I never knew Foster Hewitt, who set the bar for hockey play-by-play radio broadcasters, but I did know Danny Gallivan, who set the bar higher for hockey play-by-play on TV. I think it’s safe to assume that both of them, rest their souls, would be aghast if they could hear […]
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.
The Maurice Richard Trophy will be awarded this weekend to the player who scored the most goals this season in the National Hockey League. There is no suspense. It’s not determined by a vote of sports writers, players or fans, so there’s no announcement. Auston Matthews is the winner, for […]
There’s still a few hockey fans who can turn personal clocks back to Bobby Orr…Phil Esposito…the big, bad Boston Bruins. It was a dominant powerhouse, fuelled principally by the arrival of the phenomenal young defenceman from Parry Sound. It was a team for the ages, a team that would win […]
It must be a long time ago, but the number of people at sports events used to be important. In every Canadian Press story the attendance was required reporting, as much as the score was. Always. Maybe the size of the crowd was not always exact, but it was always […]
Our cross-country drive to Emo called for an overnight in Fargo, apparently a magnet for Canadian shoppers. A little homework proved valuable: The Roger Maris Museum was in Fargo…in a shopping mall! Two birds, one stone, right? As distant-replay aficionados know, Roger Maris was once the biggest name in baseball. […]
Gary Bettman and I go a way back, even though he doesn’t know it…probably because we’ve never met. The NHL President, you see, was vocal about the NHL’s having any kind of association with gambling, legal or otherwise, at a time when I was regularly writing stories on that subject. […]
This week is my anniversary. Okay, it’s one of them and, while it’s a passion one it doesn’t include my wife…at least not directly. My first Stanley Cup was 49 years ago this week although I hasten to report that my name was not engraved on hockey’s Holy Grail. It […]
The big lefthander dropped his baseball socks, the white ones ballplayers wear from ankle to only knee, visible when the player pulls up the stirrups, or outer socks. The white ones are like the underwear of baseball socks, to be picked up and washed by the batboy. Then the big […]
Now what? Now that Guy Lafleur is gone, who will be next to catch the torch that is symbolically passed from the greatest of Montreal’s French Canadiens? For the first time in eight decades, there is no active nor retired player ready to be that “legend of legends.” Since Lafleur’s […]
The first race horse I became attached to was Nancy Hawk, a filly so frisky and so gifted she could have been named after my girlfriend (now wife), and there has only been a few since then — horses, not wives — who were special. Two, actually. I watched and […]
The only time in my life that I placed a call to Montclair, New Jersey, the voice that answered was Larry Doby’s. It was one wintry night, he had been the hitting coach for the Montreal Expos, who hadn’t done much hitting (nor fielding nor pitching) in his final season, […]
I miss Jim Coleman. I miss driving him home from football games, 20 minutes when I had him, his history and his personality to myself. I miss that for years he good-naturedly chided my girlfriend Nancy, now my wife, for taking years off his life the wintry night she drove […]
