Sport: Big Jim

When James Jackson Jeffries was in his prime, no man in the world could stand against him. His father was a street-corner evangelist, his mother a peaceful Bible-reading woman, but Big Jim was born for combat. At 16, he was working as a boilermaker in East Los Angeles. At 21, he stood 6 ft. 1½ in., weighed 212 Ibs., could high-jump 6 ft. and run 100 yds. in eleven seconds. He could hit like a jackhammer and, in the words of Gentleman Jim Corbett, "couldn't be hurt with an ax." In 1899, when he...