Shake & Bake, Part I

“You know, my uncle was a football star,” swooned Chloe, our daughter-in-law, tenderly combing baby Sophie’s hair in the kitchen of their cozy townhouse in Louisville. “His name is Glen Doughty, but most people know him as “Shake & Bake,” his nickname. He was a star at Michigan and then when the Colts played in Baltimore. I have his phone number if you want.”

Wait. What? If what Chloe was saying was true—and I had no reason to doubt her — I found myself peering through a fresh lens.

Eureka!

You might say the arc of Glenn “Shake & Bake” Doughty’s terrestrial pilgrimage bends toward pure performance, joyfully modeled, celebrated in every arena he finds himself competing in.

During his eight productive, colorful seasons as a wide receiver with the Baltimore Colts, Doughty caught 219 passes, scooted into the end zone for 24 touchdowns and pocketed a total of 3,547 career yards.

The former Michigan Wolverine standout was selected to the Pro Bowl and the Associated Press All-pro, among other honors.

In 1975, Doughty’s colorful passion and physicality helped catapult the Colts from last to first place in the AFC East. It was the same year he set up The Shake & Bake Band with Colt teammates Freddie Scott, Ray Chester and Lloyd Mumford.

In a violent game, getting hurt is part and parcel of the on-field narrative. The list included a litany of orthopedic mishaps like torn Achilles. But the scariest, the one forever seared in his mind, he emphasized, related to one of the four concussions he endured.

“It was at a game in Denver,” said Doughty, 72. During a play, “my eye was pushed back into my socket. I cracked the cavity that held the eye itself. I was seeing double. The pain went all the way from my head to my foot. My whole body went numb.”

His injury resulted in a trip to the hospital where doctors dislodged a piece of matter as long as 10 inches.

While that moment involved an area of the body

that houses pupils, corneas and irises, the experience enriched another kind of vision. one that nurtured the heart and soul — one that gave back to a marginalized community in Charm City.

For Doughty, giving back is a calling. He’s all about preserving the rhythm he had honed as a standout athlete.

When he hung up his grass-stained cleats in 1980, it only pumped fresh oxygen into No. 35’s forward motion.

By harnessing his outsized, sunny side up personality, Doughty had a playbook for life after football.

His commitment: To leave West Baltimore and the Upton neighborhood a better place.

That goal came to fruition in 1982, when Shake & Bake Family Fun Center opened its doors on Pennsylvania Avenue.

While the iconic venue is now owned by the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, make no mistake: It’s Doughty’s thumbprints, his stylistic and breezy wholesomeness, that are enshrined there.

Personal recollections of his football glory days are always flavorfully layered with keen observations served sunny side up with generous helpings of hearty laughter.

It was Glenn’s electric personality that attracted others, asserted Billy Taylor, one of Dougherty’s teammates at the University of Michigan in the late 1960s.

“He was outgoing and energetic, always pumped up and very athletic. Clean cut — he had no vices.”

Taylor, a running back who shattered Michigan’s career rushing record, rolling up 3,072 yards in three seasons, recalled that he and Doughty helped compose a tight-knit, fiveman squad that came to be known as “The Mellow Men.”

At that time, he explained, the group represented the largest group of Black athletes on scholarship in Michigan’s history. Now 74, Taylor, who earned a PHD, said that back then, NCAA rules required freshmen athletes to live in dormitories on the sprawling Ann Arbor campus.

“But in our sophomore year, we could move off campus. We decided we wanted to stick together and we found a six-bedroom house at 1345 Geddes Road. Glenn was one of the leaders of the house. He was more mature.”

Looking back on his days at Michigan and his fellow `Mellow Men,’ Doughty defined the deep relationships he enjoyed.

“We clicked immediately. All of our abilities were evident to everybody who saw us.”

At Michigan, Doughty and his freshmen cohorts were tutored by a graduate student. Helping him untangle the mysteries of calculus, he noted, was Ted Kaczynski, who later emerged as the notorious unabomber.

“He came to our door at the Den of the Mellow Men,” Doughty said, “dressed in camouflage fatigues.”

Kaczinski announced to Doughty and his housemates that he was plotting to “blow up a building on campus.” As he rewound the bizarre account, Doughty fell silent for a second or two as if to absorb the enormity of the announcement shaken with understandable bewilderment.

“But… he was my tutor!” he said, aghast.

Kaczinski later embarked on a 20-year rampage of terror, planting bombs that killed three Americans and injured scores of others.

He died in prison earlier this year.

Check out the Jan. 27 Times-call Life section for Part II of Tony Glaros’ Longmont Lessons column.