Not a ball player, per se, but the bespectacled spectacle does not discriminate. You have to have a lot of pucks to play ice-hockey without a helmet- and even more to place two glass discs a few inches from your eyes. Hal sold cars in the off-season, but on the ice...
I am sure he could see forever, see every minute detail of the puck as it was flying towards his face. Determined not to live up to the nerd image, he also reportedly got into a fight with hockey hall of fame bruiser Rocket Richard that eventually led to a riot in Detroit.
No Yale or MIT degree, but he exploited his own braininess as a coach in the Western Hockey League as well as the NHL. Hal died in 1998- see his obituary in the NY Times here.
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