CityView Magazine

68 | October 2015 T wenty-three-year-old Rocco Marchegiano came to Fayetteville, North Carolina in March, 1947 with a carload of friends from his hometown of Brockton, Massachusetts and big league dreams. Ambitious, even fearful of a marginal life, the Army vet- eran hoped to escape the limited opportunities available in his home town to a high school dropout. He had already dug ditches, worked on a coal truck and labored in a shoe shop— as his father had for decades. Young Marchegiano wanted to be a ballplayer. He was good enough to get a tryout with the minor league Fayetteville Cubs, but not good enough to make the team. Mar- chegiano had, by professional baseball standards, a weak arm. e irony will not escape boxing fans. at "weak" right arm would become world famous for its power. Marchegiano returned to Brockton and pursued another dream, another way out of anonymity. And with another name—sort of. As Rocky Marciano, he would become one of the best known athletes in the world, winning the biggest individual title in sports—the heavy- weight championship of the world. Before he died in a plane crash in 1969, Marciano would appear on television with Ed Sullivan, share stages with other Italian-American icons like Joe DiMaggio, and meet presidents like Dwight D. Eisenhow- er and fellow Bay-Stater John F. Kennedy. Marciano was the dominant heavyweight of the 1950s. Aer winning the title in dramatic fashion, he defended it in epic battles—sometimes bleeding, swollen or up from the canvas, but always, endlessly punching until victory. He achieved the highest knockout percentage of any heav- Rocky Marciano's Fayetteville Ties The rock star boxer's less than stellar baseball career BY DAN TRIGOBOFF sports Photos courtesy Stanley Bauman Photograph Collection, Stonehill Archival Collections Baseball player turned Heavyweight Champion: Rocky Marciano

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