I’m sitting at a baseball game one night, doing what I’ve always done at a thousand or so ball games, most of them during five seasons as a Montreal baseball writer. I’m keeping score. To my right, there’s an old guy…ok, another old guy, doing the same thing. So what […]
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.
Even on TV, there’s a lot to watch when the attraction is a Canadian Football League game. Exciting plays. Crazy fans dressed up for (fill in the blanks). Players dancing in the end zone, or showing off on the sideline. So there I am, sitting in front of the television […]
When professional sports teams refused to allow purveyors of legal gambling to use their trademarked names (Canadiens, Cubs, Cowboys, etc.), a wise man I knew said to me: “They will, once the money is too much to resist.” In those days, the leagues denied such access on moral grounds. It […]
Call a major-league pitcher “a barber” today, it would likely mean he could cut his teammates’ hair… I know, “hair stylist” is more politically correct. However, a few editions back in baseball’s dictionary, you’ll find “THE barber.” His name was Sal Maglie. His nickname had nothing to do with cutting […]
Are you thinking of visiting the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame in Hamilton sometime, to see artifacts belonging to the greatest players the CFL has ever known? Don’t bother. Or do you want to watch old movies of the 1962 Fog Bowl or the 1977 Ice Bowl or the […]
Perhaps fittingly, it’s nine years ago that Gordie Howe took his final breath. Once considered the best hockey player of all time, Howe was the subject of more books than even AI can find, and I thought I’d seen the last of them until I spotted “Nine Lessons I Learned […]
On Hockey Night in Canada recently, one commentator said: “There’s nothing like Game Seven overtime.” He is right. Game Seven overtime ends the season, terminating one team’s year with finality and fatality, the clearest definition of “sudden-death” overtime. It also puts an exclamation mark on victory (17 times) sending the […]
Today, he would’ve been 130. Friday is the 90th anniversary of Babe Ruth’s last game. He died 77 years ago. Yet after all these years it’s amazing there are still stories about him, particularly when the stories are new to people like me, who have read extensively about baseball’s most […]
The sometimes self-serving and often-controversial original Toronto Maple Leafs owner indulged himself 60 years ago by donating a trophy in his own name, for the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Conn Smythe’s dream came true — his name would live in perpetuity. He once told his son […]
People usually frequent race tracks for one of two reasons: (1) to bet, (2) to enjoy the competition of four-legged, half-ton “athletes” who run faster than any human, with a human on their backs. The former is often driven by misguided greed, the latter more by which horse won than […]
For Michael Jordan, it was 23. For Babe Ruth, it was 3. For Jimmy Brown, it was 32. These were jersey numbers made famous by Hall of Fame athletes who didn’t play hockey, athletes instantly recognizable by just their numbers. Hockey’s was Number Nine… once upon a time. For ancient […]
Now that the Toronto Maple Leafs have made it official they’re a genuine threat to win the Stanley Cup, get ready. Leaf jokes will stop. Parade routes will be more acceptable. The ghosts of Cups past will surface. May 2, 1967, will be re-visited, noting that was the year Canada […]
