I started my life as a small boy running errands for a famous mobster.. I then became a famous HOF Boxer...Who was I ?
Was just tryin' to get a handle on who the fighter might be. Have some vague recollection that Barney Ross did some non-criminal things for Capone.
Yes, that is who I have too. Barney Ross was so desperate to make a buck that he even turned to Chicago's main form of earning a living during the Roaring 20's . . . Racketeering. Barney was soon busted for running illegal crap games & went to work for various gangsters including Scarface Al Capone. During his brief apprenticeship, Ross decided he liked the work & wanted to join the mob full time. The story may be apocryphal, but supposedly Capone himself, denied young Barney the entree to a life of crime. Scarface felt it wasn't appropriate for the son of a rabbi to become a made man. The story goes that he gave Ross a twenty dollar bill (more than a week's wages for many during the Depression), told Barney too, . . . Get off the streets. When Barney began to protest, Capone snarled, beat it, before I get mad!
Right you are jg..It was the great Barney Ross,who as a youngster would run errands for the infamoul Al Capone in Chicago...After Ross's father who owned a small candy store, was shot to death in a holdup,Capone told young Barney to take care of his mother, gave him afew bucks and told him to skidoo... The rest is boxing history...b.b. A good small bio of Ross was written by Douglas Century...
