Searching for Hobey Baker
Episode 1: The Natural
MALE VOICE: Get your tickets. Get tickets.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: The year, 1911. The venue, St. Nicholas Arena, New York City. It’s where Princeton University played their home hockey games, usually to sold out crowds. Tonight, Princeton’s Hobart Amory Hare Baker, a prep school hockey sensation, is about to make his debut against Williams College, a team the Princeton Tigers just barely beat the year before.
But this game was never close. Next morning’s New York Tribune’s headline reads, “Princeton trounces Williams 14 to nothing.” And the leading scorer, with six goals, is Hobart Baker, soon to be known to all as Hobey. The New York Tribune, December 22nd, 1911.
NEW YORK TRIBUNE: Throughout the game, Baker appeared at his best. This rover was everywhere. And almost every time he shot the puck at the opposing net, it reached the mark.
HOBEY BAKER: Hobey had already made a name for himself playing football for Princeton, then one of the top college teams in America.
HOBEY BAKER: Los Angeles Times, October 27th, 1912.
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Princeton surprised the most optimistic of her followers today by defeating Dartmouth 22 to seven. Hobey Baker’s work was without question the feature of the fray. With Princeton one point behind in the second period, Baker gave them the lead by kicking a goal from the 30 yard line, and in addition, made the most sensational run seen here this year. Gathering the ball on Princeton’s 15 yard line, he dodged his way through the entire green 11 and ran 85 yards for a touchdown.
ANNOUNCER: Touchdown. Princeton Tigers.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Hello. I’m David Duchovney. I’m an actor, and writer, and sometime athlete. And like Hobey Baker, I also went to Princeton University. During my four years there, I was well aware of the legend, the myth that was Hobey Baker, whether it was his name on Princeton’s hockey rink or portraits of him hanging in the Ivy Club and Nassau Inn.
But that’s not the same as understanding who Hobey Baker really was. While Hobey Baker is arguably one of America’s greatest athletes, not just of his time, but of all time, many people have never heard of him. If you’re a hockey fan, you might recall his name, which is engraved on the trophy given each year to the best men’s college hockey player in America, the Hobey Baker Award.
And to this day, he remains the only athlete in both the college football and hockey hall of fames. As a two sport athlete, Hobey was the real life natural in an era when college phenoms like Baker were the center of America’s media universe.
After all, the early 20th century was a time before Hollywood celebrities, rock stars, or social media influencers. One of Baker’s Princeton classmates, the novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, described his encounter with Hobey this way.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: He was an idea worthy of everything in my enthusiastic admiration, yet consummated and expressed in a human being who stood within ten feet of me.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: People adored Hobey. And for much of his life, he existed in the national spotlight. But there was so much more to him than the beautiful, preternaturally gifted athlete everyone saw. In his biography of Baker, Princeton alum, John Davies, wrote that, “With Hobey, there was always a foreboding, a sense that Hobey was somehow playing out a Greek tragedy.”
So who was the real Hobey? We spent years examining his personal correspondence, conducted extensive interviews with experts, and countless hours researching in the Hobey Baker archives at Princeton. We went in search of Hobey Baker. And what we discovered wasn’t just his amazing athletic accomplishments, and his daring exploits as a World War I fighter pilot, but also the untold, queer history of an iconic American athlete.
So join me as we travel back over a century to a time when sports and what is today called the Ivy League were king and Hobey Baker uncomfortably wore its crown. From 30 for 30 Podcasts, this is Searching for Hobey Baker, episode one, The Natural. Hobey Baker was born in 1892 in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. And despite his being brought up in wealthy mainline Philadelphia, his path to athletic greatness was built on the emotional wreckage of a traumatic childhood.
EMIL SALVINI: Hobey’s father and his wife, May Augusta Pemberton, they did have a tumultuous relationship.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Emil Salvini is the author of Hobey Baker, American Legend. With their parents’ marriage coming apart, the 11 year old Hobey and his older brother, Thornton, found themselves cast adrift.
EMIL SALVINI: Hobey’s mother was not a strong maternal influence in Hobey or his brother’s, Thornton’s, life. They tolerated each other until they divorced. May Pemberton managed to keep the Quaker City gossips in a turmoil. For many years before she and Alfred were divorced, they felt the lack of a mother, especially Hobey, I think for the rest of his life.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: To get his boys away from the gossip and also from his obligation as a father, Alfred Baker sent Hobey and Thornton to St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, a school known for graduating men of action, and only accepting male students of the appropriate pedigree and class, like the Astors, Duponts, Morgans, Kennedys, Vanderbilts, and William Randolph Hearst.
EMIL SALVINI: So, Hobey and his brother were basically raised at St. Paul’s from the age of 11 to 18.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Hobey’s father asked an older boy and former neighbor, Ned Toland (PH), to watch over Hobey at St. Paul’s.
NED TOLAND: Hobey’s father said, “Ned, we can’t do much about bringing up the boy. Please keep your eye on him and do everything you can.”
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Ned Toland shared his memories of Hobey in a letter to Baker biographer, John Davies.
NED TOLAND: I was happy to, having known the family in Philadelphia. Young Hobey soon showed the most extraordinary athletic talent.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: With its frozen ponds providing black ice from Thanksgiving through March, St. Paul’s became the birthplace and mecca of hockey in the United States.
EMIL SALVINI: One of the headmasters visited Canada. And when he came back, he had all this different equipment with him. Because up to that point, they used to play what was called– shinty. And that was really just using a stick to bat a ball up and down the ice. So he introduced a puck, sort of a modern puck that we use today, and– ice hockey sticks. And– he’s considered one of the fathers of American hockey along with Malcolm Gordon, who was hired there as a coach.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: On cold winter nights, a young Hobey Baker would skate alone in the dark on St. Paul’s lower school pond with just his hockey stick and a puck.
TIM RAPPLEYE: Not only would he sneak out on Sunday afternoons when you were not supposed to be playing hockey, but he would also sneak out on weeknights under a moon and starlight and stick handle for hours at a time.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: That’s Tim Rappleye, author of, Hobey Baker: Upon Further Review.
TIM RAPPLEYE: And he couldn’t look down at the puck, because it’s midnight. So why bother? And so he learned to stick handle without every having to look down, which is really the– the formula for becoming a star.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Hobey’s hockey teams at St. Paul’s not only dominated their other prep school opponents, but even managed the David versus Goliath task of defeating varsity hockey teams at both Princeton and Harvard. But Ned Toland remembered Hobey not just as an amazing high school hockey prodigy, but also as a deeply empathetic and caring person.
NED TOLAND: The other thing I recall was his kindness with the younger boys. He was a god at St. Paul’s. But after hockey practice was over, Hobey would invariably skate over to a group of young boys watching. He’d sort them into teams of seven and play them alone. He was untouchable on the ice, but found subtle ways of allowing the younger boys to score on him. One of those little boys, Louis Miller (PH), told me it was one of the highlights of his life. And he told me that when he was 70 years old.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: From an early age, Hobey’s concern for others was legendary. Jim Deckert (PH) was a year behind Hobey at St. Paul’s. He too wrote Davies about his fond memories of Hobey.
JIM DECKERT: Our team was often used by the varsity team for practice. One day, Hobey flashed ahead of me to steal the puck. On turning to get away, his skate accidentally drove into my shin, opening a gap between the muscle and the bone of about three inches.
I was carted off to the infirmary and stayed there for weeks until the doctors pronounced me out of danger of paralysis. He was the big man on campus, busier than anyone, but he still came to visit me twice a day without fail the entire time. It’s been 50 years since that day. But any time I feel like remembering Hobey Baker, I only have to stick a finger in the little hole that still exists in my shin.
NEWSBOY: Hey, hey. Extra. Extra. New York City’s Knickerbocker Bank goes bust. Stock market crashes. Hey, read all about it in today’s New York Herald. Extra. Extra. Get your paper here. Still just five cents.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: America’s financial panic of 1907 drove Hobey’s father, Alfred, and his furniture upholstery business close to bankruptcy. In 1910, with the Baker boys set to graduate from St. Paul’s, Alfred was left with a fraught choice. With only enough money to send one boy to college, the likely choice was the elder son, Thornton. But Thornton didn’t agree. He selflessly stepped aside to let the younger, more athletic brother go instead.
TIM RAPPLEYE: And that was a great psychological debt that Hobey never really reconciled, that his brother laid down his ambitions, his dreams for Hobey. So Hobey always felt a little guilty over that.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Not surprisingly, the college Hobey chose was Princeton University, where his father had starred in football a quarter of a century earlier. In 1910, Princeton was much different than today. It was all white, all male, and, like St. Paul’s, very much an upper class bastion. Baker contemporary, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, described the campus this way.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: Suddenly all around you spreads out the loveliest variete of Gothic architecture in America. Battlement linked onto battlement, hall to hall, arch broken, vine-covered luxuriant, and lovely. Over two square miles of green grass. Here is no monotony. No feeling that it was all built yesterday at the whim of last week’s millionaire. Nassau Hall was already 30 years old when Hessian bullets pierced its sides.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Hobey’s growing fame at Princeton rested on his sporting exploits, the great football player, and an even greater hockey player. He was also skilled at golf, tennis, baseball, and swimming.
EMIL SALVINI: What they said most about Hobey was that he only had to be shown how to do something once. There’s one story where he was walking with a friend and they came by a building where there were tryouts for the– shooting club. And his friend said, “Why don’t you try it?” And he had never held a gun before. And they showed him how the rifle worked. And they said within a couple hours, he had qualified for the team.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Like many Princeton students, F. Scott Fitzgerald was in awe of Hobey. In his first novel, This Side of Paradise, he gave the main character Hobey’s middle name, Amory. And the story even included a character based on Hobey, named Allenby.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: There, at the head of the white platoon, marched Allenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that this year the hopes of the college rested on him, that his 160 pounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue and crimson lines. Fascinated, Amory watched each rank of linked arms as it came abreast, the faces indistinct above the polo shorts, the voices built in a pan of triumph. And the voices grew fainter as they wound eastward over campus.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Kurt Kernit is a Fitzgerald scholar and English professional at Troy University.
KIRK CURNUTT: There’s a strong tendency in Fitzgerald for hero worship. You know, Hobey was the BMOC when Fitzgerald got there in the fall of 1913, the big man on campus. That was a huge deal in the Ivy Leagues, represented not only sort of the intellectual scholar gentleman, but the consummate athlete. And Fitzgerald wanted to be that athlete.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: At the turn of the 20th century, football and Princeton University were synonymous. In fact, Princeton and Rutgers played the first college football game ever in 1869.
JOEL BUSSERT: The eastern schools that eventually formed the Ivy League, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, had always been important schools in the development of football.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Joel Bussert is a former NFL executive and leading authority on the early days of college football.
JOEL BUSSERT: And these years, it’s important to remember, there’s no such thing as a National Football League. It won’t be organized until 1920. And therefore, in a certain sense, college football was the only game in town.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: It was also a dangerous sport. After watching a Yale-Harvard football game, then heavyweight boxing champ, John Sullivan, remarked, “There’s murder in that game.” In 1909, 26 players died playing football. This caused some colleges, including Stanford and Columbia, to drop the sport.
But Princeton’s then president, Woodrow Wilson, a former football coach himself, was a fervent supporter of the game, and the virtues or teamwork and fair play it provided students. Along with other college presidents, he lobbied to change the game’s rules, making it less deadly by prohibiting flying wedges, and stopping blockers from locking arms, and outlawing diving tackles, and providing better protection for pass receivers. In 1910, Hobey’s first year at Princeton, freshman were not allowed to play hockey. So Hobey decided to give the dangerous game of football a try. Tim Rappleye.
TIM RAPPLEYE: He says, “Oh, I sort of want to figure out this football thing.” And turned out to become quite a star in football, because of his elusive, incredible athleticism, his speed, and his stamina, and his– his vision out there. I think Gale Sayers or– Sanders from Detroit would be the best analogy of what kind of football player he was, incredibly fast and elusive.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Hobey starred as both the freshman team’s punt returner and drop kicker, two key positions in early 20th century football. Back then, more yards were usually gained on punt returns than on plays from the line of scrimmage. Teams might punt 40 or more times during a game, sometimes even on first down. Heff Herring, one of Hobey’s football coaches, described Hobey’s athletic prowess in his book, Forty Years of Football.
HEFF HERRING: I believe it to be absolutely true that he never dropped a single punt in four years at Princeton. I might add that his method of punt catching was to stand two or three yards back from where he judged the punt would drop, then start so as to take it on the run. It was risky, of course, but his record speaks for itself.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Hobey biographer, Emil Salvini.
EMIL SALVINI: They had no numbers on their jerseys at that time. And– he never wore a helmet. So he was recognizable not only by his speed, but by his blonde hair, which they said you could see flowing as he ran. And– they said he was absolutely graceful, turned in any direction. And he did it with almost no apparent effort. I mean, he truly was the natural. And that– people just were just absolutely blown away by watching what he could do. And he did it with no effort at all.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: In spite of his small size, 5’9″ and just 160 pounds, during his four years playing football at Princeton, Hobey set every school scoring record, records that stood for half a century, resulting in him being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
In 1912, Hobey was named an all-American, along with another football icon, Jim Thorpe. During Hobey’s three years on the varsity football team, Princeton lost just three of their 27 games and were the consensus national champions in 1911, Hobey’s sophomore year. And while Hobey is remembered for his amazing offensive plays on the gridiron, it is perhaps his final act on the field against his arch nemesis, Yale, that is among his most memorable. And it was a defensive play.
TRAIN CONDUCTOR: Ladies and gentlemen, last call. All aboard the Princeton-Yale game special. The next stop and, in fact, the only stop of this train will be New Haven, Connecticut. All aboard.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: November 15th, 1913. During the heyday of Princeton football, special trains brought eager fans to away games. 35,000 people watched Princeton play its final season game in New Haven against Yale to the sound of, “Bulldog. Bulldog. Eli Yale,” a fight song written by Hobey’s friend and famed composer, Cole Porter, Yale class of 1913. Early football expert, Joel Bussert.
JOEL BUSSERT: Late in the game, the score is tied three to three. And– a Yale player by the name of Ainsworth gets loose on a long, long run, probably– most of the field. And of course he’s being pursued by most of the Princeton team, almost all of whom are losing ground, except one player, Hobey Baker.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Here’s how the Meriden Daily Journal described it.
MERIDEN DAILY JOURNAL: The rabid crowd fired to a point of frenzy, howled for a touchdown. Ainsworth was now clear of everybody but Hobey Backer, playing far back towards the Princeton goal. Baker set himself like a panther ready to spring. Ainsworth rushed along, first trying to dodge one way, then the other.
It was a battle of wits. Baker wouldn’t move, but just waited until he was sure which way Ainsworth was going to dash. For a moment, it looked as if Ainsworth was free to pass. Both of Baker’s arms clutched themselves around Ainsworth’s legs. And he began to topple over. Ainsworth fell over toward the Tiger goal line, just six yards from the coveted chalk mark. It was the best Princeton tackle of the game. It had to be. And Baker knew it.
JOEL BUSSERT: I could write hundreds if not thousands of words and fill several columns of– of a newspaper about a game. It– it was what I would call the heroic age of sports. The players were perceived as heroes. And they were described in heroic ways– by the newspaper reporters who were covering the games. And this contributed of course I think to the legend of Hobey Baker.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: One of Hobey’s fervent fans was Woodrow Wilson. He was the former president of Princeton University, New Jersey’s then governor, and the 1912 Democratic presidential candidate. Wilson would often walk from his nearby home over to Princeton’s football fields and quietly observe Hobey and the team practice, something he happened to do on November 5th while awaiting the 1912 election returns. Watching Hobey and his teammates was Wilson’s moment of Zen, giving him solace and comfort just hours before he became president elect of the United States of America.
TIM RAPPLEYE: The football team felt quite an affinity for Wilson as well.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Hobey biographer, Tim Rappleye.
TIM RAPPLEYE: And so when the results were confirmed, the whole football team, including Hobey, came to Wilson’s house and serenaded him with, you know, I’m sure the Princeton Old Nassau.
TIM RAPPLEYE: Hobey loved to sing. And I’m sure he was front and center, serenading the president.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: But as accomplished as he was at football, Hobey Baker’s greatest athletic exploits occurred on the ice. As a hockey player, Hobey was, and in fact still is, and always will be sui generis, a player without parallel. Hobey played on the days when there were not six, but seven players on a hockey team, three forwards, two defense men, a goalie, and a seventh player, the rover.
The rover was allowed to range freely over the entire rink, playing either defense or forward. And the rover was always the team’s best player, Hobey. And also, back then, there was no forward passing in hockey. And substitutions were rare. So players often stayed on the ice the entire game. Hobey also had a unique technological advantage, special skates crafted just for him. Tim Rappleye explains.
TIM RAPPLEYE: When he was at St. Paul’s, there was a trainer, Mack Smith (PH). He worked with Hobey and decided instead of just having, like, six inches or eight inches of steel on the ice like a ruler, they would rocker the blade, so make it look like a rocking chair’s rocker.
So there’s less blade, less steel on the front, less steel on the back. And this would allow Hobey to make these severe cuts along the ice and take what– what are known as rink turns and special crossovers that would allow him much more agility. And it allowed him to do his signature move. He would go around his own net with the puck to pick up speed. And he would do it not just once, do it twice on these rockered blades to get a whole head of steam going.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: In A Guide to Hockey, Baker even wrote down his tips about playing the game, referencing how he learned to play on cold winter nights on St. Paul’s ponds.
HOBEY BAKER: To get out on the ice and spend ten or 15 minutes skating around, never looking at the puck at all, but feeling it at the end of your stick, is the best sort of practice for those who wish to become hockey players. The ability to carry the puck without looking at it enables a player to take in the whole field as he comes down the ice. He can see just where each man is placed and can instantly work out his course.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: With his innovative skates and prodigious hockey acumen, Hobey set every possible college hockey record, records that stood for decades. While official stats weren’t recorded, he is credited with scoring the most goals in a season, 35, most goals in one game, eight, and most goals per game, 2.2. And even the opposition crowds were captivated by Hobey, often chanting, “Here he comes,” when Hobey had the puck.
ALL: Here he comes. Here he comes. Here he comes. Here he comes.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Over his three years playing varsity hockey at Princeton, Hobey led the Tigers to national college championships in 1912 and in his final year, 1914. But Baker did more than just set records. 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. Vernon Andrews wrote about Hobey’s legacy as a sportsman in his recent book that examined the cultural impact of white and Black athletes.
VERNON ANDREWS: So Hobey loved this British ideal of amateurism, but had really gotten kicked in once the new Olympics started in– 1896. And so he was filled with this idea of amateur ideal, and– and shaking hands, and knowing the other players, and not playing for money.
There was something higher that you played for other than money. And he was the embodiment of that, the gentleman athlete, shaking hands, being a good person to everyone, and really not taking much credit for himself. He was okay with losing as long as he played fair, as long as he didn’t check anyone too hard in hockey. And he only got on penalty in all of his years of playing hockey in college.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: In a 1991 article on Hobey’s legacy, Sports Illustrated write, Ron Fimrite, described what he termed Hobey’s Code.
RON FIMRITE: A star player must be modest in victory and generous in defeat. He credits his triumphs to teamwork, accepts only faint praise for himself. He is clean-cut in dress and manner. He plays by the rules. He never boasts, for boasting is the worst form of muckery. And above all, he is cool and implacable, incapable of conspicuous public demonstration.
ANNOUNCER: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Boston Arena. Tonight, the Harvard Crimson take on the Princeton University Tigers. And here is tonight’s lineup for the visiting Princeton Tigers. Starting at the role of position and co-captain is Hobart Amory Baker.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: What many consider Hobey’s greatest hockey game was one of the few he actually lost. It took place on January 24th, 1914 in the Boston Arena. Hobey biographer, Emil Salvini.
EMIL SALVINI: It was sold out. There was about 6,000 spectators. And they were actually scalping the tickets.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Tim Rappleye picks the game up from there.
TIM RAPPLEYE: Harvard and Princeton had both split national championships the previous two years. And this is gonna be the big showdown.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: But this year, Harvard had an unexpected advantage. Two of Princeton’s starters, Ehrik Kliner (SIC) and Grant Peacock, were out that night, leaving the Tigers low on substitutes.
EMIL SALVINI: You couldn’t go back in the game once they took you out. So these guys were playing, you know, no commercials or anything like that. They’d lose, like, five, ten pounds during a game.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: The New York Times, January 25th, 1914.
NEW YORK TIMES: The most desperately contested college hockey game in years was played between Harvard and Princeton at the arena tonight. The Tigers, playing without Kliner (SIC) and Peacock were greatly handicapped. But Harvard did not stop Baker, as had been figured. And the Tiger’s star was battering away at the Crimson goal all evening.
TIM RAPPLEYE: They played two periods of overtime. They played a sudden death overtime.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: The Daily Princetonian, January 26th, 1914.
THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN: Twice during the second extra period came two brilliant plays by Baker. And it looked almost certain that Princeton would score the deciding goal. Taking the puck from behind his own goal line, Baker threaded his way with lightning speed past all his opponents. Each time, however, he was compelled to make a quick shot, which missed its mark by only a narrow margin.
TIM RAPPLEYE: And finally in, like, the 80th minute, a fella named Leverett Saltonstall scored the winning goal, who was future governor and future senator for Massachusetts, a political giant. And Saltonstall would always say his greatest moment was scoring the overtime goal that beat Hobey Baker.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: But Hobey’s days at Princeton involved more than his well-covered exploits on the gridiron and ice. He loved to sing, to play his ukulele, and to spend fun times with his college friends and teammates. Early on at Princeton, he had been eagerly accepted into Princeton’s Ivy Club, which, like Yale’s secret society, Skull and Bones, was reserved for the college’s male elite, even though Hobey lacked the wealth of many of his Ivy Club peers. More so than today, a century ago, private clubs like Ivy were the nursery for politicians, titans of industry, judges, and society’s benefactors.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: During his senior year, Hobey and his Ivy Club friends attended a party at New York’s Plaza Hotel.
TIM RAPPLEYE: So Hobey is at a bachelor party. And they’re drinking champagne. And evidently, Hobey’s a pretty cheap drunk, one or two glasses of champagne. And he’s gettin’ tipsy. And he’s taking chances. So he leads a parade of– of these boys in tuxedos, you know, out onto, like, the third, or fourth, or fifth floor on this crazy ledge. And Hobey’s just, you know, prancing back and forth like a cat, risking life and limb, and blowing the minds of all these tuxedo-ed– Hobey fans. That was just all part of his persona.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Another frequent haunt for Hobey and his friends were parties hosted by Percy Rivington Pyne II. Nine years older than Hobey, Percy, like Hobey, graduated from St. Paul’s and then followed the well-trodden path to his father’s alma mater, Princeton, where he even won the college golf championship in 1899. Baker biographer, Emil Salvini.
EMIL SALVINI: As far as Percy goes, he was an interesting character. And– you know, many people said he was the poster boy for the idle rich.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Percy was the son of Moses Taylor Pyne, one of America’s richest men during the Guilded Age. The Pyne fortune was over $2 billion in today’s money and was based on transporting cotton from the south and developing the sugar trade between Cuba and America, crops dependent on slave labor.
Moses both attended and adored Princeton, donating millions to his alma mater, helping transform it from a provincial, local New York college to a major national university. Between the 1880s and 1920s, Moses Pyne wielded the power to hire and force the resignation of Princeton presidents, including Woodrow Wilson.
For decades, he more or less bankrolled the university. Percy Pyne took full advantage of his father’s uber wealth, entertaining Princeton’s top athletes, along with bachelors from New York’s elite families at Drumthwacket, the family’s mansion in Princeton. Charles Biddle, a Princeton alum, was a good friend of both Hobey and Percy. In a letter to Hobey biographer, John Davies, Biddle recalled what Percy would call, “The rippin’ days at Drumthwacket.”
CHARLES BIDDLE: I came to know Percy well. He had a tremendous fortune. And it gave him great pleasure to entertain and give a good time to the younger men he liked. There were other men along, both of Percy’s age, like Mike Vanderbilt, and a number of younger men who Percy liked to entertain. He drank too much, but was a very nice and most generous person.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: In June, 1914, Hobey graduated from Princeton. But he was not quite ready to enter the humdrum world of work. Dreading a life out of the athletic spotlight and craving new adventures, Hobey embarked on a carefree summer motorcycle tour of Europe with a Princeton classmate, Rolf Bonn (PH). At the end of their European jaunt, in August 1914, Hobey and Rolf found themselves in London, staying with Princeton professor, Augustus Trowbridge. In a letter to a friend, Trowbridge’s son, Cornelius, recalled Hobey’s visit.
CORNELIUS TROWBRIDGE: Hobey drove a motorcycle exactly as he skated. Careening around with me holding onto his back was such a thrill. The London bobbies had never seen anything like it and just stared at us with their mouths open.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: However, during the summer of 1914, ominous clouds of war were gathering over Europe. The Manchester Guardian, June 29th, 1914.
THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN: The Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in the streets of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, yesterday afternoon.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: The Austrian archduke’s assassination set in motion a chain of cataclysmic events, leading to The Great War, now known as World War I. The British Foreign Office, August 4th, 1914.
BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE: His majesty’s government has declared to the German government that a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany as from 11:00 P.M. on August 4.
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Great Britain joined France and Russia in declaring war on Germany. The next morning, Hobey and Rolf impulsively tried to enlist in the British Army.
TIM RAPPLEYE: They were caught up with this sense of noblesse oblige, “We wanna be the noble class that goes off to war and takes on the Germans.” And outta nowhere, a Princeton professor sees them and says, “You absolutely cannot go off to war.”
DAVID DUCHOVNY: Professor Trowbridge reminded Hobey that his fame would make his enlisting front page news and embarrass his admirer, President Woodrow Wilson, who wished to maintain America’s neutrality. Chasten and disappointed, Hobey and Rolf set sail back to New York.
As their ocean liner departed for America, Hobey observed thousands of young British soldiers queuing on the Liverpool docks, mobilizing for France and The Great War. With Europe now at war, the British foreign secretary remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
So as Europe’s lights dimmed and with his athletic glory days at Princeton behind him, Hobey felt adrift, sailing home to what seemed an uncertain and dull future. Baker perhaps feared that he might soon become like the Fitzgerald character, Tom Buchanan, in The Great Gatsby, one of those men who reached such an acute, limited excellence at 21 that everything afterwards savors of anticlimax.
But Hobey would soon learn that his days as an American sports star were far from over and that his life would take a new and dramatic turn under the wing of none other than Percy Rivington Pyne II. Coming up on the next episode of Searching for Hobey Baker.
TIM RAPPLEYE: Hobey is living, like, some scene out of The Great Gatsby, kinda on the arm of Percy Pyne.
HOBEY BAKER: Dear Percy. God knows I have not deserved all the affection you have given me.
EMIL SALVINI: And he just had this on again/off again hero worship of Hobey. He couldn’t spend enough time with Hobey.
HOBEY BAKER: I feel and have always felt that I have stolen it from some other person for whom God meant it. I hope not. Affectionately, Hobey.
ANNOUNCER: Searching for Hobey Baker was narrated by David Duchovny. The series was executive produced by Ross Greenberg, Andrew Reynolds, and Timothy Smith. From Silver Sound, the producer and re-recording mixer for the production was Cory Choi.
The supervising sound designer was Luke Allen. Our original music and music supervision was done by John Sands and Wayne Sharpe. The associate producer for this podcast was Evan Janikan (PH). Also from Silver Sound, additional producing by Hunt Beady and Reid Adler.
Studio recording by Tom Fama (PH), location recording by Tarchesio Longobardi (PH) and Christian Cuccionello (PH), and script support by Wenrei Joao (PH). Special thanks to Steven Arcieri and Matt Brody from Arcieri Talent. Our production manager was Christina Diledgi (PH), and the production accountant was Donna Bruccalei (PH).
Legal services provided by Jordan Manekin (PH) and Sam Bayard for 30 for 30 podcasts. This episode was produced by Carolyn Hepburn, Tara Nadolny, and Adiza Egan (PH). Our line producer was Cath Sankey. Senior editorial producer for 30 for 30 podcasts was Preeti Varathan.
The associate producers were Gus Navarro and Isabella Seman. Production assistants were Diamante McKelvie and Anthony Salas. Senior producers are Marquis Daisy and Gentry Kirby. Heather Anderson, Marsha Cooke, Brian Lockhart, and Burke Magnus are executive producers for 30 for 30 and ESPN films. Rights and clearances by Jennifer Thorpe and Kaal Griffith. Fact checking by Daniel Tomorrow and Andrew Distler. This podcast was developed by Eve Troh, Adam Newhouse, and Trevor Gill.
* * *END OF TRANSCRIPT* * *
