At the Beach, a Sport With a Beat : Ex-Boxer Has Fitness Routine in the Bag

Standing in the muscular shadows of the body builders and health enthusiasts, 56-year-old John Romero didn’t look like an athlete. His stomach protruded from a loose-fitting shirt and his breathing was labored from a bicycle ride along Venice’s Ocean Front Walk. Even his shoulders, which once supported a 400-pound lift, sagged a little as he stood in the breeze.

Gazing at the young faces around him, the former boxer and weightlifter acknowledged that his glory days were past. But a transformation occurred as he hooked his tattered speed ball to a metal post and hit it with rapid-fire jabs that echoed throughout the athletic complex.

Romero the relic suddenly became the Romero the “speed bagger,” a man who could still dazzle the crowds by banging the small leather bag faster and better than anybody else along the sandy patches of the Venice Recreation Center.

“I’m out here ever day, rain or shine,” said Romero, a grandfather of five. “I’ve been coming here seven days a week for six years. I guess I’ve been here too damn long, because everybody knows me as the guy with the bag.”

A retired farm worker and serviceman, Romero has a small but steady following. His audience is usually composed of youngsters on summer break who seem intrigued by the site of a man diligently hitting an inflated rubber ball wrapped in leather.

Onlookers invariably ask for a turn and Romero finds himself explaining that the small bag, a training tool commonly used by boxers, requires agility and hand-to-eye coordination, not brute strength. Located at eye level, it is supposed to help a boxer learn to keep his hands up and improve his coordination. Because of the pounding motion, Romero said, it requires a steady and measured punch.

Romero’s frame straightened considerably as he approached the bag for a demonstration. His hands were wrapped in gauze and his head was cocked back. His chest was thrust skyward and his tongue was clamped between his teeth. With his elbows thrust out, he began a rhythmic pounding with the outer edges of his hands, shaking the concrete below and turning the bag into a blur.

“It’s just a sport,” Romero said. “But you have to practice and practice. You’re not going to learn in a day, that’s for sure. And you’re not going to learn in a week.”

The New Mexico native said he never considered making a career out of “hobbies” such as boxing and weightlifting. As a boy, he worked in various farm fields with his family. Barely fluent in English, he joined the Army at the outbreak of the Korean War and was quickly assigned to the demolition squad.

When he wasn’t practicing English or hunting for mines and booby traps, Romero relaxed by competing on the Army boxing team. He couldn’t remember his record, but described himself as a good boxer. Asked about his most memorable experiences in wartime Korea, Romero recalled a couple of boxing matches and the time he stepped on a live mine. “I just stepped on top of it,” Romero recalled, smiling. “Later, they told me it would have exploded with a little more weight on it.”

Romero moved to Venice at the end of his Army hitch. He toyed with weightlifting long enough to become modestly successful, once pressing 400 pounds, but said that the thought of spending all of his time under heavy weights wasn’t as appealing as the ideaof punching a speed bag.

Today, Romero and his sister share a small Venice house that has no telephone. He has lived on a military pension of $475 a month since the mid-1970s, when doctors discovered a liver disorder. Romero said he begins each day by riding out to the Santa Monica Pier. Occasionally, he goes fishing. Most of the time, however, he turns up at the Venice recreation area by midday.

Within minutes of his arrival, Romero plucks a speed ball from the basket attached to his black bicycle. After filling it with air, he attaches it to the post and starts pounding without a warm-up. His skin is bronze from the sun and his arms looked leathery as they twirl in steady motion.

The onlookers come and go. After watching for nearly 30 minutes, one beachgoer asked Romero how long he stayed each day.

“Until I get tired,” Romero replied, without missing a beat.