I saw Boomer play. I started following the Leafs in 1958 when he was in his second full year year. In 1971-72 his last full season in the NHL he 74 games and was +18 on a not very good Leafs team. The next year he fractured a vertebrae in his neck in game 5 and that would be his career.
His game? Look up the term "hard rock" in the dictionary and there would be a picture of #22. Also check out "irrepressible".
He was the epitome of the defensive defenceman and his best goal total in a season was 8 goals which makes it sort of ironic that his "broken ankle" goal in the Cup finals is one of the most famous goals of all time. However to me what was even more amazing than coming back in that game as he was likely running on adrenalin at that point, was that two nights later he would play Game 7 and help the Leafs win the Cup without missing a shift. He would spend the next 10 weeks in a cast as the high ankle break healed.
He would have been a Number 1/2 Dman in today's game IMHO. In those days on the Leafs the pairings of Horton/Stanley and Brewer/Baun were sort of 1 and 1A with Horton and Brewer supplying the offense from the back end and Stanley and Baun the solid defence.
I had the chance several summers back to spend a couple of days (and a couple of rounds of golf) with Bobby at a resort north of Toronto and he regaled us with many stories of the Golden Age of the NHL. He is one of the truly nice people and puts on no airs - probably because his wife would not tolerate it.
His two most lasting accomplishments IMHO were getting Gordie Howe a raise and beginning the process of getting the players a proper accounting of their pension funds.
In 1968 Baun was traded by Oakland (who had claimed him in the expansion draft from the Leafs) to the Wings and told Howe he was responsible for suppressing salaries league-wide for years because he was taking so little from the Wings. Howe responded that he was the highest paid player on the Wings at which point Bobby told him what he (Howe) was making ($45,000 per) and then told Howe that he had just signed for $67,000. Howe was incensed and demanded and got a raise to $100,000. Unbeknownst to either of them Baun's old D partner, Carl Brewer had just been signed to a $126,000 a year contract by the Wings.
After his retirement Baun became very suspicious of what was going on with the NHL players' pension fund. After 17 years and 964 games his pension was a paltry $7,622 per year.
He spent over $100,000 of his own money investigating with the help of a Toronto actuary who told him, "It's a scandal, a criminal scandal". And it was as the courts would later rule.
Baun would go on to set up the NHL Alumni Association to continue the pension fund investigations but he experienced stonewalling from the owners and pension administrators and a lot of resistance from players who would rather play than learn about the ins and outs of the financial part of the game and just wanted Bobby Baun to stop rocking the boat (sound familiar?).
Baun would finally give up in frustration and his buddy Carl Brewer (with Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull amongst others) would take over the lead eventually resulting in the NHL owners being held to account for the breach of trust and expose the collusion of Alan Eagleson in the pension fund shenanigans. The owners were using the players' surplus funds for various unauthorized purposes including paying the owners' share of the contributions (a so-called "contribution holiday") and using the All-Star games money to pay themselves "administration fees".
http://www.andrewsstarspage.com/CBA/11-16cba.htm
If you want some more of the details check out the book "Net Worth: Exploding the Myths of Pro Hockey" by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths
For their work in exposing the fraud of the NHL owners both Baun and Brewer should be in the HHOF - as builders if not players.
BTW Bobby has lost virtually all his hearing in both ears. He is a corporate spokesman for a hearing aid company (Widex Canada) and travels around the country talking to people about hearing loss. He delights in pulling out his digital hearing aids and showing them off. They are custom designed - one has a blue maple leaf and the other as red maple leaf.
http://chealth.canoe.ca/channel_hea...hannel_id=165&channel_id=165&relation_id=8144
There is an autobiography (with Anne Logan) titled "Lowering the Boom - the Bobby Baun Story".
http://www.amazon.com/Lowering-Boom...m_fullview_prod_4/102-0302079-5745741?ie=UTF8