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Former Upper Merion star QB Bobby Baker going into Pa. Sports Hall

MEMORIES? Bobby Baker certainly has his share, even after so many years. He also has the stories to go with them. And he's always got one more to tell. At least.

MEMORIES? Bobby Baker certainly has his share, even after so many years. He also has the stories to go with them. And he's always got one more to tell. At least.

"It doesn't seem like it's been that long," he said. "It's funny how things go. It's all good. But no one knows my name now. That's ancient history. How about Billy 'White Shoes' (Johnson, of Widener and NFL fame)? Now that's a name. But people (today) will go, 'Who?'

"We were just a bunch of kids having fun. And we had so much fun doing what we did. Every day, I feel like my life's been blessed. Because of that time."

From 1970-72 he was the quarterback at Upper Merion High School. Childhood friend Bobby Thomas was his favorite target. They set state records for passing and receiving that mostly stood until the game changed in the 2000s, earning the nicknames "Mr. Fling" and "Mr. Cling." Baker went to Florida State, got injured his first year and transferred to Temple, where he could never win the starting job. Thomas ended up at Nebraska as the next Johnny Rodgers and had a good career, but not a great one.

For many, they'll remain forever linked.

"I run at Upper Merion track almost every morning around 5, before work," Baker said. "It really seems like it happened yesterday."

On Friday night Baker is being inducted into the Montgomery County chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame at the Valley Forge Casino in King of Prussia. He's been asked before and declined, because he wanted to go in with Thomas, who became a lifetime military man and has been living in Japan with his wife and children. Finally Baker agreed. But only because Willie Thomas, Bobby's mother, will accompany him to the ceremony.

"She's my date," Baker said. "I spent so much time at their house when we were growing up. It just seems right. Honestly, she's the reason I'm going.

"(Bobby and I) have a great relationship. But we don't talk like we should. He's worse than me. Whenever he comes back to town I'll get a call at like 10 at night. He'll go, 'Hey, where you at?' And I'll say, 'I'm sleeping.' Then we'll figure something out."

They usually did.

There was the Thanksgiving game in 1971 against Norristown, in a driving rainstorm, when he threw a late 43-yard touchdown to Thomas and then ran it in for the two-point conversion that gave the Vikings an 8-7 win. And the game at unbeaten Abington a year later, again in wet conditions that forced the postponement of 39 other games in the Delaware Valley. UM was losing 18-0 after three quarters. But Baker and Thomas went off in the closing 15 minutes to pull out a 27-24 victory. And don't forget the Big 33 all-star game against Ohio in Hershey the summer after their senior season.

"There's so many memories, they all sort of become one after a while," Thomas told the Daily News in a 1987 interview on the 15th anniversary of the Abington comeback.

Tony Dorsett was on their side at the Big 33. But Baker and Thomas were the stars of a 21-19 win that Baker remembers for another teammate.

"We lost our center a couple days before the game," he recalled. "So (UM) coach (Fran) Murphy gets Russell Desimone to replace him. He's like 5-8, 180, tough as nails. He was a wrestler. And he has to block Gary Jeter, this huge dude who went to USC and the NFL. And nobody gave us a chance. They were laughing. It was in the papers, how I'm never going to get a pass off. That night, Russell crab-blocked Jeter. He didn't touch my shirt once. And in the locker room, the three of us are sitting in one corner and the press is all over us. I can still see it today. Three knuckleheads from Bridgeport. And it started with Russell snapping the freaking ball."

Desimone passed away suddenly on Saturday. His funeral is also Friday.

"It's been a rough week," Baker said. "A lot of emotions. How can I get through this, with such a heavy heart? I hope I don't lose it . . .

"Bobby would call me and maybe I'd be down the shore. So I'd tell him, 'Listen, call Russell and I'll meet you at his bar (that Desimone owned). Tell him we're coming.' And he would close the bar and cook something and we'd sit in the back room BSing for hours. We never talked football. That's what we did. He was my center since the seventh grade."

Murphy died in 2015.

"I thought he'd be there forever," Baker said. "It gets you thinking. You never know."

Baker said Murphy's teams had been successful running the ball, but that he adapted to the strengths of his players.

"It wasn't just Bobby,'' Baker said. "We had a good read offense. Our tight end caught like 50 passes. (Murphy) could have put in a wishbone and we would have done that. But we were pretty good at that offense. The rest is history.

"We played basketball, all day. We looked for games. But we took a football to the court and between games we'd throw it around. I was 6-1, which was big for a quarterback back then. We didn't smoke dope or drink beer. We played ball."

Baker got his master's degree at Temple. He was a teacher in Philadelphia for a while, but "it was too slow" for him. He got into the construction contracting business, and now works in sales for one of the area's leading commerical roofing companies. He also spent five years in Bermuda running the Navy's recreation department. Along the way he helped coach as a volunteer at Upper Merion and later West Chester University for Bill Zwann, who was a quarterback at Archbishop Carroll when Baker was playing.

"You find out it's a small world," Baker said. "It's amazing how many people you meet who influence you and come back into your life again at some point."

Like, for instance, Bruce Arians, whom he first met way back when at a football camp, when Arians had a ponytail and beard.

"You know, the hippie look," said Baker, who was floppy-haired himself. Later he became a graduate assistant for Arians at Temple, although Arians didn't recognize him at first. And the recruiting process put him in contact with some legendary figures.

"Believe it or not, (Nebraska's) Rich Glover and Johnny Rodgers came to school to recruit us," Baker said. "It was crazy. We'd get a call from the office to come down to see Coach Murphy and you'd turn the corner and there's Joe Paterno. 'Oh, hey.' Then you'd go watch film with him. A week later you'd go down and there's Woody Hayes. Bobby Bowden, who was at West Virginia, came up every Friday and ate lunch with us. We had no idea. We thought everyone does that . . .

"When we visited Florida State, we'd just left an ice storm back here. Down there they were playing frisbee outside. I met Gary Huff, who was taken by the Bears after Bert Jones was taken by the Colts. I told Bobby on the plane ride home that I was going to Florida State. I'd seen enough. There was no ESPN or any stuff like that. You saw a game or two on TV each week. That was it.

"I was working at the King of Prussia Mall stocking shelves and a got a tap on the back from a guy with an Arizona State cap on. He said, 'I'm (coach) Frank Kush, and I'm in the area. Would you like to come see us play?' So I was out there on the sideline for their spring game when Danny White was their quarterback. He didn't play, but I watched him play for the baseball team in the afternoon. He was an All-America shortstop or third baseman. I don't remember what conference they were in."

It was the Western Athletic. The Sun Devils wouldn't join the Pac-10 until 1978.

Anyhow, the road has brought Baker to Friday night. He intends to soak in every moment of it. And share some personal thank yous.

"It humbles you," said Baker, who spends a few months each winter in Florida. "It's about me, but it's not about me. It's a time to give back. That's all I'm going to do. I just hope I don't get too choked up. I just want to tell everyone how it happened."

Because it sure sounds like he had some kind of a time.

@mikekerndn