Floyd Patterson

by W. K. Stratton

  There was another matter for Patterson to deal with that spring before he could turn his full focus on Liston: his autobiography. Completing Victory over Myself had been a painstaking task. Milton Gross had polished the final manuscript and presented it to Floyd, who read it carefully, then passed it on to Julius November and, finally, to Sandra. Gross, Patterson, and November then set up a marathon session in a Midtown hotel suite and went over the manuscript page by page, with Patterson referring to a list of corrections he’d made on the back of an envelope. November suggested removing material about Floyd’s complicated relationship with Cus D’Amato, but Patterson insisted that it remain: “He’s part of my life. He’s got to be in.”11 Patterson also wanted the book to “sound” like him, and Gross rewrote passages the way Patterson would actually phrase them.

  When the writing was complete, Gross thought that he and Patterson had accomplished something special. “This is the story of a boy who’s mentally disturbed, who runs from his friends, who finds the only identity he’s ever known in the violence of the prize ring,” he said. “Tennessee Williams could play with a theme like this.” He added, “This is not a sports story or a boxing story. This is the story of a man.”12

  “The story of a man” was picked up by Sports Illustrated, which serialized it starting in May 1962. Sections of the book were published in newspapers as well. Bernard Geis personally obtained permission from the White House to use one of the photos of Patterson with President Kennedy on the dust jacket. Thus adorned, the book had its official coming-out party at Toots Shor’s saloon on May 25. Geis and Sports Illustrated cosponsored the publication party, which required attendees to purchase a $50 ticket for admission, with Wiltwyck as the beneficiary.

  Victory over Myself received accolades as soon as it hit the shelves, and from some unlikely corners. The poet Marianne Moore said, “I regard [it] as a manual for descriptive writing—how to exhibit yourself without repelling the reader. I read the book very carefully and annotated it at the back. It was delicately done.”13 In his New York Times review of the book, Gay Talese praised it in part because of what it wasn’t—another “sweaty thriller” about the kid from the slums who slugs his way to the top “to reign in Hamburger Heaven.”14 In the Los Angeles Times, influential sports columnist Jim Murray called Victory over Myself a “remarkable book,” adding, “It’s a fascinating insight into an essentially sad and gentle human being which lifts it above the realm of a sports book and is a testimony of human spirit which would probably do more good if read than all the sermons you and I will hear today or this year.”15 If it fell short of the blockbuster status of other Geis titles, it nonetheless proved popular enough and was translated for several foreign editions.16

  But the book’s release, along with the White House visit and the trip to Egypt, distracted Patterson from his primary business at hand: preparing to fight Sonny Liston. A win over Liston would require more from Patterson physically and emotionally than any other previous fight—more even than the second Johansson fight. Yet Floyd took time away from training to attend to matters surrounding the book’s publication.

  Family concerns were also diverting his focus. When Milton Gross visited the Highland Mills training camp, Floyd blurted out to him, “My daughter [Seneca] is six years old and I don’t know her.”17 The comment surprised Gross. If Floyd didn’t know his oldest child, he was certainly a stranger to the others. Floyd had painted a rosy picture of his relationship with his wife and kids in Victory over Myself. In fact, his marriage was deteriorating even as the size of his family increased. In addition to his two daughters and Floyd Jr., he now had another son, Eric. Gross asked whether Patterson was contemplating retirement in order to devote more time to his family. Patterson admitted that his wife had been demanding he spend more time at home, but assured Gross that retirement wasn’t on his mind. Floyd explained that before he met Sandra, he had fallen in love with boxing. Boxing was his first love. Floyd didn’t want to give it up, not the one thing he could do best in life. The implication was clear. If it came down to it, he’d choose boxing over his wife and children, however painful that decision might be, especially for a man who embraced the Catholic Church’s teachings on honoring marriage and family.

  There was a further complication that would affect Patterson’s family life. As heavyweight champion, Floyd received thousands of letters and had relied on an assistant to help with his correspondence and other business matters. When his secretary married and left the job, Floyd asked his close friend, the singer Mickey Alan, if he knew of someone who could replace her. Alan recommended his sister-in-law Janet Seaquist. The attractive blonde proved to be efficient, and she showed an interest in Floyd’s career and business dealings. Over time, she and Floyd grew closer.

  The Patterson family residence only added to the problems on the home front. Floyd and his family had moved to an upscale neighborhood on Troublesome Brook in northeastern Yonkers, near the town’s border with Scarsdale. Until their arrival, the neighborhood had been inhabited exclusively by whites. The name of the brook turned out to be prophetic: the newcomers did not receive a warm welcome. The Pattersons’ next-door neighbor was a dentist. He built a redwood fence along the property line dividing the backyards of the two houses. Floyd was certain his neighbor built the fence to keep the families’ children from playing together. On a visit home from training camp, Floyd responded by hiring workmen to construct a fence between the front yards of the two homes. When construction began, the dentist’s wife faced off with the workmen and Floyd in the front yard. Later in the day, the dentist himself threatened Patterson with a lawsuit if the fence builders touched anything in his yard. Patterson replied that if the dentist touched anything in his yard, he had better have an ambulance waiting.

  Yet a further distraction for Floyd in the weeks leading up to the Liston fight was a business deal he’d entered at Cus D’Amato’s urging. In 1959 D’Amato had met handball champion Jim Jacobs. Jacobs had amassed a collection of fight films, the sheer size of which (five thousand films) made him a somebody in the world of boxing. He and D’Amato hit it off and quickly became tight friends and eventually roommates.

  In 1962 Cus encouraged Floyd to participate in a project that Jacobs had concocted. Jacobs would produce a one-hour retrospective about Patterson’s career that Jacobs would syndicate to television stations. Floyd would receive a fee for interviews and a percentage of the profits. Patterson entered into an oral agreement with Jacobs; the actual letters of agreement were signed by D’Amato. The “fee” Floyd received for the interviews was $1, according to the letters D’Amato signed. After expenses were settled, there was no profit. Or at least that was what Jacobs told Patterson. Floyd made nothing out of the deal. “Cus couldn’t give away those rights to my life, in 1962—only I could do that, or only I should’ve been able to do that,” Patterson later said. “And it wasn’t what Jacobs promised me. No percentage of what the film made, no fees, nothing . . . Who knows what that film made? Jacobs had the records.”18 For Floyd, it was the last straw. Cus still had a written contract in place with Patterson that gave him a percentage of Floyd’s purses. But after the Jacobs incident, Floyd was ready to part company with D’Amato for good.

  It all made for a bad state of mind for Patterson as he readied himself to face a man considered the most dangerous heavyweight the sport had known. One thing was certain about Sonny Liston: he never kissed anyone in the ring.

  It was in his family’s cypress-board shack that Charles “Sonny” Liston came into the world. The boxing publicist and promoter Harold Conrad once said of Liston, “I think he died the day he was born.”19 Liston himself never knew where or when that dying birth occurred, but he actually drew his first breath on a large farm called the Morledge Plantation in the Mississippi River region known as the Arkansas Delta. Liston’s father, Tobe, worked as a tenant farmer, renting fifty acres on a part of the plantation known as Sand Slough. As was the case with Patterson’s birth in North
Carolina, Liston’s was not registered with state officials.

  One story holds that his father carved the date on a tree, but the tree eventually was felled, eliminating the only record of Sonny’s birth. As a consequence, his actual age was disputed during his boxing career, with many saying he was much older than advertised. He was an adult in 1953 when a birth certificate listing May 8, 1932, was filed. It is likely incorrect, though Liston grew threatening whenever someone challenged it to his face. But US Census records reveal that Tobe and Helen Liston’s family did not include Charles among their children in 1930. This suggests that he was born in that year or sometime after. What is clear is that his hard life made him seem older than he was. He suffered vicious abuse at the hands of his father. St. Louis trainer Johnny Tocco once noticed something akin to bird tracks on Liston’s back. He asked Liston about the scars and Liston said, “I had dealings with my father.”20 At other times he remarked, “The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating.”21

  The Liston family, like Floyd’s, was part of the Great Migration. In the case of the Listons, they didn’t travel as a family unit. Sonny’s mother moved from Arkansas to St. Louis to find work. Liston couldn’t stand being left behind to labor in the cotton fields under the glare of his father. Eventually, Sonny showed up at his mother’s door. He was illiterate. The public schools failed to teach him to read and write. Unlike Floyd, he was offered no opportunities akin to Wiltwyck to help him overcome his troubles. So he went to work, taking short-lived jobs at a poultry-packing plant and an icehouse. By 1949 Liston had turned to crime, in the company of two other thugs. Eventually Sonny was arrested, and he pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree robbery and two charges of larceny. He received a sentence of five years in the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, commencing June 1, 1950.

  It was in prison that Liston became a boxer, learning to fight under the approving eye of the institution’s Catholic chaplain. Liston’s good behavior and his dedication to boxing earned him parole in late 1952. Back home in St. Louis, he took a job at a steel plant and roomed at the YMCA. He began boxing in earnest. His managers and trainers were connected to John J. Vitale, the boss of the city’s Italian mob. Vitale had connections to Frankie Carbo, Blinky Palermo, and, ultimately, the IBC. Liston won seven straight pro fights in 1953 and 1954, including a split-decision victory in Detroit that was broadcast nationwide on television. After his sole stumble against Marty Marshall in September 1954, Liston accumulated win after win, mostly in the Midwest and mostly against opponents who never came close to being contenders. Nevertheless, he seemed destined to one day fight for the heavyweight championship.

  Two obstacles loomed on Liston’s road toward a title fight. He drank heavily, and when he was loaded he tended to get into trouble. The St. Louis police didn’t like him and arrested him at every opportunity. In the five years after his release from prison, Liston was jailed fourteen times. Things took a serious turn one night in 1956 when a St. Louis police officer argued with a soused Liston over a parking ticket. The dispute turned physical. Liston wrested the cop’s service revolver from him and aimed it at him. Although Liston did not shoot the officer, he did manage to split open the cop’s head and break his leg before he fled. The police arrested Liston the next morning. In January 1957 Sonny pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer and was sentenced to nine months in the city workhouse. After serving his sentence, he encountered a St. Louis police captain who gave Liston some advice. If Sonny wanted to stay alive, he better leave the city, because if he remained in St. Louis, the cops planned to kill him. Liston heeded the warning and began fighting out of Philadelphia.

  Liston fought eight times in 1958, lunching on fighters whose names are now largely forgotten. In 1959 and 1960, however, he carried his campaign of annihilation to the best contenders in the heavyweight division. They all learned that Liston was a tremendously talented heavyweight with extraordinary reach, devastating power, and hands so large that he required custom-made gloves. Liston could knock someone out with a single jab. His punching ability was so overwhelming that most fight spectators failed to note that he had also mastered all the technical intricacies of a topflight boxer. He possessed outstanding footwork. No boxer in history could cut off a ring better than Liston in his prime. Sonny stood six feet even, and typically went into the ring weighing between 210 and 220, yet he had a way of gliding across the canvas as if he were skating on ice. Once he appeared on Ed Sullivan’s television show and jumped rope to the accompaniment of his favorite song, “Night Train,” his feet as deft as a modern dancer’s.

  When D’Amato was in complete control of Patterson’s career, Sonny had no chance to challenge for the heavyweight crown, which frustrated Liston and his handlers to no end. Liston never would part company with his mob connections. Sonny actually confronted D’Amato in a surprise visit to Cus’s office. The enraged heavyweight towered over D’Amato, demanding to know if he’d ever be allowed a shot at Patterson’s title. It took a moment or two for D’Amato to compose himself before telling Liston it would be possible once Liston made a management change, meaning once Liston aligned himself with a manager and a trainer who had no organized crime connections. D’Amato knew that wasn’t about to happen and watched as Liston stormed away.

  Even as people in the boxing world called Liston a menace, a thug, and a “bad nigger,” Floyd regarded Sonny differently. Patterson saw much of himself in Liston. Floyd believed he could have ended up just like Liston—threatened by cops, doing time in prison, answering to gangsters—if life hadn’t provided him opportunities Liston never received. But Patterson also knew he was going to have to put together the best performance of his career if he was to defeat this challenge to his crown on September 25, 1962, at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

  Patterson-Liston was set to be a huge heavyweight championship bout, no two ways about it. Promoters planned to reconfigure seating in Comiskey Park so that the venerable stadium could accommodate fifty-seven thousand fans. Transforming the “Baseball Palace of the World” into a boxing venue would be a chore; the White Sox would finish their season there just two days before the September 25 bout. Tickets went on sale for between $10 and $100. The promoters predicted the fight would earn substantially in excess of $6 million, which, they proclaimed, would make it “the greatest fight in history.” Patterson was guaranteed 45 percent of the net live gate and 55 percent of the ancillary income , including money from closed-circuit and broadcast rights. Liston had to yield a lot of money for his shot at the title. He would receive just 12½ percent of the live gate and 12½ percent of the ancillary income, both against guarantees of $200,000. That was fine with him. “I don’t care where or how much,” Liston said, “just as long as we fight.”22

  Once the contracts were signed, the boxers set up their respective training camps. Patterson chose Elgin, Illinois, somewhat hidden from the media glare. Six years earlier, Patterson had trained at Sportsman’s Park racetrack to prepare for his only other pro match in Chicago—the fight in which he defeated Archie Moore to become heavyweight champ. Perhaps ominously, Liston chose to train at Aurora Downs, an abandoned racetrack that was even more rundown than Sportsman’s Park had been. Patterson’s camp in Elgin was typical of his other camps. The atmosphere was friendly, and Patterson attempted to answer reporters’ questions as best he could. Liston’s camp was more like a reverse prison: it had barbed wire and an armed guard posted to keep people out.

  As Patterson and Liston worked out at their training camps, publicist Harold Conrad began his job in Chicago: generating hype. No one could do a better job of that when it came to bigtime boxing events. Conrad realized that the Patterson-Liston battle was weighted with sociological and political implications, not the least of which was that Patterson was going against President Kennedy, his political hero, by agreeing to the bout. But Patterson believed fair play trumped even presidential requests, that Liston had earned the right to fight for the crown. Floyd could
see no reason to deny Liston. The fight had captured the fancy of many, many Americans, making it the most talked-about heavyweight title bout since Louis-Schmeling in the 1930s and Dempsey-Tunney in the 1920s. But this fight was different in one very important respect: both Patterson and Liston were African American. No event in American history, in or out of sports, had focused so much attention on an event in which the leading players were black.

  Conrad knew writers would be attracted by everything the clash between Floyd and Sonny symbolized—not just the sports reporters, who would be there anyway, but big-name literary writers. Conrad was right. Prize-winning novelists and highbrow essayists elbowed their way into Chicago’s Sheraton Hotel, the fight headquarters, where they joined the sportswriters in churning out fight-related verbiage at the rate of “ten thousand words a minute,” in the words of Norman Mailer, one of the authors who’d come to town. No self-respecting writer turned down Conrad’s offer of press credentials, not for something this big. So the writers came to Chicago in droves, turning this prizefight into a genuine literary event. Mailer’s appearance was particularly significant. He was covering the fight for Esquire, the magazine that was defining the New Journalism of the 1960s, Mailer being one of the creators of the new form, which used techniques of fiction—scene-by-scene constructions, subjective points of view, interior monologues—to make nonfiction more lively and relevant to readers. The New Journalism was so popular that some prognosticators predicted it would spell the death of the Great American Novel. That didn’t happen, but the New Journalism left a lasting mark on American nonfiction prose, making it less stodgy and more accessible. In addition to its literary contributions, Esquire also served as the arbiter of what was cool by early 1960s standards. By dispatching Mailer, arguably the most famous writer of his time, to Chicago, Esquire was giving the Patterson-Liston bout a stamp of hipness that no previous prizefight had received.