Greenfield Jimmy played in the bigs as late as '22, but by then the 18th Amendment was the law of the land, and he was discovering that his playing baseball was getting in the way of a more lucrative new career, which was providing alcoholic beverages to those who desired them, notwithstanding their legal unavailability. The old man wasn't anything but a banjo hitter on the diamond, but he could sure slug off it. As soon as he turned to the side, Greenfield Jimmy reared back and popped him flush on the chin.
JIMMY THE BOXER DRIVER
"What neighbor?" the big truck driver asked, twisting his head to catch a glimpse of this witness. Softly, Greenfield Jimmy cut in, "Oh, I'm so sorry, but my neighbor over there saw the whole thing." Livid, the big truck driver came over and started hollering down at the little old guy. The truck driver rested on his horn until finally the grandfather pulled his car over and got out. A truck got behind him coming up Forbes Avenue and sat on his tail, and Greenfield Jimmy slowed down. Greenfield Jimmy's grandchildren remember a day in Jimmy's 60s, when he took them out for a drive.
He was just a little guy, maybe 5'9", a banty rooster, but one time he went over to the Dodger dugout and yelled, "All right, you so-and-sos, I'll fight you one at a time or in groups of five." Not a single Dodger took up the offer. "Ah, rub it with a brick," Greenfield Jimmy would say whenever anybody complained of an injury. When the boxer's mother died that summer of '41, one of the things that mattered most then was to get her the closest possible plot in Calvary Cemetery to where Harry Greb already lay in peace. Joe Louis, whom the boxer loved so much, is in a lot of the pictures, but the largest single photograph belongs to Harry Greb, the Pittsburgh Windmill, the middleweight champeen, the only man ever to beat Gene Tunney. Mostly in Las Vegas, it seems, the poor bastards. The other pictures on the walls of the club cellar are mostly of fighters. She was Miss Ocean City, and Alfred Lunt called him "a Celtic god," and Hollywood had a part for him that Errol Flynn himself wound up with after the boxer said no thanks and went back to Pittsburgh. Never in your life did you see two better-looking kids. This particular picture was featured in a magazine, the boxer and the blonde running, hand in hand, out of the surf. Pictures cover the walls of the club cellar.
Not merely beautiful, you understand, but schoolgirl cute, just like she was when the boxer first flirted with her down the Jersey shore. The blonde is past 60 now, and she's still cute as a button. He still has his looks? Hey, you should see her. But you can sure see why he keeps on trying. After a couple of belts, he has been known to confess that although he fought 21 times against world champions, he has never yet won a decision over the blonde-never yet, as they say in boxing, outpointed her. "I did you a favor," he snaps back, smirking at his comeback.
"Actually, you sort of forced me into it," she says. The boxer and the blonde laugh again, together, remembering how they fell in love.
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