NONFICTION - July 9, 1995

SPARRING WITH HEMINGWAY and Other Legends of the Fight Game by Budd Schulberg (Ivan R. Dee; $25; 256 pp.) Nobody is neutral. Either you love boxing or you hate it. Either it’s the most elemental and ennobling of contests or it’s the cruelest sport, never mind riding to hounds, the blood and bicuspids of ice hockey or “keeping a girls’ weight down to 69 so she can swing from a metal bar,” as Mike Downey volunteers. Budd Schulberg leaves no doubt as to his camp, citing a “simple, indomitable fighting animal . . . ferocious and capable . . . in there alone with only the speed and force of his fisted hands, the durability of his jaw and ribs . . . plus the decisive intangibles, character, intelligence, pride, spirit--only these for weapons.” More than any other sport, prizefighting has seduced the major writers of their time, back to Milton, even Homer: “With clashing gauntlets now they fiercely close / Their crackling jaws re-echo to the blows. . . .” Lord Byron was a follower and practitioner. Conan Doyle, GBS, Joyce Carol Oates, for heaven’s sake. First-rate but flawed were Jack London (racist), Hemingway (pretentious), Mailer (ingenuous). A. J. Liebling and Red Smith were simply the best, with Schulberg right behind. The author of “The Disenchanted” and “On the Waterfront” fell quite naturally into the rhythm of the ring. Visitors to the Hollywood home of his father, producer J. P. Schulberg, included Tony Canozneri, Mushy Callahan, Jack Dempsey; Fidel LaBarba and Art Aragon were best men at his wedding; he co-managed Archie McBride, tussled with George Foreman, rumbled with Papa. Bringing expertise and empathy to this collection of essays, Schulberg swings from the high drama of the Marciano-Moore title fight, at once savage and cerebral, to the unspeakable tragedy of Speedy Sencio, battered into jelly because of a manager’s greed and now a blind attendant in a men’s room. He recognizes the need for reform (but never abolition) while savoring the classic bout, “epic in form and mythic in content.” Besides, he notes, “if our civilization is indeed declining and if it finally falls, it will not be because Joe Louis clobbered Max Schmeling or took the measure of Billy Conn.”