The deal that made superstar defencemen Quinn Hughes a member of the Minnesota Wild last week sent hockey historians — well, one of them anyway — scurrying to see how many other Norris Trophy winners have been traded. The answer is surprising. Just 33 players have won the Norris, as […]
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.
Why would a hockey player who has been dead more than half a century still generate enough interest to have a seventh book written about him? Either he was the Greatest Of All Time, or he was forever mysterious. Terry Sawchuk may have been both. “The Sawchuk Diaries: An Oral […]
It happened just over 44 years ago. A soccer team filled a Canadian city with European emotions. Victory-mad fans. An unimaginable sports parade – 100,000 strong – that may never be seen in Canada again, or at least until the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup. This was Vancouver […]
Last week, I was listening to one of those often-mindless sports radio shows when the chatter was interrupted by an infomercial flashback that was sports-related but not mindless. I immediately recognized the voice of Phil Esposito, the more famous of the two Hockey Hall of Fame brothers from Sault Ste. […]
It happened in the press box at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. He was tallest man I’d ever seen in person. He was intimidating just to observe, and I wasn’t about to ask questions of a basketball player at a baseball game because, well, there was a baseball game to cover that […]
It’s a moment frozen in time, and with good reason. For the first Grey Cup kick-off in Winnipeg, in 1991, it was minus 16 degrees. My bride and I were sitting in the south end zone, 10 rows up. If the seats weren’t metal, they felt metal. The wind was […]
As another horse racing season wound down this month with the Breeders Cup, and as the sport of kings inches closer to extinction, here’s the question: Can this sport be sustained by people who say “there’s just something about horse racing.” This is a sport — of royalty or not […]
To understand the nation-wide phenomenon of the Toronto Blue Jays, it’s worth examining the demographic of this coast-to-coast love affair and, if possible, its roots. The Avengers. They may never forget Monday, October 19, 1981. Blue Monday. The day Canada’s original major-league team, the Montreal Expos, lost the pennant. The […]
This week was to be an opportunity to tell the story of somebody who did something no other major-league pitcher has ever done — or would ever do. A chance to re-visit the warm Baltimore day when a pitcher who would never make it to the Hall of Fame experienced […]
We were sitting at the kitchen table, the young hockey player and me. He was home alone, at the hockey household where he was staying. His “house mother” was the former wife of one superstar, and the mother of another. He was living in the shadow of what is still […]
Without doubt, it’s the most famous pitching performance in World Series history and without a doubt, that’s never likely to change. This week is the 69th anniversary of the perfect game pitched by a mediocre New York Yankees right-hander, Don Larsen. The only perfect game pitched in the Series has […]
Before digesting the changes coming to the Canadian Football League, I needed a conversation with my inner being, and it went something like this: “Self, make sure to take your open mind into the reading room. It’s human nature to resist change, and resistance strengthens with age. If changes can […]
