For nearly 50 years, Kerry Baker has been a coach and role model to Sarasota athletes

SARASOTA - The father/teacher and son/student occupied one end of the basketball court at Sarasota’s Arlington Park.

As Kerry Baker worked with Steve, his son, the first captain of the Cardinal Mooney football and basketball teams noticed a tall blond boy shooting by himself at the opposite end of the court.

“I have to go fix his shot,” Baker, the eternal teacher, said. He walked to the other end and introduced himself to the kid, who was from Sweden and playing at IMG Academy.

“He fixes this kid’s shot in five minutes,” Steve Baker said.

Now, he's money: With Baker’s help, Mooney has a shot

When the boy’s parents met Baker, they wondered who he was. But impressed with the improvement he made in their son’s shot, they hired Baker to work with him while he was at IMG. And that’s not all.

“He developed such a strong rapport with this kid and his parents,” Steve said, “his parents flew my mom and dad to Sweden to train their kid, all expenses paid, because that was how impressed they were.”

The Baker Act had gone international.

Not even 79-year-old Kerry Baker knows how his life might have unfolded had he not swapped a day of school at Mooney in 1961 for a day at the beach.

Born in Flushing, N.Y. in 1944, Baker, who never knew his father and was raised by his grandparents, moved with them at age 4 to Sarasota. One of the 15 original students to attend St. Martha Catholic School from first grade through ninth, Baker met coach John Heath there, then followed him over to Cardinal Mooney.

But as a junior, he skipped a day of school and was caught. As punishment, the Mooney principal expelled him. The three-sport star surely would have earned his diploma at Mooney before embarking on a college career as a student-athlete, perhaps never returning to Sarasota.

“But everything happens for a reason,” Steve said.

First career starts

Kerry went to work for his grandfather, one of Sarasota’s first painting contractors. In 1965, he was drafted into the Army for the Vietnam War, but scored highly enough on the Army intelligence test to earn an assignment at New York’s Fort Hamilton, where he met Judy, his future wife. Discharged from the Army in 1967, Baker relocated back to Sarasota and founded in 1971 Spectrum Painting, a residential and commercial painting contractor firm.

But it was his former coach, Heath, who helped lay the groundwork for his life work. When he became the Cougars football coach, he told Baker he didn’t have enough players to field a team.

“My dad said, ‘I’ll take care of that',’’ Steve said. Within three days, Baker had gotten all the St. Martha graduates who had enrolled at other high schools to transfer to Mooney. Heath had his team.

“Coach Heath was more than just a coach to me,” Baker said. “He was a mentor, role model, and like a father to me. He was a coach ahead of his time who stressed the value of calisthenics and weight training well before it was popular.”

As a member of Mooney’s original class, in the fall of 1959, Baker helped Heath select the school’s colors of garnet and gold, now red and gold. It was Baker alone who chose the school’s nickname of Cougars. So after Baker had returned to Sarasota following his assignment at Fort Hamilton, Heath, back at St. Martha, called him with a request.

“What started him in coaching,” Steve said, “was Heath asking him if he could help out coaching some of the teams at St. Martha."

Baker took over the school’s basketball and flag football teams, but it was the former that earned him the unofficial title of Sarasota County’s hoop savant.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a coach in this town who has worked with kids from all the different schools like my dad,” Steve said. “They came to him. He was genuinely concerned about the kids he coached, not just about sports. He treated all the players as his sons. He coached them in life. He related to the kids uniquely, and they knew that he was genuine and that he cared. He was a disciplinarian, but he wasn't negative."

“Bake” was a good player, but a better coach. He was a member of the original Sarasota Oyster Bar basketball team with Waite Bellamy, Andy Owens, Rich Jordan, and others, and worked out at the old All-American Fitness Center, managed by Jordan, a fellow basketball lover, who would become his best friend.

A fast connection

“We hit it off really well,” said Rich Jordan, a legendary name in Michigan high school basketball. “He was a really good guy. You couldn’t find a better friend. He kind of respected me, and he loved sports so much. We’ve probably seen and talked about thousands of games. We’re still doing it. It was a match made in sports.”

Before Baker began giving private lessons to aspiring basketball players in the area, it was Jordan who did. But when it became too time consuming, he handed it off to Baker, who certainly had the credentials. Besides coaching at Mooney, he was an assistant coach under Gary Halbert at Sarasota. In 1983, he coached one of Sarasota’s first AAU teams. In 1999, Baker coached the national championship 16-and-under Youth Basketball Organization team which featured Adrian McPherson and future NBAer Amare Stoudemire.

Jordan charged $50 an hour for his private instruction. Baker did, too, but often that hour became 90 minutes, or even 120. Sometimes he didn't charge.

"If he worked with a kid from the hood, no way would he take money," said Con Nicholas, a former Mooney student. "Bake would never take money from a kid of a single mom with five kids. Just a really cool guy. He's almost like a guy out of a dime novel. He was very gruff, smoked cigarettes back in the day, and cussed like a sailor."

It didn’t matter if the setting was a team practice, or individual instruction, Baker loved teaching basketball, and he loved the kids he taught. Sometimes, he’d spend up to $500 a month of his own money making calls to college coaches around the country, trying to secure a scholarship for one of his former pupils. He was connected, and not just in basketball. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Baker managed to get the game video of Riverview football player Mike Fraraccio circulated among colleges in the Northeast. It resulted in a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania.

"He was very instrumental in getting Michael's video in the right hands," said Rudy Fraraccio, Michael's father. He was the basketball EF Hutton: when Baker talked hoops, people listened. He convinced Dave McMahon to send son Ryan to Cardinal Mooney. He encouraged Cougar guard Jeremy Hall to walk on at Duke. Hall played in 10 games for the Blue Devils during the 1995-96 season.

And his kids loved him. Not only basketball, Baker would impart life lessons, framed against the mistakes he made growing up.

“I never shied away from sharing them,” he said, “so they would not make the same mistakes. They knew I cared about them as individuals and utilized the game to teach them life lessons, such as the importance of faith, family, hard work to achieve your goals, and how to deal with adversities in life.”

He impacted many of his students in profound ways, many of whom responded with heartfelt words or gestures. Baker worked with Kelly Kirschner, who showed his appreciation by giving Baker the NIT wristwatch he had earned as manager of the Georgetown University basketball team.

“The measure of his success as a coach,” Steve said, “is the measure of the relationships he’s developed over the years, and maintained. His players liked him as a person and coach.”

Mick Jordan, son of Rich and a former Mooney point guard, remembers Baker always being around.

“I’ve known him my whole life,” he said. “Outside of my dad, no one has spent more time and effort toward my whole athletic career than him. He’s like an uncle to me, really. He’s just been a major part of my life. You really can’t say enough good stuff about Coach Bake.”

“Genuine was the key for him,” Rich Jordan said. “The kids knew he really cared. He didn’t care if they were black or white or Hispanic. Just that they were a person who loved to do what he loved to teach and do.”

Baker will turn 80 in February, but has been battling health woes. Learning this, many of his former players have reached out.

“He treated all his players like his sons,” Steve said. “He coached them in life.”

Kerry Baker won’t forget any of them.

"I have been truly blessed in my life,” he said. “I have had the privilege of coaching many young men for close to 50 years in the town that I was raised in. All of the players I have coached over the years have had a positive impact on my life.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Kerry Baker combined his passion for basketball and kids to make a difference