The Game:Jack London's Ranch Album

Jack London's Ranch Album

The Game
Boxing was Jack London's favorite sport. His interest began in the early years when he and one of his close friends, Jim Whitaker, were sharing talents . . . Whitaker's expertise in boxing and Jack's knowledge of how to get stories sold. Jack's interest never waned. Wherever he went, boxing gloves always went along, and he was ever ready to put them on with anyone. His favorite sparring partner was Charmian. They boxed nearly every day. They boxed at home, all the way to the Solomons Islands on the Snark, from Sydney, Australia to Ecuador on the Tymeric, and from Baltimore to Seattle on the Dirgo in 1912. It was on the Snark that they had the most fun. In the morning they put on their bathing suits, boxed for a full hour, threw buckets of salt water on one another, and went below to dress for a day of work and sailing. This constant boxing with Charmian gave Jack an excellent defense, for he couldn't strike back as with a man. However, he would box any man, in deadly earnest or for a few rounds of sparring.

His interest didn't stop with his own boxing. He was an avid spectator at every professional boxing match he could get to, preferring to be there as a reporter so he could be assured of a ringside seat. And it wasn't for the brutality of the fights either. He enjoyed the science of boxing, where man was pitted against man, but he hated bullfights, where man's superior intellect destined the slaughter of the poor bull, and he hated hunting with a rifle, which negated any possible sport that could be involved.

Jack wrote The Game, a boxing story, and it was serialized in Meptropolitan Magazine April-May 1905. It created headlines when critics claimed the story was unreal . . . that no fighter could be killed by hitting his head on the canvas. Jack replied he had seen this actually happen in the West Oakland Atheletic Club. The furor died down considerably when Jimmy Britt, lightweight champion of the world, reviewed The Game for the San Francisco Examiner and said, with a reproduction of a letter from Jack, "With nothing more than the above letter to assure me that Jack London is strictly on the 'level' and nothing more to guarantee me that he knows 'The Game' than his description of his fictional prize-fight, I would, if he were part of our world, propose or accept him as referee of my impending battle with Nelson."

The Game is certainly an epic on pugilism." Jack didn't referee the fight, but on September 9 he went to Colma and reported it for the Examiner.

A Pictorial Biography of Jack London - Russ Kingman

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