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The 'Rocky' road And now, in the sub-novice finals of the Western Pennsylvania Golden Gloves - weighing in at 115 pounds - me! Sunday, July 26, 1998 By Christopher Snowbeck, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Between the departure of a pair of sweaty fighters from the ring and the return of Kim the Hooters Girl - our "card girl" for the night - I climbed the stairs, slipped through the ropes and stood on the dingy white square of canvas.
This was the finale of my fighting season.
It came during a boxing show at Monroeville's Palace Inn on the night of April Fool's Day. But my participation was no joke - at least, I didn't intend it to be.
Boxing has always been an intellectual problem for me. I've never figured out how to reconcile my belief in principles such as peace, civility and mutual respect with my attraction to the sport.
Growing up, I was always something of a pacifist, completely rejecting the portraits of masculinity that swaggered before my impressionable eyes - Tom Cruise flying a fighter jet, Sylvester Stallone slurring "Adrian."
Still, somewhere beneath my bookish, somewhat androgynous exterior, I always harbored this perverse idea that I could fight.
There was no empirical evidence to support this belief, of course.
The closest I ever came to blows was when, during the first grade, a fifth-grader rode up to me on his bike and menacingly called out: "Hey, kid, do you want to fight!"
"No," I replied, and quickly walked away.
See, he was bigger than I was.
I always thought that if I was paired up against someone my size, I would do just fine. ... Well, to be honest, I imagined that during a fair fight - in a boxing ring, with gloves and all the accoutrements of the sport - I would surprise the world and "kick butt."
I guess that's why I finally forced myself to try boxing, to test the limits of my aggression, to venture out into the land of the tough. My six-month journey to understand the deep, dark force that compels people to box bloodied my nose, blackened my eye and let me behold the terrible thrill of violence.
And when it all ended on that fateful Day of Fools in Monroeville, I reflected on how far I had come ... and how, in some ways, I was right back where I started.
Right back at the gym, asking Michelle Underwood of the Brookline Recreation Center about the club's storied boxing program. She described the club as well as the Western Pennsylvania Golden Gloves tournament, where I could compete as a "sub-novice," since I'd had no previous fights.
Then she eyed my body and asked how much I weighed.
"Hey Chuck!" she yelled, her voice racing past photos of fighters on the wall, beyond the newspaper clippings describing champions of yore and down into the bowels of the building.
"Chuck," she called again. "I found you a 115-pound boxer."
The stereo blared with anthems of masculinity, a never-ending cycle of Queen's "We Are the Champions," the instrumental theme to "Rocky" and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger."
Scattered around the gym, young men and boys pounded away at bags hung like slaughtered cows. Stuttering thuds from onion-shaped speed bags echoed throughout the cavern as did the yells and jokes from adolescents playfully trading punches.
I stood by a wall.
Boxing coach Chuck Senft stood alone, too. As he surveyed the scene, his facial expression suggested tooth ache.
Chuck stands about 5 feet, 5 inches. His portly frame suggests his fighting days are behind him, but in running the recreation center he takes guff from no one. The only battles that trouble him involve paperwork.
There's nothing all that photogenic about Chuck's wide, oft-broken nose and his roly-poly face, but in the gym he is a celebrity, the director and star of an annual boxing production that starts in Brookline and travels across the western half of Pennsylvania. The drama culminates with the regional Golden Gloves tournament, a perennial black and blue blossom of spring.
Chuck brought the boxing program to Brookline in 1957, a time when there was no other place for kids to box.
In the 1970s, he started training teens and adults and fielded a team that challenged the best neighborhood gyms in the city. The seasons culminated with the Golden Gloves finals at the Civic Arena, where up to 11,000 people would pay to watch the fights and newspaper headlines would herald a fighter as the "pride of Brookline."
The fans don't turn out in those numbers anymore. This year's Golden Gloves tournament didn't even earn a mention in the Post-Gazette.
Occasionally, Chuck acknowledges a change.
"At one time, parents would rather have their son go out for the boxing team," Chuck said.
But, in general, he contests the idea that boxing is a sport in decline.
The public opposition to the violence of boxing - to the knuckle-scraping masculinity it seems to promote and the menacing bravado exhibited by an ear-chomping Tyson or an obnoxious Camacho - all stems from a lack of appreciation for the amateurs, Chuck said.
The glamorous glitz of Vegas and the pros contrasts with the gym at Brookline, which doesn't even look like your classic hole-in-the-wall training ground. The most startling thing about it: There is no ring.
Imaginary boundaries limit pairs of boxers to a section of the gym floor - a coach watches all practice matches to make sure no one gets killed.
But on that first night of practice in October, I listened as Chuck told our group of about 30 boys and men - ages 8 to 38 - that sparring would not begin for some time.
A quick look around the gym revealed many fighters, but few my size. It wasn't exactly a chatty group, but many of the boxers seemed to know one another from previous seasons and exchanged pleasantries. No one looked nervous - which made me a little bit more uneasy.
We would spend the first three months getting in shape and working on the basics, Chuck said.
Chuck's an old Army man and, for that reason, runs boxing workouts in a military manner: All guys standing in a circle doing the same series of exercises every night.
"Brookline fighters all have the same jab, the same hook, the same footwork," he said. "That's because we all work together."
With iron fist in leather glove, Chuck demanded uniformity every night during our workouts; practice was scheduled for twice a week but, by winter, we worked out Mondays through Thursdays.
The two- to three-hour routines started with a grueling set of calisthenics, followed by running, work on the heavy bags, ducking and footwork drills and, by January, sparring sessions. Somewhere in the midst of it all, Chuck always took time to lead us in "fundamentals."
With music blaring, Chuck would stand at the center of the gym and call out punches. Spread around in a circle, my teammates and I would respond by shooting our fists right at him.
We would practice the jab, the 1-2, various jab-and-hook combinations and sundry techniques.
With every fake blow, some of the more experienced boxers in the club emitted noisy bursts of air, like little gusts of water from a whale's blow hole. Quickly, surely, their hands shot out and then immediately returned to their temples, as if the fist movements were governed by rubber bands.
Confusion governed my punches.
Some have an intuitive sense for how to throw a punch, I suppose. For me, it was a struggle to remember all the elements: keeping your chin down, your fists tight, your elbows in and, as you punch, moving your fists and feet in unison, swivelling or bending at the waist as appropriate, darting in and out.
My progress was slow.
On one particularly painful November night, we had practiced a number of punches and combinations when we came to the deadly left jab, left hook, right upper cut sequence.
Chuck thundered, calling out, "JAB! ... HOOK! ... UPPER! ... BACK!" and everywhere, fists flew furiously.
While some nights during fundamentals I found myself either stumbling over my feet or just standing befuddled, I had been doing a pretty good job keeping up, that night, successfully approximating the virile visions around me.
But, then, before I knew what happened, it all came crashing down.
I punched someone, that night.
Me.
Somehow, a right hook landed on my eye and scraped off a slit of skin from just below the brow - a glancing blow, I suppose.
When I retired to the hallway for a drink of water and dabbed at my eye with the shoulder of my shirt, it left a speck of blood.
This was not merely the first time I had ever punched myself. No, this was the first time I had ever punched anyone. And, beyond that, it was the first time I had ever been hit.
In one glorious moment, I was both bully and victim.
Returning to the gym, I continued the workout, confident no one noticed what had happened.
It was a different story at work the next day.
As colleagues saw the gash and asked what happened, they learned of my Golden Gloves training. Some questioned how I would fare in a match, where as many as four fists could hit my head.
Others amused themselves by divining nicknames for me - everything from "Pretty Boy" and "Kid Snowbeck" to less charitable monikers:
"Chris the Ambivalent."
"Canvas Eater."
My experience sparring that winter floored me - literally once, figuratively at all times.
We started boxing three-minute rounds in mid-January and kept it up until the Golden Gloves tournaments in March.
Depending on the night, I could sometimes land punches with authority. And with the exception of one shot from a former Marine I sparred with, I learned I could take a punch.
Sometimes, in fact, I seemed a little too good at getting hit.
During one sparring session, Chuck went so far as to stop the action and get in my face, bellowing the chant I constantly heard him call from ringside: "Move your head! Don't let him hit you in the head! Why don't you move your head!"
Did he think I wanted to get hit?
This emphasis on the obvious was not unlike how Chuck taught us to throw a single jab: "You jab and then you back out," he explained. "Why? Because, you hit the man, he's gonna be mad! He'll hit back."
Or when he helped us complete our forms to register with USA Boxing: "If you come to a blank you can't fill out, don't fill it out."
But I had to be thankful for Chuck's words because, in truth, my lack of defense was a big weakness.
In February, I began sparring with Ryan, a 24-year-old who weighed 133 pounds and stood a little taller than my 5-foot-6 frame.
Our first round together began with me trying to land some left jabs and, when I failed, Ryan quickly countering with a series of solid punches right in my face.
From there it gets hazy.
I remember the bell ringing to end the first round and just as it sounded, Ryan landed a thunderous right on the side of my head.
I thought I'd been hit by a howitzer.
Before the end of the third round, Chuck offered me more advice about moving my head - "Move your head!" - and asked why, when I threw a left and a right, I never completed the combination with another left.
Fatigue was one answer. My lack of technique was another.
Chuck's constant reminders - and every punch I took - should have driven home the point that boxing is not just about "fighting tough." It's also about being cunning and precise and fighting smart.
Short of being a smart boxer, Chuck appreciated my perseverance.
One night, while chiding a younger boxer for not attending more workouts, Chuck grabbed me as I was walking past and suggested the teen-ager emulate my work ethic.
"He's like a Timex," Chuck said, adding both the "takes-a-licking" and "keeps-on-ticking" bits of the slogan.
As the weeks passed, I became more comfortable with fighting, overcoming many of the fears that plagued me before and after sparring sessions.
Whereas my first sparring match left me gasping for air and seeing in boxing a metaphor for the utter despair all of us face as we chart our lonely paths to the grave (it was a bad night), I became less melodramatic over time.
Late at night, after workouts, I would calmly sit in my living room, reflecting on my fights while applying a bag of frozen broccoli to reduce nose swelling; a bag of frozen corn placed between the shoulder blades relieved back pain.
As we moved into our last month of practice, Chuck and the other coaches tried to motivate the group to work harder.
Chuck told us about the old times, how guys would practice until 11 p.m. and would spar five or six opponents a night, three rounds each.
He told us that the year the film "Rocky" came out, a few hundred kids and young adults joined the Brookline program.
"I could have told them that year, I want you to run through that wall, and they would have tried, they were so gung-ho," Chuck said.
But with some of our guys, it seemed as if he could barely get them to walk through the door.
"The spirit was here," he said to me at the end of the season. "But now, in the last, I'd say, six years, I've got to build a new team each year.
"When someone new wins, he's satisfied. He's accomplished what he wanted to do, and he's done. Somebody who loses, they realize it takes a lot of dedication, more than they want to put into it, and they're done."
The first of four fight nights before the Golden Gloves finale was scheduled for March 21. Winners during these preliminary matches advanced to the finals on the night of April 1.
Every match fought by a Brookline fighter - win or lose - contributed points towards our team total. As the preliminary tournament nights came and went, I sat on the sidelines, wondering why I wasn't being called to fight. I wanted to ask Chuck about it - but, I must confess, I was a little relieved about sitting out and didn't want Chuck to go too far out of his way to arrange a match.
We had a somewhat lackluster showing during the preliminary rounds of the Golden Gloves, due in part to other things than our collective work ethic. Two of our boxers came down with chickenpox. And then, during an early bout, one of our fighters was kicked in the chest after being knocked down.
"I could have started a riot," Chuck said afterward. "But I figured if I started something, there could have been serious, serious consequences."
We almost had a riot a week later at the conclusion of a Golden Gloves fight card on Mount Washington.
The state athletic commission had gotten wind of the kicking incident and decided to rematch the fighters. There were no kicks this time, but some of our fans believed the opposition boxer was fighting dirty again.
Some of the more than 20 fans who followed our progress started jeering, fans for the Wilkinsburg fighter responded and when it was all said and done, all hell broke lose - almost.
"Thank God the police were there and came up because I think that guy would have beat me just for cheering," said Toni Giordano, 44, the girlfriend of one of our coaches and a leading fan.
Billy clubs were pulled, men were restrained, and about 100 spectators rushed together on one side of the gym to see what was happening - and maybe to join in if things got worse.
The next preliminary fight card - held on the following night - ended on a similarly bad note for Brookline when one of our boxers was knocked out in the first round, taking a crushing right to the head before timbering to the canvas.
He was unconscious for a longer period of time than the fight lasted.
Despite leaving the ring on a stretcher and spending the wee hours of the morning in an emergency room, Ken was OK.
He stood with the team at ringside the night of April Fool's Day at the Palace Inn in Monroeville, still hoping for victory - whatever form it might come in.
Twelve Brookline boxers earned medals that night. As a group, we won the "Outstanding Team Trophy" award for Western Pennsylvania.
Chuck was even recognized and given a plaque, although the Police Athletic League organization that ran the entire Golden Gloves tournament misspelled his name, honoring "Chuck Snift" instead of Chuck Senft.
When I was called to the ring, I calmly walked past Kim the Hooter's Girl, climbed the steps, slipped between the ropes and took my spot on the canvas.
This was the exam testing me on all I had learned:
To use my height advantage and left jab to keep my opponent away.
To draw on the wisdom and maturity of my advanced years and keep the match at a reasonable pace.
To fight smart, patiently waiting for openings while avoiding jabs and moving from side to side, frustrating my opponent until he made a mistake.
The bell rang, calling the fans' attention to the ring.
The announcer picked up the microphone and called out words I'd waited my whole life to hear: "Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Now, in the 112-pound category. . . ."
And then he said it.
"Winner by walkover, Chris Snowbeck."
I was a champion.
Victory came after blood and sweat and tears and hours upon hours of practice. But, in the final analysis, the key factor to my success was the fact that in all of Western Pennsylvania, there were no other adults fighting in my category who weighed what I did.
I suppose I will always have regrets about not having had an actual bout.
Chuck called me several weeks after the Monroeville tournament and asked if I'll be back next fall. He thinks I would have done well in a fight, and he'd love to see it happen next year.
I said I'd think about it.
Part of me would like to do it just for Chuck. He was a wonderful coach for me, always supportive while challenging me to do my best.
And part of me would like to do it just to be part of the team again.
But the truth is, I don't really like boxing.
The experience has pretty much convinced me I don't ever want to square off against an opponent again. On some level, I find fighting profoundly disturbing - which is probably why I find it so interesting, too.
My six months of training underscored a point some friends and family were quite eager to suggest to me throughout this journey: I am, primarily, a sentimental writer who dreams of being a great soup maker, not your typical tough guy.
Part of me regrets knowing I'm not a fighter; it's like accepting the fact that Santa Claus isn't real or that life is finite or that your diet really should include vegetables.
But I'm content knowing that, while not exactly "bad ass," I'm not really a wimp, either.
Besides, for the most part I'm now free of questions about my ability to box and free to consider the oddity of the sport without risking bodily injury ever again.
And so, where some living rooms feature urns containing the charred remains of loved one lost, mine houses a little trophy - a plastic figurine of a young man sporting boxing gloves standing on a pedestal, just above a little plaque.
There might be no better words to describe the ambiguous joy of my boxing experience than the concise trophy inscription: "SUB-NOVICE - WINNER."
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