My first recollection of the captivating drama of sports, as spun by its various ‘voices’, occurred in the late 1960s.
I observed my father engrossed in a hockey game on our TV that was smaller than the lone 10” x 20” basement window it was perched up beside at the ceiling. It must’ve been Hockey Night in Canada, likely the Leafs versus the Canadiens, though in black and white, my novice eye could not be certain.
I gazed up at the swirling black shirts with white trim, waving to and fro in a rotation of sorts, alternately attacking and defending in unison with another collection of skaters in opposite attire, doing precisely the same thing.
Accompanying this basic ballet, in steady staccato, was a ‘voice’ coming from the TV.
Whenever the ‘voice’ grew louder my father leaned forward; when softer, he’d lean back. When the ‘voice’ was both louder and faster, the palm of my father’s hand would go straight to his forehead. This ‘voice’, with its own rotation of pace, pause, and tone, seemed to have him on a string.
Within a couple of winters, having gained some notion of the game’s fundamentals, I become similarly afflicted. As terrific as the action was, better still were these ‘voices’.
Looking back, I like to think that that first voice was Danny Gallivan, he of the “cannonading drive”, but, in all likelihood, it was that high-pitched nasality of Foster Hewitt’s, honing his “Henderson sores!” a few seasons ahead of really needing it.
By 1970, May 10, in fact, there was a new and better ‘voice’, unmatched to this day. What Dan Kelly called on that Sunday afternoon – “Bobby Orr, … behind the net to Sanderson, to Orr, … Bobby Orr … Scores! … Bobby Orr! The Boston Bruins have won the Stanley Cup!” – has kept Orr aloft in our minds, ever since. I was euphoric when Mrs. Barber, my Grade 4 teacher, called upon me to proclaim Orr’s feat the next day.
Soon enough, I was infatuated with these ‘voices’, listening whenever I could to Kelly’s booming ‘voice-of-the-Blues’, as he faded in and out on KMOX radio, St. Louis.
When the Canadiens played the Sabres, I’d turn down the volume on the TV, preferring the exuberant Ted Darling’s play-by-play via WGR 550 radio, Buffalo.
This predilection for press box prose spread rapidly to other sports as well. I became enthralled with many more commentators and their sidekicks; Curt Gowdy with Tony Kubek on baseball; John Madden – long before ‘Madden NFL 21’ – with anybody on football.
These ‘voices’, regaling amusing anecdotes with nicknames of the notorious and the nefarious, providing wider perspective, via lengthy embellishment.
An actual encounter with one of these ‘voices’ occurred one blustery winter day, post-game in Oshawa. I was sharing some dismay with Peterborough broadcaster, Gary Dalliday, over a stellar Petes’ netminding effort brazenly dismissed by a Generals’ broadcasting crew.
As he headed up the steps of the bus, ‘The Diller’ looked back over his shoulder, smugly stating, “First Star on our broadcast,” with a wink and a grin.
Truth tweaked. No harm done.
The pen may be more powerful than the sword, but on occasion, it’s the podium’s telling, not the spelling, that’s most compelling.
To that point, think back to that marvellous montage of fervent sporting action, the up-tempo music, and that Saturday afternoon voice, “Spanning the globe from sea-to-sea … the thrill of victory – Pele scoring; Spitz swimming; Frazier, bobbing and weaving – and the agony of defeat” – skier Bogataj crashing. “The human drama of athletic competition. This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports!”
And, often on ‘WWS’, Cassius Clay, coolest name ever, with a voice of his own, and with that of Howard Cosell’s too; both exhorting that Clay was Ali.
Then, March 8, 1971, a date of non-infamy, really; no feast, no famine, but, nonetheless, the ‘Fight of the Century’, Frazier versus Ali. That date has resonated with me now for 50 years, never once stealing through the night without apprehension …nor contemplation.
Early on, it was with fond recollection, then nostalgia, revelation, and eventually, maybe wisdom.
Cosell was mocked in some circles, “too pompous” and “too verbose”, but for me, his was a voice I could listen to all day. His back-stories were beautiful, and while delivered in Hewitt’s nasality, they were more tolerable for the bass, and were broadcast brilliantly.
He’d mix cadence with inflection, and firmness with emotion like no other, unravelling whisperings of ‘Great White Hopes’ and perilous ‘Black Panthers’.
Cosell connected the mysteries of epochal eras to sport’s grandest events – African Americans, Jesse Owens, track and field, at the Berlin Olympics (1936); and Joe Louis, boxer, versus Max Schmeling, (1936, 1938); both highly politicized by an earlier ‘master race’.
To this, as well, African American sprinters, Tommie C. Smith and John Carlos, on the podium with ram-rod-raised, black-gloved fists, the Olympics again, Mexico City (1968) – with race-riots and anti-war protests, in dangerous sounding places like Watts, Harlem, and Newark.
Cosell, effectively intertwining the calamity of it all via well-chosen words and reverence, imprinting impressionable young minds with darker realities of a world outside their own.
Cosell’s adulation for the outlandish Ali was obvious. Who wasn’t swept up in the panache, the prowess, and the pinnacle? The Rocky series of movies’ Apollo Creed – that ‘Master-of-Disaster’ – was so blatantly Ali.
Yet, as intoxicating as the ‘Louisville Lip’ was, the vitriol of his “Gorilla” and “Uncle Tom,” directed at Frazier, was reprehensible.
Strangely, this odd, two-way taunting, played simultaneously to Whites with the former, to Blacks with the latter. And, where ‘Hockey Night in Canada’s’ Ron MacLean dosey-doed deftly out of the Coach’s Corner, Cosell’s reproach of Ali was lacking.
Other ‘voices’, too, with more militant aims, contributed to the cacophony, tactically twisting Ali’s, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” to, “Ain’t no Viet Cong ever called me N.”
In the echoes of these expressions, our grade school reading group, was, amongst the ‘Lions’ and the ‘Tigers’, not coincidently, the ‘Panthers’. I have no doubt that elsewhere some sons of the ‘Daughters of the Confederacy’, mirrored our group with contrasting, darker images.
John Epstein is a former, 25-year Orillia business owner who left southern Ontario for the north years ago, and has never been back. He is now a freelance writer, whose column will appear monthly in OrilliaMatters.
