Jerry Izenberg talks about his 70-year journey in sports
Jerry Izenberg has always been a fighter even when he didn’t realize it battling his way past the lined up bullies at the Blessed Sacrament Church and School.
By Tony Paige
New York Daily News
It was the fight of the (previous) century.
And the great white hope was victorious which seemed odd since the winner was a man of color.
Heavyweight champ Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, avenged his knockout loss to Max Schmeling in front of 80,000 crazed fans at Yankee Stadium on June 22, 1938. The fight lasted just over two minutes.
Fifteen miles to the southwest, seven-year-old Jerry Izenberg listened to the bout on an old, large radio (no TV back then) with his dad Harry, mother Sadye and sister Lois. They rooted for Louis, were not fans of Nazi Germany’s Schmeling and they were Jews.
The year 1938 had strong connections for young Izenberg. There was the Louis-Schmeling fight, Hank Greenberg chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record (60) and the exposure of the Nazi concentration camps.
Izenberg has a memoir out (his 15th book) covering all of that entitled, “Baseball, Nazis & Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark.”
If the title seems a bit long, good, because the 92-year-old Izenberg, the Columnist Emeritus for The Star-Ledger (formerly the Newark Star Ledger), has seen and experienced a lot more than we ever will.
And what better time to reminisce than the 85th anniversary of the Louis-Schmeling rematch. He remembers minute details from that historic night.
“My father said nobody’s going to bed,” recalls Izenberg sporting an impish glee and stylish goatee over a Zoom call. “Everyone’s coming to the living room where the big radio was. He points to my mother and sister and says you too. We’re going to listen to the Louis-Schmeling fight tonight.”
And what a fight, as Louis, knocked out by Schmeling in the same Yankee Stadium ring two years previous, tore into the German right from the start.
“Clem McCarthy is the announcer with that gravelly voice. He says the fighters are now in the ring and my father jumps to his feet and the bell rings,” says Izenberg as the fight comes to life in the living room of the family home at 80 Shanley Ave. in Newark. “My father is throwing punches and cursing. My father is my hero, so I’m throwing punches and cursing.
“My mother grabs me by the arm and says, ‘Language, Language, Language.’ It kind of took the edge off the night, but our guy won.”
Izenberg has always been a fighter even when he didn’t realize it battling his way past the lined up bullies at the Blessed Sacrament Church and School. He lost many a fight and found out why he started out as a punching bag as he walked home.
“The sidewalk in blue chalk said, ‘All Jews are kites,’” he remembers. “I knew I couldn’t fly so I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was all about.
“I asked my father and boy did he tell me. He said it was written by an illiterate chazer [pig].”
Izenberg is proudly Jewish and that didn’t stop him from being one of America’s most decorated sports writers.
He is one of only two daily newspaper columnists to have covered the first 53 Super Bowls and 54 consecutive Kentucky Derbies, plus the last five Triple Crown winners.
Heck, he covered Muhammad Ali when he was known as Cassius Clay at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
As time passed, Izenberg got to know both 1938 combatants and found out Schmeling was not a Nazi.
“When he lost to Louis, they sent him to the front lines in Crete,” states Izenberg with a chuckle. “When they realized that Schmeling was going to lose, [the Nazis] cut the radio feed to Germany and played [Richard] Wagner.”
Schmeling, who became a millionaire as the head of Coca-Cola in Germany, paid for Louis’ funeral in 1981.
Residing in Henderson, Nev., with his wife Aileen of 45 years and still writing in his 73rd year as a journalist, Izenberg is also a Korean War vet while his father fought in WWI.
