Bobby Baldridge's retirement

Robert Taylor sent a link to the following article, which appeared in The Jackson Sun, Sunday, September 9, 2007. Congratulations, Bobby, on an outstanding career!

Baldridge ready to retire after 40 years with TSSAA

When he was a youngster, living in downtown Jackson in the late 1950s, Bob Baldridge occasionally talked to entertainers named Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Perkins was a regular at Tuchfeld's department store, which was managed by Baldridge's father. Perkins often brought his musician friends to the store.

"Elvis just stood quietly and talked to me, but Cash would pace up and down," Baldridge said. "I didn't think anything of it back then. It was before they became real famous."

In a much less glamorous setting, Baldridge became a bit famous himself as a spokesperson for the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association. For 40 years he has helped shape one of the nation's strongest and most progressive high school sports organizations.

But that comes to an end on Oct. 1 when Baldridge, 63, retires.

"I started to retire three years ago, but I finally told them this was it," Baldridge said Saturday, while vacationing with his wife, Judy, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Only two other persons in the history of this nation's high school state associations have given 40 years to their work. Baldridge takes with him volumes of stories and historical facts about the TSSAA, which governs high school sports.

He was there at the final state basketball tournament for black high schools. He helped with the integration issues of high school sports. Hired on Oct. 1, 1967, by A.F. Bridges, the TSSAA's first executive, Baldridge was on the ground floor of developing the classification system and has directed the football playoffs since their inception in 1969.

"For years I did it by myself," Baldridge said of managing the playoffs. "Football has always been a joy for me."

A 1962 graduate of Jackson High School, Baldridge was the football and basketball manager for coaches Tury Oman and Eddie Crawford, and he was editor of the school paper. He worked at The Jackson Sun and Nashville Tennessean before the TSSAA hired him.

"I went with the TSSAA knowing they were going to move (from Trenton) to the Nashville area (in 1970)," Baldridge said.

He earned a master's degree in business administration and could have used a law degree with the TSSAA while dealing with state and federal governments. He often testified on behalf of the TSSAA about many issues, including Title IX, which helped bring equality to women's sports

"Mr. Bridges was smarter than all of us," Baldridge said. "He put in girls' athletics long before other states did. Baldridge estimates he has traveled 1.2 million miles for the TSSAA and has attended 2,200 state basketball tournament games. "Of course, I got to see very little of those games," Baldridge said. "I was too busy running around checking on things."

You might think the TSSAA's most painful headache the past 40 years has been the public-private debates or the Brentwood Academy lawsuit. Not so, says Baldridge. "The biggest problem we've ever had at TSSAA was going from half-court to full-court play in girls' basketball," he said.

Baldridge served eight years as executive director of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame and has received numerous honors. But he is quick to note what has meant the most to him."It's all the great people I've worked with in the office and across the state," he said. "That was the best part of it all."