By Geoff Smith

Teammate has fond memories of Gordie Howe the baseball player

Jun 10, 2016 | 2:00 PM

It was one fight that took place not on the ice of an arena, but down an embankment near a lonely rural road, and Gordie Howe got in the last lick.

The future Hockey Hall of Famer spent the summer of 1951 playing first base for the Saskatoon 55s of the Northern Saskatchewan Baseball League. The 55s played teams from North Battleford, Prince Albert, Eston, Colonsay, and a Delisle team that also included NHL greats: Max and Doug Bentley.

Teammate Charlie Beene remembers Howe as a good hitter who played for the fun of it – until the Detroit Red Wings put a stop to it.

“I think about halfway through the season, the Detroit (Red Wings) told him to knock it off, because here he was, you know, the most famous hockey player at the time, I think forever, and that he might get hurt in baseball. And he was having a good time playing,” Boone said from his home in Billings, Mont. “They were asking him to stop playing baseball, and he loved to play it, and he was competitive.”

Beene was one of many U.S. college players who spent their summers with Canadian teams. He recalled one road trip that led to a scene that reminded him of a Hollywood film.

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“He rode in the car with our coach (Roy Taylor) from Visalia, Calif. And me and Bob Garcia and Jack Hannah, and what do guys do when they’re going 300 miles on a gravel road, and we’re in the back seat, and Gordie and the coach are in the front seat? Well, I don’t know if you know, but 17-year-olds, you slap the guy in the back of the head and then act like nothing happened.

“Well, that’s what we did with Gordie. Two or three times, me or Bob Garcia, my buddy, slapped him and finally he says, ‘Roy, stop the car. We’re going to settle this right now.’ We stopped by an overpass of a creek bed. Out of the car, and I said, ‘well Bob, I’m pretty tall, I’ll take him upper you take him lower and we can take him.’

“So there we go, whaling away, down about a 20-foot bank, into the creek,” Beene said. “We’re whaling away and we get to the bottom, all three of us sitting there, Bob Garcia says, ‘Look at that. Charlie’s got a bloody nose, Gordie’s got a bloody nose, and I don’t have one.’ With that, Gordie whopped him one with his big hockey hand, and he says, ‘you do now’”

Howe and Boone’s paths diverged after that year. While Howe continued to build the legend of “Mr. Hockey,” Beene’s baseball career was cut short by an injury. He ended up spending 29 years with the San Francisco Police Department before retiring to his wife’s hometown of Billings.

In 1993 Howe visited, as part of a tour celebrating his 65th birthday.

“I really liked him, and when he came here to Billings I, of course, set up a deal and went to see him and talked with him, and go through our scrapbooks and stuff,” Beene said.

“You got what I consider one of the nicest, greatest players and nicest men in the world in Gordie Howe, and anything I could say I would say (is) proof… that he was a super guy,” he said.

gsmith@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @smithco