He held a Tiger. Then it was gone again.
Years of searching for one of the sports world’s most sought-after artifacts appear to have paid off. Yet the mystery of the 1925 Hamilton Tigers sweater remains.
HE’S ALWAYS BELIEVED THE HOLY
GRAIL was out there. Likely lost in a basement or an attic or a garage, right under the nose of someone who had no idea they were sitting on a lottery ticket with all the winning numbers.
For him, the search for a 1925 Hamilton Tigers sweater had become, if not an obsession, certainly a years-long Arthurian quest. In part because of his passion for sports in this city, and in part because several years ago Sports Illustrated called it one of the sports world’s 25 greatest lost treasures.
“There’s got to be one out there some- where,” Russ Boychuk kept telling himself.
So when the email arrived from a couple guys saying they might have found one, the Hamilton native really didn’t get too excited. He’d been down the deep well of disappointment too many times before.
He’s spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars — even starring in a TV documentary about his quest — only to be left with nothing more than a pile of frequent flyer miles and some great stories to show for it all.
Still, he agreed to meet them. When he did, this is what he heard.
A few years ago, Burlington’s Hidden Lake Golf Club was sold to the ClubLink chain. Jeff Roundell and Sean Harney were course superintendent and assistant superintendent and decided to clean out an old greenskeeping garage. Which included a small cinder block chemical storage room in the back corner.
The room yielded nothing exciting. Same with the difficultto-access roof that was covered in unused construction materials, an old pop machine, boxes, and some winter tires. And one sealed plastic tub. Just before it was thrown on the pile destined for the dump, Roundell cracked it open to see if anything was inside. When he did, he found some old photos he guessed were from the 1920s.
Then he dug a little deeper. At this point in the telling of their story they pulled out their find. A yellow-and-black wool sweater with TIGERS embroidered in yellow on a big black H crest. And No. 2 on the back. Billy Burch’s number. In 1925, he was the MVP of the league and a future hockey Hall of Famer.
Could this actually be his sweater? For the first time, Boychuk almost couldn’t breathe.
“When I looked at it and felt the texture and saw some rips and the big H crest ...” he says, letting his voice trail off. “Geez, this could be original, hardly ever worn.”
This sure looked like what he’d been chasing for so long. Tantalizing enough that he immediately got on the phone to Phil Pritchard from the Hockey Hall of Fame — the Burlington guy with the white gloves who presents the Stanley Cup every year — to come take a look.
Standing in the upper room of the Coach and Lantern in Ancaster a few days later, they gave it a once over with wide eyes. Then another. Then a third. It would need to be much-more-closely examined to verify its authenticity, but Prichard was leaning toward it being the real deal.
“I think it is,” he says by text to The Spectator from the World Championships in Denmark. “We want it for the Hall of Fame.”
Of course he would. All hockey fans would.
Before the Original Six, there were the Tigers. For five seasons, 33 different players called Hamilton home as they competed against the Toronto St. Patricks, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Montreal Maroons and Boston Bruins. In four of those seasons, they were lousy. But 1925 was magic.
They finished first that year and appeared headed toward a Stanley Cup championship. At least until the players became upset that in a season that had been expanded from 24 games to 30 games, they wouldn’t be paid for their extra work. So, they went on strike. Long story short, the players were suspended by NHL president Frank Calder, who declared the Canadiens the Cup champions and the team was promptly sold to a New York bootlegger who renamed them the New York Americans. Hamilton hasn’t had a big-league team since.
The last reported sighting of one of their elusive sweaters was nearly two decades ago. A Hamilton memorabilia collector says he sold it to an unknown buyer for something like $500, because he’d received a threat that someone would be shot if he didn’t sell his stuff. It’s a wild story that some have a hard time believing, yet he’s never wavered from it.
But now the lost sweater was back. Or one like it. So search over, right? Mystery solved? Not exactly.
The garage where it was found was built in the 1990s near an old hog barn that had been razed. Nothing got moved over from one building to the other, meaning it arrived there within the past 25 years or so.
Robbie Robinson Jr. was greenskeeper at the course for years. Now retired, he says he knows nothing about any tub or any sweater. If it was indeed found in that spot, he certainly didn’t put it there. While there were as many as 30 people who had access to the place during the golf season, he can’t imagine who would have.
“It sounds preposterous to me,” he says.
George Tidd is the former managing partner of the course. The sweater isn’t his, he says. His old business partner in the venture was a huge sports fan, but never mentioned owning anything like this before passing away two years ago. It seems unlikely he would’ve left something so precious stashed away to remain hidden.
But if none of them put it there, who did? That’s important, because it could determine who has claim to ownership of this treasure that’s said to be worth between $60,000 and $100,000. Maybe more. Is there a historic right to it? A new owner’s windfall? A case of finders’ keepers?
Let’s start with that last option. When Roundell pulled the sweater out of the tub that day and held it up for Harney to see, the latter thought it was unique enough that they should keep it. The amateur hockey historian then went home and started doing some research on their discovery only to have his mind blown with what he learned.
While he naturally thought of the value and what it could mean to a couple working guys, he says there was never a real thought of keeping it. Instead, he contacted Boychuk whose name he’d found online.
“Even though we found it, it doesn’t belong to us,” Harney says. “This could be worth a lot of money, but that’s not the right thing to do.”
After the private showing in Ancaster, the guys gave it to a boss at the course who they were told was going to give it to a higher boss within ClubLink. That was the last they saw it.
“I do not have it,” Harney says. Does the Waterdown native know where it is?
“I do not.”
Because its location is once again a mystery, the Hall of Fame hasn’t been able to expertly examine it, so it remains only probably a 1925 Tigers sweater.
Boychuk, meanwhile, is concerned that someone may sell it to a private collector. Or already has.
He desperately hopes not. Not when the sweater was already so incredibly close to being lost forever, saved from the dump only by the keen eye of an alert hockey fan. And not when he’s possibly laid hands on the treasure he’s sought for so long.
Because if it’s back in the wind ....