THE DREAM THAT BECAME A NIGHTMARE

By Roger Esty

Before I got on the Forum,my contact with the sport of boxing was a far back memory. I'd been to one fight at the Pachanga Indian Reservation in more than 30 years. The thread has stirred up my interest again. Meeting some of the guys I used to watch in the squared circle has certainly been a treat. But some of those distant memories have come back. I'm recalling them little by little.

I wrote about how I found out about Spud Murphy's death. Spud was a local lightweight who's dad trained him in his gym on upper Broadway. I was working with a fighter named Gilbert Baptist at Juvenile Hall. Gilbert was doing some work for the Probation Department then. He was also working out with Terry Norris.

Like I told the story,I found out about Spud's death at his old man's gym. I don't want to rehash the events of that day,so I won't.I've already written about that. All I'm going to say is the old man talked about his son like he was still alive in that gym.

I remember Irish Spud Murphy. He wasn't very good. All the fellas' around the Coliseum were telling his father to let the kid go. Spud wasn't a strong kid. He lost a lot of fights to nobodys.

I'd been away from the boxing scene for a while before I met Gilbert Baptist and used to watch him train with Norris at old man Murphy's Gym. He named the gym after his deceased son. "Spud Murphy's Gym."

When I found out that the Commission had yanked Spud's license because the cat scan came out negative,it bothered me that his father would let him work out with the fighters still. I guess the kid collapsed in the shower inside the gym. When I think about it,it makes me blue. That shouldn't have happened. The old man was living a dream through his son that became nightmare. Nightmares never go away.