Hockey legend Hobey Baker was gay, ESPN claims
June 14, 2024A new podcast from the sports cable channel ESPN has claimed that Hobey Baker, one of America's greatest ice hockey stars, was gay.
This assertion was made during an episode of the podcast series 30 for 30 – a comprehensive look into some of the most famous figures and stories in sports.
In the three-part series titled ‘Searching For Hobey Baker,’ which explores the life of the ice hockey player and WWI fighter pilot, the network suggests that Baker was gay – a revelation that surprised many.
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According to ‘MSN’, this claim is specifically discussed in episode two, ‘The Lost Generation,’ where narrator David Duchovny states that Baker began living with and enjoying a relationship with socialite and financier Percy Rivington Pyne II, who was 10 years his senior.
Their relationship attracted scrutiny within their social circles, even during a time, the podcast argues, that was “comparatively tolerant of gay relationships and sexual encounters between men.”
This seemingly untold story has surprised many Baker fans, including Outsports journalist Cyd Zeigler, who noted that in the “25 years of Outsports’ archives, Hobey Baker is not mentioned once.”
The series’ executive producer and researcher, Andy Reynolds, defended the claim, asserting there is extensive evidence to support it.
“That is what we are claiming,” Reynolds said. “It’s based on massive amounts of research and documentation. Talking about what this means, and how do we get this right, we know we have to dot every i and cross every t.”
Reynolds emphasised that the standard for validating each claim needed “to be incredibly high” and that he believed it had been met.
Baker’s contributions to ice hockey are significant, with the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s most prestigious award for male university players named in his honour.
Born in 1892 to a wealthy family in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, Baker’s early life was marked by his exceptional skill on the ice hockey rink.
While competing at St. Paul’s School, his talent was recognised by coach Malcolm Gordon, one of the sport’s pioneers in the U.S.A.
He later enrolled at Princeton University, becoming one of the most famous players on the Princeton Tigers hockey team while also enjoying success in the university’s football team.
During his peak with the Tigers, Baker helped secure eight wins in the 10-game 1911-12 hockey season.
In 1916, as the U.S. entry into WWI approached, Baker joined a civilian air corps and became a fighter pilot, eventually reaching the front lines in January 1918. He died in December of that year – a month after the conflict ended – when the plane he took for a test flight crashed at an airfield in northeastern France.
There are very few claims outside ‘Searching for Hobey Baker’ suggesting he was gay, though Reynolds maintained there is “no doubt” about his sexuality.
Reynolds and co-writer Tim Smith, after collecting letters exchanged between Baker and Pyne, concluded that the two were in a relationship.
“If we presented this evidence of a man and a woman, there’s no doubt we’d see them as a romantic couple,” Reynolds told Outsports. “In this case, the experts told us that they see this as a very strong loving relationship.
“This is a 90-minute podcast, but there’s a lot of other stuff under the bottom side of the iceberg.”
There is also evidence suggesting Baker was not attracted to women and made efforts to avoid any who wanted to date him. He was, however, briefly engaged to a friend of Pyne but ended the engagement shortly before his death.
While researchers acknowledge that relationships and views on sexuality were very different in the early 1900s, Reynolds concluded that Baker was gay or queer and insisted that experts agree.
“We didn’t receive any feedback saying, ‘No, you’ve got it wrong here.’ And I was careful not to prejudge their evaluations: we set out what we had and said: ‘Based on your expertise, what do you think?’”
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