Joseph Wallace McCormick was a Canadian-born ice hockey player, from Buckingham, Quebec. Early in his career, during World War I, he played in Pittsburgh for the Duquesne Garden and Pittsburgh Athletic Association teams. In 1918, Joe enlisted in the U.S. Army. His older brother, Lawrence, followed his lead shortly afterwards. Joe served in the Army in France during the war. Because the brothers held an honorable discharge from the Army, they were entitled to automatic US citizenship and on March 17, 1920, just five weeks before playing in the 1920 Summer Olympics, they both became naturalized Americans.

Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets was the name of three separate ice hockey teams based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The original team was part of the United States Amateur Hockey Association (USAHA) from 1920 to 1925 and developed from predecessors dating back to 1915. After winning the USAHA Championship in 1924 and 1925, the ostensibly amateur Yellow Jackets turned fully professional and became the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National Hockey League. After the Pirates relocated in 1930 to play as the Philadelphia Quakers, a second Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets club played for two seasons in the International Hockey League, a minor professional circuit. A third Yellow Jackets team was organized at the amateur level in 1935 by John H. Harris and competed in the Eastern Amateur Hockey League before folding in 1937.