Saturday night, the stars were shining in the Bronx.

It was clear as a bell.

The crowd streaming into Yankee Stadium was big. Not as big as Friday’s might have been, but big enough. At every entrance to the stadium, a New York Yankees employee stood taking tickets. Behind him stood a Sonny Lieberman employee checking the New York Yankees employee. And behind the Sonny Lieberman employee stood a Giuseppe Sanseli employee checking the Sonny Lieberman employee who was checking the New York Yankees employee.

Billy Constable, Jimmy Joel Jenks, and Rosie Feinstein had ringside seats, courtesy of Sonny Lieberman. As a matter of fact, all of Sonny’s employees were sitting at ringside. All except Billie Berry.

Throughout the preliminaries, Billy Constable was a nervous wreck. Jimmy Joel and Rosie were unable to do a thing about it.

“I think he’s bet too much on the fight,” Rosie told Jimmy Joel. “He’s so out of it he didn’t even say anything about poor Billie Berry.”

“Yeah, you’re right ’bout that. He really is nervous. How much did he bet, Rosie?”

“A hundred and ninety thousand dollars.”

“Mother of God,” said Jimmy Joel Jenks. “Where’d he get it?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who’d he bet it on?”

“The American,” said Rosie Feinstein.

When the Swede entered the ring, he pranced around in a circle, making a muscle with his right arm and pointing to the muscle with the index finger of his left hand. And while he circled the ring the Swede was mouthing the words, “Tunder of Tor. Tunder of Tor.” It was unclear whether anyone in the stadium had the faintest idea what he was saying.

In the first round, the Swede came out of his corner, looked hard at the American, and threw a punch that almost took the American’s head off and sent him straight to the canvas. He lay there for what seemed like forever, flat on his back, arms and legs akimbo. The crowd was on their feet. Most of the audience thought the fight was over. But the American righted himself so that one knee was on the canvas and took an eight count. With the referee pushing his fingers into the American’s face, shouting the count as he did, “One…two…three…,” the American stayed on that one knee, trying desperately to shake the cobwebs out of his head.

A total of fourteen seconds of the first round had gone by.

Billy Constable became nauseous and dizzy. He thought he might faint.

The American was hurt but not badly hurt. He stood up and spent the remainder of the round trying to get his legs to stop wobbling and hiding from the big Swede. Then, just as the round was about to end, the Swede knocked him down again. This time the bell saved the American.

The Swede dropped the American four more times in the second round and three times in the third. All the American’s trainer, Jake Munza, could do was shout at his boxer to get up. Munza yelled so loudly and so often his voice became nothing more than a pitiful squeak. The veins on both sides of his neck resembled taut cables.