care of Dr. John W. Flinn from Montreal. The awkward sounding name was actually an acronym for the place, “Pure Air, Maximum Sunshine, Equitable Temperature, Good Accommodations and Food.” His patients were many, from movie stars to miners.35

  If there existed any chance for Gans’ condition to improve, Prescott was his last hope. Here he and his partner looked forward to the time when the cool, dry air would restore him and he could return to Baltimore. The Mile High City was already familiar with Gans’ achievements. The year before, Prescott hosted a huge boxing event that brought John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain out of retirement. The men, then in their fifties, engaged in a boxing exhibition that some spectators said was a show of nothing but flabby old men.36 The preliminary event was none other than the film of the Gans-Herman fight, a full-length, 32-minute show. How sadly ironic that Gans would appear the next year in person in such ill-health.

  Stately Victorian homes lined Senator Avenue, but because Gans was black, he would be taken to the modest section of homes on Virginia Street off Gurley where he and wife Martha J. resided with a friend, Mrs. Eliza Evans. From town center Gans could see Thumb Butte Mountain, an eroded mountain peak looming over the city. In the evening the town came to life along Town Square’s Whiskey Row, a block of saloons in full operation since the territorial days.

  According to the Prescott Journal-Miner, when Gans arrived in the city, he looked “pale, but optimistic, despite the fact that his health [was] broken.”37 He was not despondent. He declared he would “battle his threatened ‘white plague’ attack to a finish and be lively and prancing when his affliction gets the count.”38

  By the next week, the paper reported that his condition had improved and that Gans looked forward to attending the Johnson-Jeffries and the Ketchel-Langford fights in San Francisco in July. He was out of his bed for the first time, his appetite had improved, and he was generally experiencing relief in the piney mountains of the city. Gans was attended by a former Chicago physician, Dr. Harry T. Southworth. Both the doctor and his wife, Harriette Fay, were popular figures in Prescott. Dr. Southworth served as city health officer for many years.

  Progress was slower than Gans had expected, forcing him to miss the fights for which he was chosen tutor emeritus. If his friends could have seen him, no one would have believed that he was only months removed from his former life in the ring. By the middle of July, Gans could dress himself and take short walks. But during the last few days of July his condition worsened. He remained bedridden and became depressed. On July 28, 1910, a telegram was sent back to Baltimore with the grim news. Gans was “at the point of death” and he had “been in a semi-comatose condition, and no hope is held out for his recovery.”39 Gans wanted to return home. His wife tried to convince him to stay in Arizona, telling him that the city’s clean, dry air would improve his condition and finally cure him if given enough time. She begged him to stay. But Gans was firmly determined to leave for Baltimore.

  With his condition so fragile, he arranged to have Dr. Southworth travel with him. On the afternoon before he left Prescott, he told a reporter that he realized he co
uld not survive for very long. “And believing that it was a matter of only a few weeks until the end came, he desired to close his earthly career at the old home and with those so near and dear to him.”40 He appreciated the kindness shown him while in Prescott, but it was time to go home.

  On August 1, 1910, at 12:35 in the early morning, Gans arrived at the Prescott depot ready for his departure for Baltimore. Reporters there at the stroke of midnight quoted him as saying, “I know that I am going to die and feel that I am growing weaker daily. Several days ago I was walking around but the doctor ordered me to remain in bed. I want to see mother and the two children in Baltimore before I die. I made a mistake in not coming to Prescott in the beginning. I did not realize my condition. My last two fights broke down my constitution and made me an easy victim for consumption.”41 The wires sent word across the nation that the champion was going home. Reporters and huge crowds of fans waited patiently at every major train stop along the way to see the Old Master for the last time.

  August 4, word circulated quickly that Gans’ train had pulled into Chicago, and because he was expected to live only a few hours, he had been removed from his private car and taken along with his small entourage to the home of his former wife, Madge Gans. The press gathered and waited expectantly for the death knell. But like the fighter who would always summon the strength to rise on the count of nine, Gans refused to take the final count.

  While physicians tried to persuade him to stay in Chicago, Gans insisted that they go to whatever ends possible to prolong his life so that he could make it to Baltimore to say goodbye to his family and friends. The doctors consented and reservations were made for him to board a train at 5:30 that afternoon. His physician said he believed the effort to reach Gans’ old home would be fruitless, as it was “improbable the fighter would live longer than today, but a start would be made to please the patient.”42