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The Miracle Man of Hockey!

The Greatest Success Story of 1938!

Thus ran sport-page headlines last April when Baseball Umpire Bill Stewart, in his first year as manager of a hockey team, flew his limp-winged Chicago Black Hawks to a Stanley Cup victory. Last week, on the third day of 1939, the Miracle Man of 1938 was given the bum's rush.

Shoved off the Black Hawks bench because his 1938 world champions were in fourth place, with only eight victories in 21 games this season (a record that still was better than the Hawks had last year at this time), short, squat Bill Stewart was replaced by two men: his crack forward, Paul Thompson (brother of famed Goalie Tiny Thompson of the Detroit Red Wings), and a onetime Hawk named Carl Voss.

To the Black Hawks, dual control will be novel, but a change of managers in midseason is nothing new. Owner Frederic McLaughlin, polo-playing millionaire coffee man, apparently has put great store in the old sport maxim, "Pan the players and can the coach." In 13 years he has canned ten managers--a record for major-league hockey. "He tried almost everyone except Irene Castle [his divorce-seeking wife]," one sportswriter commented.

But fiery little Bill Stewart, a baseball umpire for six years, was flabbergasted at being sent to the showers in the middle of the second inning. Said he: "I would have lasted longer if I hadn't talked back."

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