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Paying the Debt. So does everybody else. Black Hawks President William Wirtz calls Hull "the best public relations man the N.H.L. ever had." He should be; he works hard enough at it. "Every professional athlete," he says, "owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment." Hull rarely does—whether it means visiting a Chicago hospital to say hello to ailing Black Hawks fans or hanging around the arena until the last autograph is signed. Last month in Toronto, he shook hands and signed autographs for a full 50 minutes. A Toronto lawyer recalls arriving at that city's airport at 5 a.m. to find the Black Hawks dozing in chairs while they waited for a delayed flight home. "I was with a friend who had four boys, ranging from about six to twelve years old," he says. "One of the kids spotted Hull and started up to him. His father said, 'Hey, you can't do that.' But quick as a flash Hull was awake and, by God, there he was with a kid on each knee."
To paraphrase W. C. Fields, anybody who loves small children can't be all good. The public image aside, Bobby Hull is a pure, all-wool, elemental man, a stogie-chomping, beer-drinking, four-letter guy who said "I do" to a hasty marriage at 18. His second wife, Joanne, is a onetime figure skater; in eight years of boisterously happy marriage, the two of them have worked up a boffo routine. He comes home growling like a bear. She roars back.
He marches out of the house, and she turns the lock. He puts his brobdingnagian shoulder to the door and opens it by the hinges. "It happens all the time," grins Bobby. Smiles Joanne: "You tell 'em, Star."
Hull can also be stellar in a Keller. "One day after a White Sox game," he says, "a bunch of us were sitting around a Michigan Avenue bar having a few, when this guy comes up and starts getting pretty obnoxious. I tell him, 'Get lost, creep,' and he looks at me and says, 'You know something, buddy? You're a —,' I reach across the table, grab his tie, give it a half-turn, and cork him one. Then I slam his head down on the table, and it breaks a couple of beer bottles. The last I see of him, he's crawling out the door on his hands and knees. Later I find out he's a small-time hood and packs a gun. I've never been back there since."
Nobody who has ever known Bobby Hull could doubt the story. It was, remembers the senior Robert Hull, 57, "a cold son-of-a-gun of a night" in Point Anne, Ont., when the doctor delivered his fifth child (of eleven) and announced: "The only difference between your son and you is that he doesn't eat so much." Bobby weighed 12 Ibs. at birth. His father, a 240-lb. cement worker, could lift the front end of a car, and he was also a fair country hockey player—which is what folks do to keep warm in the long Ontario winters.