Who was Hobey Baker?

The name of Hobey Baker will be forever linked to great college hockey and the annual award to the best U.S. college hockey player that bears his name, the Hobey Baker Memorial Award. However, the excellent Princeton athlete was a star in football as well as hockey.

He competed at a time (1910-13) when the games of hockey and football were played under regulations that made the sports completely different than what we know today. Hockey was played with seven men and no forward passing. Football, after the changes instituted by the insistence of President Roosevelt in 1905, was a safer game, but continued to be changed with a constant modification of rules. The running attack was still very basic and the passing game was slowly developing into what we know it to be today. Gone were the days of flying wedges, hurdling, or pushing the ball carrier. Until 1912 there were only three downs. The kicking game remained an important factor. The strategy usually employed was to force the other team into a mistake, hopefully a fumble. Kicking duels would often decide a game's outcome. Forty to fifty punts and kicks a game were not unusual.

Though the game was different from modern football, the enthusiasm was tremendous. There were mass pep rallies and torchlight parades. Hundreds of fans would show up to watch daily practices.

Due to poor grounds-keeping the field was often a muddy mess. The players wore very little padding beneath their sweaters and baggy pants. Some players wore leather helmets, but many did not. The fashion on the field was in sharp contrast to the way people dressed in the stands. Spectators wore fur coats, high collars, and the latest in fashionable hats.

Hobey Baker was born January 15, 1892 in Bala-Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. He went to prep school at St. Paul's. He came to Princeton to play hockey and had no particular reputation as a football player, however he soon became a fixture on the Princeton freshman team as a halfback. He was known as an excellent, ingenious runner who might fake a field goal, or take on a strange running style of alternately speeding up to escape tacklers and then slowing down to keep from over running his blockers.

Hobey's sophomore year, 1911, was the season he had doubts about his ability to play varsity football. At only 5-9, 160, he told a teammate that "a guy like me is almost certain to get hurt and not last very long." However, the varsity coaches liked the way he received punts. He was given a change in the opening game and scored a touchdown on a long run.

In 1911, Princeton was conceded the "national" championship by being the best of the Big Three - Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Hobey was used as a safety man most of the year. If the field was wet the chances of fumbling punt returns was increased since officials didn't keep the balls dry. To catch all the punts - like Hobey did in the Yale-Princeton game and preserve a 6-3 win - was a major accomplishment.

It was Hobey's junior year, 1912, that he made his mark in football. He developed a new tactic for punt returns. He would stand about five yards behind where he thought the punted ball would land. As he watched the ball descend he would run in place, and at the last second take off and catch the ball on a dead run. The big, and sometimes slippery, ball of that era was difficult enough to catch, but Hobey's courageous style was a sensation. It was a technique that only he seemed to master and it yielded him as many as 180 yards in a game. He could receive as many as twenty to twenty-five kicks in a game and each catch might decide the outcome of a game.

There were no numbers on players and a wet field could produce enough mud to darken a jersey to the point where it was difficult to tell between teammate or opponent. However, Hobey Baker always stood out, if not just for his unique style of receiving punts but also his bright shock of yellow hair since he refused to wear a helmet.

Sportswriter John R. Tunis wrote of Baker: "The whole atmosphere was electric when he was playing. Everybody would just stand up when he got the puck or caught the ball. He could drop kick from any part of the field and from any angle. He was kind of a panther. His coordination and foot-work were so wonderful that he could take chances and do things that others wouldn't dare to."

His reckless and daring style of football may have been inspired by his method of hockey playing. His position of rover as a hockey player provided him the same kind of independence and control that an aggressive punt returner did.

By mid-October of the 1912 season Baker was declared "the most feared open field runner now playing the game of football," by the Boston Herald. But the Big Three were still playing the Eastern style of college football - punt, look for a fumble, and get into position for a field goal. In 1912, a fourth down was added and a variety of restrictions on the forward pass were removed. It was time for the offense to blossom, but it would be a Western team that would take full advantage. Notre Dame developed a wide open passing attack and demolished one of the East's best teams, Army, 35-0, in 1912.

Hobey developed his drop-kicking style and quickly became known as a scoring machine. He had tremendous kicking duels with Harvard's great kicker Brickley. Between his running and kicking ability he eventually accumulated enough points to become Princeton's all-time career scoring leader, a record that lasted 50 years.

Harvard was national champion in 1912. Hobey was selected All-American along with Harvard's Brickley and Carlisle's Jim Thorpe.

Hobey was elected captain for the 1913 season. The Princeton captain had tremendous responsibilities. He worked with the coaches and made crucial field and strategy decisions. It was a year that Hobey did a little of everything: ran the ball, returned kicks, drop kicked, played defensive back, threw the ball, and coached.

Though Hobey Baker will be forever remembered as an amateur hockey player, who played in a league by himself, his ability on the gridiron will also be remembered. Biographer John Davies wrote " . . . with the existing rules and strategy, football could take small advantage of Hobey's full range of abilities . . . offensively consisted of catching punts and drop-kicking . . . the only excitement in this curiously shackled, self-hobbled game. He was an offensive star in a defensive age. And that's why old men (and old ladies) still talk of the times they 'went down to see Hobey Baker play.'"

After Hobey graduated from Princeton he became a banker. He also played for the amateur team at St. Nicholas Arena in New York, the equivalent of modern pro hockey. When World War I started he joined the Army, became a pilot and won the Croix de Guerre. Just before he was to leave France to return to the U.S. he was killed in a flying accident in 1918.

He is enshrined in both the Hockey Hall of Fame and the National Football Hall of Fame, the only player to be in both halls. Each season the top U.S. college hockey player is awarded the Hobey Baker Memorial Award.