He grabbed the decision against the strokes but it cost him. His speech was TKO'ed. Making himself understood was painful and embarrassing. Usually he didn't say much. His pride got in the way, a defiant pride that gave way only to family. I'm family, so we talked.

It was a bright, summer morning. We were sitting in my living room in 1987. I pretended not to notice when tiny streams of spittle oozed from his mouth when he spoke. They followed a deep crease below his lip, ending in wet repose on a granite chin.

His fractured words, bent out of shape, wove a pugilistic tapestry from poignant memories, both funny and sad. He looked at his watch, then at me. His lined face took on a youthful mischievous grin as he enquired. "What the hell time does this bar open'? I need a heart starter." I handed him a rye and coke. He sipped his drink and was silent, lost for a moment on a street called yesterday.

"You know Vinnie," he said, "I fought a guy in New York in 38 who hit me so hard in the belly, I could taste what I had for breakfast the day before." Then he shook his head, "Can't even remember the sucker's name...but just thinking about him gives me a bellyache." As he spoke, he lovingly caressed the knuckles of his left hand, the way a guy with the hoots massages a willing broad's thigh. "But" he mused, "Baby Doll took care of him" Baby Doll, that's what Joe called his left hook.

Looking at him, I tried to see past the remittance of a famous boxing career. Past the scar tissue, the fleshy monuments to some quack's sloppy stitching, past the warrior's lace. I was searching for the movie star Adonis who I grew up in awe of. The only trace remaining were dark reflecting jewels still alive and sparkling behind his Latin, umber eyes. I fixed him another drink and listened as he told me stories of winners, losers, rounders and squares about a time when the sweet science wasn't so sweet. When winning wasn't important...staying alive was.

My brother Joe (Slush) Bagnato was born July 19, 1913 on Bay Street, south of College in downtown Toronto. The nickname Slush was given to him by his Yiddish cronies because of his addiction to a Jewish card game of the same name.

"What was it like?" I wondered, back then growing up in Toronto the Good, the son of an Italian immigrant? Joe expressed a cold old hostility. "The fact that I was born here didn't mean much. I had a foreign sounding name that made me a dago, an Eyetye-come-lately. If you couldn't look after yourself, you got your ass kicked regularly."

"Is that why you became a fighter, so you could fight back?"

Joe didn t suffer fools, he shut me up with a condescending look and a question. "Were you born yesterday? I got in the game because I was good, damn good. And for the bread." Then he told me of his first fight, that virgin, jubilant awareness of possessing an explosive equalizer in his fist.

"I was only ten when two kids jumped me. One of them called me a dago. That's when I nailed him. I throw out my left and...Baby Doll is borne!" His voice cracked, vibrated, then found a strong mellow timber. He bellowed, sounding like an old bell that hadn't been rung in years Struggling to his feet, hands up in a classic stance exulting, "What a feeling when I tagged him! Flesh meeting flesh. !" He dropped his hands. His mouth moved but no words came out. It was as if his brain was searching for the perfect description to an indescribable exultant feeling.

A strange melancholy mood came over him but was then replaced by a crooked smile and he whispered, "It was like making love, yeah, like making love". He pulled me toward him; "You know what I'm talking about?" For a moment, the scar tissue over his eyes vanished and I caught a glimpse of the young Lothario, the pride of Toronto's little Italy. I refilled his glass and listened completely engrossed as he spoke of his rite of passage, bitterness and his introduction to reality.

I watched as he wiped an amber trickle of whiskey from around his mouth. "It was 1935. You were only three. Anyway, I'm in a semi-final in Detroit against some local kid. I'd flattened my last six opponents and the American fight mob was beginning to pay attention. On the morning of the fight, after the weigh-in, a rounder dressed like Capone and looking just as tough motions me to follow him out in the hall. The dude gives the corridor the once-over, like to don't want to be overheard. He squeezes each word out of the side of his mouth slowly as if every one cost a sawbuck, then puts it to me "Wanna make five hundred? Go in the water tonight, get me?"

I said, "Joe, you mean he wanted you to..." I le cut me off with a curt, "What the hell you think, he was asking me for a date?" So what did you do? I was sorry I asked. My brother reached out and grabbed me by the throat; "I squeezed his goddam Adam's Apple till it turned to cider and his kisser a dark blue. Then a short hook in his gut. He folded like a cheap card table with only one leg." Then Joe let go of me before I suffered the same fate as the wise guy.

Searching for my voice, I sputtered, "What happened?" He stared at me mute, took a drink, swallowed hard and continued. "I went back to the dump of a hotel where I'm staying." The look in his eyes was a silent plea for understanding. "You gotta remember Vinnie, this was Detroit in the '30s, town's full of hoods. A bullet was worth more than a life and I'm a green kid from Toronto. Understand?"

He said he couldn't get to sleep that afternoon, it was one bad dream after another but the pain in his head was too real to be a dream. He opened his eyes and saw a hood with a gun sitting on the bed. "Good, you're awake. I didn't want to blow a hole in a nice Italian boy while he was snoozing. Takes all the fun out of it. He used the Italian word for understand. "Capisce?" As he spoke, the bum beat time against Joe's head with the barrel of the biggest gun Joe had ever seen. The guy looked like someone sent over from central casting like he just stepped out of a Wanted poster. Eyes dark and dangerous. Thin smiling lips. A narrow crooked scar from the lobe of his left ear to his mean mouth. It resembled a sutured road once traveled by a straight razor. He spoke like a politician who loved the sound of his own voice his message was punctuated by the rhythmic tapping of the gun barrel against Joe's skull. "Just lay dare kid and listen (tap, tap). Tonight, first time you get nailed, fall down (tap,tap). Stay down (tap,tap) or I'll find you and blow your head off, capisce'?" Then as if to make his point, he pulled the trigger. The sound of the hammer hitting the empty chamber was minimal but to Joe, it erupted with the force of Mount Vesuvius blowing its top. The hood got up, checked his reflection in the mirror, brushed the wrinkles out of his expensive suit. He waved the gun in a goodbye gesture "See ya tonight paisan." Then he pointed the rod at Joe, said "Bang!" laughed a sick laugh and walked out the door.

Looking at my brother, I shared his hurt as he explained. "Funny, alone and scared out of my mind, all I can think about is Papa. What he said to me about being a fighter. "It'sa job. Dey pay you, you do ya best. And be proud of ya work." Joe said our Dad's words tore him apart as he dressed and headed for the arena. "I'm hoping and praying my manager would handle everything. But when I get in the dressing room he ain't there...but I'm not alone.

"That smiling bozo, the creep who carried the heavy artillery is waiting. And he's got another sweetheart with him. The guy's as big as a Mac truck." I could tell the years hadn't diminished Joe's anger, it was there in his face and gnarled clenched fist as he went on.

"Smiley greeted me with 'Hey paisan, hope you had a good snooze?' Meanwhile the big sucker with him moved behind me, his large back against the door. I couldn't figure out why the fix, hell, what's the big deal? We were just two kids getting started. Smiley filled me in."

"Nothing personal kid. Just arithmetic. Ya see, ya got a string of K.O.'s and that" he paused, "what the hell you call your left hook? Same as a broad, doll, no...Baby Doll! Yeah, that's it. It's like the papers say. Baby Doll has chilled more guys den February. Hell, ya got champ written all over ya.

The mug you're fighting is a bum. But a local bum, so der's plenty of action. Your five to one favourite, so we bet on him. You lose, we win. Simple, like one and one make two. Arithmetic, capische?"

Old hate seemed to ooze out of my brother's pores; venomous sweat filled the creases that crosshatched his bitter face. He lit a smoke. He inhaled so deeply that the tip of the cigarette shone like a small, evil red eye glaring at me. He finished his drink. I refilled his glass and waited.

Joe drank, smoked, plucked a strand of tobacco from his tongue and just sat there. "Well, for Christ sake, what did you do?" The question shot out of my mouth with the speed of a prisoner fleeing an unlocked cell. His response was laconic; "I grew up." He rattled the ice cubes in his glass, frozen reminders of what had happened.