The baseball scout and I met on a pleasure craft destined for Pearl Harbor. I had never been to Pearl Harbor, not surprising since I’d never been to Hawaii. Considering the inhabitants of the boat, it was a treat from Major League Baseball, a thank you or a perk for […]
Bob Dunn – Distant Replay
How being in the sports media gave one writer & broadcaster the opportunity to interview sports personalities he never imagined he’d even meet in places he never imagined he’d be. These will be his stories about their stories — or just about them — from the pages of his past, while working out of Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver in the 60s and 70s.
In Winnipeg, we have a 32-year-old nephew with Special Olympics credentials in curling and snowshoeing. Austin doesn’t play hockey, but he knows about Billy Mosienko, the only National Hockey League player ever to score three goals in 21 seconds. Every week, Austin is a five-pin bowler at Billy Mosienko Bowling. […]
The oldest living National Hockey League player (as I write this) is 103. He was born on Christmas Day in Fort William, Ont., as Steve Wojciechowski, which he shortened to Wochy (making life linguistically easier for hockey broadcasters, starting with the legendary Foster Hewitt). He has lived 71 years of […]
It was just days before Newfoundland first won the Brier. Curling’s national championship was being played at the Regina Exhibition Stadium, which by today’s site standards might rank as an oversized barn that held 7,000 spectators and a few cows. Curling brooms were made of corn straw… you sweep, and […]
The first time I went to spring training, it included a side trip to Puerto Rico, which was also a first. The reason for the side trip? That’s where the Montreal Expos were playing a Grapefruit League game against the Pittsburgh Pirates and, as a rookie on the baseball beat, […]
The death of Jim Robson last week brought an understandable outpouring of tributes, from TV from the Olympics to news outlets across Canada. It’ll likely continue next week, when Hockey Night in Canada is back in business, when the Vancouver Canucks resume their dismal season. My hope for several years […]
When goalies didn’t wear masks, nobody wore helmets, sticks were made of wood and pucks were retrieved from snowbanks, I played hockey. I didn’t make it to teenage hockey. There were only four of us in my community, so we had to transfer to a team in the next neighbourhood. […]
If you’re interested in knowing who holds the honour of being Canada’s all-time leading goal scorer at the Olympic Games, the name might surprise you – Harry Watson. And it’s not even the Harry Watson who won five Stanley Cups with Detroit and Toronto after the Second World War – […]
Normally, I disregard column ideas from friends and readers, even when they’re both. However, comma… “I expect to see a Wilbur Wood column next week,” texted one loyal reader. Wilbur Wood, who died at 84 last Saturday, was a major-league pitcher. He became famous with the Chicago White Sox when […]
It was a two-hour sports show on the radio every Sunday morning. Anybody who has worked in radio knows Sunday morning is typically a wasteland of listeners… unless the station is way down south and features a televangelist. After almost a year of being responsible for “Sunday Morning Sports Page” […]
Since the National Football League is always my personal second choice for this game’s entertainment, only rarely do I care who wins the Super Bowl or any of the games preceding it. Most years, I don’t watch “America’s game” until the playoffs. This time, I thought it would be cool […]
When Auston Matthews scored his 421st goal last weekend, he became the greatest goal scorer in Toronto Maple Leafs history, at age 28. As much as the facts support his status, in the world of Distant Replays has there ever been a greater goal scorer in the hearts of long-time […]
