SportsLit

As one of the greatest NBA players of all-time, Larry Bird’s life has been covered extensively. Out of common roots in midwestern basketball and out of a passion for regional history, Randy Mills (Retd. Prof. Oakland City University) mines Larry Legend’s origin story. In doing so, he presents the fervent foundation for the sport that existed in Bird’s home state of Indiana, using it as a base to focus specifically on the machinations of his high school basketball playing days for the Spring Valley Blackhawks from 1972-1974.  Utilizing archived stories from local reporters and tapping into a lived experience with the subject matter, Mills arrives at his latest release in a line of publications that study the midwestern United States.

Don Cherry’s Coach's Corner segment on Hockey Night in Canada ended abruptly in 2019. Was it ever going to happen any other way? Controversial and entertaining, Cherry spoke his mind to the country for 37 years in the aforementioned first intermission segment. On Nov. 9, 2019, going over the top met with the times at hand and the contemporary media landscape.  Cherry was fired by Sportsnet in what is known as “Poppygate”. Is there more to this story? Is there more to Grapes than most care to know? His late daughter decided she wanted to confront this matter and also the descriptions she so often heard and read about her dad. The result is The Don Cherry Story, by his Daughter, Cindy Cherry. It’s a book that exists in two parts, the first deals with the front facing persona of her father, and the second which focuses on his life, on and off the ice. This episode is a conversation with Cindy’s brother and Don’s son, Tim Cherry, about the book and about his family. *Cindy Cherry passed away in July 2024. **This was recorded one week prior to Cherry’s sign off from "The Don Cherry's Grapevine Podcast" on Sunday, June 22.

There is an unending well of culture to draw from when it comes to hockey in Canada.Ronnie Shuker's bucket is full after driving across the country, 30,000 miles (or roughly 50,000 kilometres for you hosers!) in all. After traversing the "true north", Shuker (Editor-at-Large, The Hockey News) emptied his experiences over 244 pages giving further contemporary context to a game that exists in the bones of this nation. 

The business of women’s sports has never had this much momentum. So what is it building on? Jane McManus provides a real-time snapshot of where we currently are and how we got here in Fast Track: The Surging Business of Women’s Sports. McManus has spent a career covering sports for major outlets such as the New York Daily News and was a founding columnist for espnW. Now an Adjunct Professor at NYU at the Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport, she has published a book that examines the business of women's sport, focusing on the peaks that have occured during her lifetime, from 1970s till present day. Tracing a line through the origins of the WTA to the leagues emerging today, there is lots to learn in this rapidly developing movement that rides an undulating past into its next sustainable breakthrough.    

The story, and history of Maple Leaf Gardens is well documented. It has been described as having religious significance, there is reverence and well earned-lore. A loathsome thread exists too.  Without question it is one of the most significant buildings ever constructed in Canada and a big part of its legend is that it was completed during the early years of the Great Depression. But what was Toronto Maple Leafs’ owner Conn Smythe’s intent?  Why did he build it where he did? What crowd did he want to attract and how do those spectators compare to what our notions of them would be? How did this venerated structure meet the times it evolved from? These are questions that Russell Field (Associate Professor, Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management, the University of Manitoba) examines in A Night at the Gardens: Class, Gender, and Respectability in 1930s Toronto. Explore the origin and early days of Maple Leaf Gardens through an academic lense.