The headstone is scarcely distinguishable from neighboring prominences on lot 12 in the Rockland section of the vast West Laurel Hill Cemetery in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd. Palatial mausoleums command the hilltop, and even the lesser monuments below are ennobled with flags and wreaths and scattered flowers. But in the winter wind, only dead leaves dance on Hobey's grave. The inscription on his modest stone, shadowed now by the skeletal limbs of barren trees, reads:
HOBART AMORY HARE BAKER
CAPTAIN 141ST AERO SQUADRON, AEF
DIED AT TOUL, FRANCE, DECEMBER 21, 1918
AGED 26 YEARS
It is only the anonymous verse beneath the inscription that suggests the splendor of the man buried here:
YOU SEEMED WINGED, EVEN AS A LAD,
WITH THAT SWIFT LOOK OF THOSE WHO KNOW THE SKY,
IT WAS NO BLUNDERING FATE THAT STOOPED AND BADE
YOU BREAK YOUR WINGS, AND FALL TO EARTH AND DIE,
I THINK SOME DAY YOU MAY HAVE FLOWN TOO HIGH,
SO THAT IMMORTALS SAW YOU AND WERE GLAD,
WATCHING THE BEAUTY OF YOUR SPIRITS FLAME,
UNTIL THEY LOVED AND CALLED YOU, AND YOU CAME.
That he should now lie ignored in the city of his birth is the final irony in the amazing saga of Hobart Amory Hare (Hobey) Baker, in his day and perhaps forever the most romantic figure in all of sport, an athlete who surpassed even his most daring feats with the sheer magic of his person. Hobey is the only athlete elected to both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Hockey Hall of Fame. He is a charter member of the latter, and he was the first American-born player inducted. The Hobey Baker Award is collegiate hockey's equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. Football statistics were considered declasse in Hobey's time, but the 92 points he scored in 1912 was Princeton's single- season record for the 20th century until 1974.
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