'The Biggest Mouth in Sports'

This works as something of a bookend, at least I reckon, to yesterday's post on goals, fights and fine writing: ESPN.com's Scott Burnside on Don Cherry (via SportsFilter):

Cherry: A poet, and he knows it.

The popular perception is that what separates Cherry from almost everyone else in his position is that his internal wiring system does not include a fail-safe switch, that he draws an average of 1.4 million Canadians every Saturday night who believe what is about to follow is some kind of out-of-body experience, a raw, roiling, undiluted stew of anger and opinion, passion and outrage.
Cherry couldn't disagree more. "I know exactly what I'm saying," he says, "so that when I'm fired, it won't be a slip of the tongue. Everything I want to say, I say."

Some of what's in here won't surprise if you're a Cherryholic - the Lord Nelson at the bridge self-image, the inflammatory rhetoric and the fists-up approach. The Rush Limbaugh/Madden analogy really doesn't work for me either - except perhaps from the self-promotion point of view. Cherry is a unique figure, and although he infuriates at times, life (and HNIC) would be awfully boring without him. The only thing about him that seems contrived is his wardrobe. All caveats aside, it's still a must-read, and besides, it gives an excuse to roll out the latest from The Collected Works of Donald Stewart Cherry, which last season got regular space here:

This, my first Blue
Isn't she beautiful like this
Some lady
sent in this tie
and I can't remember
her name
and
I feel bad.

Comments

[John Richardson]

Your Collected Works reminds me of a book that someone put together a number of years back titled "O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzutto"

His occasional jingoistic rants to one side, Don is at his best when talking seriously about the game.

Remember his campaign against seamless glass which was responsible for all sorts of concussions? And when he opened the Hershey Centre making sure it wasn't installed there.

Or his whacking Maclean on the head with a modern elblow pad to show how dangerous the equipment was?

I can tell you one thing. If you're watching HNIC at a bar, people may talk all through the game but when Coach's Corner comes on, everyone shuts up and listens.

[cy]

This seriously dates me, but the closest analogy I can think of to Cherry is the oldtime curmudgeon Gordon Sinclair ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Sinclair ). Cherry mines much the same vein, right down to the plaid jackets.
A commenter in the SportsFilter thread made a good point: why isn't this guy in the Hockey Hall of Fame's media wing?

[John Richardson]

I'm assuming members of the media nominate their own for inclusion into the HHOF Media Wing and I also assume there are more print people who vote than TV or radio people.

If that's the case, Cherry has about as much chance of getting in as I have of replacing Bettman.

[Carla]

I am extremely pleased to see the return of "The Collected Works of Donald S. Cherry"--one of my favourite regular JABS features from last year. Grapes' struggles with the Queen's English frequently do seem like off-kilter poimes. Nice to have them in front of me in black & white--helps me parse what exactly he said, since it's sometimes hard to ken on the fly during "CC". I mean, it's really no wonder Ron frequently looks bewildered during the show, eh? ;-)