Original Spartans
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Dr. John Baker and Dr. Fred Dalzell worked the sidelines of Holy Spirit High School football games for parts of five decades. The prominent South Jersey orthopedic surgeon John Baker likes to talk about the time he met the eminent South Jersey high school football coach Ed Byrnes to talk about becoming the team doctor for the Holy Spirit Spartans. In New Jersey, state law requires high school football teams to have medical staff on-hand in case of injury. At most schools, this is a paid position, but Holy Spirit in the late 1970s was running its program on a shoestring, and Coach Byrnes was looking for volunteers. Baker was a young doctor, recently transplanted to South Jersey from St.