ESPN Searches For The Real Hobey Baker In New 30 For 30 Podcast

If you are a hockey fan, the name Hobey Baker should be one worth the reverence of the award bearing his name. It is awarded to the top collegiate hockey player in the U.S.A.

The name is synonymous of putting hockey on this country’s map. He was our first star on ice, years before the founding of the National Hockey League. His legacy not only adorns the award given to the finest collegiate hockey player of the year, but his name graces the entrance of the hockey rink at his alma mater of Princeton University.

Baker was also a pilot for the Army Air Corps during World War I. Just when he was about to be discharged back to the U.S.A. in 1918, he crashed the plane he was piloting on a test flight in France.  He did not survive the crash.

Over a century later, the legacy of Baker has resurfaced as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcasts. Their series called “Searching for Hobey Baker” reveals something we never knew about this hockey pioneer. Turns out that Baker just happened to be an LGBTQ+ male based on contemporary standards.

In the early 1900s, being LGBTQ+ was seen in a completely different light. There was some evidence that such same-gender relationships actually exist through this lens. In this podcast series, we learn about Baker’s friendship with a wealthy man named Percy R. Pyne II who was nine years older than the noted athlete. Before the U.S.A. entered into World War I, they became roommates and grew closer as two bachelors in New York City. This was further evidenced by letters between Baker and Pyne during the former’s service during World War I.

The three-episode podcast intermixes this storyline within Baker’s own life. The series, narrated by actor David Duchovny, talks about the collegiate star in multiple sports at Princeton in a context of a legendry athlete, a war hero, and an enigma. We learn about his upbringing, his athletic exploits at Princeton, and his life with Pyne going into the war.

The story on Baker had been circulating for years. For Andy Reynolds (Executive Producer/Co-Writer), Tim Smith (Executive Producer/Co-Writer), and Ross Greenburg (Executive Producer), the challenge was to understand the context of Baker’s life during the “Lost Generation” of the early 1900s. “What we wanted to do was then take everything we found to the historical experts, the LGBTQ historians, and sort of lay out to them all the letters, all the remembrances, all the first-person accounts and second-person accounts,” explained Reynolds.

Why tell this story through ESPN’s 30 for 30 Podcast platform? Preeti Varathan, the Head of ESPN 30 for 30 Podcasts explained that “anytime you tell a powerful story that is clear in LGBTQIA+ elements, you’re going to get a whole broad spectrum of responses. Especially at 30 for 30, when we were thinking about why do we want to tell this story? We were sort of thinking about the great 30 for 30 slogan, which is, ‘What If I Told You?’”

Varathan further explained, “what [if I] told you that this incredible amateur athlete, one of the greatest American amateur athletes of all time had this much more complex, fuller and nuanced story? What if I told you he was same-sex loving? And I think for me personally, as someone who loves sports storytelling, but really loves sports storytelling that takes a character that you think you know and expands them and sort of redefines them in new ways.”

More importantly, telling this story during LGBTQ+ Pride Month helps to add context to this story of an American champion of amateur athletics and fallen veteran with an intriguing history of not only a young man, but his life as a whole. As Varathan said, “there is a big practice of sort of truer, fuller historical American storytelling happening right now across multiple disciplines. At 30 for 30, we are just deeply excited and honored to have this podcast be a part of that. I am looking forward to the spectrum of responses.”

There’s so much to talk about in the three episodes of “Searching for Hobey Baker,” but all will be revealed when you listen to them, starting on June 12. You can listen to ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcasts on your favorite podcast app or at 30for30podcasts.com.