Battler

In Pittsburgh, 30 years ago, a strapping battler named James McCoy stood up to John L. Sullivan and endured, for a few rounds, the rataplan of fists as hard and heavy as stove-lids. John L. Sullivan is dead. Battler McCoy is an old man. Last week he was shuffling home from work through a lonely park when he was set upon by three weasel-faced fellows--men who, in soggy swaddling-clothes, were mewing for their mothers when McCoy was trading cuffs with the hardest hitter who ever put on a glove--thin rogues whom, in the days of his pride, he could have broken with a slap of his hand. They knocked him down with a piece of iron pipe, strove to take from his finger a $3,000 diamond ring. Unable to pull the thin gold circle from his bulking knuckle, they took whispered counsel, produced a pair of pliers, cut off the finger, escaped with the jewel.