December 21, 1918: The Death of Hobey Baker

December 21, 1918: Hobey Baker, America's 1st great hockey player, is killed in a plane crash. He was only 26 years old.

Hobart Amory Hare Baker was born on January 15, 1892 outside Philadelphia in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. His family was rich, and could have gotten him into any college he wanted. Instead of the nearby University of Pennsylvania, he chose Princeton University, helping them win National Championships in football in 1911, and in hockey in 1912 and 1914.

He graduated in 1914, and moved to New York where he went to work for J.P. Morgan Bank and helped the St. Nicholas Hockey Club win the national amateur championship in 1915.

In 1917, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Service, a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. By the time the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, he held the rank of Captain, and was commander of the 141st Aero Squadron.

On December 21, 1918, 40 days after the Armistice, and the day before he was set to return to America, he was test-piloting a plane in Toul, France, when the engine failed, and crashed nose-first. He was pulled out of the wreckage, but died in the ambulance.

In 1921, Princeton opened the Hobey Baker Memorial Rink. He was the only American among the 1st 9 inductees into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945. In 1975, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. In 1980, the Hobey Baker Award was introduced, a hockey version of the Heisman Trophy.

*

December 21, 1918 was a Saturday. Born on this day were Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian diplomat who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992, but was later exposed as having committed war crimes during World War II; and Donald Regan, who served President Ronald Reagan as Secretary of the Treasury during his 1st term and White House Chief of Staff for the 1st half of his 2nd, before his resignation over the Iran-Contra scandal.

Baseball was in the off-season. Football season was also over, except for the Rose Bowl, which was an all-military affair: George Halas led the Great Lake Naval Training Station, north of Chicago, to a 17-0 win over the Mare Island Marines, based outside San Francisco, led by former Washington State quarterback Dick Hanley. Both teams went into the game undefeated. Hanley would coach Marine teams in World War II. Halas, of course, went on to found the team that became the Chicago Bears, and co-found the NFL.

There was no serious professional basketball league. But the NHL season opened on this date, with 1 game: The Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Canadiens, 5-2 at the Jubilee Arena in Montreal.

April 30, 1945: The 1st Hockey Hall of Fame Election

James T. Sutherland

April 30, 1945: The first election for the Hockey Hall of Fame is held, in Toronto. It is announced at the National Hockey League's offices, since the Hall does not yet have a physical location, and won't until 1961.

The Hockey Hall of Fame was established through the efforts of James T. Sutherland, a former president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA). Sutherland sought to establish it in Kingston, Ontario, as he believed that the city was the birthplace of hockey. (The evidence is murky: It could also have been in Montreal, or in Canada's Maritime Provinces.)

In 1943, the NHL and CAHA reached an agreement that a Hall of Fame would be established in Kingston. Originally called the "International Hockey Hall of Fame," its mandate was to honor great hockey players and to raise funds for a permanent location.

The 1st 9 "honoured members" were, in chronological order:

* Horace "Hod" Stuart, star of America's 1st great professional team, the Pittsburgh Bankers, and a member of the Montreal Wanderers' 1907 Stanley Cup winners, shortly before his death in a diving accident.

* Frank McGee, star of the Ottawa Silver Seven team that won the Stanley Cup in 1903, 1904, 1905 and 1906. 

* Harvey Pulford, who also played for those Silver Seven teams.

* Tommy Phillips, star of one of the greatest upset wins in hockey history, the 1907 Stanley Cup win of the Kenora Thistles.

* Georges Vezina, for whom the NHL's top goaltender award was named, backstop of the Montreal Canadiens' Stanley Cup winners of 1916 and 1924. 

* Hobart "Hobey" Baker, amateur star at Princeton University, the 1st American ever elected, and the only non-Canadian among the charter inductees.

* Eddie Gerard, who played for several Ottawa teams, including the Ottawa Senators' Stanley Cup winners of 1920, 1921 and 1923.

* Howie Morenz, "the Babe Ruth of Hockey," who led the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup in 1924, 1930 and 1931.

* Charlie Gardiner, goaltender who fought through what turned out to be a fatal illness to help the Chicago Black Hawks win the 1934 Stanley Cup.

It wasn't just Gardiner: All of them were already dead. McGee had died in combat in World War I, while Baker had died in a training accident in service after the Armistice. Vezina died of tuberculosis in 1926, while still an active player. Pulford had died in 1940, at age 65, the only one to have lived anything resembling a long life.

In addition, the 1st 2 "Builders" were elected: Frederick Stanley, the 16th Earl of Derby, who, as Governor-General of Canada in 1893, had donated the Stanley Cup; and H. Montagu Allan, who had founded the Allan Cup, awarded since 1909 to Canada's annual amateur hockey champions. Hall of Fame founder Sutherland had donated the Memorial Cup in 1919, as a tribute to the dead of World War I, for the championship of Canadian "major junior hockey." He would be elected in the Hall's 2nd class, in 1947.

There would be no physical Hockey Hall of Fame until 1961, when it opened at Exhibition Place in Toronto. It was moved to the former Bank of Montreal building in downtown Toronto in 1993.

*

April 30, 1945 was a Monday. It was the day that Adolf Hitler performed his one service to humanity: Killing Hitler. I have a separate entry for that event.

The National Football League was in its off-season. The National Hockey League had already completed its season, with the Toronto Maple Leafs having won the Stanley Cup. And the National Basketball Association wouldn't begin play for another year and a half. And it was a Monday, a travel day in Major League Baseball. No games were played.