‘They could have cooked Mr. Escape alive! They singed his hair and burned off his goatee!’ : Hanging Around With Steve

I saw an old friend the other day whose name is Steve Baker, and I said, “Hey, Steve,” which is a phrase my wife taught me in order to communicate verbally in a reasonably civil manner. He, of course, replied, “Hey, Al.”

Men begin that way, scratching and circling like lower primates at a water hole, before they decide whether to continue the communication or kill and eat the communicatee.

“Whatcha been up to?” I asked, spitting.

Steve adjusted his shorts and said, “Oh, the usual. Blown up in Tokyo. Burned in Venezuela. Hanged in Houston.”

“Nice, nice,” I said. Then to inject a little humor, I asked, “When they going to shoot you from a cannon?”

“Next year,” he said without smiling, “in Yosemite.”

You remember Mr. Escape. He calls himself the World’s Greatest Escape Artist and sometimes suggests he might be a reincarnation of Houdini.

I saw him in Tarzana, which is where he lives with his wife, Julie. Steve is not the kind of person you can ask, ‘Whatcha been up to?’ without inviting a 60-minute illustrated response.

He led the way to his apartment, turned on the VCR and proceeded to explain how he had almost been barbecued in Venezuela.

“Picture this,” he said, standing in the middle of the room, arms outspread. His expression becomes a blend of hope and terror when he falls into this mode. His goatee quivers.

“There is Steve Baker in Caracas, chained to a wooden cross inside a fiberboard tepee, about to become a human torch! Will he live or will he die?”

That’s another thing. Steve refers to himself in the third person when he’s on, as though discussing someone in another room. The habit bothered me until I met a man who blended singular and plural self-references in the same sentence.

“We think I’ll have us a little martini before dinner and we’re wondering if you’d like to join me?” he would ask. As long as I got the martini, I didn’t sweat the details.

The poor fellow died in an automobile accident, and it took all the self-restraint I could muster not to open the funeral casket to see how many people they were going to bury.

But I digress.

There was Steve Baker, chained to a wooden cross in a fiberboard tepee on the outskirts of Caracas.

The Venezuelans were supposed to pour 2.5 gallons of a kerosene mixture on the tepee and set it afire. Mr. Escape would then have 30 seconds to free himself and leap grandly through the flames of the blazing tepee into the hearts of the Latin Americans, except, of course, for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

Somewhere, however, communications broke down. The Venezuelans poured 2.5 gallons of straight gasoline on the tepee and the whole thing was an instant funeral pyre, with Mr. Escape inside.

“Those damned fools,” Steve said, glowering in remembered indignation. “They could have cooked Mr. Escape alive! They singed his hair and burned off his goatee!”

Instead of the usual 30 seconds, Steve was out of the burning tepee in 12.5 seconds, and while his egress might not have been elegant, it was sure as hell spectacular. A blazing goatee is not your usual act ending.

Only the cannon stunt will top that. Mr. Escape plans to be fired into the air from a 3,600-foot-high cliff. He will be straitjacketed and shackled and will be wearing a parachute.

“Steve Baker,” he said with a flourish, “will have exactly 17 seconds to free himself and pull the rip cord, and not a second more!” The emphasis is his, incidentally, because Steve talks in italics when he is being Mr. Escape.

This is no kid standing there sucking in his stomach, by the way. Baker is 47 and proud to be leaping through flames and fighting his way out of exploding coffins at an age when most men are having trouble lifting their beer cans.

He probably ought to turn his energies toward a milder pursuit, but, like the guy who sweeps up after circus elephants, he’d rather stay active than leave show biz.

Good for him. There is much to admire in a man who drags luck to its limits, because he proves ultimately that luck is a condition of skill. The world belongs to those who reach beyond their grasp.

Steve ended his lecture by showing me tapes of his best escapes. That wasn’t necessary, however, because I have known him for a long time and don’t need proof of his exploits.

We first met, in fact, when I was walking down Franklin Street in Oakland one day, looked up and saw this nut in a straitjacket hanging by his heels from the 10th floor of the Tribune Tower.

“Who are you?” I called up.

I watched as he wriggled out of the straitjacket quick as a wink and, still hanging upside down, spread his arms and proclaimed in italics:

“He is Mr. Escape, the best in the world!”

That was 20 years ago. I reminded Steve of the incident and he smiled. “I still am,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied.

We shook hands.