HBIC Summer Project: Gordie Howe, Newsy Lalonde, And Baseball

When I started writing these biographies on people associated with the AAGPBL that had a significant hockey story to tell as well, I always knew that I'd find someone whose information was just bits and pieces rather than being a full story. The person being biographied today falls into that "bits and pieces" category, but some deep dives into who he was led me to discover the image to the left! Yes, we're not talking about a female baseball player today, but the man to the left has a hockey trophy named for his service in Regina, Saskatchewan as a long-time scout in the area. That trophy is the Hub Bishop Most Sportsmanlike Award that's given to a Regina Pats player annually for showing good sportsmanship, and the man it was named for is Hubert "Hub" Bishop who worked in the Regina area scouting hockey, but spent his time on the planet working in a number of capacities including finding players for the AAGPBL!

Hubert Bishop wasn't always a hockey scout nor was he a baseball scout to begin his career in sports. Bishop actually was involved with the Western Canadian union senior rugby scene at the time when he was promoting hockey in Saskatoon. It should be noted that the Western Canadian union senior rugby circuit was the precursor to the founding of the Canadian Football League, and Bishop was the secretary of the league back in 1923! Say what you want about executives like Gary Bettman moving from the NBA to the NHL in today's game, but it seems that Bishop was one of the first executives to switch jobs and switch sports as his career moved forward. Without knowing Bishop's birthday, it's hard to determine how old he was in 1923, but he certainly was old enough to hold a prominent position in western Canada's premier rugby league! That's pretty cool considering what became of that league!

It should be noted that Bishop was also working with the Saskatoon Shieks who played in the Western Canada Hockey League and Prairie Hockey League from 1922 to 1928. He makes reference of being the secretary for that team in a 1964 Letter to the Editor he sent to The Glengarry News in Alexandria, Ontario where he saw the likes of Newsy Lalonde, George Hainsworth, and the Cook brothers play.

As long-winded as that Letter to the Editor is, Bishop references a couple of other hockey teams in the letter which we'll get to in a second. It seems, however, that he wasn't a fan of hockey's "razzle-dazzle brand" seen in the 1960s, and he officially chose football as the sport he most closely followed. To each their own, I suppose.

The irony of him referencing those players is that Hub Bishop sold all of them in 1926 to various NHL teams. As per the article to the left from the Manitoba Free Press, he sold Newsy Lalonde to the New York Americans, the Cook brothers to the Ottawa Senators, and four players - including George Hainsworth - to the Toronto St. Patricks. Imagine being the guy who sold five future Hall of Fame players to NHL teams. There aren't many people in hockey who can claim that distinction!

One of the other teams he referenced in his lengthy Letter to the Editor were the Saskatoon Quakers, and he indicated he was the President of the amateur league in which the 1934 Sasaktoon Quakers played. That's notable because they won the 1934 World Hockey Championship in Milan, Italy.

He also mentioned that he promoted his brother's team, the Battleford Millers, when they became the first Canadian team to visit Japan to play hockey. As per the article on the right, the team spent 24 days in Japan playing hockey, leaving Vancouver by boat on March 2, 1935 and arriving in Yokohama on March 15. The trip back would see them leave from Hiye Maru on April 9 and arrive in Vancouver by April 20. Four games would be played in Tokyo (spelled Tokio) and two more would be played in Kwansai with the Battleford squad meeting Japanese university students, a Manchurian team, the Nikko team made up of employees at the Ashio Copper Mine, an all-Japan team, and possibly the Oji Paper Mills team. The tour saw the Canadians win all seven games they played, and the smallest goal differential was 13. The reason for the invitation was that that Japanese teams wanted to prepare for the 1936 Olympic Games by playing high-level competition, and they certainly found it in the Millers. For the record, Canada finished as the silver medalist at the 1936 Olympics while Japan placed ninth.

By 1940, it seemed that higher levels of hockey had taken notice of Bishop's skills as a hockey administrator. In February of that year, the Cleveland Barons of the International-American Hockey League began setting up a "'farm' affiliation" across North America. Tha meant setting up a number of franchises with new opportunities, but it also meant they needed more scouts to sign players to fill rosters for player development. Cleveland, coached by Bill Cook, named Hub Bishop as the scout in Regina who would find players from in and around the southern Saskatchewan city who could be signed. This will be important in a few years for another team that employed Bishop's scouting services when it came to a player who could have changed the fortunes of one team before landing with another team!

In 1943 while working as the western scout for the New York Rangers, Bishop discovered a lanky 15 year-old kid from Floral, Saskatchewan who he hurriedly sent to Winnipeg that fall for training camp under the watch of Lester Patrick. The kid played well despite taking some ribbing from the veterans about his build, but Lester Patrick was unhappy about a hip check he had thrown against one of the Rangers' veterans. Add in that the young man was homesick, and it seemed that the Rangers weren't going to have him as part of their team just yet. Instead, they offered him a C-form which would have made him New York Rangers property and wanted to send him to a Catholic school in Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. Being that this young man wasn't Catholic, he balked at the suggestion and refused to sign the C-form, returning home to Saskatchewan where things were far more familiar.

The young man that Bishop had discovered? He was none other than Gordie Howe!

Bishop was responsible for a number of western Canadian players heading to the NHL thanks to his scouting, and it's pretty clear that his influence on both the hockey and football world can't be overlooked. If this was just a hockey article, you might be satisfied in knowing a little more about Hubert D. Bishop, but we have another sport to discuss because Bishop may have found the player around whom Penny Marshall centered her movie.

What About Baseball?

I had mentioned former NHL player Johnny Gottselig in Olive Bend's biography, and he plays another role here. Gottselig grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan where he played for the Regina Pats, so he knew of Hub Bishop's work in and around Regina as a scout and administrator for teams.

Gottselig played 16 seasons for the Black Hawks between 1928 and 1945, and Philip Wrigley's familiarity with some of the Black Hawks players gave him the opportunity to hire Gottselig as a scout for his new girls' baseball league starting in the spring of 1943. Obviously, one man wouldn't be enough manpower to find talent in all corners of the map, so he sought out help. Thanks to his upbringing in Regina along with managing the Blackhawks' Kansas City farm team, Gottselig reached out to a number of hockey scouts for help in recruiting baseball talent. Hub Bishop was one of the men he contacted to find players in Saskatchewan!

As we know, a number of women came to the AAGPBL from Saskatchewan, but one of the first players that was recruited by Bishop was Mary "Bonnie" Baker (née George) from Regina. Baker was a Saskatchewan softball champion in 1940, and was playing with the Army and Navy Bombers in Regina when Bishop came to find her. Working as a clerk at the Army and Navy store during the day, Bishop offered her the chance to follow her dreams to play professional baseball in the new league being created by Wrigley after her husband was sent overseas by the Canadian military. She attended training camp in that inaugural season, played well, and the South Bend Blue Sox selected Baker for their team.

Baker was described as a five-tool player in her time as she hit for average, flashed some power, ran like the wind, was defensively sound, and had a great arm. Being a former model, she often appeared in photographs promoting the league which helped to spur her popularity as "the face of the league". She holds the record for playing the most games in the AAGPBL, she was named as an all-star twice in the league, and she never hit lower that .208 in her nine seasons in the league, finishing with a .235 career average. He 94 stolen bases in 1946 led the league in that season, and she had 80-or-more hits in seven of her nine seasons in the AAGPBL!

Because she was in a lot of the publicity for the league, it's rumoured that Penny Marshall based the character of Dottie Hinson on Mary Baker in her film A League of Their Own. While not all of Hinson's depictions in the movie are based on Baker's real-life stats and activities, Baker was considered one of the top players in the circuit and one of the best catchers in the league's history. And while I'm not suggesting in any way that Jon Lovitz's portrayal of scout Ernie Capadino was close to the real-life persona of Hub Bishop, we can't discount the fact that Bishop was the person who put Mary Baker into the AAGPBL!

Bishop was also responsible for finding a number of other top players such as Arleene "Johnnie" Johnson, but it's pretty incredible to think that a man who started in rugby and hockey may have been responsible for getting one of the AAGPBL's best players into the league! It seems Bishop had an eye for talent in a number of sports!

The Accolades

As a guy who worked behind the scenes, there aren't a lot of accolades for Hubert Bishop. For the guys on the ground and in the trenches, they never are singled out for distinction, but it should be noted that the WHL's Regina Pats honour Hubert Bishop's memory with an annual award they give out to a team member. The Hub Bishop Most Sportsmanlike Award is that annual trophy, and Tye Spencer was the winner of that award this season. Past winners included Zack Smith, Zach Wytinck, Sam Steel, Adam Brooks, and Morgan Klimchuk to name a few players who earned the honour.

To his credit, Hub Bishop also was the man who sold Newsy Lalonde, the Cook brothers, and George Hainsworth to the NHL while discovering one of the greatest players of all-time to lace up a pair of skates in Gordie Howe. He also brought one of the best baseball players to the AAGPBL in Mary Baker while also finding several AAGPBL all-stars in Saskatchewan, and I have to mention that he managed the league that a World Championship hockey team played in as well. He likely was one of the best scouts of talent during his era, and it's somewhat shocking he hasn't been recognized for all he did in finding and promoting the amazing athletes he discovered!

Hubert D. Bishop wasn't inducted to any Halls of Fame nor was he honured for his work in digging up some of the best talent seen in hockey and baseball. He is being mentioned here, though, because of that work, and it should be noted that, while all that was going on, he was also a bootlegger for Seagram during the prohibition era to the Chicago Outfit - the same group that Al Capone was once running! While his sports work definitely should be recognized, how crazy is it that we nearly had Al Capone in this story?

It appears that Hubert Bishop passed away on or near April 6, 1970. As mentioned in the article, Bishop also served as a "special prairie representative" for the Los Angeles Kings and he was one of the directors of the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders. I would have love to have expanded on his work with the Los Angeles Kings, but the entire archive for all Saskatchewan newspapers are locked down. There appears to be multiple stories in the newspapers from that province about Bishop, but the subscription costs to access them are a little rich for my blood. It's interesting to know, however, that he may have helped find players for the Kings when they joined the NHL back in 1967!

For what it's worth, though, Hub Bishop played an integral role in getting talent to the AAGPBL as much as he did the NHL. For that, he's being recognized here on HBIC. Rest in peace, Hubert. Your incredible legacy in sports makes you a legend, even if those honours came long after you had retired.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!