“Just Enough Liebling” has a foreword by current “New Yorker” editor David Remnick. (Image by North Pointe Press.)

An indifferent student from a wealthy Upper East Side family, A.J. Liebling had an endless curiosity of all things, especially French food, press criticism and pugilism. “The University of Eighth Avenue” is a piece from the latter category though not from the New Yorker. It’s a great two-part story from a pair of December 1955 issues of Sports Illustrated, about an old-school fighter named Billy Ray, who was soon to turn 90. In it, Ray recalls the raffish, cold-blooded side of the 19th-century Brooklyn sporting scene. (Read the full article, part one and part two.) An excerpt:

“Ray grew up in the gracious old Brooklyn of Henry Ward Beecher, in which prizefighting was as much against the law as cocking mains or dogfights, but less frowned upon, since there were no Humane Societies needling the police to stop the fist fighters. Left to their own devices the police were lenient. ‘A fellow named Hughie Bart ran a great place around 1882,’ Mr. Ray said. ‘It was right across the street from Calvary Cemetery and there would be dogfights in the basement, rooster fights on an upper floor, and we would be fighting on the ground floor, all at the same time. Mourners would stop in on their way back, to take their mind off their loss. The gravediggers were old tads with beards. They’d sit in Hughie’s drinking between jobs, and when they were watching a fight you dassn’t quit, because they would split your skull with a spade.'”

See also:

• “Pete Hart’s Pavilion” (1889)