Guys at work like to joke around with Robert Baker.
“Hey man,” they’ve been saying lately. “Why are you working so hard when your brother is going to the NFL?”
Robert shakes his head. “He’s going to the NFL — I’m not,” he shoots back. “I have to work.”
After spending seven years and two months in prison for first-degree robbery, Robert insists he isn’t taking for granted his new lease on life. And after missing out on so many seminal moments in his little brother’s football career — all those state championships Budda Baker won at Bellevue, his rise as an All-American at the University of Washington — Robert is enjoying the buildup to this week’s NFL draft.