Jimmy Jacobs (handballer)
Encyclopedia
James Leslie 'Jimmy' Jacobs (February 18, 1930 – March 23, 1988) was an American handball
player, boxing
manager, Academy Award nominee and comic book
and fight film collector.
, Jacobs grew up in a single-parent family in Los Angeles. He dropped out of high school before completing his education but excelled at numerous sports, including baseball
, basketball
, football
and handball
. He was credited with running 100 yards (91.4 m) in under ten seconds, winning a skeet shooting
championship and shooting rounds of golf
in the low 70s. Jacobs was offered the chance to try out for the US Olympic basketball team but declined in order to focus on handball. Jacobs was drafted
into the army during the Korean War
and was awarded a Purple Heart
.
In four-wall handball, Jacobs won his first American singles championship in 1955, defeating Vic Hershkowitz
in the final. In total, he won six American singles championships and six doubles championships (partnering Marty Decatur). He was additionally a three time national champion in three-wall handball. Between 1955 and 1969, he won every national handball competition match he played in. In 1966, Robert H. Boyle of Sports Illustrated
wrote: "Jacobs is generally hailed as the finest player of all time. Indeed, there are those who say Jacobs is the best athlete, regardless of sport, in the country." In 1970, he was recognised by the US Handball Association
as the "Greatest Handball Player of the Generation."
and Jersey Joe Walcott
's 1947 world heavyweight title fight. Wanting to judge the result for himself, he tracked down and purchased a copy of the fight. Whilst touring Europe as a handball player, he began buying up old fight films, many of which had been shipped out of America in the wake of the 1912 Congressional ban on the interstate trafficking of boxing films. Jacobs became friends with the boxing trainer Cus D'Amato
, who secretly trained him intensively for six months for a fight with world light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore
, wanting to make history by leading a boxer to a world title in his first ever fight; the bout ultimately failed to materialise.
In 1959 Jacobs went into business with fellow collector Bill Cayton
, and together they owned the production companies The Greatest Fights of the Century and Big Fights inc. He and Cayton rescued and restored rare films of such fighters as Bob Fitzsimmons
, Jack Johnson
, Jack Dempsey
and James J. Corbett
, which might otherwise have been lost forever. In 1974, they purchased the Madison Square Garden
fight archive. The result was that between them they amassed the world's largest collection of fight films (between 16,000 and 26,000), dating from the 1890s through to the present day. In 1998 Cayton sold the collection to ESPN
for a reported $100million. They also made over 1000 boxing documentaries and productions, including a.k.a. Cassius Clay
, Jack Johnson
, The Heavyweight Champions and Legendary Champions
; the latter three were nominated for Academy Awards
.
In 1978 Jacobs and Cayton bought the management contract of world light-welterweight champion Wilfred Benítez
from Benitez' father for $75,000 and guided him to two more championships and over $6.5 million in purses. The partnership ended in December 1983, when Benitez bought out his contract in order to manage himself. In 1984 they signed the 18-year-old Mike Tyson
, who was being trained by Jacobs' old friend D'Amato, and oversaw his rise to become undisputed world heavyweight champion; Jacobs became a close friend and mentor of Tyson. They also managed Edwin Rosario
, who became a three time world lightweight champion, and 1970s middleweight contender Eugene Hart
. Jacobs was named Manager of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America
in 1986.
issue from 1938, worth $10,000 each at the time of his death.
, the World Boxing Hall of Fame
, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
and the US Handball Hall of Fame. He posthumously appeared in the boxing documentaries When We Were Kings
and Tyson in archive footage.
American handball
American handball is a sport in which players hit a small rubber ball against a wall using their hands.- History :...
player, boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
manager, Academy Award nominee and comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
and fight film collector.
Handball
Born in St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, Jacobs grew up in a single-parent family in Los Angeles. He dropped out of high school before completing his education but excelled at numerous sports, including baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
, football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
and handball
American handball
American handball is a sport in which players hit a small rubber ball against a wall using their hands.- History :...
. He was credited with running 100 yards (91.4 m) in under ten seconds, winning a skeet shooting
Skeet shooting
Skeet shooting is one of the three major types of competitive shotgun target shooting sports . There are several types of skeet, including one with Olympic status , and many with only national recognition.- General principles :Skeet is a recreational and competitive activity where...
championship and shooting rounds of golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
in the low 70s. Jacobs was offered the chance to try out for the US Olympic basketball team but declined in order to focus on handball. Jacobs was drafted
Conscription in the United States
Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
into the army during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
and was awarded a Purple Heart
Purple Heart
The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those who have been wounded or killed while serving on or after April 5, 1917 with the U.S. military. The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is located in New Windsor, New York...
.
In four-wall handball, Jacobs won his first American singles championship in 1955, defeating Vic Hershkowitz
Vic Hershkowitz
Vic Hershkowitz was a dominant handball player who played from the early 1940s to the early 1960s. He won 23 amateur national titles. He was a New York City fireman. His accomplishments include winning forty national and international handball titles, including nine consecutive Three-Wall Singles...
in the final. In total, he won six American singles championships and six doubles championships (partnering Marty Decatur). He was additionally a three time national champion in three-wall handball. Between 1955 and 1969, he won every national handball competition match he played in. In 1966, Robert H. Boyle of Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
wrote: "Jacobs is generally hailed as the finest player of all time. Indeed, there are those who say Jacobs is the best athlete, regardless of sport, in the country." In 1970, he was recognised by the US Handball Association
United States Handball Association
The United States Handball Association is the national governing body for American handball in the United States, a game played mostly in that country...
as the "Greatest Handball Player of the Generation."
Boxing
A longtime boxing enthusiast, Jacobs started collecting films of boxing matches at the age of 17 after reading about the controversial decision in Joe LouisJoe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...
and Jersey Joe Walcott
Jersey Joe Walcott
Arnold Raymond Cream , better known as Jersey Joe Walcott, was a world heavyweight boxing champion. He broke the world's record for the oldest man to win the world's Heavyweight title when he earned it at the age of , a record that would be broken on November 5, 1994, by George Foreman, who...
's 1947 world heavyweight title fight. Wanting to judge the result for himself, he tracked down and purchased a copy of the fight. Whilst touring Europe as a handball player, he began buying up old fight films, many of which had been shipped out of America in the wake of the 1912 Congressional ban on the interstate trafficking of boxing films. Jacobs became friends with the boxing trainer Cus D'Amato
Cus D'Amato
Constantine "Cus" D'Amato was an American boxing manager and trainer who handled the careers of Floyd Patterson, José Torres, Vinnie Ferguson, and Mike Tyson. Several successful boxing trainers, including Teddy Atlas, Kevin Rooney, and Joe Fariello, were tutored by D'Amato...
, who secretly trained him intensively for six months for a fight with world light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore
Archie Moore
Archie Moore, born Archibald Lee Wright , was light heavyweight world boxing champion who had one of the longest professional careers in the history of that sport....
, wanting to make history by leading a boxer to a world title in his first ever fight; the bout ultimately failed to materialise.
In 1959 Jacobs went into business with fellow collector Bill Cayton
Bill Cayton
William D. Cayton , best known for helping to manage and promote Mike Tyson early in his career, was also famous for preserving much of boxing's legacy through his efforts as a film historian and producer...
, and together they owned the production companies The Greatest Fights of the Century and Big Fights inc. He and Cayton rescued and restored rare films of such fighters as Bob Fitzsimmons
Bob Fitzsimmons
Robert James "Bob" Fitzsimmons , was a British boxer who made boxing history as the sport's first three-division world champion. He also achieved fame for beating Gentleman Jim Corbett, the man who beat John L. Sullivan, and is in The Guinness Book of World Records as the Lightest heavyweight...
, Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson (boxer)
John Arthur Johnson , nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion...
, Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey was an American boxer who held the world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926. Dempsey's aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first...
and James J. Corbett
James J. Corbett
James John "Gentleman Jim" Corbett was an Irish-American heavyweight boxing champion, best known as the man who defeated the great John L. Sullivan. He also coached boxing at the Olympic Club in San Francisco...
, which might otherwise have been lost forever. In 1974, they purchased the Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
fight archive. The result was that between them they amassed the world's largest collection of fight films (between 16,000 and 26,000), dating from the 1890s through to the present day. In 1998 Cayton sold the collection to ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
for a reported $100million. They also made over 1000 boxing documentaries and productions, including a.k.a. Cassius Clay
A.k.a. Cassius Clay
A.k.a. Cassius Clay is a 1970 boxing documentary film about the former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali....
, Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson (film)
Jack Johnson is a 1970 documentary film directed by Jim Jacobs about the boxer Jack Johnson. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature....
, The Heavyweight Champions and Legendary Champions
Legendary Champions
Legendary Champions is a 1968 documentary film written and directed by Harry Chapin featuring old boxers in action. There are many scenes that show the boxers outside the ring, including some that are the only ones of their kind. Several early boxers, John L. Sullivan for example, are shown in the...
; the latter three were nominated for Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
.
In 1978 Jacobs and Cayton bought the management contract of world light-welterweight champion Wilfred Benítez
Wilfred Benitez
Wilfred Benítez , is a Puerto Rican boxer. He is remembered best as a skilled and aggressive fighter with exceptional defensive abilities who won world championships in three separate weight divisions, and was the youngest world champion in boxing history at the age of 17...
from Benitez' father for $75,000 and guided him to two more championships and over $6.5 million in purses. The partnership ended in December 1983, when Benitez bought out his contract in order to manage himself. In 1984 they signed the 18-year-old Mike Tyson
Mike Tyson
Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson is a retired American boxer. Tyson is a former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles, he was 20 years, 4 months and 22 days old...
, who was being trained by Jacobs' old friend D'Amato, and oversaw his rise to become undisputed world heavyweight champion; Jacobs became a close friend and mentor of Tyson. They also managed Edwin Rosario
Edwin Rosario
Edwin "El Chapo" Rosario was a Puerto Rican boxer. He was the WBC world lightweight champion from 1983–84 and the WBA world champion in 1986–87 and again in 1989–90...
, who became a three time world lightweight champion, and 1970s middleweight contender Eugene Hart
Eugene Hart
Eugene "Cyclone" Hart was a terrific punching American middleweight boxer who fought from 1969 to 1982. Hart never fought for the title and could not get a victory against the upper echelon fighters he faced. His best showing against a top notch fighter was when he fought "Bad" Bennie Briscoe to...
. Jacobs was named Manager of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America
Boxing Writers Association of America
The Boxing Writers Association of America was originally formed in 1926 as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York. The association's purpose is to promote better working conditions for boxing writers, as well as hold its writers to the highest professional and ethical standards...
in 1986.
Comics
Jacobs also acquired an extensive collection of comic books, having read them since his youth. His collection was thought to contain between 500,000 and 880,000 comics, and had to be stored in a warehouse. Jacobs owned six copies of a rare Detective ComicsDetective Comics
Detective Comics is an American comic book series published monthly by DC Comics since 1937, best known for introducing the iconic superhero Batman in Detective Comics #27 . It is, along with Action Comics, the book that launched with the debut of Superman, one of the medium's signature series, and...
issue from 1938, worth $10,000 each at the time of his death.
Death
Jacobs died of leukaemia in 1988. He is an inductee of the International Boxing Hall of FameInternational Boxing Hall of Fame
The modern International Boxing Hall of Fame is located in Canastota, New York, United States, within driving distance from the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown and the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta...
, the World Boxing Hall of Fame
World Boxing Hall of Fame
The World Boxing Hall of Fame is located in Riverside, California, United States, in Southern California. The WBHF is one of two recognized international boxing halls of fame with the other being the International Boxing Hall of Fame , with the IBHOF being the more widely recognized...
, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame was opened July 7, 1981, in Netanya, Israel. It honors Jewish athletes and their accomplishments from anywhere around the world....
and the US Handball Hall of Fame. He posthumously appeared in the boxing documentaries When We Were Kings
When We Were Kings
When We Were Kings is a 1996 documentary film directed by Leon Gast about the famous Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight championship match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight was held in Zaire on October 30, 1974.The film features a number of celebrities, including James Brown, Jim...
and Tyson in archive footage.