Now You Know Big Book of Sports

NOW YOU

KNOW

NOW YOU

KNOW

Doug Lennox

DUNDURN PRESS

TORONTO

Copyright © Magnetawan Communications Inc. and Dundurn Press Limited, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Project Editor: Michael Carroll

Contributing Editor: Shaun Smith

Copy Editor: Jennifer McKnight

Design: Erin Mallory

Printer: Trancontinental

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Lennox, Doug

Now you know big book of sports / by Doug Lennox.

ISBN 978-1-55488-454-4

1. Sports--Miscellanea. 2. Olympics--Miscellanea. I. Title.

GV707.L46 2009    796    C2009-902997-9

1  2  3  4  5     13  12  11  10  09

We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on recycled paper.

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contents

Preface •

Hockey •

Soccer •

Football •

Rugby •

Baseball •

Basketball •

Lacrosse •

Curling •

Olympics •

Tennis •

Golf •

Bowling •

Running •

Cycling •

Skiing and Snowboarding •

Auto Racing •

Boxing and Wrestling •

Winners and Champions •

Question and Feature List •

preface

The vast collection of human activity called sports provides a fascinating portrait of humanity at both its best and worst. Courage, endurance, skill, tenacity, invention, cowardice, greed, pain, luck, weakness, and strength — these are just some of the qualities of human endeavour that run through the history of athleticism. They are the subject of this book.

Through questions, answers, lists, statistics, charts, and sidebars, I have tried here to assemble as detailed a collection of the most unusual, puzzling, revealing, and downright fascinating facts about sports as possible.

Who gained a winning edge with drugs, who disgraced themselves with rage, who defied the odds, and who won the love of the world? Who died on the ski slopes, who cheated at golf, who fought to win another day? What’s inside a bowling ball? Where was rugby born? Why do the Japanese buy hole-in-one insurance? Where is the world’s oldest curling pond? Who owns the all-time record for the most career stage wins in the Tour de France? (It’s probably not who you think it is.)

All and more is here. From the power of F1 to the finesse of fencing. From the statistics of baseball to the brutality of boxing. From the speed of ice hockey to the strategy of football. A special section on the Olympics — Summer and Winter — offering material on every current official Olympic sport (plus a few extras) rounds out the collection just in time for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

Let the games begin!

hockey

Where and when did hockey originate?

The location and the approximate date of ice hockey’s origins, as with many sports, are much-debated and conjectured issues. Stick-and-ball games have deep roots and various types can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Hockey appears to have evolved from a number of older sporting endeavours that employed some sort of stick (usually short and curved) and a ball: Irish hurling or hurley, Scottish shinty, English field hockey and bandy (the latter becoming popular in Scandinavia and Russia), Canadian/ American shinny, and American ice polo. North American First Nations also likely influenced the development of stick games on ice and were probably inspired in turn by European games. Gughawat, or Indian shinny, and baggataway, or lacrosse, were certainly played by First Nations people when the first Europeans arrived on the scene. Both games utilized short, curved sticks, numerous competitors per team, and fierce competition (practically an all-out battle) for possession of a ball.

What is the origin of the word hockey?

The origins of the word hockey are almost as contentious as the question of who invented the game. One of the more popular derivations is the Old French hoquet, or shepherd’s crook, possibly a reference to the stick used in early forms of the game. Some think hoquet can be traced farther back to the Germanic root word hok or hak, which refers to a curved or bent piece of wood or metal. Likely, this is also the root of the English word hook. Nobody can say for sure, though. Hockey might just as easily owe its origin as a word to Scandinavia or Holland. One thing most people agree on, however, is that the word once signified the instrument of play rather than the game itself.

Quickies

Did you know …

that just before British soldiers fled New York City in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War, they reportedly played a game of Irish hurling on skates, and that a version of hockey was played in Stoney Brook (today’s Princeton), New Jersey, in the winter of 1786?

Why is street hockey called shinny?

Although shins take a beating during a game of shinny, the name comes from the Celtic game of shinty. A pick-up game of hockey, either on the street or on ice, shinny has no formal rules, and the goals are marked by whatever is handy. The puck can be anything from a ball to a tin can. There’s no hoisting, bodychecking, or lifting the puck because no one wears pads. Shinny is a uniquely Canadian expression.

The first professional shin pads were hand-stitched leather-covered strips of bamboo, wrapped around the lower leg outside knee-high stockings.

For many Canadian kids during the 1930s and 1940s, copies of the Eaton’s catalogue shoved into their socks were their first shin pads.

Who made the first hockey sticks?

The First Nations connection to the very first hockey sticks got a boost in early 2008 when the son of a Quebec City antique dealer acquired what he claims is a 350-year-old curved Mi’kmaq stick that he says proves Natives played hockey in Canada as early as the late seventeenth century. The man’s assertion hasn’t been met with much support among experts, but one thing is certain: the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia were carving single-piece hockey sticks at least as early as the 1870s and probably earlier. They utilized a wood known as hornbeam (also called ironwood) because of its strength. Later they turned to yellow birch when they exhausted the available hornbeam. These early sticks curved up like field hockey sticks and were much shorter and heavier than the kind used in modern ice hockey. The Starr Manufacturing Company in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, started producing hockey sticks in the late nineteenth century under the brand names Mic-Mac and Rex. The company’s sticks were immensely popular well into the 1930s. Starr was also famous for its skates, which it began manufacturing in the 1860s.

Quickies

Did you know …

that the world’s largest hockey stick is in Duncan, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island? The 207 foot, 32 ton wooden stick once adorned the entrance to Vancouver’s Expo 86. Duncan has been home to the colossal stick since 1988 and has been trying for the past 20 years to get it recognized officially in The Guinness Book of World Records as the planet’s largest. Recently, the town succeeded in its quest, though perhaps that has something to do with the fact that British Columbia billionaire Jimmy Pattison now owns the Guinness World Book Company, publisher of the famous record tome.

Who drew up the first recorded rules for organized hockey?

James George Aylwin Creighton, a McGill University student, a Halifax native, and the captain of one of the teams that played the first indoor hockey game in Montreal, has the distinction of drawing up the first recorded rules for organized hockey. He accomplished this feat in 1873, and the rules were published in the Montreal Gazette on February 27, 1877, after a series of four games between Creighton’s Metropolitan Club and the rival St. James Club held in Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Creighton’s rules, now called the Montreal Rules, likely derived from the earlier Halifax Rules. They are, in many respects, quite similar to the rules of field hockey.

When was the first organized hockey team founded?

On January 31, 1877, McGill University students started the first organized ice hockey club. Employing codified rules, hockey officials, and team uniforms, the McGill University Hockey Club played a challenge match against a loose collection of lacrosse and football players. McGill beat its opponents 2–1.

Quickies

Did you know …

that Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink, which opened for business in 1862, was the first building in Canada to be electrified, and was the scene of the first Stanley Cup playoff game in 1894? The arena closed for good in 1937. Today its site features a parking garage.

Why is Toronto’s hockey team called the Maple Leafs?

In 1927, after having just been fired by the Rangers, Conn Smythe took the winnings from a horse race and bought the Toronto St. Pats hockey team, renaming them the Maple Leafs. Impressed with how brilliantly Canadians had fought in the First World War, Smythe named his new team after the soldiers’ maple leaf insignia. Smythe is the man who said of hockey, If you can’t beat them in the alley, you can’t beat them on the ice.

What was the first arena built especially for ice hockey?

There are two claimants to this distinction. Dey’s Skating Rink in Ottawa was opened in December 1896 and was torn down in 1920. Ottawa, represented by the Ottawa Hockey Club (also known as the Silver Seven and the Senators), won its first Stanley Cup in 1903 at Dey’s. The Montreal Arena, also called the Westmount Arena, began operations on December 31, 1898, and became home to a variety of teams, including Montreal’s Shamrocks, Victorias, AAAs, Wanderers, and Canadiens. The rink burned down on January 2, 1918, causing the Wanderers to fold. The Canadiens moved back to the Jubilee Arena where they had played before taking up residence at the Montreal Arena. In the summer of 1919 the Jubilee also burned down, forcing the Canadiens to build and move to the Mount Royal Arena, the Habs’ last rink before relocating to the Montreal Forum in 1926. The Mount Royal Arena, strangely enough, also burned down, but not until February 2000.

Quickies …

Did you know …

that the second organized hockey team in history was the Montreal Victorias, which debuted in 1881 and later went on to win the Stanley Cup in 1895, holding it from that year until 1899 (except for a challenge loss to the Winnipeg Victorias in 1896) when they lost it for good to the Montreal Shamrocks?

When was the first game in the National Hockey League played?

The first two games in the spanking new National Hockey League were played on December 19, 1917. The Montreal Wanderers edged the Toronto Arenas 10–9 and the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Ottawa Senators 7–4. The Wanderers’ match only attracted 700 fans. Unfortunately for the Wanderers, once one of the greatest hockey teams and winners of the Stanley Cup four times, their arena burned down two weeks later and the franchise folded.

What was the first hockey book?

Montrealer and Hockey Hall of Famer Arthur Farrell was a star forward with the Montreal Shamrocks, winners of the Stanley Cup in 1899 and 1900. Farrell published the first known hockey book in 1899. It was called Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game and was more of a manual for the sport than a meditation about it, but at least it was a start. Farrell subsequently produced two other hockey publications. The third outlined the origins of the game, detailed the rules in Canada and the United States, and featured comments by Canadian hockey stars on the art of playing various positions. You might say Farrell was an early precursor of the likes of superstar goalie Ken Dryden and the celebrated hockey journalist Roy MacGregor, but combined in one person.

What is the legend of the New Jersey Devil?

The New Jersey Devils began their NHL life as the Kansas City Scouts. Their tenure in Kansas City lasted only till 1978, when the NHL approved the team’s move to Denver as the Colorado Rockies. In 1982 the Rockies. relocated once again, this time to New Jersey. After a fan vote, the new team was christened the New Jersey Devils.

Five Hockey Books to Take to an Iceberg

• The Game: A Thoughtful and Provocative Look at a Life in Hockey by Ken Dryden (1983).

• Net Worth: Exploding the Myths of Pro Hockey by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths (1991).

• Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man Who Couldn’t Play by David Adams Richards (1996).

• Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places by Dave Bidini (2000).

• Putting a Roof on Winter: Hockey’s Rise from Sport to Spectacle by Michael McKinley (2000).

Most tellers of the legend of the Jersey Devil trace the tale back to Deborah Leeds, a New Jersey woman who was about to give birth to her 13th child. The story goes that Mrs. Leeds invoked the Devil during a very difficult and painful labour, and when the baby was born, it grew into a full-grown devil and escaped from the house. People in the 1700s still believed in witchcraft, and many felt a deformed child was a child of the Devil or that the deformity was a sign that the child had been cursed by God. It may be that Mrs. Leeds gave birth to a child with a birth defect and, given the superstitions of the period, the legend of the Jersey Devil was born.

Top Five Hockey Movies

• Slap Shot (1977): Directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman.

• Mystery, Alaska (1999): Directed by Jay Roach and starring Russell Crowe.

• The Rhino Brothers (2001): Directed by Dwayne Beaver and starring Curtis Bechdholt.

• Miracle (2004): Directed by Gavin O’Connor and starring Kurt Russell.

• The Rocket (2005): Directed by Charles Binamé and starring Roy Dupuis.

What was the first hockey movie?

The Edison Manufacturing Company made two very short films depicting hockey players in action — Hockey Match on the Ice (1898) and Hockey Match on the Ice at Montreal, Canada (1901) — so, in effect, these are the first two movies about ice hockey. The second of the two shows a couple of hundred kids playing what might well be shinny rather than organized hockey. However, the first known feature movie about hockey is the abysmal King of Hockey, a low-budget flick made by Warner Brothers in 1936. It stars Dick Purcell as Gabby Dugan, a college hockey player who makes his way into professional hockey, meets up with a nasty gambler, and gets involved with a socialite played by Anne Nagel. The movie is pretty hokey and terribly melodramatic, but it does feature hockey players from the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. Still, the American writer obviously wasn’t familiar with the game, since the script makes references to fouls and the penalty cage. If nothing else, King of Hockey is a harbinger of the hockey celluloid mediocrity that was to come.

Five Worst Hockey Movies

• Youngblood (1986): Directed by Peter Markle and starring Rob Lowe.

• The Mighty Ducks (1992): Directed by Stephen Herek and starring Emilio Estevez.

• MVP: Most Valuable Primate (2000): Directed by Robert Vince and starring various chimpanzees playing Jack.

• National Lampoon’s Pucked (2006): Directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Jon Bon Jovi.

• The Love Guru (2008): Directed by Marco Schnabel and starring Mike Myers.

Who wrote the original theme song for CBC-TV’s Hockey Night in Canada?

Vancouver-born Dolores Claman wrote the theme song for Hockey Night in Canada (with an arrangement by Howard Cable), a ditty called The Hockey Theme, which has become one of the most recognizable tunes ever composed in Canada. In 1968, when Claman was asked to write an anthem for the show, she supposedly had never seen a hockey game and claims she didn’t actually see one in person until 30 years after the introduction of her song. The theme was first played on Hockey Night in Canada during the 1968–69 season. Previously, the television show’s themes had been Saturday’s Game, a march by Howard Cable, and Esso Happy Motoring Song. In 2008, after a long-standing dispute over financial compensation with CBC-TV, Claman broke with the network and signed a deal with CTV that allowed The Hockey Theme to be featured on the private company’s televised hockey games beginning in 2008–09.

Who invented tabletop hockey?

In 1932 Torontonian Don Munro built a model for a tabletop hockey game in his basement using scrap metal and carving hockey figures out of wood. Shortly after, he sold the concept to Eaton’s Department Store in Toronto, and the new game was a huge hit. Munro’s largely wooden game was replaced in the mid-1950s by the Eagle Toy Company’s version, which boasted painted tin figures and metal rods that allowed players to whip their hockey pieces around 360 degrees.

Top Five Hockey Songs

• Fifty Mission Cap by The Tragically Hip

• Hockey by Jane Siberry

• The Hockey Song by Stompin’ Tom Connors

• Hit Somebody by Warren Zevon

• Gordie and My Old Man by Grievous Angels

What NHL team staged a contest between live bears and its players?

It’s hard to believe, but in December 1998 the once-mighty Edmonton Oilers in a bid to boost fading fan interest actually had three of their Russian players — Mikhail Shta-lenkov, Andrei Kovalenko, and Boris Mironov — hit the ice against a trio of bears borrowed from a Russian circus. The much-diminished Oilers, as represented by the aforementioned Russians, were at least able to drub the bears, which were pretty hapless on skates and in helmets.

How did the Boston hockey team get the name Bruins?

In the 1920s, Charles Adams held a city-wide contest to name his new Boston hockey team. Because the colours of his Brookside Department Stores were brown and yellow, he insisted that the team wear those same colours. He also wanted the team to be named after an animal known for its strength, agility, ferocity, and cunning. The public contest came up with the Bruins, meaning a large, ferocious bear.

Who are the Hanson brothers?

The Hanson brothers — Jeff and Steve Carlson and Dave Hanson — first found celebrity in 1977 in the Paul Newman film Slap Shot as hard-hitting, rabble-rousing hockey enforcers, the kind of players much beloved by broadcaster Don Cherry. In Slap Shot the trio play the fictional Hanson siblings (Jeff, Steve, and Jack). The two Carlsons and Hanson were actual hockey players in the minor leagues (and in the case of Steve Carlson and Dave Hanson, the NHL, too). In fact, Jack Carlson, another brother, had to bow out of the film because he was called up to play for the Edmonton Oilers (then in the World Hockey Association). Dave Hanson took his place. Interestingly, there is another character in the movie called Dave Killer Carlson, played by Jerry Houser, who is somewhat based on the real Jack Carlson and Dave Hanson, both of whom had the nickname Killer as players. The Carlsons hailed from Virginia, Minnesota, and first played for the Marquette Iron Rangers in Michigan. The real Dave Hanson was born in Cumberland, Wisconsin. Steve and Jeff Carlson and Dave Hanson made two wretched sequels to Slap Shot and continue to make public appearances as their fictional alter egos.

When did Coach’s Corner first appear on Hockey Night in Canada ?

The bombastic, flamboyantly dressed Don Cherry made his debut on Hockey Night in Canada in the Coach’s Corner segment in 1980 with Dave Hodge as his sidekick. In 1987 Hodge was replaced by Ron MacLean, who has been Cherry’s foil ever since. Always controversial, Cherry toiled in minor-league hockey as a defenceman from the 1950s to the early 1970s, finishing his playing career with the American Hockey League’s Rochester Americans, a team he also coached for three seasons. He parlayed the minor-league coaching stint into a chance in the big time as head coach of the Boston Bruins, a job he held for five seasons (1974–75 to 1978–79). During the seventh game of the Stanley Cup semifinal with the Montreal Canadiens in 1979, Cherry made the mistake of allowing too many Bruins on the ice, earning a penalty for the team. The Canadiens capitalized on the error during the subsequent power play when Guy Lafleur scored the tying goal. The match went into overtime and the Canadiens’ Yvon Lambert scored again, winning the game and eliminating Boston. The Habs went on to play the New York Rangers in the final and ended up winning the Cup. Cherry was fired. He bounced back briefly, though, in 1979–80 as head coach of the wretched Colorado Rockies but was fired after one season.

Six Top All-Time Hockey Broadcasters

• Foster Hewitt (1902–1985)

• Danny Gallivan (1917–1993)

• René Lecavalier (1918–1999)

• Howie Meeker (1923– )

• Bill Hewitt (1928–1996)

• Dick Irvin, Jr. (1932– )

When was hockey first broadcast on television?

Amazingly, the very first television broadcast of hockey occurred on October 29, 1938. The British Broadcasting Corporation aired the second and third periods of a game between the Harringay Racers and Streatham at London’s Harringay Arena. Perhaps equally surprising, the very first telecast of hockey in North America didn’t happen in Canada but in the United States. On an experimental station set up by NBC at Madison Square Garden, the network broadcast a game between the New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens on February 15, 1940. Not many people got to see the telecast, since there were fewer than 300 television sets in New York City. The first televised NHL game in Canada finally transpired on October 11, 1952, when Hockey Night in Canada debuted on the tube in French with a game between the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Canadiens called by René Lecavalier at the Montreal Forum. The Habs lost to the Hawks 3–2. Three weeks later, on November 1, Hockey Night in Canada aired its initial English-language broadcast as Foster Hewitt provided the play-by-the-play for a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens. The Leafs beat the Bruins 2–1. Just the last half of the game was broadcast, a policy that continued until 1968 for regular-season matches.

When did Foster Hewitt first say he shoots, he scores?

On March 22, 1923, Foster Hewitt uttered his signature he shoots, he scores in his first radio broadcast, a playoff game between intermediate hockey clubs from Toronto and Kitchener at the former’s Mutual Street Arena. The broadcast was done for CFCA in a glassed-in booth near the penalty box. A month before Hewitt’s CFCA broadcast, on February 18, Norm Albert, an editor at the Toronto Star, made the very first radio broadcast of a hockey game. The senior-league match between clubs from North Toronto and Midland, Ontario, turned out to be a 16–4 blowout in favour of Toronto. On January 7, 1933, Hewitt was heard for the first time coast-to-coast on radio when he welcomed listeners with Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland for a game between the Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings, which the former won 7–6.

When were the first hockey cards issued?

In 1910–11 Imperial Tobacco released the inaugural set of catalogued hockey cards in a 36-card collection. The cards showcased coloured pictures of the superstars of the era such as Georges Vézina, Cyclone Taylor, and Lester Patrick and were placed in packages of cigarettes. A complete mint set of these cards is now worth thousands of dollars.

What famous explorer played hockey in the Arctic?

A recent discovery in a letter from British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin to Roderick Murchison, dated November 6, 1825, records: Till the snow fell the game of hockey played on the ice was the morning’s sport. Franklin’s men were wintering during his second Arctic expedition at Fort Franklin (now called Deline) in Canada’s Northwest Territories on the shore of Great Bear Lake in October 1825. However, it isn’t clear if the people participating in this activity were wearing skates. More likely, they were playing field hockey. Still, that doesn’t stop Deline today from laying claim to hosting the very first hockey game in North America. As for Franklin, on his final expedition in 1845 to locate the Northwest Passage to Asia, he and his men disappeared in Canada’s Far North. They were last seen by Europeans on July 26, 1845. It appears Franklin perished on June 11, 1847, off King William Island in the Arctic Ocean.