Sports Biblio Digest, 11.17.19: Cancelling the Bombastic Don Cherry
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: Bill Russell; An English Soccer Magazine in Peril; When a Sportswriter’s Dog Took The Field; Vaclav Nedomansky’s Dash for Freedom; Victory Journal; The Dallas Diamonds; Another Avante-Garde Soccer Book; Finishing a Cricket Book After a Stroke
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Don Cherry’s big bouche finally caught up with him, as the legendary Canadian hockey analyst was fired on Remembrance Day for his latest remarks about immigrants.
His long-standing popularity and colorful suits ultimately couldn’t shield him from public and media criticism that had been mounting for years, and that finally erupted with enough critical mass, and against a dramatically evolving social backdrop in an increasingly diverse nation of newcomers from all corners of the world.
Even Ron MacLean, his sidekick on Sportsnet’s “Coach’s Corner” program, distanced himself from Cherry’s comments about what he saw as a lack of patriotism from those not born in Canada:
“You people... love our way of life, love our milk and honey. At least you could pay a couple of bucks for poppies or something like that. These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada.”
As political sensitivities have changed in the West, the old-world views of those like the 85-year-old Cherry are being swiftly swept away, especially in media fields. Leigh Montville’s 1993 Sports Illustrated profile of Cherry truly stands the test of time, and with a prophetic lead to boot, given this week’s developments:
“The best things he says are the worst things he says. The danger is everything. The danger is the attraction for the public. What next? What will he do? He always is one F word, one outrage away from extinction. What will he do? He holds on to the stick of dynamite and watches the wick burn shorter and shorter. This is his 11th season. He cannot let go as the inevitable approaches. Ka-boom!”
Cherry, who lasted 28 more years in the role, was as hard-bitten in his verbiage as he was hard-nosed about preferring a throwback style of rough, physical hockey that’s been transformed in recent years with the arrival of skilled European offensive stars.
His hard-line conservative politics in a nation dominated by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party are increasingly out of touch with a polyglot younger generation of Canadians who embraced the Toronto Raptors, the globally-feted NBA champions.
Even Cherry’s media detractors acknowledge how he has embodied a sizable part of Canada’s national, as well as its hockey, identity. However:
“The problem with being Archie Bunker is this is the age of Donald Trump, and that’s part of what happened to Don. People have seen where this stuff goes, now. People have seen how ugly it can get.”
Cherry had plenty of defenders, including in the media, who lashed out at “woke” attitudes that demand silencing those with politically unfashionable views.
Also in Cherry’s corner was NHL legend Bobby Orr, who called the firing “disgraceful” and dismissed claims that Cherry is a bigot.
But younger Canadians, especially those who have emigrated, or are from emigre families, have become so sour about the man nicknamed “Grapes” that opinion- and taste-makers cannot ignore such concerns as this:
“Your comments simply singled out a segment of our population and portrayed them as somehow less Canadian than, well, you.”
Cherry has refused to apologize or take back anything he’s said. He may be Archie Bunker in the age of Donald Trump, but he’s also run afoul of a “cancel culture” that brooks no dissent in the realm of identity politics.
Two days after Cherry was fired, the Peterborough Petes junior club in Ontario went ahead with a previously scheduled clinic for new arrivals, those learning about the game, as well as how to skate and what it means to be a Canadian.
They came from the Middle East and Africa, where hockey is virtually non-existent, and for whom Don Cherry must have come across as exotic as he was outrageous. Similar initiatives are underway elsewhere in Canada.
The outreach is a way of tackling growing concerns about a decline in participation in youth hockey in Canada.
As a Petes official said, this is also about “what we’re trying to be as a team, and what we hope that our country’s trying to be.”
A Few Good Reads
Bill Russell was to have been the first black player inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975, but he declined to attend the ceremony, saying that other African-American stars should have been enshrined ahead of him. On Saturday, Russell announced on social media that he accepted his Hall of Fame ring in a private ceremony that included his wife and fellow Hall of Famers Alonzo Mourning, Bill Walton and Ann Meyers Drysdale. Among those “others” are Chuck Cooper, the first black player drafted in the NBA, by the Celtics in 1950. He was posthumously inducted in August, with Russell, now 85, serving as a presenter, along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elgin Baylor, Dominique Wilkins and Chuck Cooper III;
On Monday, the Hockey Hall of Fame celebration will honor Guy Carbonneau, Vaclav Nedomansky, Hayley Wickenheiser, Sergei Zubov, and Jim Rutherford as its latest inductees. Nedomansky’s journey to North America and the National Hockey League began in 1974, when he and his family slipped over the Czech border with Austria, ostensibly on a family vacation to Switzerland, but with plans to settle in Canada instead. His move across the Iron Curtain—a year before Martina Navratilova defected—that changed the NHL, and helped globalize the sport at the highest levels;
Jesse Hogan traveled the world covering cricket for The Age, then he took leave in 2016 to work on a book of interviews with Australian Test cricketers and their baggy green garb. Felled by a stroke at the age of 33, Hogan asked fellow cricket writer Andrew Faulkner to help him complete the project, and “For Cap and Glory” was published on Saturday by HarperCollins and that includes a foreword by sports agent Simon Auteri;
I remember this game distinctly while covering college football at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1997 when a chocolate-colored labrador retriever ran out on the field at Sanford Stadium during a Georgia-Kentucky game. The dog belonged to my colleague, Mark Schlabach, who was sitting in the press box and at first wasn’t aware of the commotion. After a black cat ran on the field during Monday’s Jets-Giants game, Mark penned this funny remembrance of the adventures of Tubby, whose owner was given a public nuisance citation and ordered to appear in court. When the judge asked Mark if there were any witnesses, he said, “About 86,117;”
Mike Wise, a former sports columnist for The Washington Post, writes in his former newspaper a personal story about the legacy of the 1960s, and especially how narcotics ravaged his parents and ripped his family apart;
It’s been 40 years since the Dallas Diamonds were born as the first women’s professional basketball team in that Texas city, but whose wild ride to fame, loaded with plenty of personalities and on-court success led by Nancy Lieberman, didn’t last very long;
Another avante-garde and philosophical book about soccer, entitled provocatively enough “Soccer,” by Belgian novelist, filmmaker and photographer Jean-Phillippe Toussaint, is reviewed at the U.S. Sport History blog;
We’ve written here before about the lushly produced and photographed sports magazine, Victory Journal, and here’s another appreciation of the creative storytelling mastery that comes out twice a year and is well worth the cover price, and that I occasionally find at my local Barnes & Noble store;
Another magazine that’s been on my B & N shelves for years is in great danger of fading away for good. When Saturday Comes, launched in 1986, right before the English Premier League era, is making a fundraising appeal to readers as it tries to survive as a cheeky, independent and still rebellious chronicler of the big-money game and how it’s hollowed out traditional communities and fan bases. In a Patreon message to readers and potential contributors, it’s been noted that the WSC permanent office has been closed to cut costs, that it’s no longer self-sustaining as a magazine, and that “we’d like to think if we weren’t here that we’d be missed.”
Passings
Vera Clemente, 81, was left with young sons to care for when her husband, Pittsburgh Pirates all-star Roberto Clemente, was killed in a plane crash on a humanitarian mission in 1972. Ever since then, she took up the mantle for her husband’s legacy, as a posthumous Hall of Famer and for the many off-the-field endeavors she continued as chairwoman of the Roberto Clemente Foundation. A longtime goodwill ambassador for Major League Baseball, she had been hospitalized recently in Puerto Rico.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 186, published Nov. 17, 2019.
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