October 11, 2021

R.I.P. Bob Hopper

Detroit native starred as pitcher in Ontario

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Hopper the Stopper.

That’s the moniker Bob Hopper enjoyed, meaning he could shut down the opposition late in games as a relief pitcher, cool as can be in a tight, tense situation.

The long time Renfrew-area resident, who died Sept. 26 in North Bay, Ont. at the age of 93, was said by former Renfrew Red Sox teammate Al Stitt to be a player as close to perfection as he had ever seen.

"Bob was an extremely well coordinated player. Oh yeah, a fundamentally sound player,'' Stitt said. "In my estimation, he was the best ball player I ever saw in Renfrew.''

Born in Detroit, Hopper told me several years ago he moved to Toronto with his parents Robert and Marquerite as an only child when he was about six years old. He skated on the outdoor rinks of St. Michael's College in mid-town Toronto and learned teamwork and competition on the diamonds of west Toronto.

"Bob had natural athletic ability, enjoyed the outdoors and probably never saw a baseball field he couldn't love,'' his obituary on the Zohr Family Funeral Home website said.

Hopper wasn't an intimidating presence at 5-foot-9, 160 pounds but his confidence and a stifling knuckleball made up for it.

For close to 40 years, Hopper worked in the credit department for Sears, beginning around 1955, and the job as an executive would take him to different venues in Ontario, even Winnipeg. One stop was Ottawa, another one was Sarnia and he also made it to Kitchener in the late 1960s. If you needed to borrow money or buy something from Sears on a lay-away plan, that was Hopper's department.

"He would open new stores and set up the credit department,'' his daughter Sharon said in an interview.

Sharon said her dad was lured to Renfrew in the early 1950s to play hockey. He was "paid a little money'' to strap on the blades and he took a job on the side at Fraser's Men's Wear store on Raglan St.

Hopper played about five years for the Red Sox and also played in Beachburg and for Douglas where he recalled teammates such as brothers Mac and Tony O’Neill and Junior Russett.

“One year, Beachburg won the (South Renfrew) league and played in the OBA playdowns and Freddie Price picked up Bob (from Renfrew),’’ Stitt recalled. “In one of the OBA games, Bob pitched and batted first. He hit the first pitch of the game over the fence for the only run of the game. Bob was a great shortstop if not pitching.’’

I was a brief teammate of Hopper’s in the 1970s in Renfrew when he wasn’t away working for Sears. Often, Hopper would pop up in team photos with us at the Renfrew fairgrounds and accompany us on some road trips and for tournaments in other parts of Ontario.

While throwing for the Intercounty Baseball League's Kitchener Panthers from 1967 to 1969, he earned a reputation as being pretty-darn stingy when he entered the game in the late innings. In one such game, June 11 against the first-year Toronto Maple Leafs, a newspaper report said Hopper was “one of the heroes’’ as Kitchener prevailed 6-4.

“He took over for Nelson Dufour with the bases loaded and none out in the bottom of the ninth inning and retired the side without a run,’’ the newspaper report said.

“Bob was a very unassuming guy. You would never know he was a key relief pitcher for the Panthers when I played,’’ recalled Kitchener teammate Paul Knight. “When he came in to relieve the starter in a very close, tense game, Bob never seemed nervous or unsettled whatsoever. And he was not a huge physical presence on the mound, but he sure could put out an opposition rally. Hence the name Hopper the Stopper.

“In the dugout or the dressing room, Bob was more on the quiet side. I believe he had that quiet, inner confidence that allowed him to come into a game and get the job done. He was a very likeable guy, a wonderful teammate, and a skilled reliever.

“I believe it was a knuckleball he used to throw which used to often drop straight down to get hitters out. And then sometimes, it would just float it in like a butterfly and batters would try to swat it and miss. Was fun to watch the frustration from the opposition batters. Everyone once in a while he would throw a fastball which probably seemed like 100 mph to the batter after all those knuckleballs.’’

When he turned 60 in 1987, Hopper landed a dream job as a security doorman for the Toronto Blue Jays at spring training in Dunedin, Fla. More often than not, his duties would expand to the Jays pitching mound where he would throw rounds and rounds of batting practice with his rubber arm or get involved in pitcher-fielding drills.

Manager Cito Gaston would often count on the sage Hopper for advice just like Red Sox manager Clair Seeley did in Renfrew years earlier. Gaston and Hopper formed a bond.

“Dad was with the Jays in Dunedin about 13 years until about 2000,’’ Sharon said.

“Bob became friends with Cito,’’ Stitt said. “(With the Jays) Bob was helping out raw rookies, who had all kinds of talent but didn't have the fundamentals.’’

Hopper leaves his daughter Sharon and son Randy. He is buried next to his wife Lynn at a cemetery in picturesque White Lake, where the couple had built a lakeside property in the 1980s near Renfrew.