Bobby Hull was proof that sports legends could be horrible people
“I took a real beating there. Bobby just picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, threw me in the room, and just proceeded to knock the heck out of me. He took my shoe — with a steel heel — and proceeded to hit me in the head. I was covered with blood. And I can remember him holding me over the balcony and I thought this is the end, I'm going.”~Joanne Hull
I first remember seeing Bobby Hull play hockey in the early 1960s. He would get the puck behind the Blackhawk net and start moving up the ice at full speed. When reaching the other team’s zone, he would wind up for his famous slap shot. It was the most exciting thing a young kid had ever seen in sports. More than sixty years later, it still is.
“Adolf Hitler had some good ideas. He just went a little bit too far.”~Bobby Hull
Bobby Hull was the first player to score more than fifty goals in a season. He won three league-scoring titles. He won three Most Valuable Player awards. He scored more than six hundred goals in a Blackhawk uniform. He’s the main reason the Chicago Stadium was filled to capacity for every game. Bobby Hull was basically Michael Jordan on ice.
“The black population in the United States is growing too quickly.”~Bobby Hull
When the news of his death broke yesterday, you saw the word complicated used often. That was the first word that came to my mind, also. But, he really wasn’t complicated. This was a man who beat up women and was racist/antisemitic. He could also score goals. He was a bad human who happened to be a great athlete. Nothing complicated about this. You see it all the time in sports. They are not mutually exclusive qualities. That’s how this should be reported. That’s how Bobby Hull should be remembered.