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Article Last Updated: Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 9:52:43 AM PST
Night that would haunt boxing
By Jeff Faraudo, STAFF WRITER
FOUR YEARS later, he would be boxing's heavyweight champion of the world. With stunning victories over Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium and Primo Carnera at Madison Square Garden, he would be draped in celebrity.
He would dine with glamorous women and make his movie debut in a starring role alongside Myrna Loy in "The Prizefighter and the Lady."
Max Baer -- who barely a year before was making 25 cents a day slopping hogs -- soon would be on top of the world.
But on the afternoon of Aug. 26, 1930, the 21-year-old from Livermore sat alone in a San Francisco city prison cell. Just hours earlier, doctors declared dead Frankie Campbell, whom Baer had bludgeoned in the fifth round of their bout the night before at San Francisco's Recreation Park.
Baer, labeled "the Livermore butcher-boy fighter" by the San Francisco Chronicle, was facing manslaughter charges.
While Baer sat in his cell, fight promoter Ancil Hoffman posted his $10,000 bail. Much of it came in the form of several huge bags of quarters, half-dollars, $1 and $5 bills -- Baer's $9,171.63 portion of the fight's gate receipts. When the clerk meticulously counted all of it, Baer was released.
The fame he would later gain was nowhere on the horizon. Baer's problems were just beginning.
Even before his Aug. 25, 1930, bout with Campbell -- brother to baseball star Dolph Camilli -- trouble simmered.
Baer had won 23 of his first 26 fights -- nine with first-round knockouts -- all in a span of barely 15 months. Campbell entered their clash having won 14 straight fights.
Then, on the day before the fight, Baer tossed sparring partner Tillie Herman from his camp after learning Herman allegedly had been sent by Campbell's manager to teach Baer a style that would set him up for defeat. The incident gave the fight an edge, especially after Herman wound up working ringside as Campbell's
chief second.
Baer weighed 194 pounds, and Campbell, who was said to be fighting at 185, checked in at just 179 on the day of the bout. That disparity, no doubt, contributed to Baer being installed as a 2-to-1 betting favorite.
A crowd of 15,000 at Rec Park watched as Baer decisively won the first two rounds. In the second, he slipped to the canvas, and referee Toby Irwin sent Campbell to his corner.
Baer popped to his feet almost immediately, however, and sprinted across the ring toward Campbell, who was facing out to the crowd, perhaps talking with someone he knew. Baer delivered a crushing blow from behind that knocked a tooth from Campbell's mouth.
Newspaper columnists ripped Baer for poor sportsmanship, but the sneak attack was legal. And Campbell seemed unaffected -- the third round was perhaps his best.
In the fifth, Baer cornered Campbell and delivered the blow that changed the fight. Campbell immediately slumped but not to the canvas. The corner ropes held him up in a sitting position, and Baer's non-stop delivery of perhaps a dozen more shots to the head prevented Campbell from falling forward.
Irwin, the referee, just watched. Campbell, spewing blood from his ears, nose and eyes, was defenseless. But the fierce assault went unchecked.
Finally, Irwin pushed Baer away, and it was over. Campbell crumpled to the mat, a piteous heap.
Was Irwin asleep at the switch? Or was the referee aware of rumors of heavy betting that Campbell wouldn't last five rounds and perhaps was unwilling to impact the cash flow by stopping the bout in the fifth?
"I never heard that, personally. But in those days, when gangsters controlled a lot of what was going on in boxing ... I don't put anything out of reach," said Max Baer Jr., the fighter's son who later starred as TV's Jethro on "The Beverly Hillbillies."
Amazingly, there was no ambulance at the scene, and it took 30 minutes for one to arrive. Finally, too late, Campbell was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital, where three doctors worked on him overnight but ruled against surgery.
At 11:45 a.m. the next day, Campbell was pronounced dead.
"Campbell's brain was knocked completely loose from his skull," Dr. T.E. Tilman told reporters. "If it had been a case of one cerebral hemorrhage or two, or even three, we might have saved his life.
"But his brain was literally one huge mass of bruises. There was nothing to be done."
Baer, by all accounts, was distraught.
"Max is heartsick," said J. Hamilton Lorimer, his manager. "He can't sleep, and he can't eat. He tells me he doesn't want to fight again."
Said Max Jr.: "He was an uneducated kid who was doing it for the money. He didn't think people died from this sport. "They were all poor -- this was the bottom of the Depression. He got $35 for his first fight, and he just wanted to fight the next night."
Besides being held on manslaughter charges, Baer faced scrutiny from other sources. The state Athletic Commission began an investigation, and Gov. C.C. Young appointed a five-man committee to conduct its own inquiry. A grand jury considered leveling charges.
The state's boxing commission suspended Baer for a year and lifted the licenses of others involved with the bout. Irwin's attempt at an explanation was he was blocked off by the ropes on one side and had to rush all the way around the fighters to stop the bout.
The grand jury accused Irwin of "negligence and inefficiency," and recommended to Gov. Young that Irwin and boxing commissioner Charles F. Traung be banned for life. Irwin responded by threatening a defamation suit.
Four months later, after all charges were dropped, Baer's boxing license was reinstated. For a while, at least, he wasn't the same fighter, and he lost four of his next six bouts.
Legendary fighter Jack Dempsey then took an interest in Baer, streamlining his punching style and helping to ease his guilt.
Baer won the world title in 1934, lost it a year later, and retired by the end of the decade with a record of 72-12, including 52 knockouts.
He died at age 50 in 1959, having never fully escaped the tragedy of Aug.25, 1930.
"My father was not a violent man. His personality was really gregarious," Max Baer Jr. said. "He would cry a lot (over Campbell's death). My mother told me my dad used to have nightmares, even 20 years later."