I can tell you the exact date I first met Nick Baker. It was Oct. 30, 1982, so just about 41 years ago. I had just started working a few weeks earlier for the old Gloucester County Times newspaperx, and I was assigned to cover the Colonial Conference XC meet at Gloucester County College.
A Haddonfield runner named Blair Murphy won the boys race, and I talked to Blair and Nick about the race and ran back to our office excited to write one of my first newspaper articles ever. I wrote what I thought was a compelling story, filed it and left the office feeling pretty good about myself.
Later that day, I got a call from the sports editor explaining to me that Haddonfield isn’t in Gloucester County and our paper doesn’t cover schools in Camden County and I never should have written that story.
Oh well. It was too late to write anything else so the story ran. In the ensuing years, as I got to know Nick, we would always laugh about that, how I had written a story about one of his runners that never should have been written.
Nick died Saturday morning after battling lung cancer. He was 70. He’ll be missed terribly by everyone who knew him.
When I think about Nick, the first thing I think of isn’t the decades of coaching success, the 20 state XC titles, 21 state track titles, 35 sectional XC titles, the South Jersey-record XC dual meet winning streak, the individual state champions and record-setting runners he worked with, the countless Coach of the Year honors he received or Hall of Fames he was inducted into.
The first thing I’ll think about is that laugh and that smile. Because Nick was never defined by the unparalleled success he had as a coach, and he had the most genuine smile you’ll ever see.
Track and cross country were a big part of who he was, but more than anything he was just a great guy. A terrific dad to Colin and Courtney, a loving husband to Maureen, a devoted teacher and mentor to literally thousands of young people and a tireless advocate for the sport he loved.
I can tell you the exact date the last time I saw Nick. It was Aug. 16, so just about two months ago. I ran into Nick and Maureen sitting with Steve Shaklee and Cricket Batz at Norcross Dell in Haddon Township, where Calexico was performing on a spectacular summer evening. We sat together in the back row, and every time I looked at Nick, he was smiling.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 