Baker: Owens’ impact crucial> UM professor part of ESPN special

As far as ESPN is concerned, track star Jesse Owens is No. 6 among the 50 greatest athletes of the 20th century.

As far as University of Maine history professor Bill Baker is concerned, it’s virtually pointless to rank Owens along with sports legends from various sports.

“It really is apples and oranges. How do you compare people from different sports and different eras?” Baker asked. “I don’t quarrel with the logic of their doing that, but I think there should be a distinction made between the greatest athletes, per se, and the most significant athletes.”

Baker wrote a book about Owens – “Jesse Owens: An American Life” – was a movie consultant for the making of the Jesse Owens Story, and has appeared as part of a panel with veteran broadcast journalist Sander Vanocur on The History Channel during its broadcast of a movie about Owens’ life.

Baker was invited to talk about Owens for an episode in a continuing ESPN series called SportsCentury 50 Greatest Athletes. That episode, featuring Owens as No. 6, airs Friday at 10:30 p.m.

“It may come out very different in the finished product, but the man I talked to didn’t want to do a glib, rah-rah feature on Owens,” said Baker, a professor at UMaine since 1970. “He wanted not to highlight any warts, but make him into a real life person, with strengths and weaknesses.”

Baker was asked why Owens is considered so important.

“My take on it is this whole idea of the greatest athletes of the century, is a very tough thing to guage, but in Jesse’s case, I would think a part of his importance is from the point of view of his place in time,” Baker explained. “Jesse had this incredibly supercharged stage on which to perform in Berlin.

“He came out of a racist situation in the South where he grew up and the North where he moved, but he also went to an Olympics that was politically charged like no other since. The Nazis were [persecuting] the Jews and there was pressure on black athletes not to go. Not only did he go, but he starred.”

Owens tied the Olympic record in the 100-meter dash, broke Olympic and world records in the 200 and the running broad jump (long jump), and ran the anchor leg for the world record-breaking 400-meter relay team en route to winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.

“Jesse Owens was one of the only two national and internationally-renowned athletes in the ’30s to whom young blacks could look to with pride,” said Baker, who is working on a book about the relationship between religion and sports. “The other was Joe Louis. And five weeks before Jesse went to Berlin, Louis was knocked out by Max Schmeling. It’s ironic that he had his historical Olympic performance right after Louis’ loss. That was a part of the mythology and religion of his stature.”