The continuing case of the incredible shrinking sweater ...
When he got a call to chat about an old hockey sweater that may be one of the most-sought-after artifacts in sports memorabilia, he said he had no idea what anyone was talking about.
Why would he, a retired greenskeeper at a Burlington golf course, know anything about a Hamilton Tigers’ sweater from 1925 that may have been found in his old work garage? One that could be worth $60,000 to $100,000, maybe more. In his words, the idea was preposterous.
But when the story landed on the front page of The Spectator, he got back in touch.
“I remember now what it is,” Robbie Robinson Jr. says.
If this was a movie, this would be the moment the dramatic music swells and the solution to a nearly century old mystery is revealed. The story behind the final surviving sweater from Hamilton’s last NHL team will finally be told. The search that has taken history hunters and filmmakers on a criss-crossing search of North America will finally reach its denouement. So go on. What is it?
“It belonged to my uncle Gerald,” Robinson says.
For many years, Gerald Robinson lived in Harriston, Ont. (northwest of Fergus) and ran a car dealership. It had originally been McConnel Garage. His wife had been a McConnel.
When Gerald died in 1990 at age 79, his niece and nephew — Robbie and his sister — cleaned out the house so it could be sold. In the basement was a trunk containing a black and gold hockey sweater. The sweater.
Not knowing what it might be, Robinson packed it away in a Rubbermaid tub and says he then stored it in the groundskeeping garage. And that’s where it stayed until the new superintendent and assistant superintendent cracked it open and discovered the treasure. Then showed it to a few people before giving it to someone from the course’s new management group.
Why is this sweater such a big deal?
The Hamilton Tigers were about to play in the 1925 Stanley Cup championships when the players announced they were going on strike because the season had been extended from 24 to 30 games and they weren’t being paid extra for their efforts. League president Frank Calder promptly suspended them all and the franchise was sold to New York before the start of the next season.
Several years ago, Sports Illustrated wrote about a Tigers’ sweater as one of the world’s sports memorabilia treasures. If one could be found.
When Robinson was phoned last week about the discovery of this sweater, the suggestion that he’d had his hands on a rare piece of history made no sense to him. He said it certainly wasn’t his. But the photo of it in the paper a day later and the reference to old pictures found in the same tub tweaked his memory. He suddenly recalled it clearly.
“It was definitely not for the Hamilton Tigers,” he says. Wait, what?
No, he says. Couldn’t be. He says the sweater he folded up that day was small. Child-size small. He figures his uncle wore it when
he was a kid. No way this was an NHL sweater.
“I totally doubt it,” he says. Old sweaters shrink, though. This presumably could’ve merely been the result of age and not being perfectly preserved as would be done by museums or the Hall of Fame. Even the curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame believes it’s authentic after seeing it.
So maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But if it is, how did this piece of hockey history end up in the basement of a house in a blinkand-you-miss-it-place like Harriston? Robinson has no idea.
His uncle was a curler and golfer but not a hockey player. He never lived in Hamilton. There was no reason to believe he had any interactions with pro hockey players of that era or that anyone would have come all the way out there to buy a car or get service.
There was a McDonnell who played for the Tigers in 1920. Moylan McDonnell was a defenceman who wore the black and gold for one season before retiring to a life of banking in New York City. But no McConnel. Close doesn’t count.
A guy named Claude Robinson was born in Harriston. He is in the International Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder. How many Robinsons could there possibly be in a population of a few hundred. Maybe he’s a relative. He could be the connection. Except moved to Winnipeg as a boy and stayed there to help the Victorias win Allan Cup titles and the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association get going in Manitoba. There’s no evidence he ever returned to his hometown.
Failing all else, should we read anything into the fact that it had been kept? If it was a meaningless children’s sweater would it not have simply been thrown away decades ago?
“His wife saved everything,” Robinson says.
Which leaves us no closer to knowing the truth than we were before.
Meaning the hunt for the elusive Tigers’ sweater continues.