Jack Dempsey vs Joe Louis

Off your posting name, I assume you are American, so I will use a baseball analogy. In 1936, when the Baseball Hall of Fame opened, Ty Cobb and not Babe Ruth recieved the most votes. The voters were the men who had seen both play. By 1950 when the AP picked the best player of the first half century, they picked Ruth. By 2000, Ruth was generally judged and placed way ahead of Cobb. Now, were the writers of 1936 really the best judges? They are the ones who saw both of them and unlike boxing, there is no film that helps with an evalutation. Do you think we should judge Cobb the better player off the 1936 opinion? Both men had finished their careers.

I remember reading an interview with an old timer back in the sixties in which he was questioned on why he thought Cobb was better than Ruth. He replied that Cobb was the better bunter. The writers of 1936 valued 'inside' baseball and considered home runs a distortion of the game which rewarded power over skill, and so voted.

 

Be careful with these types of level-headed posts, you'll only be accused of worshipping a "myth" and being in denial.

BTW, didn't you know that Ali, Holmes, Marciano et al. were always taking on surprise opponents on 30 seconds notice ?

 

But what about the main point? Do you think we should consider Cobb better because those who actually saw the two of them play judged him better?
Or can we arrive at a different judgement by using different criteria?

 

Thanks.
I know it only too well.

:good

 

Well as a fairly hardcore baseball fan I'll point out that Babe Ruth had only retired in 1935 and there was still some thought that he might return to playing (if you're a modern baseball "stat-head" fan you'll note that Ruth was still a very productive hitter at the end of his career - his 1934 full-season OPS+ was a whopping 161, and his limited play in 1935 still let him put up a 116). For this first election active players were allowed on the ballot, but some sportwriters thought only retired players should be eligible.

Further, the difference in votes between Ruth and Cobb were insignificant. There were 226 total ballots distributed for votes that year. Cobb's name appeared on 221, Ruth's on 215. At the time of voting Cobb was the all-time leader in hits by 700 hits, the all-time leader in stolen bases by more than 150, the all-time leader in total bases (Ruth was 2nd), the all-time leader in total times on-base, and the all-time leader in career batting average, a distinction he still holds to this day.

Simply put, there can be no doubt that Cobb, retired for 10 years, was a slam-dunk Hall of Fame player - and five voters STILL left him off the ballot! Ruth, recently retired with whispers of a return, was left off 11 ballots - still indefensible, but let's not go overboard with intepreting the meaning of this slight.

 

Just to pin you down--how much weight to you give the opinion of the writers who saw both? Would you defer to their judgement yourself and rate Cobb over Ruth? even if you otherwise felt Ruth was better, perhaps because he was both a top positions player and a top pitcher.
I'm just interested in what you think.

*Mendoza---if you read these posts, I would be very interested in knowing your opinion on the Ruth versus Cobb issue and the opinions of the 1936 writers.

 

So Ruth had just retired and might come back. Couldn't the same arguments be used concerning Louis versus Dempsey in 1950?

But there is no doubt that the writers of 1936 were probably more impressed with Cobb's much higher batting average than the typical 'stat-head' baseball fan or expert would be today.

 

It is not only the men who saw Dempsey who were voting in 1950, it was men who were boys when Dempsey was champion and a boyhood idol to many of them. These men were in their 30's and early 40's in 1950. Humans are human and it is difficult to be objective with or critical of a boyhood idol.

And, yes, I think Dempsey had achieved a legendary status he probably did not have in 1928 and which Louis would not achieve until the 1960's or so.

 

But you're talking about two very different things here - being voted into a Hall of Fame, versus being declared "The Greatest" by some measure. The Hall of Fame had specific standards and those standards were still evolving - note that Lou Gehrig, perhaps the greatest 1B of all-time, was on that same ballot and only drew 22% of the vote. Does that mean that the voters thought Gehrig a mediocre player? No, Gehrig was still an active player at the time, and many voters thought it premature to enshrine any active player, even an obvious great like Gehrig. Eventually the baseball writer's association agreed upon the current standards - 5 years retirement, at least 10 years in the big leagues. Before that was the formal standard, each writer made their own standard.

In determining "The Greatest", there is no limitation on how long one must be retired, or indeed if a fighter could still be active. I just don't think you're making a fair or accurate comparison.

 

Oh, sorry if i said or implied this about you, but i was talking in general.

What i meant was that a lot of people put Dempsey very high in their top10 mostly based on legend but hardly knowing the substance behind it.

Considering you didn't answer my question, i will help you:

Of my last 25 threads, 2 were about Dempsey.
Of my last 50 threads, 3 were about Dempsey.

And one of them is the recent "Who should rank higher, Dempsey or Johnson?", hardly one aimed to criticise him.

Furthermore, the threads had substance, a lot of arguments and weren't "Quitali Quitschko is a *****" threads.

I never said that politics played no role at all. As Fogey argumented though, a lot of the evidence shows that Wills was held on a leash. If the fight was so impossible to make, then why did they keep promising him the fight if he got by a certain opponent?

Regardless, fact remains that Dempsey did not fight the #1 contende for all that time.

Yeah, he did and i claimed exactly that.

Jesus christ. How often do i have to repeat this? I have already said that it is merely a factor to consider when looking at the entire picture, not the sole reason to say his chin is questionable.

Don't be silly, where did i claim that Willard was in the top10 ranked by anyone? I never have and i never will. I'm glad you recognise how bad he was, though.

Dmt, we're talking about nearly one hundred years ago here. You couldn't see fights on the television because there was no television. You couldnt' read about or look up results of fights or even training camps on the Internet. A lot of people were illiterate. I read a while ago that 65% of all African Americans over 21 in Missisippi were illiterate in 1920. How are they supposed to read a newspaper report?

And how many people do you think actually saw Wills fight? As i said before, you couldn't watch them on TV or download them, and travelling was not as easy or cheap as it is now. The living standards were much lower.

However, if there was more demand on Dempsey-Wills, then this only reflects even worse on Dempsey.

Well, if you read my posts then you'd know that the point is not just that he refused this fight, but the main point is that he was booed and gave boxing a black eye, despite it being a black opponent! Where was that dreaded color line now? The crowd certainly didn't seem to know about it.

And neither did Dempsey's management as they kept promising Wills a shot.

 

The newspaper article doesn't give any indication that *Dempsey* was unwilling to fight. Naturally Dempsey's management opposed it, and it's mere common sense for them to have done so. Any insinuation otherwise is nincompoopery.

I'd boo too. I paid my money for a sparring bout and the promoter screwed me out of my entertainment by trying to double-cross a young, up-and-coming fighter generously donating his time for the cause.

Promoters have been giving boxing black eyes since the bare-knuckle days. I'm not going to look for a fainting couch after reading about this botched exhibition.

Where was Dempsey's scheduled opponent? The one he agreed to fight? What of him?

Where was the promoter when the time came to inform Dempsey's management of the change in opponent? The newspaper article claims the Dempsey team wasn't aware of the promoter's attempted chicanery until Jeanette was actually in th ring.

And yet you still flog this baloney as if it means anything about Dempsey. Preposterous.