Talking Over Old Times : Jimmie Reese, 85, and Jimmy McLarnin, 82, Compare Notes on Baseball, Boxing

Standing on first base after singling for the New York Yankees in 1930, 25-year-old Jimmie Reese felt real fear for the first time in a ballpark.

“Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig hit in the next spots behind me,” he said. “When those lefties pulled shots my way, all I got was a half-second flash of white. Sometimes their drives would clip my shirt-- swish! --before I could begin to duck. It was the only time I’ve been terrified.

“Babe suggested I hide behind the first baseman and let him get killed. I gave it some serious thought.”

Sixty years later, the Angels’ James Harrison (Dunk) Reese is the dean of major league coaches. Reese, 85, who broke into pro ball as a batboy with the Frank Chance-led Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League in 1917, remains a supple, sinewy 6 feet and 172 pounds. He is conditioning coach and fungo-hitting specialist for the Angels, whose manager, Doug Rader, wasn’t born when Reese was a long-retired second baseman. “He’s no oddity,” Rader says. Angel owner Gene Autry says: “He’s a physical-mental marvel. Jimmie beats me. I’m only 82.”

Connie Mack spent 66 seasons involved with major league baseball; Reese is in his 73rd season. Steady as a metronome, until he was sidelined by heart trouble a few months ago, he hit fungoes, at the rate of about 25,000 a season: 100 and 200 feet, elusive, catch-me-if-you-can warm-up fly balls to Angel players.

When Reese was born, in 1904, Ty Cobb was in the minors. Babe Ruth was a waif of 9. Henry Ford was still trying to build his first Model-T. A cleanup swinger named Carrie Nation was destroying saloons with her ax. Says Wally Joyner in the Angel clubhouse: “ Honus Wagner was playing when Jimmie broke into pro baseball. Oh boy.”

In 1924, at 19, Reese was a $150-a-month second baseman for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, advancing in 1930 to the Yankees at a high price. That was a memorable year. Playing part-time, the rookie batted .346. And Babe Ruth finally found a roommate who wouldn’t squeal to the bosses on his nocturnal wanderings. The two became pals and stayed close even after Jimmie left the Yankees for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Two decades after that, Reese became known as “king of the fungo,” the most pinpointedly accurate user of a skinny, 27-ounce, flat-sided hickory bat in the country. Once, in Seattle, on a challenge, he hit a 3flagpole 150 feet away on his first try.

“He can knock a grasshopper off a leaf,” former Angel Nolan Ryan would say. “And Dunk’s as fine a man as you’ll ever meet. A sweet guy.”

Ryan named one of his sons “Reese” after his friend. Joe DiMaggio, 76, notes: “I’m proud of Jimmie.” Reese was asked to throw out the first ball at the 1989 All-Star game--the 60th, but still a quarter-century short of Reese’s age.

Across Los Angeles from Reese’s home near UCLA, there is Jimmy McLarnin in Glendale. At 82, he is believed to be the oldest living former world prizefight champion of any weight. He is 82. The welterweight king of the early 1930s defeated the best in a classic age of 147-pounders, earned close to $800,000 in 17 years, defied New York and Chicago mobsters and fixers who sought to cut in on his earnings and survived intact in brain and body to become a celebrity golfer.

The former “Baby Face” McLarnin weighs only three pounds more than his fighting weight, can still shoot 80 at golf and make a speed bag hum. He’s a Boxing Hall of Famer in two countries--the United States and Canada.

Born in Ireland, McLarnin came out of Vancouver during the Jazz Age to win his first professional U.S. match in 1924. Top fighters whom Jimmy beat and lost to are long dead: Tony Canzoneri, Barney Ross, Sammy Mandell, Lou Ambers, Billy Petrolle, Pancho Villa, Benny Leonard, Young Corbett III.

“I was so poor when I first hit California,” he says, “that I caught my fish dinner of clams out of San Francisco Bay. Harry Greb and Jack Dempsey himself encouraged me to keep going. I got tough enough hanging in there that Louis Kid Kaplan broke my jaw in three places . . . and I didn’t know it for two years, when a dentist gave me the news.”

McLarnin was characterized by his fierceness, his sudden knockouts--such as a two-round victory over Ruby Goldstein; a his three-round victory over lightweight champion Al Singer; his one-round victory in 1933 in Los Angeles over Young Corbett for the welterweight title.

Ring magazine editor Nat Fleischer called his three bouts with Petrolle--McLarnin won two of them--as savage as any matches he ever witnessed. Petrolle had to be carried out after all three. Says McLarnin: “For a few hours, I didn’t know what place I was in, which was the Polo Grounds.”

Also known as the “Irish Lullaby,” McLarnin never allowed his wife, Lillian, to watch him in action, because he bled easily. His three fights within one year of 1934-35 with Barney Ross were particularly memorable. “Ross was truly great,” McLarnin says. “But I didn’t think he deserved the decision on two of our little mixes.” Their series, grossing $473,712, made McLarnin rich.

McLarnin invested wisely and remains a wealthy man. Also, a very healthy one.

Reese, too, is quite well off. And since the two never had met during their combined 93 years in baseball and boxing, it seemed fitting that they be introduced. Here’s how it went between the two reigning elders of their sports:

McLarnin: We’ve reached an elephant’s age. When I tell writers that Gentleman Jim Corbett gave me boxing lessons in 1926 they don’t believe it, so I show ‘em photos of Corbett teaching me how to counterpunch. And they still think it’s a gag.

Reese: Wally Joyner thinks I’m out of the cave age. I saw Walter Johnson, Rube Walberg and Pete Alexander pitch. Played with or against such as Jimmy Foxx, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Dazzy Vance. World War I was coming on. The auto speed limit was 15 m.p.h. . . . 73 years ago.

McLarnin: A good bar drink with free lunch was what--two bits? A new Ford or Olds went for $390. Radio in homes was just coming in when I started fighting for dough in 1923. Age 16.

Reese: I was a McLarnin fan long before you won the world title. Can remember seeing you in Oakland when I was playing for the Oaks in the Coast League. You beat much bigger fighters.

McLarnin: Well, I was a 105-pound flyweight from Belfast, Ireland, with a jab. And far from smart . . . and it took two years to get that jab right.

Reese: The Pancho Villa fight--do you mind if I ask about that, Jimmy?

McLarnin: No. That was on the Fourth of July, 1925. Non-title. Used to be I couldn’t talk about it. I gave Villa quite a shellacking. A tough, game kid, Villa. He died eight or so days later . . . an awful thing. But then doctors said he’d died of an infected tooth.

Reese: You weren’t blamed?

McLarnin: Not much was said. Later, Max Baer killed Frankie Campbell in a San Francisco fight and caught hell for hitting Frankie after he was on the ropes, helpless. I always told myself that I could get knocked off, too.

Reese: What happens in a case like that? What’s the fighter thinking?

McLarnin: He’s out of his mind. Crazy to win. Going only on instinct. Blame the referee when a death happens. Sometimes it’s the boxing commission to blame--allowing mismatches. The promoters, they don’t give much of a damn . . . long as it’s payday.

Reese: Another matter . . . in 1930, when I was with the Yankees, it was around New York that gamblers and crooks had boxing in their pocket. Bob Shawkey, our manager, warned us not to ever speak to anyone who even looked like a mob guy.

McLarnin: You heard it straight. I had a great manager, Pop Foster. I was the first fighter from the West to go into New York--that was in ‘27--who didn’t pay 10% of his purse to the gangsters. Jack Legs Diamond, Owney Madden, the Capones, Gyp The Blood . . . they cut a piece of many top boys. Some who objected had their hands busted or wound up half dead in an alley. But Pop refused to roll over. I fought champs like Tony Canzoneri, Barney Ross, Lou Ambers, Benny Leonard, Kid Kaplan. And kept every dime of the $50,000 to $60,000 purses that Mike Jacobs and others paid me.

Reese: Foster or both of you could have been killed.

McLarnin: Pop was a Victoria Cross winner for England in World War I. All guts. He died at 81 and left me $245,000, his life savings, the dear man. I loved him.

Reese: Talking of money . . . it’s small change now, but when the Yanks brought me up from Oakland in 1930 as a double-play combination with Lyn Lary, the price was $125,000. It was supposed to be a big league record at the time for a cash transaction. I looked at the check and asked for a small piece of it. Cal Ewing, the Oakland boss, laughed at me. Not a nickel for Reese or Lary. Today everyone gets a percentage cut. However, the Yankees paid me $9,000 for my rookie year. There were men in the majors then making $200 to $300 a month.

McLarnin: You were a millionaire.

Reese: Yep. I roomed in New York with Lefty Gomez at the Edison Hotel. A big room and bath cost us $2 per day. We got $5 per day meal allowance. Now it’s $60 and going up. Ballplayers of this day need more food than we did, I guess (laugh). They’re hungrier than we were. Eight million dollars a season isn’t enough.

McLarnin: Babe Ruth used to come into Dinty Moore’s, a fighter’s hangout. He was a fight fan. Asked me to show him a few moves, which I did . . . like slipping, not ducking a punch. Ruth had very fast eye-to-hand reactions. He hadn’t grown the big belly then.

Reese: Babe needed a boxing coach. He got into a few scraps with Ty Cobb. At Detroit one time a war broke out . . . Cobb came charging in from the outfield and Babe came off the bench. They collided like two freights, each went flying a different direction. Guess you could call it a push. But there were times when Babe was sucker-punched. There were people who wanted him out of the lineup.

McLarnin: Did you ever wonder why ballplayers never take up pro boxing when they’re young and teachable? Facing fastballs up around the head takes the same guts and reaction time that ducking punches takes. And it isn’t that they’re not naturally angry, like a fighter must be. Look at all the ballpark fights they start. Billy Martin would have made a good ring fighter . . . a born puncher.

Reese: It’s kind of odd. Baseball and boxing have been around since the 1870s. But the only ballplayer I know of who seriously tried the ring game was Art Shires.

McLarnin: I remember Shires. He won a couple of matches and said, “now get me Gene Tunney.”

Reese: He called himself “The Great Shires.” He knocked out his baseball manager, Lena Blackburne, and got ambitious. He was a big guy, played first base for the Chicago White Sox in the late 1920s. Hit over .300 a few times. But Art struck out looking when it came to the fists.

McLarnin: A bum. I’d have flattened him, even at 60 pounds lighter.

Reese: Let’s just say that they use different gloves in the two sports. They don’t mix, never will.

McLarnin: I’m not so sure. A lot of talent is wasted. Maybe it’s the time angle. I was a damned good shortstop as a kid. Had some ballclub offers but didn’t want to spend a lot of years in minor leagues. As a fighter I made it much faster. After about 65 bouts I beat Young Corbett for the world championship--a KO in one. Wound up with around $800,000 won, overall, in 77 matches. In pre-inflation dollars.

I’ll tell you a secret. All fighters have some coward in them. They don’t like to get slugged, and their faces caved in. It takes a special person to overcome that. Ask (Angel Manager) Doug Rader. He once had about 20 pro fights under the name of Lou D’Bardini, didn’t he?

Reese: And got out of it P.D.Q. Doug says he lost all 20 of them. Jimmy, was the fight game tougher, more demanding, when you were in it than now?

McLarnin: Much more so. Mike Tyson--he’s a juvenile on defense. The boys from Corbett and Dempsey to Tunney to Marciano and Louis would have used him for a chopping block. Promoters, managers used to let it get very dangerous in there. Many paid for it. Two straight middleweight champs, Harry Greb and Tiger Flowers, died at 32 or so years old after minor surgery . . . Kid McCoy went crazy, spent years in prison. Billy Papke was a champ. Suicide. Ernie Schaaf died after beatings from Primo Carnera and Max Baer. Remember Les Darcy from Australia? A good one, died in bad shape. Baer was a “catcher.” Died at only about 50. People got killed away from the ring, like Stanley Ketchel and Battling Siki, both shot. I was lucky to get out of the racket alive. Without what Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom called “conclusion of the brain.”

Reese: I notice that your rear knuckles are sort of moved back. . . .

McLarnin: Near to my wrists. I had three pretty active goes with Billy Petrolle. They called him the “Fargo Express.” Hit like hell. In our 1930 fight I couldn’t remember a thing from Rounds 2 through 7. One of my best fans was Jimmy Walker, mayor of New York. They led Walker out of Madison Square Garden in tears after Petrolle beat me up.

Reese: But you asked for a rematch as I remember.

McLarnin: Sure I did. I couldn’t stand to be licked. And won both of two more wild ones we had. Those times I figured out Petrolle and made him pay.

Reese: When I was Babe Ruth’s roommate, he used to go to your matches. He liked the way you swarmed over everybody.

McLarnin: What was it like being Babe’s roomie?

Reese: I’ll remember it until I’m 100. Babe was a revolving door. Here’s a story or two you haven’t heard. Babe was superstitious. Once, when we were fooling around, he stuffed me into a locker and fastened me in. Then he went out and hit a homer. Back I go into the locker next day. Another homer. That proved it--the locker with me in it was lucky. For four straight days I had to climb in that box, until the streak ran out. Anything Babe wanted, he got . . . including taking prisoners.

Once, in St. Louis, his wife ordered me to drive him from the Coronado Hotel straight to the stadium. “No stops,” she said. No doubt Claire had heard stories of Babe’s other hobby--which wasn’t playing poker. We went out a side door of the hotel toward his 16-cylinder Packard . . . and there was a lady in a parked car. Babe whispered, “We’re taking a little detour.” We followed her several miles to an apartment house. Babe told me to read a book or two while he was busy. He and his hostess went into another room. An hour or so later he came out puffing. Lit a cigar and said we’d better scram or be late for the game.

Infield practice was on when we arrived. Manager Bob Shawkey said, “Hi, Babe.” To me, it was “Reese, where the hell have you been?” Shawkey wanted an explanation through me that would pin down my buddy. But earlier Babe had told me, “the hell with Shawkey, don’t tell him a thing.” Shawkey had to do something. He came up with, “Reese, I think you’re bad company for Ruth to keep.” I all but fell over. Babe thought it was a howl.

Many a time he’d be gone all night . . . check into our road room at 5 or 6 a.m. . . . have a beer while he went through a stack of phone messages I’d taken--mostly female voices--and go right back out the door by 7 a.m. . . . headed for another appointment.

McLarnin: Did he have a preference--blondes, redheads, brunettes? Reese: Didn’t matter. He liked them all and he had dozens of them in every city. He had this notebook with phone numbers. It was packed. Sometimes I’d wait outside some boudoir while he made trips back and forth. On each time out, he’d coast a bit, smoke a stogie. When there were five or six stogie butts in the tray he’d give me the word--time to take off.

Reese: You know that he also had 1,517 career singles, don’t you? That’s against 1,356 extra-base hits. He could hit one-baggers as well as almost anybody. Nobody remembers that Babe could lay off homers, punch through holes.

McLarnin: How many home runs would Ruth hit per season if he was playing today? What would they have to pay him?

Reese: Well, his slugging average was .690, still the record. I expect he’d hit 70 to 80 homers. Could be more if he cut his drinking and held at 215-220 pounds. That was Babe’s best weight when he hit 312 out of parks from 1926 thought 1931. Today he’d have a longer season to work with. Pitchers couldn’t control him with their best breaking stuff. He saw all that and murdered it. Nobody around now has his timing and bat speed--heck, only two men have had 50 or more homers in the past 25 years.

Also, the rule up to 1931 was that if a ball left the park fair but then curved foul while the umpires could still see it, that was a foul ball. That doesn’t apply anymore--and Babe lost a dozen or so of those each season.

McLarnin: What about his income?

Reese: Can you imagine a “Babe Ruth Hour” on a network? For salary, $10 million per season and $50 million for an extended, three- or four-year contract is a good guess. They’d need a Brinks truck. Probably the whole league would have to share the bill. There’d be millions more in side stuff. As for charging for an autograph, no. Absolutely not. Babe never would take a dime directly from any fan.

McLarnin: When I was young there were big headlines out that Ruth was dead, killed in a crash . . . or so I remember.

Reese: That was around 1920, outside Philadelphia. He went off the road, flipped clear over. Totaled his car. Early editions had him dead. Babe didn’t have more than a banged knee. He hit a few trolleys, too, but didn’t break anything important.

McLarnin: That happened to me, too--being dead, I mean. I was in against the great Barney Ross in 1935 for a $60,000 purse at the Long Island Bowl. Leaving L.A. I changed planes at the last minute. And the one I was listed on crashed at Kansas City. Everybody on board was killed. Headlines came out that McLarnin was dead. At a Chicago stop, I walked into the Palmer House. The Hollywood producer, Hal Roach, was in a barber chair, reading the story. . . . He yelled and jumped three feet. We were golfing pals. I didn’t know about the K.C. crash. So it was total confusion.

Reese: Hating an opponent--that’s a factor which seems built in with hockey and growing in football. Baseball hates come and go. Pitchers with the habit of throwing at a man’s head probably cause more hard feelings than anyone. Get skulled and you don’t forget it, ever. How about in prizefighting?

McLarnin: That’s different. A guy bangs on your head all night and you don’t hate him. That’s his job. There’s a bond between fighters . . . most came up hungry from poor families. Usually their managers don’t care about their welfare. If they wind up punchy, that’s too bad. Fighters have shared a lot of pain. In a way there’s a love feeling between them. Before the bell you’re out to ruin a man. But there’s also respect on both sides. I admired the men I boxed, only disliked two or three. Compared to some people who’ve run the game for many years, your opponent is a fine person. He’s got the guts to get in there, hasn’t he?

Reese: How do you feel now? At your--make that our--age?

McLarnin: Ready to dance and prance. Peppy. I travel all over, meet some good folks. McLarnin is remembered by a lot of them. I sign autographs. Bob Hope calls me up . . . asks if I’m the illegitimate son of John L. Sullivan. What I don’t like is being a curiosity. Some people feel that old age makes you a freak. How are you doing?

Reese: I’ve hit around 1.5 million fungoes over the years. . . . Placing the ball barely within reach of fielders. It’s a great conditioner. I protect my main bat, keep it wrapped. It’s the oldest bat in baseball.

McLarnin: I’ve watched you at the Stadium before games . . . you never stop moving. . . . I think that if a man starts tuning himself at 35 and holds to it, he can be physical to 80 or 90, even longer. I worry the doctors. They can’t find anything wrong with me, a bunch of punches later. Around me I see old athletes who are flabby. They gave up long ago.

Reese: It’s easy to quit on your body. What men over 40 should do is work out daily for 30 minutes on an exercycle. Start with five minutes and work up. If you’re cramped for space at home, run in place. Put some zip in it when you’re conditioned. Get the knees high.

McLarnin: Jack Dempsey lived around the corner from where we’re sitting. He cut his own grass, washed his cars, jumped rope, did a lot of hiking. And lived to be 88. Jim Thorpe never worked out, died at 65.

Reese: Outside of some heart trouble I’ve rarely been ill. I swallow handfuls of vitamins every day, eat ‘em like peanuts. As to drinking vodka, which I see you do, what about that?

McLarnin: My liver hasn’t complained since 1934, when I retired. Of course you need some philosophy. I go by what James J. Corbett told me more than 50 years ago. Jim was a mass of class. He said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow. Keep your left out, your chin in and your ass off the canvas.”

Reese: That puts it quite well. Did you say Corbett?