From Head to Toe, Baker Stood Apart From Crowd - Oregon State University Athletics

COURTESY OF JOHN MCGRATH; THE

Always confident they were a step ahead of the times, the Dallas Cowboys once held a national audition to identify America’s next great kicker.

In the spring of 1970, the Cowboys’ traveling tryout camp – the “Kicker Karavan” – covered 10,000 miles, at a cost of $72,000, to test the legs of 1,400 candidates. When the last chip shot was shanked, the Cowboys determined their kicker of the future to be Mike Clark, notable only because he also happened to be their kicker of the past.

“They spent $72,000 looking for a kicker, and they wound up trading a draft choice for Mike Clark,” said the late Sam Baker, speaking for the cynical majority. “I’d like that $72,000.”

Baker had reason to believe he was worth it. The 39-year-old was four months removed from his 15th and final season of an NFL career that found him ranked fourth in career scoring.

Loris “Sam” Baker’s long battle with diabetes ended on June 5. He was 76.

Although Baker was a San Francisco native and set school rushing records as a fullback at Oregon State, he first showed his athletic prowess in Tacoma. The former batboy for Tacoma’s Johnson Paint Co. team that finished fifth in the 1937 National Baseball Congress tournament – managed by John Heinrick, its roster including future major leaguers Fred Hutchinson and Earl Johnson – Baker was educated at Lowell, Mason and Stadium. Upon quitting the NFL, he returned to Fircrest, where he and his wife Sarah raised their four daughters.

Baker’s football career mirrored the evolution of the NFL from second-tier pro sport to one that transformed a predestined winter Sunday into a veritable national holiday. He was drafted by the Rams out of Oregon State in 1952, at the advent of free-substitution rules. He retired in 1969, the year commissioner Pete Rozelle announced a deal with ABC to televise Monday night games in prime time.

Baker was coached by Curly Lambeau in Washington, Paul Brown in Cleveland, and Tom Landry in Dallas.

With the Browns, he was teammates with Jim Brown, whose presence in the Cleveland backfield assured that the ex-fullback from Oregon State would get no meaningful carries. Not that Baker was lobbying to run the ball; he was plenty busy kicking and punting it.

Given today’s climate of acute specialization, it’s rare for a placekicker to handle the additional chores of a punter. But it was just as rare during Baker’s early years in the NFL, when quarterbacks usually doubled as punters – it made it easier to execute quick kicks – and placekickers were usually linemen who embraced a chance for a breakout role in the spotlight.

Baker was prominent in ushering in the brief but fondly remembered “position” of the dual-boot threat: the punter who also kicked. Or, if you will, the kicker who also punted. His 17 field goals with the Washington Redskins led the NFL in 1956, the year he began an 11-year streak of averaging at last 40 yards per punt attempt. The following season, Baker scored a league-high 77 points – including six scored on a fake punt converted into a touchdown run.

His 45.4-yard punting average with the Redskins led the league in 1958, the same year he went 25-for-25 on extra points.

And so it went, from Washington, to Cleveland, to Dallas, to Philadelphia, where Baker spent his final six seasons and earned two trips to the Pro Bowl. By the time he retired, Baker held the NFL record of scoring in 110 straight games.

Baker’s versatility wasn’t confined to his footwork. He scored through the roof on an intelligence test pioneered (as so much else about pro football was) by Paul Brown.

“The team psychologist gave me a battery of tests – personality, IQ, capability, dexterity, you name it,” Baker recalled. “All of us on the club took them and then, later on, the psychologist had little private talks with us to explain how we did.

“The first thing he said to me when I walked in was, ‘you know, you’re not a genius. You know it, don’t you? You know it, you know it! I figured he was sore because I had a higher IQ than he did.”

Baker’s IQ – reported to be 142 – was not always considered a virtue by coaches, who astutely believed that bright guys were not the most obvious volunteers to run through a wall at the chirp of a whistle or buy into a slogan scrawled on a chalkboard.

“Life would indeed be dull if America’s football players rolled off the assembly line saying ‘yessir’ and ‘nosir’ and ‘gee, I think all the credit belongs to my teammates, sir,’” Paul Zimmerman wrote in his first edition of “A Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football.”

“It’s people like ... Sam Baker,” continued Zimmerman, “who make things interesting.”

In addition to a pair of rushing touchdowns with the ’Skins, Baker threw a touchdown pass for the Eagles. He also returned 12 kicks and punts, and caught seven passes.

And though he never got to experience the thrill of doing any of this in a playoff game – wild cards weren’t implemented until 1978 – Baker was able to participate in the emergence of the modern NFL.

In the obituary published last week, Baker was referred to as “one of a kind.”

One of a kind, from an era that’ll never be again.