One Summer: America, 1927

Lindbergh was surely glad to let someone else have the world’s attention for a day.
    As it was, the celebrations that followed were a little muted by Lindbergh standards, though this owed at least as much to the sodden weather as to jaded public sentiment. Byrd and his men, accompanied by Chamberlin, were placed in open-topped cars for a parade up Broadway. Unfortunately, the heavens opened in a clattering torrent just as they set off, driving many thousands of onlookers to scatter for cover and leaving Byrd and his men as drenched as if they had swum ashore. At City Hall a big viewing platform had been erected for a presentation ceremony, but about a hundred of the chairs were conspicuously empty, and about half the crowd melted away during the speeches as the rain continued to fall heavily.
    A thought on many people’s minds was whether the rain would ease for the Dempsey–Sharkey fight. Happily, it did. Though the air was thundery, the rain held off and the fighters and spectators enjoyed a comparatively cool, dry evening on 20 July. Eighty-five thousand people turned out at Yankee Stadium (more than had ever attended a baseball game, but then for a boxing match thousands of extra seats could be put on the playing field – and never mind that many in them couldn’t see very much) – and the gate of $1,250,000 was a record for a non-title fight. Among those attending were Mayor Jimmy Walker, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the cowboy star Tom Mix, the publisher Bernarr Macfadden and the Maharajah of Ratlam (or very possibly someone who fooled the world into thinking he was a maharajah). Two people who went almost entirelyunnoticed in the crowd were Richard Byrd and Clarence Chamberlin.
    Sharkey was the six-to-five favourite, based largely on the consideration that he was twenty-five years old and on the rise while Dempsey was thirty-two and all but retired. Sharkey was from Boston, the son of Lithuanian immigrants who had endowed him with magnificent strength and a name that no one could spell. It was variously rendered in official records as Zuhauskay, Zuhauskas, Coccoskey and Cukochsay before Sharkey chose his nom de ring as more sleekly American-sounding. He took ‘Jack’ from his greatest hero – Jack Dempsey.
    The fight was disappointingly restrained. Dempsey was much less aggressive than of old. Sharkey dealt with his cautious attacks easily, and led comfortably through the first six rounds. In the seventh, however, Sharkey did the most brainless thing a boxer can do. Frustrated by Dempsey’s repeated low blows, he turned to the referee to complain and Dempsey tagged him on the chin, knocking him out cold. Photographs show Sharkey dropped on the canvas like a discarded overcoat. Dempsey was declared the winner. He would now meet Gene Tunney in a rematch on 22 September in Chicago. It would be the biggest fight in history, and the most controversial.
    An ecstatic Jacob Ruppert announced plans to increase the seating capacity at Yankee Stadium by extending the decks down the left-field line, which would let him accommodate 90,000 spectators at boxing matches. This news was greeted with a certain cynicism among newsmen, who pointed out that many spectators were already so distantly seated that it had been like watching a bout through an inverted telescope. As one reporter put it only semi-wryly, at the conclusion of the fight hundreds of fans rushed from the stadium and ‘bought late extras to find out what had happened’.
    The next day Sharkey was rushed to hospital with severe internal bleeding. Happily, he made a full recovery, but it was astriking reminder that Dempsey, even in restrained mode, still hit with mighty force.
     
    On the afternoon following the Dempsey–Sharkey bout, Charles Lindbergh, now embarked on his national tour, arrived in Boston in an unusually perky fashion. Coming in to land at the recently opened Boston Airport (on the site of the present Logan Airport), he raced across Boston Harbor just above the waterline, then at the last possible instant shot straight up into the sky to the point where it looked as if his plane must surely stall, then nonchalantly rolled to one side in a graceful arc and made a pinpoint landing, coming to a halt just before the doors of the hangar set aside for his arrival – all this in a plane with no brakes or forward visibility. The delighted roar of the crowd could be heard on Boston Common, three miles away.
    The centre of Boston was a mass of