Anyone who followed football in the late 1950s and 1960s would know the name of Joe Baker, and such was his popularity wherever he played that The Scotsman’s front-page headline the day after his untimely death from a heart attack at 63 was no exaggeration. It was in the Hibs family that the grieving was deepest, however, at the club where he debuted as a 17 year-old and set seemingly unbreakable scoring records in four seasons between 1957 and 1961.
Although Joe’s name is legendary amongst Hibs fans it is possible to still surprise yourself by examining the basis for his fame. He was still only 17 when he scored four against Hearts in a 4-3 Scottish Cup win at Tynecastle, and amassed a season total of 21 goals in just 33 games in 1957-58. It got better and better from there: 30 goals in 36 games the following season, the record-breaking 46 in 42 games in 1959-60 (aged 19!), and 44 in 49 games in 1960-61.
In that final season he performed further remarkable feats. He scored four against Airdrie in the League Cup, five against Third Lanark in the League and NINE against the hapless Peebles Rovers in a 15-1 Scottish Cup massacre. Then, in the Inter Cities Fairs Cup he scored two in the Nou Camp in the famous 4-4 draw against Barcelona, following that with another in the second-leg victory at Easter Road. In the two drawn semi-final legs against Roma he again scored one at home and two away. In more recent times that would have been enough to take Hibs to the final on away goals, but not for the only time the rules of the day denied Joe the platform his skills deserved as the tie-breaker was lost 0-6 after a month’s delay.
Infamously, he was ineligible to represent Scotland owing to his birth in Liverpool while his father was stationed there with the navy. Although Joe made history as the first non English League player to represent England internationally, he was never truly welcomed in the English camp and their rejection of him after eight caps, coupled with the absurdly inflexible nationality rules prevented Joe from ever demonstrating his worth at international level. What might have been for Joe if he had made the cut for England’s 1966 World Cup squad, as he so nearly did? What might have been for Scotland instead had he been able to partner Denis Law up front through the 1960s?
Not that his club partnership with Denis was all that stellar, comprising just that single ill-fated season at Torino. Joe scored seven times in 19 outings, Denis ten in 27. Perhaps their comparatively modest hit rate was good for Italian football at the time, but the fact that Torino invited Joe to their promotion celebrations forty years later in 2001 is testament to his popularity as a man as much as his prowess as a striker.
In the article below Joe’s Arsenal career is compared favourably with Thierry Henry’s, and if his scoring rate with Nottingham Forest looks modest we are reminded that his team nevertheless lost out on the League title by just one point to Manchester United in 1967. That man Law again, and Bobby Charlton, and a young George Best, the sharp end of a team that would lift the European Cup the following year. Another case of ‘what if’ for Joe Baker.
Mike Aitken’s parting comment that Joe’s second spell at Hibs underlines the wisdom of never retracing your steps in life betrays an ignorance of the full story. Joe’s age (30) no doubt took the edge off the pace he had as a youngster, but when you look at Hibs’ stats for his two last seasons you can see that his scoring rate in the games he played – a goal every two games – was the equal of his fellow strikers at the time, Joe McBride, Jimmy O’Rourke and Arthur Duncan. They only scored more than Joe because they played more often. His scoring rate at Raith Rovers (34 in 49 league games) in his last two senior seasons proved that even at the age of 33, when most strikers had already hung up their boots in those days, Joe was simply too good for the Second Division.
As late as 1959 Joe was still training as an apprentice engineer, but after his playing days ended he followed the well-worn career path of the ex-footballer into the management of licensed premises. A brief spell coaching at Albion Rovers quickly convinced him that he was not cut out for the management of football teams.
In later years Joe acted as a matchday host at Easter Road, and was famously pictured kissing the turf at the Hands Off Hibs rally in 1990. A Hibs man through and through despite his youth and family roots planted firmly in Lanarkshire, Joe suffered a sudden heart attack while playing golf and died in the hospital in Wishaw, the town where he grew up and learned his love of football. Cruel fate once again denied Joe the life he should have had, a long and comfortable retirement, cheering on Hibs through good times and bad. In a different history he would still be with us, a living legend whose exploits may never be bettered.
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