Sports

Harbaugh, Bailey were inches from eternal glory

Things could have been different for Jim Harbaugh. And they could have been different for Aaron Bailey.

Trailing the Steelers 20-16 with 5 seconds left in the 1995 AFC Championship in Pittsburgh, Harbaugh and the Colts were 30 yards from the end zone and a trip to Super Bowl XXX, where they would have faced the Cowboys.

Harbaugh heaved a Hail Mary into the end zone at Three Rivers Stadium. Among a sea of black jerseys, somehow the ball fell into Bailey’s breadbasket as the Colts receiver hit the turf, but he was unable to secure the catch. The ball rolled off his fingers as he laid on his back — pass incomplete, Super Bowl dreams incomplete, both Bailey and Harbaugh falling just inches short of a forever moment.

Harbaugh will coach the 49ers in tonight’s Super Bowl, his first time there as a head coach, though he did make it as a Raiders assistant in 2002, when they lost to the Buccaneers.

Had that ill-fated prayer in 1995 been answered, a lot would have changed for Harbaugh and Bailey.

“If I would have made that catch, life [for me] would have been a lot different. Yeah, it would have,” Bailey told The Post in the days leading up to tonight’s Super Bowl XLVII clash between Harbaugh’s 49ers and the Ravens, coached by his brother John. “But that’s just how life is sometimes.”

Harbaugh spiked the ball just inside the 30-yard line to set up the final play that day in Pittsburgh. From the shotgun, he took the final snap, then launched his Hail Mary from the 39, the clock hitting zero while the ball was in the air.

Bailey said the Colts practiced the play each Friday, and the receiver intended to be the “jump man” was Brian Stablein, a soaring leaper.

Bailey and Floyd Turner were supposed to try to catch the ball after it was tipped. Here, though, Bailey said the roles ended up changing.

“Things happen for a reason, I guess, and I turn around and the ball was coming right towards me,” Bailey said. “The game slows down, and you see this ball coming down in slow motion.”

As is common with Hail Marys, the ball was tipped. Not so common, however, this one was then juggled.

It hit Bailey’s left hand for an instant … then seemed to drift in the air, falling in unison with Bailey … and then the ball hit him in his stomach as he crashed to the ground … then it seemed to float over his right hand … and briefly touched his left again before finally bouncing to the artificial turf.

“He caught it!” NBC’s Phil Simms said on the broadcast. And Dick Enberg followed with, “He caught the ball! No, no, they rule it incomplete! For a moment, it appeared that the miracle had been answered! Aaron Bailey almost with the reception! And the Steelers have won!”

During a replay, third broadcaster Paul Maguire said, “That’s why Simms said he caught it — it was on his stomach!”

Near-catch. Near-miss. Near-Super Bowl. Bailey was almost David Tyree — 12 years beforehand.

“You start seeing things in super slow motion, and sometimes with 1/100ths of a second, maybe that ball was on my stomach, but that happened so fast,” Bailey said. “It was a bang-bang play. ‘Oh, he had it on his stomach.’ Yeah, but it was one of those things where that was in super slow motion.”

The idea Bailey was a goat or blew the catch is inaccurate. It wasn’t a botched layup or a ball skipping through Bill Buckner’s legs.

There were “five guys around you, tugging and pulling on you,” Bailey said.

After the play, Bailey bent over in the end zone, on his hands and knees, devastated. Someone — not anyone in uniform — came and patted him on the back, an apparent attempt at comfort.

“I was emotionally drained. Crushed. Hurt. Everything you can think of in a game of this magnitude,” Bailey said.

“It haunts you in a lot of ways to come that close to your dream and not get to touch it,” Harbaugh told Pro Football Talk two years ago.

Bailey now works as a learning and behavioral specialist in a school district in the Grand Rapids, Mich., area. He and wife Jennifer are raising four boys and three girls.

“We’re like the 2013 version of the ‘Brady Bunch,’ ” he said with a laugh. He also says he has “closure” on the play.

“The play doesn’t define me. It doesn’t define who Aaron Bailey is — at all,” Bailey said. “It’s a moment in time where a lot of people obviously will remember that. But it doesn’t define Aaron Bailey as a man, as a father, as a parent.”

Bailey hasn’t kept in touch with Harbaugh, but he is rooting for him tomorrow. He said he will email him following the game — “win or lose, and tell Harbaugh, “Hell of a job.”

mark.hale@nypost.com