I was a great punching prospect who died from a fatal blow in the ring...My brother was a top baseball player...Who was I ?
yes, it was I Frankie campbell,who was killed by Max Baer in the 1930s...Max could sure punch then...
I was heart-broken when the Brooklyn Dodgers traded Dolph Camilli. Those were the days when teams stayed intact for years.
I'm almost afraid to ask your reaction when the Dodgers themselves left Brooklyn, G. Camilli actually seems to have been fairly well traveled by the standards of the era, but of course he peaked in Brooklyn, even though already past 30 when he first came from the Phillies. They seem to come from a long lived family, at least those fortunate enough to pass from natural causes. Their mother died in 1980, around age 96, their father in 1966 around 90, and Dolph himself lived to be 90, raising questions about how long Frankie might have been with us had he not suffered such a tragic fate.
I saw dolph Camilli at first base before Gil Hodges took over. Camilli was a muscular, good fielding slugger.Probably could have made a good fighter, but picked the easier sport...Great days then JG....
Did Baer really kill the guy? Or was it a case of Campbell having preexisting brain damage as a result of earlier, ongoing trauma? I think it's the latter. In those days especially doctors could not detect signs of damage and vulnerability.
That was CRUSHING! L -- ABSOLUTELY UNTHINKABLE!...As much of a betrayal as Durocher goin' to the HATED Giants.
"I feel like something broke in my head!"-Campbell to his corner between the second and third rounds during the Baer fight (Frankie actually went on to WIN the third round). No, this wasn't like Schaaf, entering the ring against Carnera from a hospital bed with brain swelling from a case of influenza, or Paret, who suffered what was likely a fatal eventuality when Gene Fullmer beat him down. Max Baer and Frankie Campbell does indeed present every indication of being a self contained event. Over the preceding two years, Campbell was undefeated with a succession of no less than 13 knockout wins in four rounds or less. His previous two outings against Les Kennedy and Tom Kirby were rough, and he had to get off the deck in the second round (but without a count) to take out Kirby in three, but there doesn't seem to be anything extraordinarily amiss in his condition entering the Baer fight. Ultimately, Frankie just got caught in a corner like Paret was by Griffith, and the initial stunner appears to have been the knockout blow, followed by at least six "free shots" to the head and body before Campbell was able to go down. The doctor who worked on Frankie that night said it was a succession of blows to the jaw which did the damage, not anything to the back of the head, nor was his head slammed against the corner post during the action. For a highly worthwhile read, Max Baer's website has an excellent, lengthy and informative article and tribute page dedicated to Frankie, and here's the link in the event any of you haven't read it yet: http://www.maxbaer.org/frankie.html
New England Patriots owner and lifelong rabid sports fan Robert Kraft had the same sickening experience as a kid when the Braves left Boston for Milwaukee in 1953, and he ultimately purchased the Pats from James Orthwein in 1994, in order to prevent the threat of their departure from the area to Orthwein's native St. Louis. (Incredibly, some sports franchise owners seemingly couldn't care less about the teams they own, such as the Ford family with the NFL Lions in Detroit. Plenty of fans in New England remember Kentuckian John Y. Brown's nightmarish but thankfully brief reign over the Boston Celtics during the late 1970s. He didn't seem to care much about basketball in general. Imagine, somebody from Rochester, New York owning Manchester United! Oh, wait.....)
i have seldom been as touched as this aricle about Frankie Campbell..Whoever wrote this piece, about Campbell and his sad demise after the Max Baer fight, was a true artist..Thanks Lobotomy for the website on your post...B.B.
Cheers, Burt. That website was created and researched by Catherine Johnson, and the copyright can be found in her name in small yellow lettering on the left hand side at the bottom of each page. From what I thus infer, credit for authorship should go to her. (In fact Burt, because of her site, I originally switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox Mozilla, since that was the only way I could watch all that great footage she had of Max on her clips page! Since then, all I ever use is Firefox!) As more posters here become familiar with all her excellent site has to offer, we might be able to get some good conversation going here as a result.
