The Immaculate Reception, a football and a father’s memories: ‘I have something special’

Out of breath but not yet out of harm’s way, Jim Baker bolted through an exit at Three Rivers Stadium and stepped in front of the first car he saw.

The couple inside the Pontiac had been listening to the 1972 AFC divisional round playoff game between the upstart Pittsburgh Steelers and their arch-rival Oakland Raiders on the radio. They could only try to imagine, as the broadcasters described it, the ball leaving Terry Bradshaw’s arm, bouncing off of either Jack Tatum or Frenchy Fuqua (or both) and, somehow, ricocheting back toward the line of scrimmage — right into the destined hands of Franco Harris.

“We got the ball!” Baker blurted out, looking over his shoulder for the police or one of the many rabid fans fighting for the prized pigskin. “Show him.”

There on the street, Baker’s 14-year-old nephew, Bobby Pavuchak, fished around inside the oversized coat his mother made him wear to the game and presented the historic piece of leather.

Baker never got the name of that nice couple from Butler, Pa., who gave them a ride from the North Shore. But 50 years after the “Immaculate Reception” kickstarted a dynasty and earned its reputation as one of the greatest plays in NFL history, the 76-year-old insurance salesman still has that football.

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Sure, people have tried to pry it from him. They have tried virtually from the moment he wrestled the ball from the bottom of a pile in the back of the west end zone. One buddy tried to trade him $1,500 for it before Baker even got home to his wife and newborn baby. In the decades since, other lucrative offers that Baker will only describe as a “fortune” have flooded in.Baker says it’s not for sale.

“Sometimes, the money sounds great,” Baker said. “And when you put it in your pocket, you spend the money. But I have something special. It means more than just money.”

To Baker, this football represents not only the love affair between the Steelers and the city of Pittsburgh but also the unique relationship between a father and a son. It rouses emotions of an improbable win that catapulted the Steelers to new heights and takes Baker back to gut-wrenching family tragedies that have reshaped his life.

More than anything, when Baker opens the vault where he stores the ball, he’s also unlocking the part of himself where he safeguards the memories of his late son, Sam.

“The story about Jimmy Baker with that ball is a very special story,” Harris told The Athletic. “It’s very special to him, and that makes it special for me. The ball’s in the right place and with the right purpose and with the right person.”

To the man who made one of the most improbable catches in NFL history, the Immaculate Reception isn’t just a play.

To Franco Harris, it’s a confluence of events shaped by preparation and fueled by destiny. There’s no Immaculate Reception without the hiring of Chuck Noll, the drafting of “Mean” Joe Greene, or even without Harris’ own mother playing “Ave Maria” on her record player at the very moment the religiously named play unfolded.

“How crazy is that?” Harris said. “She put on her Italian album just before the play.”

Likewise, the story of how the ball wound up in the hands of an insurance salesman from West Mifflin, Pa., where it’s stayed for the last 50 years, is a series of coincidences lining up so perfectly it almost feels like fate.

Baker’s tale began a few days earlier on Dec. 19, 1972, when he and his wife, Mary, added to their growing family by welcoming a baby boy into the world. They named him Sam.

In those days, new mothers and their babies would spend several days in the hospital for observation and recovery. Baker pleaded for an exception. He had to take the baby home early, he insisted. How else was he supposed to go to work?

Finally, on Dec. 23, 1972, the physician relented.

“I didn’t tell him I was going to a Steelers game,” Baker said, with a sly smile.

Not just any Steelers game. This was the second-ever playoff game for a franchise known for failure, the other being a 21-0 letdown in 1947 against the Philadelphia Eagles.

The fact that Baker attended the game at all was a stroke of luck. Each week of the NFL season, the Pittsburgh Press held a ticket raffle for its employees. A photographer named Robert Pavuchak won. But because he had to shoot photos at the playoff game, he passed them along to his brother-in-law, Baker, with one stipulation: He had to take the photographer’s 14-year-old son, Bobby.

”I wasn’t even sure my Aunt Mary was going to let him take me to the game,” Pavuchak said. “But she did.”

That’s how Baker and Pavuchak ended up with a near front-row seat to history when they settled into Box 57 near the 30-yard line.

Through the first 58-plus minutes of a defensive struggle, the Steelers built a modest 6-0 lead off the foot of kicker Roy Gerela. Then, Oakland quarterback Ken Stabler scampered 30 yards to put the Raiders on top, 7-6, with 1:13 remaining.

Steelers linebacker Jack Ham began cutting off his tape. Believing the season was over, Steelers owner Art Rooney infamously left the box where was seated and boarded an elevator to field level. The game and the Steelers’ season came down to this: Fourth-and-10. Twenty-two seconds remaining.

“I’m saying to myself: Franco, this will probably be the last play of the season,” Harris said. “Play it to the end. Play it to the end.”

On the play, 66 option, Harris’ only assignment was to stay in and block — “I didn’t do a very good job of it,” the running back laughed — but fate had a different idea. As Harris darted out of the backfield as a possible outlet, his subconscious mind echoed the words of his former Penn State coach, Joe Paterno: “Go to the ball! Go to the ball!”

And then …

“My mind went blank,” Harris said. “I remember nothing else after that.”

When Tatum, Fuqua and the ball came together like the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio converging at The Point, the football careened back toward the line of scrimmage. In a full sprint, Harris made the shoe-string catch just before it touched the turf. The rookie running back never broke stride, racing into the end zone for the game-winning, 60-yard score.

Three Rivers Stadium went bonkers. Fans flooded onto the field to celebrate the first playoff win in Steelers franchise history.

“All the people were running down the sidelines,” Marianne Noll, the wife of the late coach Chuck Noll, told The Athletic. “People were coming out of the stands. My 14-year-old son was a ball boy, and he was in the middle of the mess. Needless to say, I was frightened.”

Baker and his nephew jumped onto the bleachers in front of them in time to watch Harris gallop into the end zone. Caught up in the moment, they too ran down the stairs toward the field, climbed onto the dugout of the multi-sport venue and jumped into the celebration.

“The craziest part for me was jumping off the dugout onto the field,” Pavuchak said. “Getting into the end zone with giant football players, being 14, that was exciting enough.”

With chaos all around him, Baker kept his eyes on the football, as it was knocked out of Harris’ hands when he hugged teammate Ron Shanklin, scooped by equipment manager Tony Parisi and passed to the referees. When the officials finally signaled touchdown, Parisi confirmed the same ball was handed to the kicker, Gerela, for the extra point.

In another stroke of luck, someone forgot to pull the net behind the goalposts. The kick nearly sailed wide right, bounced off a concrete partition between the stands and landed just in front of Baker and Pavuchak.

They pounced.

“I fought for it like fighting for a fumble,” Baker said.

A mustachioed lifelong wrestler, Baker had deceptive strength for his 5-foot-5 stature. Even today, at 76 years old, he stands with the upright, shoulders-back posture of a grappler whose years on the mat molded his body and identity.

“I don’t want to brag, but I was no hobo wrestler,” Baker said. “NFL Films told me, ‘You’re just a little sh–.’ I said, ‘That’s true, but if I had my hands on you, you wouldn’t have thought I was a little sh–. You would have thought, ‘I don’t want nothing to do with this guy.’”

Pavuchak dove into the pile himself. After nearly getting smashed by adults, he decided it was safer to step aside. Out of the rubble, his uncle emerged with a twinkle in his eye … and the football wrapped in a bear hug.

“He looked at me and just said, ‘Run!’” Pavuchak remembers.

The boy and his uncle sprinted from the corner of the end zone, across the width of the field and away from the crowd.

“As soon as we found the first open stairwell, he turned to me, took the ball and shoved it in my coat,” Pavuchak said. “He said, ‘Just stay on my ass. We’re going to run out of here.’”

When they got outside the stadium, it was almost as if they were alone, with only the fading roar of the crowd behind them. Just one problem: Their ride to the game, Pavuchak’s dad, was still shooting photos.

That’s where the couple in the 1958 four-door Pontiac comes in. Baker offered to pay the man for a ride to the Press building. However, when the driver saw the football, he agreed to do it for free. The only catch was that the woman in the front seat, whom Baker believes was a wife or girlfriend, got to hold the ball during the trip.

After a pit stop at the Press office and another at a friend’s place to show off the prized pigskin, Baker arrived back home in West Mifflin. He shared the story of the struggle and the sprint with his wife and newborn son.

That day he dedicated the football to Sam, the son who had been taken home from the hospital just hours earlier. From that moment forward, Sam’s life, the famous football and the most storied play in NFL history became forever intertwined.

More than three decades after the Immaculate Reception and the thrilling fight for the football, Baker was awakened from a dream by a 2 a.m. phone call that felt like a nightmare.

It was Sam. He was at Jefferson Hospital in Pleasant Hills.

“Dad, I have bad news,” the 33-year-old said.

“What happened?” Baker asked, panicked.

“I’ll tell you when you get here.”

During the drive to the hospital, Baker thought about all the things that made his son special. As a kid, Sam was a bit reserved and spoke with a lisp that made him somewhat self-conscious. Baker encouraged Sam to take up wrestling, believing the discipline and physicality would help instill confidence and self-worth. They spent hours on the mat together at home. Over time, the wrestling moves became second nature, and the father-son bond was unbreakable.

“I said, ‘I’ll teach you wrestling, but we’re going to go all the way,’” Baker said. “He was losing and losing. All his friends were heroes. And once I got him started and practiced with him, he’d become unstoppable.”

Sam Baker went on to wrestle at Pitt, filling his father with immeasurable pride. He began a career as a chiropractor and married Joanna, another chiropractic physician. The couple had two sons of their own, Samuel and Alexander.

“Sam was like a movie star,” Baker said, still beaming with pride. “He was real good-looking, and he was intelligent.”

When Jim Baker arrived at the hospital, his worst fears were confirmed. Sam delivered the heart-wrenching news.

“I have adrenal carcinoma,” Baker remembers his son saying, a rare cancer. “Nobody’s ever recovered from it.”

Six months later on May 9, 2006, after one final father-son fishing trip to Florida, Sam died.

Because Sam was born the same week as the Immaculate Reception, it’s his face that Baker sees when he opens the vault and shares his morning coffee with the football. And when he takes the ball out to share with fans, inevitably, the conversation shifts from the Steelers’ dynasty to stories of Sam’s successes. Has he mentioned his son was a chiropractor?

“He’s attached to it because of the Sam factor,” Pavuchak said. “It’s part of him. That’s all I can say.”

Baker, a father of three boys and one girl, lost a second son in 2017, when Brian Baker died at age 41 of a fentanyl overdose. The following year, in 2018, colon cancer took Jim’s wife, Mary, whom he met at a Terry Lee dance in neighboring Glassport. She died at age 69, less than a year before what would have been the couple’s 50th wedding anniversary.

Today, the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s expansion threatens to take Baker’s West Mifflin home, one of a few hundred houses in the path of the proposed construction of the Mon-Fayette Expressway that will connect Pennsylvania Route 51 to Interstate 376. Under the state’s eminent domain laws, Pennsylvania has the inherent right to acquire land for public transportation purposes. And while he would be compensated for the property, Baker, a man who already has been separated from so many things he loves, is standing his ground.

“So many things are against me,” Baker said. “They want me out right now, but they can’t get me out. I’m fighting. They don’t like dealing with me, that’s for sure.”

Through it all, he maintains a firm grasp on his football and all the memories it holds.

“I lost my wife. I’ve lost two sons,” Baker said, tears welling in his eyes. “I still have that football.”

And to Harris, that’s the way it should be.

The running back has never felt the need to own the history he’s made. Take his cleats from that game, for example. They have since been donated to the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. When the Steelers replaced the turf at Three Rivers Stadium, Harris made sure they cut out the exact spot where he made his immaculate catch — and then rolled it up in a ball and threw it under his deck. Curators had to clean out a wasp nest before it went on display at the history center.

So for the person who has the football to hold it so dear? That’s good enough for Franco.

“I know how special that ball was for Jimmy and his son,” Harris said. “Jimmy is the right person to have that ball.”

(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; Photos: Mike DeFabo / The Athletic, Bettmann / Getty Images)