SPANISH FORK, Utah — Billy Williams looked at the old photo and smiled.
“Oh, that's a great picture there,” said Williams, a former Major League outfielder. “We were both young, looking forward to the next season.”
Williams was looking at the Chicago Cubs' 1962 team photo. In the picture, Williams was sitting next to second baseman Ken Hubbs.
“Kenny Hubbs would have… he could be in the Hall of Fame with those individuals who played with the Cubs,” said Williams, himself a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Hubbs was the National League’s rookie of the year in 1962, a season in which he set fielding records. Hubbs’ younger brother, Gary Hubbs, remembers him as a star even before that.
Ken Hubbs was an All-American football and basketball player at a high school in Colton, California.
“Notre Dame really wanted him as a quarterback,” Gary Hubbs said. “And USC and UCLA really wanted him as a quarterback.”
Ken and Gary Hubbs were two of five boys from a sports-crazy family where their father was often the coach.
“My dad got polio,” Gary Hubbs explained, “and it left him permanently disabled from the waist down.”
“He was missing out. So, he wanted to have a lot of opportunities for his boys.”
The family belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The oldest boy, Keith Hubbs, played football at Brigham Young University in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gary Hubbs went on to play minor-league baseball in the Kansas City Royals organization.
Ken Hubbs was the star. He wanted to be a professional athlete, and baseball was offering.
“All the scouts in the major leagues were at our home the night after his graduation,” Gary Hubbs said. “I can remember all these men smoking cigars.”
Ken Hubbs signed with the Cubs. He joined the team in Chicago for the last few games of the 1961 season. He was still considered a rookie when he became a star in 1962.
“He could do everything,” Williams said. “He can run, he can steal bases, he can hit home runs.”
Cubs third baseman and future broadcaster Ron Santo became good friends with Ken Hubbs.
“He said that Kenny was always trying to convert him to Mormonism,” Gary Hubbs said with a laugh.
“We loved Kenny,” Williams said, “because he was a great ballplayer, and most of all... a great person.”
“He didn't take a drink at the time,” Williams added. “He didn't smoke. And I think he tried to convince everybody not to do it.”
In the book, “Wrigleyville: A Magical History Tour of the Chicago Cubs,” author Peter Golenbock quotes Santo as saying Ken Hubbs arrived in the big leagues with a fear of flying. To conquer it, he took flying lessons after games and in the offseason.
Ken Hubbs bought a Cessna 172. In January 1964, he received his pilot’s license. Days later, he decided to visit Utah.
Gary Hubbs said his brother had a good friend named Dennis Doyle. Doyle was married and the couple had recently had their first child, a daughter.
Doyle’s wife wanted to take the baby to see her family in Provo, Utah. As Gary Hubbs tells it, his brother and Doyle decided it would be fun to put the mother and child on the train from Colton and then fly to Provo to greet them when they arrived.
Ken Hubbs and Doyle did just that. Then, the pair was ready to fly back to California on Feb. 13, 1964. Ken Hubbs already had his equipment bag packed to go to spring training.
Family who saw them off that day, as well as newspaper accounts, say the weather around the Provo airport was clear. But there was a snowstorm on the horizon.
“When they didn't show up [in California]," Gary Hubbs said, “my dad called and he instigated a thorough air and ground search.”
No one knows what happened in the cockpit. But two days after Hubbs and Doyle went missing, searchers found their plane and their remains.
The Cessna had crashed into the south end of a frozen Utah Lake, about 3 miles from the Provo airport. Doyle was 23 years old. Ken Hubbs was 22.
Williams was in Alabama, also getting ready to go to spring training, when he heard the news on the radio.
“Everybody had planned for him [to have] been our second baseman for many, many years,” Williams said.
Members of the Cubs served as pallbearers for Ken Hubbs’ funeral days later in Colton.
Doyle’s widow remarried and went on to have three more children. She now lives in Utah County.
Ken Hubbs’ legacy lives on in multiple ways. First, his oldest brother named one of his sons Ken Hubbs.
The namesake nephew is active with the Ken Hubbs Foundation. It recognizes high school athletes across a swath of Southern California and keeps mementos of the late star, including that still-packed bag for spring training with his gloves, uniforms and awards. A baseball diamond in Colton and the local little league itself are also named for Ken Hubbs.
Then there was that night in 2002, when the younger Ken Hubbs got to throw out the first pitch at a Cubs game. Then the family got to lead the crowd in singing the seventh-inning stretch. The Hubbs family also got to say hello to Williams, Santo and other early-1960s Cubs who remembered their late teammate.
There may be one more chapter in the Ken Hubbs story.
“I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a story on Fox Sports,” explained Marshall Moore, the vice president of operations and marketing at Utah Film Studios, “and then I was like, ‘This could make a great story for a movie.’”
Moore has co-written a screenplay about Hubbs. He’s looking for financing — probably about $2 million. Moore says the movie could be filmed around Utah.
Gary Hubbs, who after minor-league baseball went on to be an electrical engineer, can still point out the spot on Utah Lake where his brother died.
“I believe that my brother's in a better place,” Gary Hubbs said, “and that when I die, I'll get to see him again.”
