Thinking Man's Tailback

Deep in dejection, Oregon State's Coach Tommy Prothro showed up at a booster luncheon to explain why the finest football team in the school's history had an indifferent 5-3 record. As Prothro brooded over his trials, a sympathetic partisan asked: "What's the good word, Tommy?" For the first time in days, Tommy Prothro smiled. "Terry Baker," he said.

By last week the phrase "Terry Baker" had become the all-purpose good word around the tidy Oregon State campus in Corvallis. An ambidextrous, introspective, gangling sophomore, Terry Baker has a pale pink face, an Adam's apple that dances when he talks like a walnut on a string, a curiously narrow torso and a pair of thick, rock-muscled legs. At 19, Baker is still a growing boy of 6 ft. 3 in.. 195 lbs. Right now he has the most impressive record in college football. Going into last week's game with Stanford, Baker was running and passing so well that he led the nation in total offense. Last Saturday Baker averaged a fat 5.4 yds. per carry, scored the first touchdown as Oregon State defeated Stanford, 25-21.

Doubting Demigod. Flashy as that record is, Terry Baker would still be one of the most remarkable football players in the game if he never completed a pass or made a yard on the ground. For not only has Baker wondered if Oregon State is the proper place for him--despite his status there as a demigod that would make any other player dizzy with glory--but he harbors dark doubts about the wisdom of even playing the game of football in the first place.

People back home in Portland, Ore. have long ago given up trying to figure Baker out. His father left home when Terry was seven, and he was raised by his mother, who put two other sons through college by working as a Teamster on the loading platform of a Sears, Roebuck store. In high school Baker was almost too good to be true. He was an A student. As a high-scoring forward, he took his basketball team to two city championships. Throwing with his right arm, he pitched his baseball team to victory in the state finals. Passing with his left arm, he led his football team to two state titles.

For a while it seemed that every col lege coach in every sport wanted Baker, who finally chose Oregon State after cautioning Coach Prothro that he might not even go out for football. True to his warning, Baker passed up freshman football; he was determined to get good grades in engineering. Recalls Professor Richard L. Richardson: "On his second day of school as a freshman, Terry raised his hand and asked if the homework amounted to nothing more than it appeared to be. I said 'No,' and he shook his head in disgust. Everybody in the class gave him a foul look as if to say, 'What are you doing here, fella?' " Richardson had barely recovered from that shock when Baker confided that he was thinking of switching to Stanford where the studies might be more challenging.

Souped-Up Single-Wing. But Baker decided to stick it out at O.S.C., took to tantalizing Prothro by dropping past football practice and unlimbering his passing arm in games of catch with frantically scurrying managers. Says Prothro wryly: "He'd toss those 50-yarders and I'd just wince." With his grades safely up to A, Baker felt relaxed enough to go out for freshman basketball, led the team in scoring. Then Baker showed up for spring football practice--and Prothro suddenly had a souped-up engine for his old-fashioned single-wing formation.

Off the field, Baker admits to being something of a mystic. Says a roommate: "At night when he's in bed, you hear him saying, 'Toes, relax. Ankles, relax. Knees, relax!' Baker shrugs off his nighttime ritual as being "just part of my growth theory." Says he: "When you feel growth coming on you, you better be ready for it, or you'll kill it. You've got to stretch out to meet it, sleep with the windows open, make your legs as long as you can. Be ready--that's the idea."

As a competitor, even Baker is ready to admit that he is a cool calculator. "I hate these other kids being better than me--in a class, in a game, in anything. Maybe it's just that I'm a mentally weak kid who needs praise or something. It just drives me on. But I never lose my head or do anything like slug a player. And when I lose or do badly, I never feel too bad until the next day, when I stop and study how things went."

Ready for Everything. The more he stops and studies, the less Baker thinks he will keep on playing football. "I believe I'll turn out for baseball this year and skip spring football. I'll really give my pitching arm a chance to develop. Then I'll decide if I'm a prospect for the big leagues, and if I think I'll make it, then I may quit football."

Faced with the prospect that this may be his first and last football season, Tailback Terry Baker is determined to make it one that will be remembered. "I've cleansed my mind and I'm ready to give it everything," he says. "I'd say I was going to have some good Saturday afternoons. It may sound silly to make predictions like that, but if you live up to them, if you're ready to live up to them, it's great."

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