I recall going to a private fight with McGinn and Jim Bagley, who was a master of slang before George Ade ever was heard of. In the latter years of his life, Joe was a teetotaler, but at the time I speak of, he would, upon occasion, indulge in the cup that cheers. It was a cold, wet, rainy night. We had to walk more than a mile through mud and wet fields before we found the roadhouse where the bouts were held. The cold rain and the mud offered a fitting excuse for a nip or two along the way—an excuse for several, in fact—and Joe became more than a little drunk. He knew it and feared the reception he would get from the boss. “Never mind, Joe,” hiccoughed Jim, “I’ll square you with the boss. I’ll write a heartbreaking story about this trip through the rain and mud and how all of us braved pneumonia and had to liquor up to save our lives.” Bagley wrote the story, giving a moving account of the privations endured by the correspondents. He told, as only Bagley could tell, of the march through the mud and rain and how the writers wandered for miles in the darkness in a vain search for the roadhouse where the fight took place. “All of a sudden,” wrote Bagley, “out of the rain and the wet and the mud and the stark, black darkness of the night, loomed a building. It was all lit up like Joe McGinn.” That is the way Jim Bagley squared Joe McGinn, if squaring with reverse English can be considered help. * * * * * The great boxing matches in the huge stadiums of the present day are marked by perfect order and decorum. They are wonderful things, but once in a while some of us can’t help longing for the days when the boxing game was sowing its wild oats. We sigh for the lost romance and adventure. Say what you want, you fellows, those were the days! Those were the good old days! A new school of boxing writer has developed in recent years, one that mixed the new with the old and thus continued to give some sense of the romance of the old prize ring days. There were writers who, like myself, had passed through the transition period and could appreciate the glamor and the thrills of those old times. Leaders of this school were Damon Runyon, Hype Igoe, “Doc” Almy, veteran of the Boston _Post_, Westbrook Pegler of the Chicago _Tribune_ Syndicate; Paul Gallico of the _Daily News_, Sid Mercer of the New York _Journal_, and Harry Smith, the dean of the California critics, who died the day of the Ezzard Charles-Joey Maxim fight in San Francisco in January 1952, at the age of seventy-six. He had been at every big fight since 1890, and was one of my dearest friends. These men stood out not merely as sports specialists but as all-round reporters. In many cases, outstanding sports writers during my early years as a journalist were recruited to cover major news events on the “outside,” such as lurid murder trials, kidnapings, Presidential campaigns, and the like.