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...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 85
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.
Jun 02, 2025•57 min•Ep. 84
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 ...
Mar 11, 2025•43 min•Ep. 83
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 wan...
Feb 11, 2025•45 min•Ep. 82
Hakeem Olajuwon left Lagos, Nigeria in 1980 and barely a year after taking up basketball, he blossomed into the game’s first international star in Houston, first collegiately with the Cougars and then with the NBA’s Rockets. In an 18-season career he was a nine-time NBA all-star and two-time league champion. He played his last season with the Toronto Raptors. Olajuwon was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and is a member of the NBA's 75th anniversary team. In “Dream: The Life and...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 81
Every hockey fan knows how it always ends for the Vancouver Canucks — no Stanley Cup — but Ed Willes digs in the corners to poke at the why, with a wry perspective. The veteran journalist (Regina Leader-Post, The Province) presents a case study, with novelistic detail, about the West Coast NHL franchise. Weaving a thread — one of instability at the top — through the history (and prehistory) of the team, Willes explains why the Canucks have fallen short of winning the Stanley Cup, but have never ...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 80
Atiba Hutchinson finally has space to contemplate the inner strength it takes to chase goals that were often, and understandably, hard to define. In “The Beautiful Dream,” the retired captain of the Canadian men’s national soccer team (CMNT) lets fans and readers in on a footballer’s journey. Now retired as a player, Hutchinson delves into his early life as a first-generation Canadian growing up in Brampton, Ont. in the 1980s, and ’90s and how he navigated the uncertain path to professional succ...
Nov 21, 2024•53 min•Ep. 79
In his début novel, sports journalist Jason Kirk gives readers a rigorous and referentially tight portrait of growing up in an evangelical world. “Hell Is a World Without You” plunges readers into the world of early-2000s teen Isaac Siena Jr., his youth group friends, widowed mother Katherine, and intense big brother Eli. Its themes delve through faith, the lingering effects of being raised with “constant fear of hell, and shame, and damnation,” and being in a world where “youth pastors dress li...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 78
Mike Keenan is a madman. Mike Keenan has a method. All things considered, both descriptions are part and parcel of a coaching career in which he angered many, and accomplished a great deal. 30 years ago he won the Stanley Cup and then abruptly parted with the New York Rangers, the team he led to the title. Iron Mike addresses career defining events such as this and covers much more in his life’s journey through hockey. The 1985 Jack Adams Award winner (NHL Coach of the Year) joined SportsLit to ...
Sep 29, 2024•52 min•Ep. 77
Relying on a near half-century of deep research and reflection, Melissa Ludtke recounts her landmark federal case in “Locker Room Talk.” In 1977 and ’78, as a Sports Illustrated reporter, Ludtke was the winning plaintiff in Ludtke v. Kuhn, a U.S. federal case that Time Inc. and lawyer Fritz Schwarz Jr. brought against Major League Baseball. In the courtroom, Justice Constance Baker Motley — a civil rights icon — found that MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn had violated Kuhn’s constitutional rights by ...
Sep 15, 2024•2 hr 9 min•Ep. 76
Michael Cochrane found an artifact of early Canadian golf great George S. Lyon hiding in plain sight one day — and set to bring him to life on the page, and on the links. In “Olympic Lyon: The Untold Story of the First Gold Medal for Golf,” Cochrane digs deep to tell the story of the Toronto insurance salesman who captured Olympic glory in the early 20th century, to the delight of fans in the young nation of Canada. Lyon never got to defend his title, or congratulate his successor. But through d...
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 75
Johnny Mize, a top home-run hitter in a turbulent time for baseball and North America, never got a complete biography in his lifetime. Author Jerry Grillo, who lives in the same region of rural Georgia where Mize hailed from, has remedied that by examining Mize’s baseball life and his effect on the sport. Mize (1913-1993, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981) played in the majors during an era marked and marred by segregation, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. The lefty-...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 74
New investment and enthusiasm are pouring into women’s sports. In “The Price She Pays: Confronting the Hidden Mental Health Crisis in Women’s Sports— from the Schoolyard to the Stadium,” lead authors Dr. Tiffany Brown and Katie Steele call for changes to the athletic hierarchy women compete under. As lead authors, along with co-author Erin Strout, they propose that the expanding popularity and financial clout of women’s sports must be commensurate with an athlete-centred mental health approach T...
Jul 11, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 73
Sport ecologist Dr. Madeleine Orr is pitching a ‘green game plan’ for sports fans. In “Warming Up,” Orr pairs her academic curiosity and storytelling to stir optimism (or “hopeium”) about using the power of sport to explain climate adaptation. The University of Toronto professor’s début book reminds readers sports are a bigger social connector than politics, arts, and pop culture — and the loss of them can have significant mental health effects. As such, sports is a rallying point to push for a ...
Jun 27, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 72
In “Ali Hoops,” the début children’s book by sports anchor Evanka Osmak, the 10-year-old heroine just wants a place in the game. Ali “daydreams about being a basketball star,” but frets about whether she can make her school team. Along the way, Ali learns lessons about who makes a true team off and on the floor — and illustrates how sports give a child a chance to build life skills and responsibility. Evanka Osmak is an anchor for Sportsnet Central. She is a mother of two and has been with Sport...
Jun 08, 2024•39 min•Ep. 71
Noah Gittell is here to get the baseball movie out of its big-screen slump. In “Baseball: The Movie,” his first book, he advocates for the return of a sports movie niche that has faded since “Moneyball” and “42” were hits in the early ’10s. Drawing on insights from fellow writers and ballplayers, Gittell shows how the baseball movie, since the time of “The Pride of the Yankees” during the Second World War, has tapped into the essentials of the American soul and identity. A longtime New York Mets...
May 15, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 70
Whether Ben Johnson ever receives exoneration, the examination of the Canadian sprinter’s life and times by Mary Ormsby shows he got a raw deal. Johnson became the first track-and-field Olympian to lose a gold medal for doping after a positive test at the 1988 Summer Olympics. In “World’s Fastest Man*: The Life of Ben Johnson,” Ormsby raises alarming questions about the reactions from the IOC, Canadian sports leaders, and the media — and double standards imposed on Johnson and other Black Canadi...
May 05, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 69
In what might be his most ambitious work, author and hockey legend Ken Dryden affirms the value of finding our similarities. At the start of the 2020s, Dryden sought out people with whom he shared a uniquely Canadian coming-of-age experience during an ambitious era. In the early 1960s, Dryden was part of the ‘Brain Class’ at Etobicoke C.I. — students who loved to learn. Through meetings on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in person, Dryden learned the biographies of 34-of-35 classmates to ...
Apr 18, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 68
How Pete Rose became so polarizing spurred Keith O’Brien to get granular in “Charlie Hustle,” which has become an instant The New York Times bestseller. In 1989, Major League Baseball’s hit king received a lifetime ban for betting on games in which he managed his hometown Cincinnati Reds. With reportorial digging, O’Brien reminds readers of everything Rose did between the lines of MLB ballparks and off the field, and why the scandal lingers into this era of legal sports gambling. A Cincinnati na...
Apr 15, 2024•53 min•Ep. 67
Jack McCallum is on the case of the Crispus Attucks Tigers, a young Oscar Robertson, and purloined glory in the heartland of hoops. In The Real Hoosiers, his 12th book, McCallum dives into why Indiana celebrates the 1954 Milan Miracle, and the film “Hoosiers,” more than Attucks. Repping a school community forced into existence in a “bewildering and openly racist big-city educational system,” future NBA assist king and players’ union leader Robertson and his teammates won back-to-back Indiana sch...
Mar 14, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 66
Morgan Campbell’s debut memoir, “My Fighting Family: Borders and Bloodlines and the Battles That Made Us” is more than a sports book — but sport is a through line. Campbell, whose parents and a set of grandparents decamped from Chicago for Toronto during the sociopolitically turbulent late 1960s, shares much about growing up Black and learning his way in Canada when holding trenchant American roots. It explores a rich and nuanced family tree filled with characters that can be turbulently interco...
Feb 13, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 65
Gambling has become a new revenue stream for major sports leagues in the last few years, raising questions about how to protect competitive integrity. It also calls to mind the fallout from the Black Sox Scandal, the greatest game-fixing scandal in the history of North American sports. In "Joe Jackson vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club: Never Before Seen Trial Transcript," the public can finally read about a civil trial 100 years ago that laid bare the inner workings of major-league baseb...
Jan 29, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 64
Erik Kramer built an NFL career on precision, timing, and accuracy, but it was his greatest miss that led to him building a complete life. Since surviving a 2015 suicide attempt, the former quarterback is making his ultimate comeback day after day, living with renewed sense of purpose. Athletically, Kramer climbed up from the "bottom of the barrel," in his words. Getting a chance to make a first impression was tough enough for a football player who was unrecruited out of high school and was undr...
Jan 18, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 63
Nothing is ever as good as it once was. That’s a lie —they improve, or more accurately, they evolve. Still, why not look back with a bit of wonder? Rich Cohen is the right writer to put the NBA, then and now, into perspective. In When the Game Was War: The NBA's Greatest Season, Cohen stress-tests his belief that the 1987-88 season was the zenith of pro basketball. Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Michael Jordan, and their long-time teammates carry a narrative about the finesse and feroc...
Dec 26, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 62
Pride and Prejudice It could have easily been the title of Ted Nolan’s biography. My Life in Two Worlds: A Coach’s Journey from the Reserve to the NHL and Back encompasses the duality of his drive to show people from his world, Garden River First Nation, could succeed in another one, whilst centering their Indigenous identity. A career coach who has achieved success at every level, Nolan is best known for his first tenure with the Buffalo Sabres in the 1990s. He earned the NHL coach-of-the-year ...
Nov 26, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 61
The NHL Draft is one of hockey's great spectacles. Just after the Stanley Cup is awarded, the spotlight shifts to the draft floor, where teams hope to acquire future stars and the diamonds in the rough that can lead them — or keep them — in contention. As a former NHL president and general manager, Doug MacLean has seen the process from the inside. That is where he and Hockey Hall of Fame-honoured writer Scott Morrison take readers in Draft Day: How Hockey Teams Pick Winners or Get Left Behind. ...
Nov 16, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 60
Jonathon Jackson captures the spirit of the thing Like “Slap Shot” itself, Jonathon Jackson might have been slightly ahead of his time when he set out to write about the timeless hockey movie. Nowadays, ‘how it was made’ books, podcasts, and limited series are everywhere. But it was back in 2006, Jackson set out to write about the “nuts and bolts” that held together a raunchy, rollicking 1977 sports comedy starring Paul Newman that remains unlike any depiction of hockey put on screens before, an...
Nov 11, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 59
Act like a champion, talk like a champion, run like a champion. Wired like a prizefighter, Donovan Bailey became the fastest man on earth in the 1990s. He did it for himself while raising Canada's standing in international sport. In his memoir, the 100-metre and Olympic and world gold medalist tells his life story with intent. Rooted in Jamaica and then Oakville, Ont., Bailey rocketed around the world after a belated entry into athletics. Following his triumphs on the track, his career was derai...
Oct 27, 2023•51 min•Ep. 58
Dave Hill is a multitalented man, but a fan for one season — hockey season. The comedian, essayist, and musician is meh toward his hometown NFL Cleveland Browns, but hockey had him hooked right off the hop. Over his life, it has become a source of perplexment as to why more Americans are not similarly stoked about hockey. In his fourth book, "The Awesome Game: One Man's Incredible, Globe-Crushing Hockey Odyssey," Hill seeks out hockey wherever he can find it from Nairobi, Kenya to Kemptville, On...
Oct 25, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 57
Step into the arena. Step outside the bubble. Justin Davis offers the public a personal story of a life in hockey with all aspects considered. What was wrong? What can be changed? What did he like? What should be maintained? With Canada’s national winter sport facing a moral audit, check out our discussion with an NHL draft choice and Memorial Cup champion player turned high school teacher who has an inside perspective. Conflicted Scars was released by ECW Press in October 2022. It features a fo...
May 04, 2023•54 min•Ep. 56
