dont forget that nice honest man who in 1968 won 31 games,denny mclain
I don't have a real pick as far as this thread goes, but I will elude to what Journeyman said earlier about had Sanders played elsewhere and got a ring or two....
I would have liked to have seen Barry get a ring or two instead of sticking it out on that craphole Lions team that had a monopoly in inferiority....had he had some talent around him....
Glad to see it and I think most of you here will agree with me when I say I'm glad that Walter Payton got a ring before he died....I think if anyone deserved one he did.
I would have liked to have seen Barry get a ring or two instead of sticking it out on that craphole Lions team that had a monopoly in inferiority....had he had some talent around him....
Glad to see it and I think most of you here will agree with me when I say I'm glad that Walter Payton got a ring before he died....I think if anyone deserved one he did.
1. Bobby Layne
2. Billy Laimbeer
3. Jack Morris
4. Barry Sanders
5. Doak Walker
6. Isiah Thomas
7. Ty Cobb
8. Al Kaline
9. Joe Louis
10. Aaron Krickstein
11. Dennis Rodman
12. Lavern Torgeson
13. Joe Dumars
14. Ron Leflore
15. Stevie Yzerman
16. Herman Moore
17. Amy Fraizer
18. Thomas Hearns
19. Lem Barney
20. Gordie Howe
2. Billy Laimbeer
3. Jack Morris
4. Barry Sanders
5. Doak Walker
6. Isiah Thomas
7. Ty Cobb
8. Al Kaline
9. Joe Louis
10. Aaron Krickstein
11. Dennis Rodman
12. Lavern Torgeson
13. Joe Dumars
14. Ron Leflore
15. Stevie Yzerman
16. Herman Moore
17. Amy Fraizer
18. Thomas Hearns
19. Lem Barney
20. Gordie Howe
JOE LOUIS.....THE DETROIT FREE PRESS
The 1st, and last two paragraphs speak volumes.
The legend of Joe Louis begins not in the boxing ring itself, but in the neighborhoods of DETROIT. Whenever he fought, the streets of his hometown sat in silent standstill, from Black Bottom on the fringe of downtown, to the Jewish sector out on Dexter Avenue, into the enclaves of ethnics on the north and west sides. Everywhere, everything was deserted, everyone glued to the blow-by-blow accounts of his exploits crackling over the radio.
History does not accord Louis the distinction of being boxing's all-time greatest; that belongs to Muhammad Ali, although Louis reigned as world heavyweight champion longer than any other man, from 1937 to '49. But Louis played a special, central role in shaping the century's sports landscape -- and its social landscape, too. With the exception of Babe Ruth, no other athlete captivated Detroit's -- and the rest of the nation's -- sports fans more before 1950, no matter what his race.
For perhaps the first time ever, blacks and whites rooted with all their hearts for their guy. The same guy. Together. Combining power with politeness, the Brown Bomber threatened white folks in the ring only. He wasn't considered uppity, as Jack Johnson was years before, and he wasn't considered brash, as Ali would be years later. "I never thought about any race thing," he said. He was a disinterested pioneer, a simple, quiet young man with no aggressions or agendas outside the ring, making him universally popular and admired.
"I've always said that Joe Louis is not black; he's not white; he's just Joe Louis," said John Condon, president of Madison Square Garden Boxing when Louis died in 1981 at age 66. "He was one of the finest people I ever met in my life. He was a good piece of the foundation of the sport."
Louis was the perfect man for a less-than-tolerant time, the perfect man to pave the way for the greater changes to come. "He opened up boxing to every black fighter," said Teddy Brenner, a predecessor of Condon's. "He even led the way for guys like Jackie Robinson in other sports. Every black athlete that followed owes a debt of gratitude to Joe Louis."
The racial majority learned to pay attention to Louis' skills, rather than his skin color. He was not a crafty boxer. He was a puncher. A spectacular, mind-numbing puncher. A puncher with so much might, with so much efficiency, he could condense a whole night's work in a single, gorgeous moment of speed and thunder. His unabashed head-hunting and deadpan, no-gloating principle made him dark and dramatic. Of his 68 professional victories in 71 bouts, 54 were by knockout. Arenas and stadiums filled to their rafters with those eager to see him.
Louis loved to fight. He won so many exhibition bouts -- even while in the military during World War II -- that his opponents were called collectively the Bum-of-the-Month Club. Among those bums was bigotry. Much like Jesse Owens did in the '36 Berlin Olympics, Louis confounded Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Aryan ideal. His two most memorable fights were in the mid-to-late '30s against German Max Schmeling, an eventual good friend who, in the heat of the moment, represented to those outside the ring an evil oppression of unwise, unholy and unjust ideas. Ali once called Louis an "Uncle Tom" because of Louis' passive political nature. But in time, even Ali became humbled by Louis' influence.
"When Joe's in the room," Ali said, "I am not the Greatest."
Violins to violence
His name actually was Joseph Louis Barrow, and he came into the world by the light of a kerosene lamp on the morning of May 13, 1914, in the east-central Alabama town of Lafayette. He was the grandson of slaves and the seventh child of Monroe and Lillie Barrow.
The Barrow home was a windowless, ramshackle affair, like many of the sharecropper houses that peppered the red clay of Lafayette. Monroe leased 120 acres of mean farmland that grudgingly yielded some cotton and, when he got lucky, a little wheat. But it was the kind of land that could break a man, and by the time Joe was 2 years old, it had broken Monroe. He was taken to the Searcy State Hospital for the Insane, where he lived until 1959 with no awareness of his son's achievements.
Lillie, a strict Baptist disciplinarian, later married Patrick Brooks, a widower with five children. Faced with the dreary prospect of a lifetime of tenant farming, Brooks went north, liked the opportunities that seemed to be available in Detroit, and returned south to bring the Barrow-Brooks family to the Motor City. They moved in with friends on Macomb Street on the city's east side, then shifted to a Catherine Street tenement when Patrick landed a job at the Ford Rouge plant.
At age 13, Joe became a fifth-grade student at Duffield School. His academic record was poor, leaving one teacher to prophetically observe that "he's going to have to make a living with his hands." For the moment, that meant enrollment in the Bronson Trade School, where Joe was to learn the craft of cabinet making. When an injury and a sagging economy threw Patrick out of work, Joe took a job delivering coal and ice.
However bad things became, Lillie got her children to church and saw that some of them received music lessons. For Joe, that meant the violin. Before he had taken enough lessons to play even a scale, however, he secretly was using his violin money to pay for boxing lessons at the Brewster Recreational Center. When Lillie learned what her son had been doing, she encouraged him to pursue boxing. So did his violin teacher. But with Patrick out of work, there was little time for the ring. Joe left Bronson to push truck bodies on the assembly line at Briggs Manufacturing.
In 1932, Joe managed to land a bout with U.S. Olympic boxer John Miler, who knocked him down seven times and convinced him that his future lay not in boxing, but in an auto plant. But before long, Joe was back at Brewster. In his second amateur fight, Joe won by knockout after throwing just two punches.
Joe began a heavy schedule of amateur bouts and entered the Golden Gloves tournament, then sponsored locally by the Free Press. In all, Joe fought 58 amateur matches, losing only four. Lack of money forced him to substitute sneakers for boxing shoes and to use the same wrappings over and over to bandage his knuckles in the ring.
And then, Joe met a Detroit entrepreneur named John Roxborough. The man who was to change Joe's life was a study in contrasts: He began his money-making career as a bail bondsman, then went into the numbers business and, to some degree, politics. A philanthropist, he also underwrote college educations for many young blacks in the city and supported black teams and athletes.
After watching Joe spar in the Brewster ring, Roxborough took the youngster aside and asked his name.
"Name's Joe Louis Barrow," Joe said.
"That's too long," Roxborough replied. "We'll just call you Joe Louis."
Louis vs. Schmeling
Joe Louis was a hit from the beginning under Roxborough's direction. His first professional opponent was Jack Kracken, Chicago's best heavyweight. When they met July 4, 1934, in the Bacon Casino on the Windy City's south side, a local fight manager predicted a mismatch. "Kracken will kill that boy," he said. "Louis is in over his head." Louis took a little less than two minutes of the first round to knock out Kracken, an achievement that earned the 20-year-old a whopping purse of $59.
The victory began a quick rise for Louis, who in 1935 beat Primo Carnera and Max Baer, both former heavyweight champions, and became a wealthy celebrity in Detroit and soon the rest of the nation. By February of '36, he had compiled a phenomenal record: 27 victories, 23 knockouts, no losses.
But then he met Schmeling for the first time.
Max Schmeling was 31, hoping to regain the form he had as heavyweight champion from '30 to '32. He was a 10-to-1 underdog, and few were impressed with him. Only 45,000 fans showed up for the fight June 19, 1936, at Yankee Stadium. Louis spent much of his training time on the golf course.
In the first round, Schmeling landed almost no punches, while Louis nearly closed one of his eyes. The fight continued somewhat in the same vein until the fourth round, when Schmeling suddenly landed a right that sent Louis to the canvas for the first time in his professional career.
In the 12th round, Schmeling landed another right, his last of the fight. Louis slumped to the canvas. He later recalled that "when the referee counted, it came to me faint, like somebody whispering."
It was Louis' first loss in 28 professional fights. When he left Yankee Stadium afterward, he hid his face behind a straw hat. Hitler and Nazi Germany rejoiced. All of Detroit was downcast.
When Louis stepped into the Yankee Stadium ring with Schmeling the second time, the world was watching. The date was June 22, 1938 -- exactly one year after Louis had won the heavyweight championship by knocking out James J. Braddock.
The rematch for the heavyweight title proved more political than pugilistic. Weeks before the fight, Louis had been invited to dinner at the White House, where President Franklin Roosevelt, feeling the champ's biceps, had told Louis: "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany."
In Berlin, the Nazi government was lavish in its praise of Schmeling. German newspapers claimed the U.S. boxing world was alive with conspiracies aimed at guaranteeing a Schmeling loss. Before the fight, Schmeling received a cable that read: "To the coming World's Champion, Max Schmeling. Wishing you every success." It was signed by Hitler.
Against this chaotic, combustible backdrop, more than 70,000 fans poured into Yankee Stadium. Louis let go with everything he had from the moment the first bell rang. He opened with a series of left jabs. Schmeling responded with the right cross that had worked so well in the previous fight. This time, however, it never touched Louis. Schmeling threw another right. It landed, but it had no effect.
Within seconds, Louis had Schmeling hanging on the ropes. Referee Arthur Donovan scored that as a knockdown. Schmeling made for the middle of the ring, but Louis caught him again. When the champ continued to pound his opponent, Schmeling's handlers threw in the towel. Donovan ignored it at first, then realized that Schmeling, indeed, was finished.
In all, Louis threw about 40 punches, knocking Schmeling down four times. The fight had taken only two minutes and four seconds. In the Schmeling camp, someone cut the wire that was carrying a broadcast of the fight back to Germany.
"I had nothing personally against Max," Louis said. "But in my mind, I wasn't champion until I beat him. The rest of it -- black against white -- was somebody's talk. I had nothing against the man, except I had to beat him for myself."
And still champion
Louis had trouble with the IRS; blew his fortune and was broke because of his carelessly generous nature; ran through four marriages to three wives; suffered a temporary mental breakdown reminiscent of his father's; and turned to working as a greeter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to make ends meet.
But the Louis legend remained, winner and still champion. Still lifelike in memory, a symbol of strength and unity so powerful, the city of Detroit named an athletic arena after him and built statues of him. Despite his faults, his ability to bring the neighborhoods of a nation together next to the radio for more than a decade, to show that a black kid from a hard-working industrial town like Detroit could take down any man of any color anytime anywhere under any kind of pressure, that amazing ability, well, it made him immortal.
In the words of legendary New York sports columnist Jimmy Cannon: "His people say he was a credit to his race. They sell him short. He was a credit to the human race."
The 1st, and last two paragraphs speak volumes.
The legend of Joe Louis begins not in the boxing ring itself, but in the neighborhoods of DETROIT. Whenever he fought, the streets of his hometown sat in silent standstill, from Black Bottom on the fringe of downtown, to the Jewish sector out on Dexter Avenue, into the enclaves of ethnics on the north and west sides. Everywhere, everything was deserted, everyone glued to the blow-by-blow accounts of his exploits crackling over the radio.
History does not accord Louis the distinction of being boxing's all-time greatest; that belongs to Muhammad Ali, although Louis reigned as world heavyweight champion longer than any other man, from 1937 to '49. But Louis played a special, central role in shaping the century's sports landscape -- and its social landscape, too. With the exception of Babe Ruth, no other athlete captivated Detroit's -- and the rest of the nation's -- sports fans more before 1950, no matter what his race.
For perhaps the first time ever, blacks and whites rooted with all their hearts for their guy. The same guy. Together. Combining power with politeness, the Brown Bomber threatened white folks in the ring only. He wasn't considered uppity, as Jack Johnson was years before, and he wasn't considered brash, as Ali would be years later. "I never thought about any race thing," he said. He was a disinterested pioneer, a simple, quiet young man with no aggressions or agendas outside the ring, making him universally popular and admired.
"I've always said that Joe Louis is not black; he's not white; he's just Joe Louis," said John Condon, president of Madison Square Garden Boxing when Louis died in 1981 at age 66. "He was one of the finest people I ever met in my life. He was a good piece of the foundation of the sport."
Louis was the perfect man for a less-than-tolerant time, the perfect man to pave the way for the greater changes to come. "He opened up boxing to every black fighter," said Teddy Brenner, a predecessor of Condon's. "He even led the way for guys like Jackie Robinson in other sports. Every black athlete that followed owes a debt of gratitude to Joe Louis."
The racial majority learned to pay attention to Louis' skills, rather than his skin color. He was not a crafty boxer. He was a puncher. A spectacular, mind-numbing puncher. A puncher with so much might, with so much efficiency, he could condense a whole night's work in a single, gorgeous moment of speed and thunder. His unabashed head-hunting and deadpan, no-gloating principle made him dark and dramatic. Of his 68 professional victories in 71 bouts, 54 were by knockout. Arenas and stadiums filled to their rafters with those eager to see him.
Louis loved to fight. He won so many exhibition bouts -- even while in the military during World War II -- that his opponents were called collectively the Bum-of-the-Month Club. Among those bums was bigotry. Much like Jesse Owens did in the '36 Berlin Olympics, Louis confounded Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Aryan ideal. His two most memorable fights were in the mid-to-late '30s against German Max Schmeling, an eventual good friend who, in the heat of the moment, represented to those outside the ring an evil oppression of unwise, unholy and unjust ideas. Ali once called Louis an "Uncle Tom" because of Louis' passive political nature. But in time, even Ali became humbled by Louis' influence.
"When Joe's in the room," Ali said, "I am not the Greatest."
Violins to violence
His name actually was Joseph Louis Barrow, and he came into the world by the light of a kerosene lamp on the morning of May 13, 1914, in the east-central Alabama town of Lafayette. He was the grandson of slaves and the seventh child of Monroe and Lillie Barrow.
The Barrow home was a windowless, ramshackle affair, like many of the sharecropper houses that peppered the red clay of Lafayette. Monroe leased 120 acres of mean farmland that grudgingly yielded some cotton and, when he got lucky, a little wheat. But it was the kind of land that could break a man, and by the time Joe was 2 years old, it had broken Monroe. He was taken to the Searcy State Hospital for the Insane, where he lived until 1959 with no awareness of his son's achievements.
Lillie, a strict Baptist disciplinarian, later married Patrick Brooks, a widower with five children. Faced with the dreary prospect of a lifetime of tenant farming, Brooks went north, liked the opportunities that seemed to be available in Detroit, and returned south to bring the Barrow-Brooks family to the Motor City. They moved in with friends on Macomb Street on the city's east side, then shifted to a Catherine Street tenement when Patrick landed a job at the Ford Rouge plant.
At age 13, Joe became a fifth-grade student at Duffield School. His academic record was poor, leaving one teacher to prophetically observe that "he's going to have to make a living with his hands." For the moment, that meant enrollment in the Bronson Trade School, where Joe was to learn the craft of cabinet making. When an injury and a sagging economy threw Patrick out of work, Joe took a job delivering coal and ice.
However bad things became, Lillie got her children to church and saw that some of them received music lessons. For Joe, that meant the violin. Before he had taken enough lessons to play even a scale, however, he secretly was using his violin money to pay for boxing lessons at the Brewster Recreational Center. When Lillie learned what her son had been doing, she encouraged him to pursue boxing. So did his violin teacher. But with Patrick out of work, there was little time for the ring. Joe left Bronson to push truck bodies on the assembly line at Briggs Manufacturing.
In 1932, Joe managed to land a bout with U.S. Olympic boxer John Miler, who knocked him down seven times and convinced him that his future lay not in boxing, but in an auto plant. But before long, Joe was back at Brewster. In his second amateur fight, Joe won by knockout after throwing just two punches.
Joe began a heavy schedule of amateur bouts and entered the Golden Gloves tournament, then sponsored locally by the Free Press. In all, Joe fought 58 amateur matches, losing only four. Lack of money forced him to substitute sneakers for boxing shoes and to use the same wrappings over and over to bandage his knuckles in the ring.
And then, Joe met a Detroit entrepreneur named John Roxborough. The man who was to change Joe's life was a study in contrasts: He began his money-making career as a bail bondsman, then went into the numbers business and, to some degree, politics. A philanthropist, he also underwrote college educations for many young blacks in the city and supported black teams and athletes.
After watching Joe spar in the Brewster ring, Roxborough took the youngster aside and asked his name.
"Name's Joe Louis Barrow," Joe said.
"That's too long," Roxborough replied. "We'll just call you Joe Louis."
Louis vs. Schmeling
Joe Louis was a hit from the beginning under Roxborough's direction. His first professional opponent was Jack Kracken, Chicago's best heavyweight. When they met July 4, 1934, in the Bacon Casino on the Windy City's south side, a local fight manager predicted a mismatch. "Kracken will kill that boy," he said. "Louis is in over his head." Louis took a little less than two minutes of the first round to knock out Kracken, an achievement that earned the 20-year-old a whopping purse of $59.
The victory began a quick rise for Louis, who in 1935 beat Primo Carnera and Max Baer, both former heavyweight champions, and became a wealthy celebrity in Detroit and soon the rest of the nation. By February of '36, he had compiled a phenomenal record: 27 victories, 23 knockouts, no losses.
But then he met Schmeling for the first time.
Max Schmeling was 31, hoping to regain the form he had as heavyweight champion from '30 to '32. He was a 10-to-1 underdog, and few were impressed with him. Only 45,000 fans showed up for the fight June 19, 1936, at Yankee Stadium. Louis spent much of his training time on the golf course.
In the first round, Schmeling landed almost no punches, while Louis nearly closed one of his eyes. The fight continued somewhat in the same vein until the fourth round, when Schmeling suddenly landed a right that sent Louis to the canvas for the first time in his professional career.
In the 12th round, Schmeling landed another right, his last of the fight. Louis slumped to the canvas. He later recalled that "when the referee counted, it came to me faint, like somebody whispering."
It was Louis' first loss in 28 professional fights. When he left Yankee Stadium afterward, he hid his face behind a straw hat. Hitler and Nazi Germany rejoiced. All of Detroit was downcast.
When Louis stepped into the Yankee Stadium ring with Schmeling the second time, the world was watching. The date was June 22, 1938 -- exactly one year after Louis had won the heavyweight championship by knocking out James J. Braddock.
The rematch for the heavyweight title proved more political than pugilistic. Weeks before the fight, Louis had been invited to dinner at the White House, where President Franklin Roosevelt, feeling the champ's biceps, had told Louis: "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany."
In Berlin, the Nazi government was lavish in its praise of Schmeling. German newspapers claimed the U.S. boxing world was alive with conspiracies aimed at guaranteeing a Schmeling loss. Before the fight, Schmeling received a cable that read: "To the coming World's Champion, Max Schmeling. Wishing you every success." It was signed by Hitler.
Against this chaotic, combustible backdrop, more than 70,000 fans poured into Yankee Stadium. Louis let go with everything he had from the moment the first bell rang. He opened with a series of left jabs. Schmeling responded with the right cross that had worked so well in the previous fight. This time, however, it never touched Louis. Schmeling threw another right. It landed, but it had no effect.
Within seconds, Louis had Schmeling hanging on the ropes. Referee Arthur Donovan scored that as a knockdown. Schmeling made for the middle of the ring, but Louis caught him again. When the champ continued to pound his opponent, Schmeling's handlers threw in the towel. Donovan ignored it at first, then realized that Schmeling, indeed, was finished.
In all, Louis threw about 40 punches, knocking Schmeling down four times. The fight had taken only two minutes and four seconds. In the Schmeling camp, someone cut the wire that was carrying a broadcast of the fight back to Germany.
"I had nothing personally against Max," Louis said. "But in my mind, I wasn't champion until I beat him. The rest of it -- black against white -- was somebody's talk. I had nothing against the man, except I had to beat him for myself."
And still champion
Louis had trouble with the IRS; blew his fortune and was broke because of his carelessly generous nature; ran through four marriages to three wives; suffered a temporary mental breakdown reminiscent of his father's; and turned to working as a greeter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to make ends meet.
But the Louis legend remained, winner and still champion. Still lifelike in memory, a symbol of strength and unity so powerful, the city of Detroit named an athletic arena after him and built statues of him. Despite his faults, his ability to bring the neighborhoods of a nation together next to the radio for more than a decade, to show that a black kid from a hard-working industrial town like Detroit could take down any man of any color anytime anywhere under any kind of pressure, that amazing ability, well, it made him immortal.
In the words of legendary New York sports columnist Jimmy Cannon: "His people say he was a credit to his race. They sell him short. He was a credit to the human race."
