Baltimore Brawler

"We used to have three institutions at the Academy," said a Navy commander. "Billy goat, Tecumseh and 'Spike' Webb. Now we have only two." Unfortunately, the Navy can do little about its loss. Tecumseh's bronze hide is still proof against the weather and the pranks of midshipmen. Replacing a billy goat is not too difficult, even at Annapolis. But time is beginning to catch up with Spike, the bald and bandy-legged little boxing coach who taught generations of officers and gentlemen to box. He has turned 65, and the rules of the Naval Academy have forced him to retire.

No one who knew him thought that Spike was ready to retire from boxing. Last week some of his old friends were enthusiastically arguing that Spike is a highly trained technical expert and ought to be shipped to Israel as Point Four aid. Spike and Israel heartily agree. Young Israeli gentlemen, they say, would do well to learn their fighting from a master.

Cocky Comer. Spike, surely a master, learned his boxing the hard way--on the streets of turn-of-the-century Baltimore. An only boy surrounded by five sisters, young Hamilton Murrell Webb did all the fighting for the family. He grew up with a bloody nose. By the time he was 14, he was tough enough to fight and win a four-round bout at the old Erica Athletic Club. He earned eight shiny half dollars, and from that night on he was a professional.

By 1916 cocky young Spike Webb was a comer, good enough to tangle in a nontitle Donnybrook with Johnny Kilbane, the featherweight champion. But before he had a chance to tackle Kilbane again, Spike was mixed up in a much bigger brawl. As coach of the 29th Division boxing team, he caught the eye of General John J. Pershing. At war's end he trained the A.E.F. boxing team for the Inter-Allied Army games in Paris. Spike has no trouble recalling the most stylish fighter on his squad: a young marine light heavyweight named Gene Tunney.

Home from the wars, Spike was hired by the Naval Academy to run its puny and unpopular boxing program. The Academy was never the same again. Spike organized a boxing team that was undefeated for eleven years. He did not rest until boxing was made an important part of the regular physical training program and one of the biggest crowd attractions at Annapolis. Once, to cut the cheering section to manageable size, the Academy made formal dress the uniform for attending fights. MacDonough Hall gymnasium was still filled to capacity.

Quaint Habit. Spike made Navy boxing his life. He taught all his midshipmen the same jabbing, skipaway style that saved Gene Tunney after Jack Dempsey flattened him for the famed long count in 1927. And he was a bug on conditioning. All Webb teams did road work before reveille; all Webb boxers developed washboard bellies. They needed them. Coach Webb had a quaint habit of slamming his fist into any abdomen within range, by way of greeting.

Over the years, in the minds of hundreds of naval officers, the Baltimore brawler with the boxer's rolling shuffle came to epitomize the ideals of the Naval Academy. But though Spike belonged to the Navy, he also found time to coach four U.S. Olympic teams. After Webb training, Olympians Frankie Genaro and Fidel La Barba went on to take turns holding the world flyweight championship. At Annapolis, meanwhile, Spike turned out such salty scrappers as Rear Admiral William V. ("Mickey") O'Regan and Submariner Captain Wreford ("Moon") Chapple.

"Spike Webb," said a reminiscent Pentagon four-striper last week, "taught you self-reliance. I guess that's the reason we liked him so much. When you were in the ring, you were on your own, and he brought out all the guts you had. He couldn't give us courage, but he could uncover what courage we had."

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