Sport: Rocky Retires

As a little kid, he was something of a weakling and a crybaby. Even after he toughened up to hold his own in boyhood brawls on the vacant lots of Brockton, Mass. (pop. 65,000), Rocco Francis Marchegiano had little taste for fighting. He dreamed of big-league baseball, and he grew up to try just about everything else—ditchdigger, dishwasher, candy mixer, truck driver, snow shoveler and, in 1943, soldier. In the Army, Marchegiano discovered that as a soldier he made a good prizefighter. A civilian again, he tried amateur boxing, and did so well...

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