Max?s new friend had spread the word all over town about the young giant, who had laid him out in the parking lot that night?
Galt, California 1925
You would never know it today, but in 1925 the land along the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay still looked a lot like the Old West. There were herds of cattle roaming open grasslands. Real cowboys watched over these Porterhouse steaks on the hoof. Max?s father Jacob Baer was a skilled butcher and had no trouble finding jobs in the area around the little towns of Hayward, Galt and Livermore. Jacob was a big man and as a youth had toyed with the idea of making a living in the ring. Back in the day, he had gone several rounds with Jim Jeffries and once fought a draw with Tom Sharkey. But as a family man, the unreliable money in boxing and possible injuries pushed him toward a steadier trade.
His son Max worked on the Twin Oaks family ranch and in the slaughterhouse in Murray County. Carrying those huge slabs of meat around all day helped the young Baer develop a strong body by his sixteenth birthday.
One Saturday night, outside a roadhouse, near Galt, Max and some friends had an idea. A local tough guy and cowboy named Eddie Overholt always kept a jug of White Lightning in the back seat of his Stutz convertible. At sixteen, Max was the biggest guy in his crowd at 6?3? tall and around one hundred eighty pounds. His friends dared him to take the bottle and share it with them. Overholt was known to be a tough hothead. No telling what he would do to Max if he got caught reaching into the back of Jack?s car. The Stutz was never locked, due to Overholt?s scary reputation.
Like most teenagers, Maxie felt he couldn?t back down in front of his friends. So against his better judgment, he took the bottle of corn liquor from the car and passed it around.
Later, when Overholt came out to get a snort from the bottle, he found it gone. He looked around and found some of the teenagers snickering at him from across the parking lot. Eddie walked over and asked which one of them had taken his bottle. All of Max?s friends suddenly backed up, leaving him standing there alone in front of Overholt.
Eddie was over six feet tall and weighed a solid two hundred and twenty pounds. He was a full grown man of twenty-five. Since Baer was the biggest kid there, Overholt thought he was looking at the ring leader. (Tradition tells you always to take on the leader in a street fight first. It sometimes gets the others to back off or run away.) Suddenly, Eddie charged in and threw a right hand at Baer?s head. Max instinctively took a step back and the punch missed by just inches. Baer stepped in and threw a left of his own to Overholt?s jaw. He knocked the man down! Eddie was enraged to suddenly find himself on the ground. He jumped up and threw a left?right combination to Max?s jaw. Both landed but had no effect on the inexperienced Baer. Max just stood there, shook it off and slowly began to smile. The boy suddenly realized he could take a good punch from a street fighter like Overholt. Encouraged, Max looked for an opening of his own and threw a looping overhand right to Jack?s nose, which now began to gush blood. Overholt again went down. It was this same right hand punch that would later make young Baer world famous. Eddie didn?t get up this time. He lay on the ground very still. Frightened by what had just done, Max quickly reached down and helped Eddie up. If his mother, Dora Baer, found out what he had just done, there would be hell to pay! You see Dora was six feet tall herself and took no nonsense from her children. Max quickly looked at his clothes to see if anything was torn. Mom worked too hard to buy him decent clothes. She had warned him time and time again to stay out of street fights.
Meanwhile, Jack looked Max over and said, ?You didn?t really steal my bottle, did you? Well anyhow, I swear I have never been hit like that by anyone or anything. You ought to go into boxing.?
There began a friendship that would last for many years. Max had never thought of boxing as a career. Just a few years before, his older sister Francis, also six feet tall, had been protecting him from bullies in the school yard. Now suddenly he had just knocked out Jack Overholt, one of the toughest men in town!
The next year the Baer family moved the short distance back to Livermore. Max?s new friend had spread the word all over town about the young giant, who had laid him out in the parking lot that night. Max began building a reputation in Livermore as someone with a future in the ring. He started to go to the gym and work out. He didn?t really know how to train to be a boxer. He would just rush a sparring partner and try to connect with that right hand. What was missing now was a good trainer. There is an old saying in sports, ?You can?t put in what God left out.? Luckily for Max Baer, Dora and Jacob had left nothing out! He found a local trainer, Percy Madsen, who tried but failed to teach him the simple fundamentals of offense and defense. Later he hooked up with Ray Pelkey, a trainer at a gym in Oakland, California. But Max was a tough nut to crack. He would always remain right hand happy. He was a natural hitter, never a boxer. You never knew when Max was going to catch a guy with his right. It would be lights out and the fans loved it!
The local kid from Livermore was now on a long journey, to the heavyweight championship of the world. Max Schmeling, Primo Carnera and Jimmy Braddock were still a long way off. But more than that, he would become an American icon throughout the 1930s.
