Jack Stallard

I get a little extra pep in my step this time of year, and I owe it all to a miracle that captivated the world and a baby I never met.

Baby Jessica isn’t a baby now. She’s 35, married and has two children of her own.

But, Jessica McClure — now Jessica McClure Morales — will always be Baby Jessica to me, and every Oct. 16 I think about her and the time she made a stadium full of fans forget they cared about a high school football game.

That’s hard to do in East Texas.

Because of my job, and since I’ve been fortunate to have this career for more than three decades, I’m occasionally asked to speak at events to share some of the things I’ve witnessed during my time as a sports editor in East Texas.

I typically give a little talk and then open things up for questions, and one of the first things I’m asked about is my favorite memory from a career that began at the Kilgore News Herald back in 1987, detoured down to Lufkin from 1990-97 and then brought me back to the News-Journal 24 years ago.

Being a sports writer has given me the best seat in the house to witness some incredible individual and team performances over the years. I’ve seen “Hail Mary” touchdown passes to win games, a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown in double overtime to win a state football championship, buzzer-beating, half court shots to send basketball teams to another round of the playoffs and a walk-off home run in the 10th inning of a baseball game by a kid who had struck out in his four previous trips to the plate.

I’ve covered a Super Bowl and a Major League Baseball All-Star Game and spent a month in Atlanta, Georgia, helping the Atlanta Journal with its coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics.

I’ve loved every minute of those games and the thousands of others I’ve been blessed to cover over the years, but folks are usually surprised when I tell them the most memorial game I ever witnessed was a 40-point blowout in Whitehouse, Texas.

It had little to do with the game itself, and to be honest, even if the game had been a classic battle to the end, I wouldn’t have cared.

My mind was on what was happening more than 400 miles away in Midland. It became blissfully obvious a little later I wasn’t the only one in the stadium worried half to death about Baby Jessica.

Most of you know the story.

On Oct. 14, 1987, 18-month-old Jessica McClure fell into a well in her aunt’s backyard in Midland. For the next 56 hours, rescuers worked around the clock to free her as the world watched and prayed.

The game I was covering for the Kilgore News Herald two days later — Kilgore vs. Whitehouse — was a stinker after Kilgore took control early and took all of the drama out of things on the field.

But, late in the game, a man nearly broke the door down getting into the press box and shouted “They got Baby Jessica out of that damn well!”

This was before social media and cell phones, so I’m guessing few, if any, of the fans attending the game knew about the rescue until the stadium’s public address announcer eventually composed himself enough to say “Ladies and gentlemen, we have great news from Midland. Baby Jessica has been rescued.”

One of the first things I was taught as a sports writer is there’s no cheering in the press box. It’s a place to work and considered unprofessional to show any sort of bias toward a particular team.

For the only time in my career, I broke that rule. I cried, cheered like gravy and biscuits had just been declared healthy and hugged several total strangers.

I wasn’t the only one, and I doubt any moment for the rest of my career will top the night a child none of us knew brought 4,000 fans and a rookie sports writer together for what might still be the largest group hug in history.