The Lou Marsh Trophy

Time for the annual Lou Marsh Trophy debate. The public vote is ongoing on the website - Cindy Klassen way ahead - colleague Damien Cox weighed in on this a while back and this morning's petroleum-based product put forth its four finalists: Ms Klassen and Messrs Nash, Morneau and Thornton.

ALEX GRIMM/REUTERS

Nash: My choice (barely), but not the public's.

I don't have a vote, but if I did - and I'm waffling here a bit - I'd buck the trend in the poll (right now, Klassen is at 53 per cent and Nash 18 per cent, well in front of the rest) and argue that Nash gets my nod ever so slightly, as the two-time MVP - rare air, that - in the biggest and best pro league of the world's No. 2 game (and averaging a career high in scoring in this followup season). Outside of a Tomas Radzinski or Jonathan de Guzman winning the Golden Ball in the world's No. 1 game, there really isn't any more outstanding achievement on a global scale - and while we're on the subject of the world's game, Christine Sinclair hasn't even entered into this year's Lou Marsh discussion. Here's the waffle, though: this is one of those either-or calls in my mind. Nash won the Lou Marsh a year ago, and Olympic athletes are penalized, in a way, in that the media making the call, like the public, pretty much ignore Olympic sports in non-Olympic years but give them huge weight otherwise. I expect Klassen to win it, and there are strong arguments in her favour -most of all, five of them, hanging around her neck. Under the most intense pressure, and all by herself, she answered the bell. Ask me who I like five minutes from now, and I may well change my mind. To me, it's that close. 

Aside from that tough call, what's really noteworthy here is how deep this list is, with Morneau and Thornton clearly up against it despite their lofty accolades. I asked departmental dean Dave Perkins, who's been part of the selection process for the last decade and a half, what he made of it. Pretty much the best he's seen, he answered. I can't argue.

PAUL CHIASSON/CANADIAN PRESS

Klassen: Five good reasons.

Go back 35 years, and up into the mid-1980s when Gretzky ruled, and it was pretty much a hockey-or-not era in the Marsh world, with very few outstanding second bananas (one exception and a tough beat was Olympic downhill champion Kathy Kreiner losing out - to Sandy Hawley of horse racing fame, a sport that barely registers now. Sandwiched around that 1976 race was the far more typical default pick of back in the day - Bobby Clarke in '75, and Guy Lafleur in 1977.)

It's a different world now. Not since 1993 has a hockey player won this race, and sorry, Joe, but that string will continue this time around. The past 10 winners came from nine different sports (kayaking being the only two-time winner in that string, with Caroline Brunet and Adam van Koeverden). Men, women, French, English - for such an exclusive award, it's a pretty inclusive list. For a country that has a hard time celebrating excellence (or funding it) in anything but hockey, nothing says more about the depth and vitality of the Canadian sports scene - and the interest engendered by this annual Lou Marsh debate - than those two trends.

The Don goes to Ottawa

With purported political philosopher Tie Domi a healthy scratch from the TV pundits panel and the Republicans losing control of the House, it was time for a little buck-up Tuesday from Don Cherry.

Mr. Cherry went to Ottawa Tuesday, (naturally) getting in a few plugs for Coach's Corner and, at least the way he told it, turning down the PM's request that he run for parliament: "I'm too great on television, I can't." he explained. Vancouver Canucks Op Ed put it best: You gotta love a man who loves himself.

Off that segue, a pointer to a newcomer to the blogroll: not really a blog at all, actually, but a nice one-stop-shop for your morning hockey fix, with more widgets than you'd find on a Paul Maurice scouting report, I reckon. The Hockey Recap. Check it out.

The e-mailbag cometh

So here we are again, a week's worth of e-mails going into the hopper for your consumption and comment.

Start with John Richardson, his interest piqued by the Dec. 12, 1938 Star sports page (pdf file) I linked to in the Red Storey post:

Read the Pages of the Past article on the game plus other articles on the page, including an account of a Leafs/Hawks game. When did this style of writing fade out? Post war? Fifties? If you've seen Good Night and Good Luck, you see how formal (and what seems stilted now) TV news broadcasts were.

Good question. I haven't seen that movie yet, but my guess would be that very television played a role in changing sportswriting (all of a sudden you could see what these guys were writing about, and painting word pictures wasn't quite so paramount, and even seemed silly and overdone). That, and Ernest Hemingway:

"My prose style. You bastards have stolen my prose style. Every shithead sportswriter in America has stolen my style and then gone and fucked it up so bad that I can't even use it anymore without becoming sick to my stomach."
"Put down the pistol, Papa. I've been writing that way all my life and you know it." (Philip Roth, The Great American Novel)

The a-bomb probably had a role too (I'm serious. Just check out Don DeLillo's Pafko at the Wall novella, which became the prologue to Underworld.)

But there's more from John. To add to the stories sent in by Karim and Les Couchie in the comments from that post, he begins with a memory of taking his son to an oldtimers game refereed by Storey and it leads to this gem:

Speaking of old timers, one of my favorite possessions is a bio of The Rocket by former Tely writer Andy O'Brien. It was published in '59 or 60 and I got it for Christmas that year -- I was 10 or 11.
At the time my best friend Roddy McLeod's dad was President of the Burlington Minor Hockey Association and was organizing the year-end banquet. I came home from school one day and my mom said, "Phone Roddy. He says it's important".
So I phoned Roddy and he says, "Guess who's in my living room? Rocket Richard. Wanna come down and meet him?"
For some reason I grabbed my book, tore down the street, walked in the front door (no one knocked back then) and there he was. God was in front of me.
I mean, I was dumbstruck. He was wearing a suit and tie and his hair was slicked back of course. He looked at me (geez, I still remember this), and said, "What position do you play?" When I said, "Goalie", he stared at me with those eyes and said, "Oh you guys give me all sorts of trouble". And then he signed, in meticulous handwriting, "To John, Best Wishes, Maurice "Rocket" Richard."
The book has survived numerous moves, two marriages, and is still one of my prized possessions--and this coming from a guy who has signed first editions of Atwood, Davies, John Irving, Alice Munro, et al.
Sorry to ramble. That Red Storey piece was a Proustian moment.

Proustian moments are all right by me, John. The world needs more of 'em.

*Tissue break*

Moving right along from that beginning, Chris Flynn weighed in on the Awards We'll Never See. He wasn't alone, but he happened to have the most articulate response (as opposed to the "You idiot!" variety, that is):

JFJ is the league's worst GM? I do not think so. Milbury gets the lifetime achievement award, and maybe Kevin Lowe, thinking that Roloson is a number one guy.
Why has Quinn coached game #1,300? Because, if you may have forgot, he is a great regular season coach, and I think I might have seen you cheering along the last 6 years in a row we have been in the playoffs. I am not defending him much, because he hasn't won us a Cup, but let's not forget the good times, and take them with the bad.
I think we both know, or at least I do, that you do not judge a defensive defenceman like Richardson and Berg on points. Judge Berg on his giveaways, but don't say he doesn't score enough, that isn't his job. And, lastly, I assume that the link about the strange timing of Eddie's back (that did not work for me) is ... just the Toronto media making stuff up to cause conflict.  Whatever the Leafs do, it is never good enough for the Toronto media.  It would be nice if there was some support in the papers for this team.

Agreed on the D-men, but as for "support in the papers" and "cheering along the last six year" I believe former e-mailbagger Roger Wilcox put it best last week: Golf Leafs Golf!

Here's another view from one Bocro, who lives somewhere well outside the 416-905 axis -- at least, that's my wild guess:

It is getting downright embarrassing. What would the Leafs do without the plethora of on ice officials coming from Southern Ontario? It is so obvious now that whenever they get behind in a game or are floundering as they tend to do, they are suddenly awarded with a 5 on 3 situation. It happened against Boston yesterday & recent games against Tampa Bay & Montreal were no exception.

Finally, the folks up at York University media relations send this one in to finish off this week's edition (for the full release, click here):

All those early mornings at the rink or the gymnasium won’t necessarily benefit your child in the long run, says a new study by a York University researcher.
The study found that athletes who train in one area as kids don’t necessarily get a jump-start on a long life of physical activity – in fact, it’s just the opposite.

Red Storey, 1918-2006

Red Storey was one of those Canadian originals who went through a number of different sporting phases in his life, from football to hockey referee to raconteur.

CP FILE PHOTO

Red Storey: All-round sportsman.

I remember him at a hockey banquet when I was quite young, telling stories and always laughing. To me, a Canadian kid reared on the lore of the Rocket Richard riots and epic football finals at Varsity Stadium, he was a larger than life figure, a link back to those times, and with better stories to tell than the ones in the books I was reading.

So I was taken a little aback this morning with the CP obit run in The Star and many other newspapers this morning -- at least this part:

In one 1938 game, Storey came off the bench in the fourth quarter and rushed for three touchdowns and 102 yards in a comeback win over Winnipeg.

One 1938 game? That was actually the 1938 Grey Cup, and the single most electrifying performance in the long history of that great game.

Storey's three touchdowns in a single Grey Cup game are a record since equalled by Jackie Parker (1956) and Tommy Scott (1980; Ross Craig of Hamilton also had three TDs in the 1913 final, and Storey and Craig share the record for rushing TDs in a Grey Cup) -- but none of them put together the concentrated burst Storey managed.

As the Star's Red Burnett noted in the sportswriting parlance of the day:

When the flame-thatched youth decided to rise and shine Argos were trailing 7 to 6 and the greater majority of the 18,846 paying customers very glum, while Winnipeg Blue Bombers' supporters were flushed with the joy of expected triumph.
Mr. Storey soon changed all that by turning in one of the greatest 15 minutes of football toting over seen on the Varsity or any other gridiron. All the 20-year-old lad, who tears along with the speed of a sprinter and the power of an elephant, did was chalk up three touchdowns and make the other possible as the brilliant Argo machine staged a thrilling 24-point rally to snatch victory from the hungry clutches of the Winnipeg gridders to retain their Canadian crown.

For a link to a pdf file of the Star's coverage of Storey's performance for the ages via Pages of the Past, click here.

Farewell, Red. Thanks for the stories.