Hobey Baker

Hobey Baker a adăugat o fotografie

acum 7 ore

R.I.P
Hobey

Hobart Amory Hare "Hobey" Baker (January 15, 1892 – December 21, 1918) was an American amateur athlete of the early twentieth century. Considered the first American star in ice hockey by the Hockey Hall of Fame, he was also an accomplished American football player. Born into a prominent family from the Philadelphia area, he enrolled at Princeton University in 1910. Baker excelled on the university's hockey and football teams, and became a noted amateur hockey player for the St. Nicholas Hockey Club in New York City. He was a member of three national championship teams, for football in 1911 and hockey in 1912 and 1914, and helped the St. Nicholas Club win a national amateur championship in 1915. Baker graduated from Princeton in 1914 and worked for J.P. Morgan Bank until he enlisted in the United States Army Air Service. During World War I he served with the 103rd and the 13th Aero Squadrons before being promoted to captain and named commander of the 141st Aero Squadron. Baker died in December 1918 after a plane he was test-piloting crashed, hours before he was due to leave France and return to America. Baker was widely regarded by his contemporaries as one…Citește mai mult

Hobey Baker a adăugat o fotografie

acum 7 ore

R.I.P
Hobey

Early life Baker was born in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, the second son of Alfred Thornton Baker, a wealthy upholsterer, and Mary Augusta Pemberton, a socialite. Alfred, known as Bobby to his friends, had played halfback while a student at Princeton University in the 1880s, the same school his father had attended. One of Baker's ancestors was Francis Rawle, a Quaker who emigrated to Philadelphia in 1688 and became one of the wealthiest members of the city. Baker was named after his uncle, Dr. Hobart Amory Hare, who was the obstetrician at his birth and president of the Jefferson Medical Hospital in Philadelphia. At the age of eleven, Baker and his twelve-year-old brother Thornton were sent to St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. Baker's parents divorced in 1907 and both remarried. While at St. Paul's, Baker was introduced to ice hockey. Malcolm Gordon, one of the first people to help develop hockey in the United States, was the coach of the school team and recognized Baker's skill. Baker was known by his classmates to be an exceptionally fast and agile skater. He spent nights skating on frozen ponds to improve his ability to move with the puck while not looking…Citește mai mult

Hobey Baker a adăugat o fotografie

acum 7 ore

R.I.P
Hobey

Princeton In 1910, Baker enrolled at Princeton University as a member of the Class of 1914. Along with six other classmates from St. Paul's, he lived in a house at 82 Nassau Street in Princeton. He joined the school's hockey, football, and baseball teams in his freshman year. The university's rules stated that students could only play two varsity sports, so Baker played outfield for the freshman baseball team before he gave up that sport to focus on hockey and football. In one of his first games with the football team, he helped defeat rival Yale when he faked a drop-kick field goal and instead ran the ball for a touchdown. Easily recognizable on the field because he wore no helmet, Baker was referred to as "the blond Adonis of the gridiron" by Philadelphia sportswriters. Princeton finished the 1911 season with a record of eight wins and two ties in ten games and won the national championship. During a game against Yale on November 18, 1911, Baker set a school record that still stands when he had 13 punt returns for 63 yards. During the 1911 football season Baker scored 92 points, a school record that lasted until 1974. Princeton…Citește mai mult

Hobey Baker a adăugat o fotografie

acum 7 ore

R.I.P
Hobey

Post-university years The summer after graduation, Baker toured Europe as a celebrity correspondent for The New York Times, where he wrote about events like the Henley Royal Regatta. Through his Princeton classmates, he was hired by Wall Street insurance firm Johnson & Higgins upon his return to the United States. Soon after, another Princeton graduate offered him a job at J.P. Morgan Bank. Hired onto a two-year trainee program, Baker earned about $20 per week. Baker befriended a rich New York socialite, Percy R. Pyne 2nd, who had also attended St. Paul's and Princeton. Though ten years older than Baker, they quickly became friends and Pyne invited Baker to live with him at his house at 263 Madison Avenue, which he did for two years. Pyne was known to be gay, and there is evidence suggestive of a romantic relationship. In 1917, Baker wrote to Pyne: "I can’t tell you what your letters mean to me...the picture of you came, also...When I feel especially dirty, I shall look at that picture...it makes me want to see you so much....I get horrible homesick and get thinking of the wonderful times we had when we weren’t scrapping." Pyne later introduced Baker to…Citește mai mult

Hobey Baker a adăugat o fotografie

acum 7 ore

R.I.P
Hobey

World War I Looking for new adventures, in 1916 he joined a civilian aviation corps led by New York City attorney Phillip A. Carroll on Governors Island, off the coast of Manhattan, a privately funded program to train civilians to pass the Reserve Military Aviator flying test and receive commissions in the Signal Officers Reserve Corps. He often went to the island late in the afternoon after he finished work for the day. Baker found the same enjoyment in flying that he had in sports, but with a more serious aspect. Prior to the annual Yale–Princeton football game on November 18, 1916, Baker in a Curtiss "Jenny" flown by fellow Governors Island student Cord Meyer (a Yalie), joined a squadron of New York National Guard Jennies led by Captain Raynal Bolling, the most to have ever flown in military formation, and flew to Palmer Stadium, home of the Princeton football team. The planes performed several maneuvers, to the delight of the crowd, and Baker landed on the field, becoming the first person to reach a football game by air. The entry of the United States into World War I excited Baker, as it finally gave him a purpose in life…Citește mai mult

Hobey Baker a lăsat un gând

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Death On December 21, 1918, Baker received orders to return to the United States. Reluctant to leave France and return to his life in America, he decided to take a final flight at his squadron's airfield in Toul. As he went for his own plane, the mechanic brought out a recently repaired one instead, in need of a test flight. The other pilots remonstrated with Baker, but he maintained that as commanding officer he could not let anyone else test the aircraft. In heavy rain, Baker took off and began to level off at 600 feet. A quarter of a mile into the flight, the engine failed. The plane was generally easy to crash-land if necessary, something he had done previously at the cost of a few broken ribs. A few hundred yards from the airfield, his plane crashed nose first into the ground. He was quickly freed from the aircraft by his men, but died in an ambulance minutes later; his orders to return home were found in his jacket pocket. Baker was buried in a small military cemetery near Toul; in 1921, his mother had his remains moved to her family plot in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala…Citește mai mult

Hobey Baker a lăsat un gând

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Legacy Baker is considered one of the greatest ice hockey players of his era, and the first great American hockey player. He was one of the first nine players inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame upon its founding in 1945, the first American so honored, and was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame as one of its charter members in 1973. Baker was posthumously awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy by the National Hockey League and USA Hockey in 1987 for his contributions to hockey in the United States. In 1975, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and is the only person in both the College Football and Hockey Halls of Fame. Baker was also inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame in 2010. His popularity was such that, after he enlisted in the military, so many of his fellow Princeton athletes followed his lead that the school had to cancel its hockey team for the 1917–18 season; all five starting players enlisted in the armed forces. Of the eleven players on the team the previous season, nine enlisted shortly after Baker. Baker was also the inspiration for literary works. In 1913…Citește mai mult

Hobey Baker a lăsat un gând

acum 7 ore

Regular season and playoffs Amateur statistics from Total Hockey, Diamond 2002, p. 616‡ Assists were not officially recorded as a statistic. The numbers here reflect only the assists that were credited to Baker in the game summaries. The actual total is likely higher.