June 28, 1939: Joe Louis vs. Tony Galento

Louis looks like he can't believe

he's wasting his time with this clown.

June 28, 1939: Joe Louis steps into the ring at Yankee Stadium to defend the Heavyweight Championship of the World. At first, his opponent looked like little more than the next member of what had become known as Louis' "Bum-of-the-Month Club." Sure, he talked big, but what could he do against the man who had wrecked all comers -- bums, contenders, and former Champions? Surely, this guy was not going to give "The Brown Bomber" a hard time.

Tony Galento was from Orange, Essex County, New Jersey, and 29 years old when he fought Louis, but he sure didn't look like a boxing contender. He was listed at 5-foot-8, but may have been as short as 5-foot-6. And he weighed 240 pounds. Boxing referee Arthur Mercante recalled, "He seemed 5-foot-8, whichever way you looked at him." And he was balding. (Later in life, he took to wearing loud suits and a toupee that even Howard Cosell would have considered gauche.) He was nicknamed "Two-Ton Tony," and he looked like a bartender, which is what he was when he wasn't boxing.

But he was strong, from his previous job as an iceman. And he was mean, from growing up in poverty. He had his 1st professional fight in 1928, and by 1937, he was winning often enough to get by, but not often enough to get a title shot. The Chilean heavyweight Arturo Godoy, who would later lose 2 fights to Louis, beat him in 2 decisions, the 2nd on the undercard of the 1937 fight where Louis beat James J. Braddock to win the title.

But he won his next 11 fights, and Louis needed an opponent for his June '39 fight at Yankee Stadium, and so Galento became the opponent. Asked for a prediction, Galento turned the usual epithet for a Louis opponent back on him: "I'll moidah da bum!" No one, not even his fellow Italian-Americans, took him seriously, even as they rooted for him.

In the weeks leading up to the fight, using the kind of tactics that would later be used on opponents by Muhammad Ali, Galento tried to psych Louis out. Mostly, this consisted of making late-night phone calls, questioning his manhood, using racial slurs, and suggesting that his wife, Marva, was cheating on him.

Yankee Stadium wouldn't have permanent lights until 1946, so temporary lights were set up. A crowd of 34,852 attended, including Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, former Heavyweight Champion Gene Tunny, married comic actors Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, and film heartthrob Tyrone Power. NBC broadcast the fight on nationwide radio.

In the 1st round, Galento landed a punch that put Louis on the ropes. Louis quickly recovered, but Galento had won the round. Louis worked on Galento's face in the 2nd round, drawing blood. A left to the chin knocked Galento down. Although he had already lost 23 of his 104 professional fights, 3 by technical knockouts, he had never been knocked down before.

He got back up quickly. In the 3rd round, he threw a left hook that knocked Louis down. He wasn't exactly "murdering the bum," but, to use an expression Ali would later use, he "shook up the world."

But, as he'd already shown in the 1st round, Louis was one of those fighters where hurting him was the worst thing you could do, because he could come back and hurt you worse. He was down for only a moment, shook it off, and went right back to plugging away, preventing Galento from playing his advantage.

As has so often been the case in boxing history, when one man is just a puncher, and the other is a boxer, the boxer usually wins. Sports columnist John A. Cluney wrote that the 4th round "was nothing short of modified murder." Louis landed 30 punches, Galento missing all of his, and Louis knocked Galento down with 31 seconds left in the round. Referee Arthur Donovan had seen enough, and he stopped the fight.

In spite of looking less like a great fighter than anyone Louis had yet faced, Galento had had his moments. The newsreel cameras showed him looking like he'd gone the full 15 rounds, but unbowed, saying, "I shoulda knocked him out."

In 1976, on his PBS sports nostalgia show The Way It Was, Curt Gowdy invited Louis, Galento, and the great boxing broadcaster Don Dunphy, and showed the fight, with Dunphy providing "as if it was happening now" commentary. Galento finally admitted, "I was never gonna knock him out."

Dunphy asked Louis if Galento got him mad. Louis said, "He really got me mad. All those mean things he said about me while training for our fight. He got me mad, all right. So I decided to carry him for a while in the fight, and punish him for those nasty things. But when he knocked me down in the third round, I decided I better not fool around. He hit too hard. So I knocked him out as quickly as I could." Galento apologized for his conduct. Louis entertained no hard feelings.

Galento's next fight was against Lou Nova, and it was considered one of the dirtiest fights of the era. The referee stopped it in the 14th round, awarding Galento a technical knockout. His next 2 fights were against the Baer brothers, Max and Buddy, and both forced him to quit after 7 rounds. In 1943, he knocked out a pre-wrestling Freddie Blassie in 2 rounds, but was knocked out 6 months later by Jack Conley, and that was it for him. Like Blassie, he turned to pro wrestling, which was more his style, anyway. He died in 1979.

*

June 28, 1939 was a Wednesday. These 5 baseball games were played that day, including a spectacular doubleheader:

* Being away from Yankee Stadium didn't hurt the New York Yankees much: They swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Athletics, 23-2 and 10-0 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The winning pitchers were Monte Pearson and Lefty Gomez.

Over the 2 games, Joe DiMaggio, in the midst of what would be his 1st season awarded the American League's Most Valuable Player, went 5-for-10 with 3 home runs, 2 walks and 5 RBIs. Babe Dahlgren went 7-for-11 with 3 home runs, a walk and 7 RBIs, numbers one would have expected to get from the 1st baseman he replaced, Lou Gehrig, in such a situation.

Joe Gordon went 6-for-12 with 3 home runs and 7 RBIs. George Selkirk went 4-for-10 with a home run, 2 walks and 5 RBIs. Tommy Henrich went 4-for-11 with a home run, 2 walks and 4 RBIs. Bill Dickey went 4-for-9 with a home run, a walk and 2 RBIs. Red Rolfe went 5-for-13 with an RBI. Frankie Crosetti went 5-for-12 with a walk, and while he was the only Yankee starter without an RBI in the opener, he hit a home run in the nightcap.

* The New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 7-1 at the Polo Grounds. Mel Ott went 1-for-4 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Boston Bees (as the Braves were known from 1936 to 1940), 6-1 at Braves Field in Boston.

* And the Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 8-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.