Editor’s note: With this final instalment, Bob Dunn is retiring his exceptional sports column for The Times. We are deeply grateful to Bob for inviting readers into his distant replays and sharing the highlights of a storied career in Canadian sports journalism. His generous spirit, warm storytelling, and unmatched depth of sports knowledge have been a gift to this community. We will truly miss his voice on these pages.
My connection with sports, like so many now-old Canadian kids, began with listening to games on the radio that I might one day be lucky enough to see in person.
Now, that connection is ending with games I barely recognize… baseball decided by relievers who start and starters who don’t… hockey games in the hands of fans told how often and how loud to cheer… the best of Canadian football trying to go worldwide because that’s what everybody else does now.
It is what today’s fans want and pay “lifetime salaries” to watch. The games are great, played better by athletes who are bigger and stronger and, in many cases, far more talented. They are making Distant Replays of their own now. The old ones are over.
For me, what a ride it has been.
That kid with his ear glued to the radio as tears ran down his cheeks became not just a fan but a sportswriter—a reluctant one at that. Coerced at 13 by a schoolmate who actually wanted to write about sports (as a teenager, I didn’t want to write about anything), I allowed my interest to grow. Daily newspaper writing mushroomed into magazine features for the ultimate trade magazine, Sports Illustrated, and eventually to sports radio and even a little television.
It led from covering local softball to the World Series, from junior hockey to the Stanley Cup final, from senior football in North Bay to 17 Grey Cups, from trying to win a nondescript $2 Daily Double to covering the Kentucky Derby.
The games and the teams were memorable. Writing about the Edmonton Eskimos as they won a still-unprecedented five straight Grey Cups. Broadcasting and writing about one of hockey’s greatest teams: the Montreal Canadiens who won five Stanley Cups in seven seasons in the ‘70s. Having flights booked for New York to cover the Expos’ first World Series until Rick Monday changed the script.
Also memorable were the athletes. Joe DiMaggio was a pleasant interview until the interviewer (moi) naively realized the one subject he never, ever discussed was Marilyn Monroe. The tireless post-game and post-career Q-and-As with goalie Ken Dryden, the best of the best, a man who graciously gave me more time than expected or deserved, chatting about anything and everything—and such a wonderful human being. Trying to get into the complicated mind of Reggie Jackson minutes after he’d hit the only back-to-back-to-back home runs, ever, in World Series history. Meeting privately with Sugar Ray Leonard, alone and unattended in a hotel lobby, to preview his first fight with Roberto Duran.
It was such a different time to be writing about sports. The first season I covered the Montreal Expos, I arrived at spring training and was handed a sheet of paper with the home phone numbers for all the players—remember, cellphones didn’t exist. At various times, I could call the homes of (and did) Wayne Gretzky, Catfish Hunter, Guy Lafleur, Tommy Lasorda, Hugh Campbell and Vince Ferragamo, among others.
Sports media legends became pals. Two of my bosses, Jack Matheson and Red Fisher, were friends for life, along with Dick Irvin, Jim Robson, Jim Coleman and Andy O’Brien. Their stories, and many I discovered on my own, have given me the opportunity to write, and to enjoy researching and re-living the memories for 257 consecutive Distant Replays for The Fort Frances Times, almost all the memories are happy ones.
Who could have imagined having such a career for a kid whose love of sports began the way mine did that day by the radio? My Dad took me to my first pro sports event through the generosity of a man wealthy enough to have season tickets. A generation later, I was able to take my family to games, many times with free tickets, many times including unimaginable perks. I hope my family enjoyed it as much as I did and that it enhanced their lives as much as it did mine.
