INTERVIEW
P66
AMA GRAND NATIONAL CHAMPION BRAD BAKER
(Above) Baker hangs his leathers at
Ben Schenk's impressive little race
shop in Eatonville, Washington.
(Right) The style of a champion.
(Far right) Home sweet home is
now in Eatonville near the base of
Washington's Mount Rainier.
If you're at the Baker homestead looking for a Walmart, the
closest one is 17 miles away. If
you're looking for the 2013 AMA
Grand National Champion, you'll
now find him in the "big city" of
Eatonville (population 2758) – an
hour and 15 minutes north and
20 or so miles from the base of
Washington's most notable landmark, Mount Rainier.
Baker lives in Eatonville in a refurbished home that sits just up
the road from his long-time sponsor and family friend Ben Schenk
(of Schenk Racing Enterprises),
but the drive to the family resi-
dence and racetrack he grew up
on is one that he makes often.
"It's beautiful, right on a river
and it's got Springfield TT dirt
so it's a really nice and fun racetrack," Baker says.
Most of us are who we are at
least partly because of where we
were raised. So it makes sense
that a young man who went to
the same school from kindergarten to 12th turned out to be downto-earth, modest and well mannered. It also worked out kinda
nice for a Grand National Champion to be.
"The town that I went to high
school in… you'd come into town
and a mile later you'd be out of
town," Baker said. "It was a good
thing for me being gone a lot for
racing. The school I went to was
K through 12. I went from preschool to when I graduated all
in the same building. With all the
same kids and pretty much all the
same teachers. A teacher that
was one of my teachers in middle
school ended up my principal
when I was in high school, but
it was a good deal to have good
relationships with all the people
who taught me in school. That
way when I needed to take off
for a couple of weeks to go racing, they understood that, ' Hey,
