Was hobey baker gay

since the National Hockey League was founded in 1917

there have been more than 10,000 NHL players

and not a single one has ever come out as gay

bisexual or any other variety of queer

but at the turn of the 20th century

the most famous athlete in the United States

was an amateur hockey player

named Hobey Baker and he was almost certainly queer

welcome back to yesterqueers

my name is Amanda and I'm a public historian of queer history

Hobey Baker was one of the greatest athletes of all time

and one of the first superstar athletes in American history

preternaturally skilled at any sport he tried

he is the only person ever to have been inducted

into both the College Football Hall of Fame

and the Hockey Hall of Fame

he set records in the early 1900s in both sports

some of which weren't broken until the 1960s

the 1960s

and he has a collegiate hockey award named after him

and yet most people in the US have never heard his name

in part because his life was cut tragically short by World War I

Hobart Amory Hare Baker was born January 15th, 1892

to a prominent family in Philadelphia

the younger of two sons he did not have a happy childhood

his parents had a difficult relationship

that was a constant source of gossip among Philadelphia's elite

and

neither of them were particularly interested in parenting their sons

after the two finally divorced when Hobey was 11

he and his older brother Thornton

were shipped off to an exclusive boarding school in New Hampshire

called St Paul's

St Paul's is "the cradle of American hockey"

the first hockey game ever played in the US

was played on St Paul's Lower School pond November 17th, 1883

Hobey was already playing football

but he loved hockey so much

that he was known for sneaking out of his room at night

to practice stick handling for hours on the lower school pond

it was too dark to see the puck most nights

so he Learned to stick handle without looking down

a skill that is still crucial to playing high level hockey today

modern hockey is played with six players on the ice three forwards

two defenseman and a goalie

but at the turn of the 20th century

it was played with seven that additional position was called a rover

and it could play anywhere on the ice

forward or defense

since substituting players also wasn't really a thing

at the turn of the 20th century

Rovers had to be the strongest players

Hobey Baker was a rover and he was unmatched

his exceptional skill combined with custom skates

that he designed with a trainer named Mac Smith

made him incredibly fast and agile

the St Paul's hockey team was so good in Hobey's era

that they regularly beat the varsity hockey teams

at Ivy League colleges like Princeton and Harvard

when Hobey followed in his father's footsteps

and entered Princeton himself in the fall of 1910

he played both football and hockey

neither the NFL nor the NHL existed yet

so college sports especially in what would become the Ivy League

were national news and Hobey was a superstar

while playing football he broke or set every collegiate record

he was named All American in the same year as Jim Thorpe

and he made a tackle in a 1913 game against Yale

that football historians still write about

but hockey was where he really shone

in 1912 the New York Tribune said of Baker

"the Lightning-like rover

had so much speed that it was next to impossible to check him

when he once got underway

old followers of hockey declared Baker to be

as fast as the best of the Canadian professionals"

he once again set or broke every conceivable college record

including most goals in a season

35 and most goals in a single game 8

he played varsity hockey for Princeton for three years

and only got one penalty in that time

because in addition to being an athlete beyond compare

Hobey Baker was the embodiment of a gentleman athlete

according to ESPN's 'searching for Hobey Baker'

"those who played with Hobey

or watched him from the grandstands

would remark on how he played the game with Grace

a firm commitment to fair play

and always with good sportsmanship

and did so in a manner that has rarely been equaled"

he was kind to younger players

and generous with his time to mentor them

he was known to be modest in victory and graceful in defeat

and he was endlessly patient with fans

although he usually brushed off praise for himself

and redirected it back to his team

the only place that Hobey was a little bit of a showboat

was on the field or on the ice

he refused to wear a helmet

and his golden blond hair made him impossible to miss

Hobey wanted people to see him playing

to see him dominating

it was while he was at Princeton

that Hobey met a Princeton alum named Percy Rivington Pyne

the 2nd who was about 10 years his senior

Percy was fabulously wealthy

he had inherited an astonishing fortune

and then grown it on Wall Street

and he was known to be a lavish entertainer

he once recreated an entire Parisian Boulevard for a pregame dinner

before a Vanderbilt ball

Percy Pyne was also gay in fact

he was the archetypal gay bachelor

hiding in plain sight in early 20th century Manhattan

and so was Hobey in a way

he was the Pinnacle of American masculinity

JC Leyendecker could very well have had him in the back of his mind

while he was creating the Arrow Collar Man

and Baker was known to have no interest in women

a college friend said of Hobey

"with his lean but well muscled figure and his handsome

manly yet boyish face

he was someone who would appeal to both men and women alike"

before noting

that he couldn't remember Hobey ever "getting acquainted" with a woman

this was a time in the US

when sleeping with someone of the same sex was considered an action

and not necessarily an indication of identity

so people wouldn't necessarily have seen it as a conflict

that Hobey was a stereotypically masculine athlete

and that he preferred the company of men

we hadn't yet gotten to the point where homosexual

heterosexual and bisexual were considered identities

so there was space for queer relationships in the early 20th century

at least for wealthy cis white men

Hobey was at loose ends after he graduated from Princeton

his father had officially run out of money

so he had to take a boring

low level job at JP Morgan

he had more than enough skill to play hockey professionally in Canada

and to be paid well for it

but he thought the idea of playing sports for money was crass

he revered what he saw as the pure competition of amateur sport

when Percy saw how hard Hobey was floundering

he invited him to move in with him to his Madison Avenue mansion

and he drew Hobey into this sort of Great Gatsby lifestyle

Percy was a member of dozens of private clubs

and he had multiple mansions

so they spent their time partying

playing polo racing cars

whatever

you might think that wealthy men at the turn of the 20th century

would do to amuse themselves

Percy and Hobey did it

Percy also showered Hobey with gifts

for instance marking the date that they moved in

together with this engraved silver cigarette case

Percy's support

also meant that Hobey was able to join the St Nick's amateur

hockey team where he continued to dazzle crowds of thousands

and to make headlines with his exceptional skill

when Hobey Baker

and St Nick's had the audacity to beat the Montreal Stars

in their own arena in front of a crowd of 10,000 Canadians

a Montreal newspaper begrudgingly wrote

"Uncle Sam has had the cheek to develop a first class hockey player .

They had, at that time before the impacts of climate change, ponds that were frozen over for three to four months of the year. People weren’t necessarily in the closet. They are the NFL, the NHL, everybody wraps into one, because he's such the standout player in both of those sports, he gets this reputation of being really he's like Tom Brady and Michael Jordan.

He was the first American player that the Canadians offered money to come and play in Canada. And my naivete got the best result.”

Hobart Amory Hare “Hobey” Baker was born in 1892 to an old Main Line Philadelphia family. He moved like a ballerina.”

Baker also had a reputation as an all-around, decent guy. At this time, people didn't really think of themselves as gay or straight.

Hobey talks about coming across a German pilot that he says, "Was flying a beautiful plane, and he was a beautiful pilot." Then Hobey unloaded the machine gun into that plane.

Hobey would share Percy's valet, his butler, and Percy would basically fund all of his lifestyle.

One thing that I really was not fully aware of was that space for same-sex love at that time was much larger than we perceive today. Clearly, they're deeply affectionate. He flies for a number of months, finally, when they get to the front lines.

All these stories about he did 10,000 hours of training. He was 11 when he and his brother were sent to St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., which was considered an ice hockey powerhouse. What he wants to do with himself is join the war. Every game he played in was in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, or The Canadian Press.

Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Andy Reynolds, who's the Executive Producer of a new three-part podcast from ESPN's 30 for 30.