Sports History I Never Knew: The First Double Axel in the Olympic Games

Sonia Henie, the “Golden Girl”

It was the free-skating event, the final program of the competition at the 1936 Winter Olympics at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany. Sonja Henie knew that she was in trouble.

The “Golden Girl,” Norwegian-born winner of the skating competitions in the previous two Olympics at Lake Placid and St. Moritz, was the big favorite for a three-peat. But in the previous program, the compulsories, a young upstart from England named Cecilia Colledge, nearly bested her. Henie threw a temper tantrum and ripped the judges’ scoring sheet off the wall, claiming she had been cheated.

Colledge, at age 11 in Lake Placid, was the youngest woman ever to compete in the Olympics. She was the first woman to execute a double-rotation jump in competition, a salchow at the 1936 European championships in Berlin. She also invented the camel and the layback spins and the one-foot axel jump. Henie had never faced such a challenger.

Cecilia Colledge, 1937

The two were close on points going into the free-skating program. Colledge went first, and she was superb, using all the creative and exciting leaps and spins in her repertoire. Henie had to be better, or her gold-medal streak would end.

And that’s what the Golden Girl did. She topped Colledge with a double “Axel Paulsen” jump. Invented in 1882, it was so risky that it had never been tried in the Olympics. Paulsen was world champion speed skater from 1882 to 1890. He also invented modern speed skate, with the blade fixed to the boot.

In the double Axel Paulsen jump, the skater takes off in a forward direction from one foot, rotates one and a half times in the air, and lands backwards on the opposite foot.  Henie took the chance; she leapt, spun, landed on her skates, and ended with a split and a cover-girl smile. She kept her gold medal.

After Germany’s propaganda triumph in the 1936 Olympic Games, the skaters went their separate ways. Henie went pro – officially, as she’d made a lot of money with “amateur” exhibitions in Europe already. She came to America in 1937, became a U.S. citizen in 1941, and made 47 million dollars in film and through skating exhibitions.

Axel Paulsen

Henie also acquired a massive collection of diamonds.  She turned her back on her countrymen and refused to contribute to the resistance fighters who were battling Nazi occupation.  She also became the biggest booster of a new-fangled ice-grooming machine invented by an American named Frank Zamboni. She ordered two for herself; if she was going to skate at your arena, you had to have your own Zamboni.

Colledge returned to England and continued to compete as an amateur. She drove a civilian ambulance in London during the blitz. Her brother Maule became a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. He never returned from a September 1943 mission over Berlin.

Colledge became a professional skater in the late 1940s, appearing in ice shows. She settled in the United States and coached elite athletes at the Skating Club of Boston from 1952 to 1977. She died, at the age of 87, in 2008 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Colledge never married and had no survivors.

And what of Axel Paulsen? He returned home and, after the death of his father, took over the family coffee shop until his death in 1936. The daring jump he invented is now known as the axel – just as all ice groomers are now Zambonis.

Now you know the rest of the story.

Sonia Henie’s touring Zamboni

Henie and her Zamboni, in photo autographed for inventor Frank Zamboni.

The double axel jump

Sonia Henie and George “Superman” Reeves, 1954

The New Normal is a Big Whiff

Nobody asked me, but…

I don’t like the “New Normal.” And I’m not talking about this virus matter.

I’m talking about baseball.

The Boston Red Sox won yesterday, 5-0 over Tampa Bay. The press is crowing about the well-pitched game by Martίn Peréz. Hey, good for him. But it’s not a game he pitched. It’s barely more than half a game, five innings.  Same for Ryan Yarbrough, the losing pitcher.

Peréz was declared the winning pitcher because he was the pitcher of record when the winning run was scored by his team. And he pitched five innings. A starter still has to go five innings to get a win. At least he did the last time I looked. Whatever.

Pitching Summary Boston vs. Tampa Bay August 5, 2020

Look at the accompanying box score. Identical patterns in innings pitched. The starter goes five. Then comes a parade of nearly-anonymous denizens from the bullpens. One inning each. LEGO pieces. Pitching by committee.

And don’t forget that pitch count!

This doesn’t do it for me.

Nor does the designated hitter. But that horse is long gone and the barn door is still hanging open. So too, I’m afraid, is horse that was once known as “complete game.”

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the character known as the closer, and the ersatz accomplishment known as the “save.”

To wit (from MLB.com):

“A relief pitcher recording a save must preserve his team’s lead while doing one of the following: Enter the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitch at least one inning. Enter the game with the tying run in the on-deck circle, at the plate or on the bases. Pitch at least three innings.”

Blech. Talk about a non-achievement.

“Lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli supposedly said this, but whoever actually did was right. Had to be a baseball fan.

Finally – and Yankee fans gonna hate this – had I been on the Hall of Fame Committee I don’t know if I would have voted for Mariano Rivera. He was probably the most renowned closer of all time, with 19 years and 652 saves.

But he was a one-inning-only marvel. He pitched 1283 total innings, or 67 innings per season.  Hardly a workhorse. If the opposing team happened to score on him, he was in deep doo-doo. So was his team. Just ask Kevin Millar, Dave Roberts, and Bill Mueller.

Okay, I probably would have come around to vote Mariano in. He did last 19 years in the majors. That’s impressive. But my vote would have come his way been because he was such an outstanding guy, the kind of professional athlete that everyone who plays sports should aspire to be. Nobody represented baseball better than Mariano Rivera.

So he has his niche in the Hall of Fame. I hope he’s the only one of his category – the closer – who ever makes it.

And who knows. Maybe we won’t ever see another pitcher from this New Normal era enshrined. Pitchers used to be the crème de la crème , the hoi aristoi. Now they’re the great unwashed, the hoi polloi.

“Search the public parks and you’ll never find a monument to a committee” goes another unattributed but pithy quote. In future years, it ought to be

“Search Cooperstown and you’ll never find a monument to a bullpen.”

Baseball’s New Normal. That’s all I have to say about that.

Remembering Johnny Majors and an Extremely Proper Introduction

June 4, 2020

Coach Majors, preparing to take the field,

Johnny Majors passed away yesterday at the age of 85. The good ol’ boy could certainly tote a football and coach a team. May he rest in peace.

Johnny’s departure brought back a memory of a curmudgeonly little move by yours truly.  It was September 15, 1979. That was at the start of my fourth year as the stadium announcer for Boston College football.  The Tennessee Volunteers had come to town to play the Eagles.

Johnny Majors was a big, big deal in those days. And rightly so. In a four-year span, he had coached a moribund Pittsburgh program to a national championship. Then his alma mater, Tennessee, came calling. He decamped to Knoxville in 1977. The Volunteers started to appear on television again.

Sometimes, coach Majors would bring his actor-brother Lee, the Six-Million Dollar Man and husband of Farrah Fawcett, to stand on the sidelines with him.  Broadcasters and reporters kissed his ring and lapped up his every word. Yes, it was Johnny Majors, Johnny Majors, Johnny Majors all day every day in college football.

The game was a nighttime one, televised nationwide. It was hyped and it was huge. This was the start of Johnny Majors’ third season at Tennessee. The Vols were ready to soar. The network – undoubtedly ABC – wanted a dramatic introduction.  And so, and as it turned out for the only time in my 42 years as BC’s stadium voice, I was called on to introduce the starting lineups. On national television.

I had to do something special, something distinctive, for our distinguished guest.  And I did. I used his correct name.

As the visiting team, the Volunteers were introduced first. One by one, they trotted out onto the field. Cued by the ABC guy at my elbow, I introduced each in turn – position, number, name.  Then, out  from under the stands jogged the coach.  Dramatic pause. Nudge from the cue guy.

“And the head coach of the Volunteers…(another dramatic pause)….John…Majors.”

Not “Johnny Majors!” as I’m sure ABC expected and hoped for. Just plain old, Sherm-Feller-style, deliberately underwhelming “John…Majors.”

No big splash. Just a tiny kerplunk. I could almost feel the broadcast booth deflating like Tom Brady’s footballs would, many years later.

I didn’t, or couldn’t, bring myself to do the same for the Boston College coach. “Edward Chlebek” would have sounded weird.  And I didn’t want to tweak Eddie’s nose either. He had troubles enough in his disastrous three seasons as BC’s coach.  In the previous year, BC had gone 0-11. So my final introduction, before the game began, was “And the head coach of the Eagles, Ed Chlebek.”

The game was actually a pretty good one. Tennessee was indeed on its way to a bowl year. But BC gave them a tussle. Despite their awful, recent record, the Eagles did have a lot of talent. The final score was an eminently respectable 28-16, a “moral victory” for the home town team.

But that night I had my own little moral victory before the game even began. I got a fiendish little bit of satisfaction out of that sly editorializing that I guess I saw as the p.a. guy’s equivalent of damning with faint praise. And I’ve not told anybody about it. Until now.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Book Review and Reflection: John Tesh’s “Relentless”

A little more than seven years ago I took my wife Mary Ellen and our son Matt to a John Tesh Christmas concert in Boston.  It was a fun night out, listening live to a guy whose life seemed to be just one fabulous success after another.

I posted a couple of pictures and clips from the concert on Facebook. To my surprise, most of the comments were snarky and negative. They weren’t so much about his music as they were ad hominem. People just didn’t seem to like him.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s easy to envy the world-traveling, jet-setting John Tesh – handsome, self-assured, undoubtedly filthy rich and married to one of the world’s most stunning women. He had the perfect life.  Jealousy of such folks often emerges as dislike or disdain. I get that.  It was probably in play here.

But I think that the real reason for the bazoos and catcalls was John Tesh’s religious faith. He is not at all bashful about proclaiming the role of God in his own life, in that of his wife, and in their life together. Nowadays, religion isn’t cool. Talk about religion makes people uncomfortable. I get that too.

I suppose if you really feel that way, it would be hard to persuade you to read Relentless: Unleashing a Life of Purpose, Grit, and Faith.  But I would urge you to read it anyway. It’s both a memoir and a self-help book. It’s the story of his life and a manual-by-example for personal success and fulfillment.  It shows the often harsh realities and the roles of luck and timing for those trying to make it in the broadcast media. It’s also an easy read – I did it in two days.

Yes, there are spiritual musings, scriptural quotes, and tidbits of pithy advice sprinkled throughout. But it never gets didactic or preachy. Tesh is a thoroughly likable guy, and reading his book was like sitting down with him for a few hours and several beers –just letting him do the talking and call it as he sees it.

Early in the book, he remarks that he gives the same career advice to anyone who asks: “Find the thing you want to do, or the broad area you want to be in, choose the path of least resistance, and plot a course for your way in.”

Connie Sellecca and James Brolin, her co-star in the popular television series “Hotel.”

It’s not as if he did it that way all the time, however. There were just a few occasions he planned things, like his sending a tape to CBS in New York and getting an audition after just a year as newscaster at a Nashville TV station. He got the New York job and was the youngest news reporter on the staff at age 24. Much later in life, when he wanted to return to his musical roots, he burst onto the concert scene with a daring and self-financed venture, John Tesh Live at Red Rocks.

On many other occasions, he was just in the right place at the right time. And he put into action another bit of advice: “Be Found Ready.” He was a film editor at a TV station in Raleigh when, one day, the news anchor was abruptly dismissed. He had never been on a news set, but he donned a borrowed sport coat and got through his first newscast.

He was on the air four months, then got recruited to a station in Orlando. Another four months and a Nashville station came calling and doubled his salary. It was at that time that newsrooms were evolving into folksy, friendly places where the on-air personalities would banter and socialize as they delivered the broadcast. Pat Sajak was the weatherman at the Nashville station.  The milieu was perfect for Tesh. Right place, right time.

As a tv journalist in New York, Tesh impressed people with his street reporting, covering such gritty matters as the perfidies of South Bronx slumlords, crooked cab drivers who swindled out-of-town visitors, riots and looting during a citywide blackout, the plight of New York’s homeless, and the Son of Sam serial murders.

That work of six years positioned him for another shifting trend in the broadcast field. CBS Sports had new management in 1981. They decided that they wanted to inject some civilian news seriousness into their sideline reporting.  He was hired by the newly minted executive producer, Terry O’Neil, who had just come over from ABC. Tesh called O’Neil his CBS Sports godfather.

A personal aside here. In 1971, fresh out of Boston College, I was a finalist for a dream job at ABC Sports. I flew to New York and interviewed for the position of sports researcher for the 1972 Olympics in Munich.  That job went to Terry O’Neil, and it launched a great career.  Good for him, bummer for me.

Tesh took the sports job and trotted the globe for five years before another change in CBS Sports management forced him out. But he’d already been approached by the producers of Entertainment Tonight. Out on the street again, he called them and got a second audition. That landed him a ten-year gig as co-host of Entertainment Tonight with Mary Hart.

Lest you think that Mr. Tesh’s career was nothing but peaks and no valleys, you should know about his two biggest blunders. Monumental screw-ups they were indeed. But give the guy credit – he bounced back each time.

Late in his junior year at North Carolina State University, he’d finally found his stride. He was a popular and successful walk-on player on the soccer team. He’d taken a radio-tv elective and decided to change his major from textile chemistry to communications. But he was past the official deadline for drop-add, and one professor refused to sign the permission slip.

Tesh was talked into forging the professor’s signature, got caught, and was tossed from school. He lived in a pup tent in a local park for months, pumping gas and working construction.  His personal phone number was the park’s public phone booth.

Tesh, Sellecca, and Gib Gerard, her son by her first husband, in a promotional shot for “Intelligence for Your Life.”

Desperate, he made an audition tape, won over the receptionist at a local radio station, and pitched himself for some entry-level job. Any job would do. And he got in the door. For four hours on Sunday mornings, he could play the station’s religious tapes. But then someone left, and he was doing weekend newscasts.  His chosen career was underway. Again, right place right time.

An even bigger blunder came many years later. He actually got a date with the ravishingly beautiful actress, Connie Sellecca. And then he stood her up. He didn’t show for their Friday rendezvous in Palm Desert, California. He went drinking with the boys instead.

Almost astoundingly and after many rebuffed approached and phone calls, she agreed to meet him for dinner.  And, unusual for a first date, their lengthy conversation turned to religion and spirituality. She was a devout Christian and an ideal match. They clicked right away.

It’s fair to say that religious faith has been the bedrock of their married life together.  It saw them through Tesh’s two battles with stage-three prostate cancer.  It impelled them to support and join Operation Blessing in its relief of tsunami victims in Sri Lanka. It has been a constant theme in their Intelligence for Your Life shows on television, radio, and podcasts.

So – it’s hard not to like and admire John Tesh. I thought I knew about him before I read the book. I didn’t know the half of it.  And I do think he’d be an ideal guy to sit down with and have those several beers.  If you can’t arrange that, read his book.

A Hockey Memory: Seaver Peters, The Man Who Made Snooks Kelley’s Dramatic 500th Win Possible

Peters, product of Melrose, Massachusetts, as captain of Dartmouth hockey.

The news of the passing of Seaver Peters, the man who was Dartmouth College athletics as its director from 1967 to 1983, brought back yet another fond sporting memory from my own school, Boston College.

Seaver was a distinguished gentleman and sportsman — a hockey man, of course – and someone whose opinions were always sought on burning issues of the day.  A good guy he was. May he rest in peace.

That fond sporting memory was of the ragtag Eagles’ dramatic 7-5 win over defending and soon-to-be-repeating national champion Boston University in 1972. That game was BC’s own little Miracle on Ice. It gave retiring coach John “Snooks” Kelley his 500^th career triumph, an unprecedented accomplishment at the time.  Like the 1980 Olympic team and the Russians, BC would have lost to their opponents nine times out of ten.

But not that night. And a decision by Seaver Peters back in November of the previous year was an indispensable step in allowing BC to come into its meeting with BU with 499 career wins on the Snooker’s record.

Jack Kelley after his NCAA championship win against Cornell in 1972

That decision was straight-laced and principled, but it looks rather quaint in hindsight.

On the eve of the season, Mr. Peters canceled a scheduled game against Boston University. Dartmouth then needed another game, and BC athletic director Bill Flynn obliged.

Why the cancellation? The hot, contentious issue swirling through Eastern college hockey at that time was the so-called “Colgate proposal,” which allowed freshmen to compete on the varsity squads. Teams like Colgate and RPI, who saw themselves at a financial and recruiting disadvantage, were all for it. The whole Ivy League was against it.

BC and several others declared that they would not use freshmen. But BU coach Jack Kelley stated that while he would not do so initially, he would reserve the right to use freshmen if necessary.

Jack Kelley’s declaration was enough for Peters, who stated that it was “implicit in the original contract” that freshmen would not be used. The Terriers feigned outrage, then shrugged it off and picked up a game with UMass, a Division Two program at the time.

I remember distinctly the day of the addition. I worked odd jobs around the BC athletic department in those days. I had put together the hockey guide for the season, and we were all ready to go to press. When I arrived at the sports information office, director Eddie Miller had an updated printer’s proof in his hand. The schedule, printed in color on the back, showed a game at Dartmouth inserted in late February.

“We’re adding a game with Dartmouth,” he said matter-of-factly.

Snooks Kelley with 1972 team leaders Ed Kenty, left, and captain Vin Shanley, right.

OK, fine, I thought. But the actual placement of the contest looked positively insane.

The game was to be played on a Monday night. But on the previous weekend, BC had to take the brutal North Country swing. They would fly to the tundras of far upstate New York to play at Clarkson on Friday and at St. Lawrence on Saturday.  Then they’d fly home on Sunday and take a bus up to Dartmouth on Monday. Two nights later they’d face the Terriers.

And before that weekend trip, things looked pretty bleak. BC was struggling. They lost the Beanpot opener to BU and barely squeaked out a consolation game win against Northeastern. They lost the Beanpot sandwich game, at home, to Dartmouth.  Snooks had only 497 wins. Four games in six nights, all against teams that were better than they, faced them.

But it spun out into a Hallmark ending that started with a 6-4 upset of Clarkson, a team coached by Snooks’ eventual successor, Len Ceglarski. They lost the next night, 7-5.

Oh, let’s not forget the weather. The team’s chartered flight, on a DC-3 from Air New England, barely made it to Massena, New York before a massive snow storm hit. The snow had stopped by Sunday, but the flight home was delayed. It finally arrived in Boston late on Sunday after a lusty buffeting by the winter winds. Several of the players made use of their barf bags. There was no time to practice for the game at Dartmouth.

But at least they played the game and somehow pulled it out.  Dave Pearlman and Bill Bedard were the BC broadcasters. I was sitting with them, as an “objective” journalist in my capacity as Eastern College reporter for The Hockey News.  If memory serves, it was a breakaway goal by Ed Hayes that made the difference in the 6-5 contest. The game would never have been played, were it not for Seaver Peters and his stand against freshman eligibility.

I also recall boarding the bus outside drafty old Davis Rink after the game. BU alumnus Jack Garrity, who had refereed, shook Snooks Kelley’s hand and said, “Well, just one more, coach.”

Snooks did get that one more two nights later in a well-chronicled upset. Then he retired. Jack Kelley directed the Terriers to another national title, then left to coach the New England Whalers. It was their last meeting. The series between the two schools stood at 50-50-4 after that game.

Seaver Peters stayed on at Dartmouth for another decade. He hired football coach Joe Yukica away from BC. Later on, Seaver went into the investment business. Joe ended up working for him there too.

And what about freshman eligibility? Did Jack Kelley ever exercise his right to use freshmen?

Seaver Peters in his retirement years

Yes, he did.  It was in the NCAA final game at Boston Garden. BU blew away Cornell, 4-0. When the game was safely won, freshman defenseman Vic Stanfield took a few turns on the ice. He was, I believe, the first and only BU freshman to play that year.

And the issue of freshman eligibility melted away like April snow. Everybody except the Ivy League teams was using them the following season, and pretty soon they followed suit too.

But at the time, it was important to many people that the structure of college sports remain as it had been, that freshmen compete only on freshman teams while they got used to the rigors of college life. It was a good idea then, and it remains a good idea today if you believe in the “student athlete.” But there’s no going back.

Seaver Peters believed in that idea. And he didn’t just talk about it.  He put his beliefs into action.

Thank you, Seaver Peters. We’ll always need leaders like you, in every walk of life. And once again, rest in peace.

Remembering Cathy Inglese, Boston College Women’s Basketball’s Greatest Coach

Cathy Inglese, age 60, died on July 24, 2019 after suffering a traumatic brain injury in a fall at her home. The following is her story that I wrote in 2014, when she was inducted into the Boston College Varsity Club Hall of Fame. She was one of the very best. May she rest in peace.

The coach with the most wins in the history of Boston College basketball had never planned to make coaching her career.

Cathy Inglese graduated from Southern Connecticut State on a Friday. She started teaching at Glastonbury High School the following Monday. She reapplied for a full-time position the following September. They told her that of course, since she’d been a star basketball player in college, she’d coach as well as teach.

“Southern was a good program when I played there, but coaching never entered my mind. I was planning to get a master’s degree in nutrition,” Cathy said.

A multi-sport star throughout high school, Cathy had turned down offers from BC, UConn and Providence to play basketball at her parents’ alma mater. She had been a good athlete since her childhood in the town of Wallingford.  “They were outside all day long,” her mother Nancy said about Cathy and her siblings. If it wasn’t baseball or basketball, they’d be climbing trees.”

In the fall of her third year of teaching, Cathy attended a Big East coaches’ clinic in Hartford and met up with Cecilia DeMarco, head coach at the University of New Hampshire. That spring, DeMarco called about an opening for an assistant basketball coach and assistant athletic director.

“My father had asked me if I’d ever like to try teaching in college, and I figured, ‘what have I got to lose.’ I was 26 at the time. I found that I liked working with student-athletes who were away from home for the first time. I got to travel, to teach, to recruit and to sell,” she explains.

Three years later, Cathy took over the University of Vermont basketball program, which had never had a winning season. Over seven years there, she transformed both Catamount basketball and herself. In her last two seasons, UVM went 29-1 and 28-1 and made the NCAA tournament.

Off the court, she conquered her fear of public speaking and hit the circuit. She addressed executives at IBM’s Vermont facility, among others, and discoursed on topics like leadership, motivation, and teamwork.

“I learned that it doesn’t matter if you’re the president of a company or a coach. You’ve got to have goals. You’ve got to believe in yourself. And it takes time. When you bring people from different backgrounds and with different outlooks, you can succeed as long you share the same vision.”

“I was lucky at Vermont,” she said. “I got to make all my mistakes early, in things like recruiting and in the systems I tried.”

Vermont was where Inglese learned to be a head coach. Boston College was where she put that all that knowledge to work. When Eagle athletic director Chet Gladchuk came calling, it didn’t take much convincing for him to bring her on board.

Again, it took time. Three losing seasons to start off. No fans at Conte Forum. But she made it clear to Gladchuk that there should be no more games in the adjoining Power Gym either. It was going to be a big-time program in a big-time facility.

“In our first game, it was so quiet you could hear the ball bouncing. It wasn’t a great environment, but it was something to build on,” she said.

Gradually, the talented athletes started to arrive. Cal Bouchard, who wasn’t widely known to college coaches, was a recruiting breakthrough. Cathy pursued Cal her after seeing a videotape of her being interviewed on television in Canada. Bouchard’s rookie year of 1996-97 was an 18-10 campaign and Inglese’s first winning one at the Heights.

Many more star athletes and successful seasons would follow. In her 15 years at the Heights, Cathy amassed a record of 273-179.  Among the highlights was the Big East championship in 2004. Inglese’s fifth-seeded Eagles won four games in four nights at the Hartford Civic Center, including a 51-48 semifinal conquest of nemesis Connecticut.

Cathy’s teams also had seven NCAA Tournament bids, and three advances to the national championship tourney’s Sweet 16. In 2005-06, the first year in the ACC, the Eagles lost their last five contests but still qualified for the NCAAs. At the Albuquerque Regional, they defeated Notre Dame and then top-seeded Ohio State, to once again make the round of 16.

Erik Johnson, now the head coach at BC, was Cathy’s assistant in her last three seasons. He marvels at the attention to detail and her meticulous planning that frequently brought victories over more talented opponents.

“I learned from her that that there’s no magic formula to winning at a high level. But every little thing matters. So we might not have players that are as big or as fast as North Carolina’s, but we could beat them because we made fewer mistakes. We moved the ball better, we were better prepared. Our fundamentals were better,” he said.

Clare Droesch was a free-wheeling shooter, a high school All-America when she arrived in 2001. For her, it was a struggle in adjusting to the Inglese way.

“She was an X and O coach who would look for five or six passes before the shot. It was hard, but it finally clicked for me in junior and senior years. When you bought into the system, it worked,” said Clare.

“We were one of the highest-percentage teams in the country. Coach did an amazing job of building offenses and defenses with the players she had.  When she saw potential, she’d push you to the limit of what you could be.”

Brooke Queenan, who played on all three of Inglese’s Sweet 16 squads, adds,

“I’ve never had a coach with her work ethic, and how goal-oriented she was. She demanded that from all of us.”

Interviewing Cathy at her home in Rhode Island in 2014

The team went 21-12 in 2007-08, Cathy’s final year at Boston College. After departing, she took a year off, then became head coach at the University of Rhode Island. Kingston wasn’t Chestnut Hill, though, and it didn’t happen for Cathy’s Rams. After five seasons, she moved on to explore other options including athletic administration, non-profit development, and leadership consulting.

The world hasn’t heard the last of Cathy Inglese, and it will be a long time before any coach in any sport at Boston College compiles a record of success like hers.

Learning from the Masters – and from the Love of My Life

On December 19, 2018, the Gridiron Club of Greater Boston presented me with the John Baronian Award for Lifetime Contribution to Football. The following is my acceptance speech.

All of the great religions of the world teach their faithful some version of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Okay, so now that we’ve got that one down, what else should we do? What’s the next step?

I’d like to tell you about a few people in my sports life who took that next step. Because if there’s anything I’ve done to merit this honor, I did it in part because I learned from them.

Eddie Miller, my first boss at Boston College. He hired me as a student assistant in his sports information office 50 years ago. That began a string of my service to BC athletics that continues to today. It was Eddie who first showed me how to deal with people in the real world, especially the world of sports.

Eddie’s successor, Reid Oslin was both a colleague in the office and later a pro to be emulated. He rose to the challenge as BC’s major sports grew more and more successful. Reid was the one who asked me if I’d like to fill in for a year as public address announcer for football, after Professor Malcolm McLoud retired. Reid also gave me the chance to be co-author of a history of BC hockey.

Bill Flynn

Their boss was athletic director Bill Flynn. He combined class and dignity with a fierce competitiveness and desire for fair play. His office door was always open and he answered his own phone. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the Big East and Hockey East. Bill was so well respected that he was the first man ever to be president of the NCAA who was not himself a college president.

Then there was the man who first received this award, back in 1999. Jack Grinold of Northeastern University. I worked with him on many projects and events down through the years. He was the second person ever hired by the Boston Patriots. But for 50 years he was Mr. Northeastern. He was also Mr. Beanpot, Mr. New England Hockey Writers and Mr. New England Football Writers. Jack was so dedicated to football that they named the Eastern Massachusetts Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame for him.

Each of these gentlemen was intensely loyal to his own school and his teams. But they knew as well that it was bigger than that. It was the game itself, the athletes who played the game, the sportsmanship and the glory of the game, that really mattered. Each left his own corner of the world a much better place than it was when he arrived.

Jack Grinold

That’s the next step, beyond the Golden Rule. Make your part of the world a better place. They all took it. I was fortunate to know them and to learn from them.

But I also had family to inspire me. Let me tell you about my grandfather George Brown and my uncle Walter Brown.

From 1905, when George was appointed athletic director of the BAA, until 1964, when Walter passed away after a heart attack at age 59, these two gentlemen did more to influence and shape sports in Boston than just about anyone else. They were men for all seasons. While they weren’t known for what they did in football, I think they should be.

George ran the Boston Arena and the Boston Garden. He coached or officiated track with the American delegation at every Olympics from 1908 to 1936. He brought hockey to Boston University, American hockey to the Olympic games, Sonja Henie and world-class women’s figure skating to America, and the starting line of the Marathon to the town of Hopkinton. His statue, The Starter, is on Hopkinton Common.

George Brown at 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, where he was a finish line judge.

But George was first a track guy. And it was in track – probably at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, that he met a man who would later be a Canton Bulldogs teammate of five founding members of the Gridiron Club. The man’s name was Jim Thorpe. They became fast friends.

Thorpe was a student at the Carlisle Indian School when won the gold medal in both the pentathlon and decathlon at Stockholm.

On the medal stand at the closing ceremonies, King Gustav V of Sweden said to him, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” To which Jim replied “Thanks, King.”

Jim Thorpe played many other sports including football. He also competed in ballroom dancing. In 1912 he was the National Collegiate champion.

But I digress. About a month after the Stockholm Olympics, Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians football coach, were guests of my grandparents at the family farm in Hopkinton. They were also guests of honor at a parade in Milford, the next town over. I’m told that somewhere in the family archives is a picture of Thorpe riding one of the Brown family’s horses. I’ve never seen it, but I’m sure it exists.

These three gentlemen had other encounters, on the football field.

Enroute to 1936 Olympics on deck of SS Manhattan. Center, in white sweater is marathoner Johnny Kelley. To Kelley’s left are Jesse Owens and George Brown.

George Brown also happened to be one of the best college football officials of his day. I know that from reading the newspaper articles that followed his death in 1937. But I also know if from the flyleaf of the family bible.

In that flyleaf are the names of all the colleges whose games my grandfather officiated. They included: nine years of BC-Holy Cross; also Dartmouth-Princeton, Harvard-Yale, Bates-Bowdoin, Amherst-Williams.  Yes, he was on the crew in all of the best games. Including the bitterest rivalry of all: West Point and the Carlisle Indians.

The teams played football twice – in 1905 and in 1912.  The first one was only 29 years after another encounter between Army and the Indians, at a place called Little Big Horn. The second one was just 21 years after a massacre at a place called Wounded Knee. Thorpe played in the 1912 game at West Point.  Here’s what Pop Warner said to his team before the game:

“Your fathers and grandfathers are the ones who fought their fathers and grandfathers. Remember it was their fathers and grandfathers who killed your fathers and grandfathers. Remember it was their fathers and grandfathers who destroyed your way of life. Remember Wounded Knee. These men playing against you today are soldiers. You are the Long Knives. You are Indians. Tonight, we will know if you are warriors.”

Can you imagine what it must have been like for my grandfather, to officiate at those games?

And in case you’re wondering, the Indians kept their win streak alive. They romped over Army 27-6. Thorpe ran wild.  Dwight Eisenhower played halfback for Army. He blew out a knee when he and a teammate tried to gang-tackle Thorpe and injure him. Thorpe faked them out, they crashed together, and that was the end of Dwight Eisenhower’s football career.

George’s son, my uncle Walter, was in my humble opinion the greatest of all American sportsmen. Some here will remember him as the Boston Celtics owner who hired Red Auerbach, picked Bob Cousy’s name out of a hat, brought in Bill Russell and started a dynasty. He also broke the color line in professional basketball by defying his fellow owners and drafting Chuck Cooper in 1950. When they pointed out Cooper’s skin color at the draft, he said “I don’t care if he’s striped, plaid, or polka dot. Boston drafts Chuck Cooper.”

Others will remember Walter for his hockey – coaching the first American World champion in 1933, the Olympic bronze medalists in 1936, and as president of USA Hockey in 1960, year of the first Olympic gold. But he almost brought the National Football League to Boston too.

Walter Brown

It was in the late 1950s. There were no Patriots then. Our team was by default, the New York Giants. They were on TV every single Sunday.  Remember Charlie Conerly, Frank Gifford, Kyle Rote, and Chris Schenkel?

But there were serious negotiations to change that. Walter and Tom Yawkey teamed up to buy the Washington Redskins from George Preston Marshall and bring them back to Boston.  They were going to be co-owners, the team would play in Fenway Park, and Frank Leahy – late of Notre Dame by way of Boston College, was going to be the coach.

Unfortunately, the deal didn’t happen. Marshall held onto the ‘Skins. But can you imagine how different things would be now, in the world of Boston football, if Tom and Walter had pulled it off? And they almost did.

My final family sports idol was my dad. He too was an official, and he loved it. He also introduced me to Boston College football and to public address announcing.

He took me to my first BC game ever. At Fenway Park. November 24, 1956. BC 52, Brandeis 0. I remember nothing about the game – but I was mesmerized in pre-game warmups. By the Brandeis punter. He could kick that ball so high.

Dad also did public address announcing for Watertown High football. He took me to a game once and sat me on his lap. And he let me count into the mic – one, two, three. It was Watertown against Rindge Tech.  I don’t remember that game either, but I do remember staring at the game program. The Coca Cola ad in the centerfold, where they had the lineups, had a picture of a cheerleader with the brightest red lips and biggest smile I ever saw.

That’s where my public address career started. It’s probably also where I developed my lifelong fondness for cheerleaders and majorettes.

And about that public address announcing job I had at BC?  It wasn’t a job. It was a vocation.  I couldn’t wait for the season to start and to get to the stadium on game day. It was a privilege to be there – to be a unique part of football at the college that had been so good to me.

For BC football, I was the one constant for 42 years. Nine head coaches. The best of times and the worst of times.

Alumni could always come back and be sure they’d hear that same old Boston accent.  Many of them told me just that, over the years…it was good to know that some things didn’t change, they said.

When I started, that night we beat Texas in 1976, I made sure to carry on the tradition set by Professor McLoud.  He was a stickler, that man. He read the rule book. And it said, about the points after touchdown, that the team would get one or two points “if the try is successful.” And so it was, for sixty years at Alumni Stadium, Boston College’s signature announcement: “The kick is good. Try Successful.”

My only regret was that those 42 years were not 51 years. I wanted to surpass the all-time leader, the gold standard in public address announcing: Bob Sheppard. He did it for 50 years for the New York Giants. And 57 for the Yankees, but that’s baseball.

I always tried to do it Bob’s way. He insisted on the Three C’s: A public address announcer must be clear, concise, correct. Not cute, colorful, or comic. That’s the way to do it. Cheerleaders belong on the field, not in the p.a. booth.

I wanted to make my school’s team – and of course myself – the all-time champions in football public address longevity. That didn’t happen. But 42 years isn’t so bad. It did surpass the 40 years of the gentleman who did it at Harvard. And any time I can help my school beat fair Harvard in anything, I done good.

So there’s where my sporting career came from. I had colleagues for emulation and family for inspiration. They all took that next step, after the Golden Rule. They made the world a better place for their having been there.

And so did the one more person I must mention. I would not be standing here – I don’t know where I’d be standing or even if I’d be standing, without her.

That’s my dear wife Mary Ellen. We’ve been together for 48 years and married for 43. She was the most beloved first grade teacher in the history of the Milton public schools. She’s the mother of my three children. It’s good for me that opposites attract, because she brought an unlimited well of wisdom and a bedrock of common sense to our life together.

But those vast stores of wisdom and common sense pale in comparison to Mary Ellen’s courage. For over four years now, she has been fighting that pernicious, horrible foe, Alzheimer’s Disease. That battle continues, every day.

Mary Ellen is here, along with six of her 13 siblings and a gathering of our dear friends. And the only thing that means more to me tonight than this wonderful award is her presence.

Mary Ellen, my dearest darling. If anyone deserves an award for lifetime achievement, it’s not I. It’s you.

To the Gridiron Club, thank you for deeming me a worthy recipient of the John Baronian Award. I promise to do my best to live up to the standards set by Mr. Baronian, by Jack Grinold, and the others.

To the players, coaches, and officials who are also honored tonight, my congratulations.

And to you all, ladies and gentlemen, for being here with us, for supporting your friends and family members, and for helping the Gridiron Club in its mission as Keepers of the Flame, thank you.

Remembering Vin Shanley, Boston College Hockey Captain Extraordinaire

Vincent Shanley, Boston College ’72, succumbed to pancreatic cancer on the weekend of Thanksgiving 2018. This blog post is for him.

I traveled with the Boston College hockey team to all games in the 1971-72 season, when Vin was team captain and Snooks Kelley was in his 36^th and final year of coaching BC. He was an ideal captain – not the most talented player on the team but the one to whom everybody looked up. I always thought that he was a breed apart from his teammates, even though he was still one of the boys too.

As a BC senior, he was already married to his lovely wife Christine. He was thoughtful and serious – I recall one time, on a bus trip to a game at Dartmouth, everybody else was horsing around, playing cards and telling jokes. Vinnie had his nose buried in “The Vantage Point,” a telephone-book-sized memoir by Lyndon Johnson.  I could tell right then that Vinnie was going places and that he’d already scoped out the trajectory of his eminently successful legal career.

My article that follows was published at the time of Vin’s induction to the BC Hall of Fame in 2016.

May he rest in peace! 

Vin Shanley ‘72

Ice Hockey

Vin Shanley, senior captain of Boston College, 1971-72 season.

Vin Shanley looked around the crowded locker room and thought, “Oh my God, What am I doing here?”

It was 1963. All the other candidates for the Boston Technical High freshman team wore uniforms emblazoned with logos from their youth hockey programs.

Not Vinnie. He’d never played organized hockey.  He felt lost in the puck handling drills. But then came the skating contests.  And Vin Shanley could fly.  Ever since he can remember, he’d walked the mile from his home in Brighton to the Boston Skating Club. Three days a week. Just to go skating.

Shanley outstripped them all and made the team. The hockey know-how, taught by coach Vic Campbell, came quickly. He showed Shanley the fine points, like how to snap off a wicked backhand shot, and how to cradle the stick blade as he would a catcher’s mitt when receiving passes.

In his junior and senior years, Shanley was the leading scorer in the Boston City League.  But Boston College coach John “Snooks” Kelley wasn’t initially interested.  Vin put in a post-graduate year at New Prep, a frequent opponent for the Eagle freshmen.

The first time the team came to BC, Vin scored two goals. A week later, the planned opponent cancelled out, and New Prep coach Owen Hughes agreed to play at McHugh Forum again. This time Vinnie scored a hat trick, with two of the goals coming on 20-foot backhanders.

The next day, the Shanleys’ phone rang. It was Snooks. He had already given out all of his scholarship money, he explained, but he asked Vinnie to come to BC as a recruited walk-on. Vin survived the cuts in freshman year and played as a regular. The next year he made it through the grueling two weeks of tryouts and beat out a couple of scholarship players for a varsity berth.

Vin Shanley and BU’s goalie in a game at Boston Arena in 1970.

Kelley called Shanley into his office. “I like your work ethic, kid. You’re on the team,” the Snooker said.

“I never missed a game, never missed a shift, in three years. I’m proud of that,” said Vin. “But I was never so proud as I was when I skated onto that ice wearing the Maroon and Gold. I was a Boston College hockey player.”

Vin’s sophomore year started off well but ended in disaster. Stacked with talented seniors, the team cruised through the first half of the schedule near the top of the standings. But then, beset by senioritis, they lost eight of their last 11 games and spiraled out of sight.

For the rest of Shanley’s BC career, the team was rebuilding and struggling for mere respectability.  Before his junior season, Vin addressed his teammates.

“We saw what happened last year,” he said. “We’ve lost eight players from that team including three All-Americans. But we’re going to play hard, we’re going to do the best we can, and we’re not going to tolerate any nonsense.”

The team got the message but didn’t have the talent. They went 11-15 and missed the playoffs for the first time. Coach Kelley announced that he’d be retiring after the following season. His career-win mark stood at 487.

Shanley and his mates dedicated their season to winning 13 games to send Snooks off with 500 wins. It’s a mark that seems quaint now, but was a towering achievement 44 years ago.

Talent on the 1971-72 team was a bit better. Juniors Bob Reardon and Ed Kenty had emerged to be fine forwards. Shanley, Scott Godfrey, and Jack Cronin were the senior spiritual leaders. They all felt that they were good enough to get the Snooker his 500^th, and maybe even to make the playoffs.  They elected Shanley their captain.

Kenty, a Hall of Fame inductee in 2002, stated,

“Vinnie wasn’t the most naturally gifted player but was an extremely hard worker who led by example. He was not afraid to speak up when players slacked off — and believe me, I know that first hand. He also was a selfless player who made others around him better. I centered Vinnie and Scott Godfrey. I think that in my three years, it was the best line I played on.

Shanley scoring against the St. Louis University Billikens in 1972. His centerman Ed Kenty is in background.

“As a person, Vinnie was always pulling the guys together off the ice as most good captains do, and he connected with everyone on every level. In summary, great leader, very good player and a super guy.”

The 500^th victory for Snooks didn’t come readily. By late February, the Eagles had ten wins, but the remaining schedule included a North Country swing to Clarkson and St. Lawrence and a meeting with national champion BU, who had thrashed the Eagles seven straight times.

But they pulled it off. And, miracle of miracles, they did it against the Terriers, 7-5. Kenty scored four times, including an empty-netter to clinch the game.  In the frantic waning seconds, the puck had caromed out to Shanley. His eyes lit up.  But the disc eluded his stick and landed on Kenty’s.

BC did not make the playoffs, but they attained the goal that truly counted. At the post-season banquet, Shanley received, for the second consecutive year, the Pike’s Peak Club Award as the Player Who Best Typifies Boston College Hockey.

Vin has stayed involved with the Pike’s Peak Club. He has been on the Board of Directors for 40 years and served three terms as president. The Club initiated its endowed scholarship during his presidency. He and his wife Christine have three children: Meagan, 43; Vincent, 41; and MaryKate, 38, as well as four grandchildren.

Vin played an important part in bringing Jerry York back to The Heights. As a member of the committee to select the Eagles’ third coach in three years, he made a passionate argument for the experience, steady hand, and previous track record of Coach York. It carried the day.

The rest is a history of success. But that success may never have occurred without Vin Shanley, the walk-on from Brighton who became one of Boston College hockey’s most respected captains and leaders of all time.

You Think You Know What It Means to be a Sports Hero? Not Until You Meet Pete Frates, You Don’t

Boston College’s Varsity Club has honored Pete Frates with the presentation of the Varsity Club Medal. This is only the second time that the medal has been bestowed upon an individual, who has “served Boston College with excellence, fostered its athletic traditions, and promoted sportsmanship while in service to the Varsity Club and Boston College Athletics.”

Pete, as many know, is the face of the Ice Bucket Challenge. He didn’t invent it, but he was the one responsible for turning it into a social-media phenomenon that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) research.

I do believe that when the cure for ALS is finally run to earth, the path for that cure will lead back to Pete Frates.

The following story of this singularly heroic man and his wonderful family, which was done for the Varsity Club’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony on September 7, 2018, appears below.

Pete Frates ’07   

Varsity Club Medal

The most prescient scouting report on the athletic potential of young Peter Frates didn’t come from a coach. It was from a dancer.

Well, actually it was gym teacher Susan Stowe, but her subject matter was dance. She’d been observing Pete ever since kindergarten. One day, when Pete was in the fourth grade, she remarked to his mother Diane,

Julie, Lucy, and Pete Frates

“I don’t say this very often, but you’ve got a Division One athlete on your hands. In the dance curriculum, he has shown such agility, and such an ability to learn – all the things necessary to be an athlete.”

There was one other athletic must-have about Pete Frates: he was born with grit and determination.  When he was an infant, he fought off a severe staph infection that required a blood transfusion and that carried a more than 20 percent mortality rate.

Pete played football, hockey, and baseball from the age of six. He excelled in all of them, all the way through high school at Saint John’s Prep in Danvers.  In football he was a Catholic Conference All-Star. He also had an instinctive rapport with coaches and an innate ability to lead, so he was elected or appointed captain of most of his teams.

Very few Boston-area athletes have played hockey in Boston Garden, football at Gillette Stadium, and baseball in Fenway Park. But Pete Frates has – and at Fenway, he blasted a home run into the bullpen in a game against Harvard, his favorite foe.

“We always thought he’d be a hockey player,” said Diane. “He was a defenseman on the Saint John’s varsity as a sophomore. He was a safety in football, and they had some powerhouse teams. He played baseball all summer in Babe Ruth or Legion ball.  He’s always had a deep and abiding love for baseball. Both my husband John and I went to BC, Class of 80. It was his dream to play at BC, but that didn’t seem to be on the radar.”

One day, in the summer between junior and senior years of high school, Pete went to a baseball showcase run by BC coach Pete Hughes. After it was over, when Hughes learned that Frates was an honor student and that he’d done well on his SATs, he asked Pete to come and play baseball at Boston College.

Pete receives his baseball jersey from members of the BC baseball team. The team has retired his #3.

Pete played center field for the Eagles, for three years under Hughes and then his senior year as team captain under Mike Aoki. In 2007 he set a modern BC record in a game at Maryland. He went 4-for 6, with eight RBIs from a grand slam, a three-run homer and a double. His Fenway homer came in 2006, when he was 4-for-4 in the 10-2 Beanpot final win over Harvard.

After graduation, Pete played a year with Hamburg, Germany, in the European League before coming home and entering the workaday world. He wasn’t exactly thrilled with selling group life insurance for a living, but he still played ball, catching on with the Lexington Blue Sox in the Inter-City League. But life changed on that fateful day when he and his family answered a doctor’s call to come in and discuss a diagnosis.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – ALS, the dreaded and incurable disease that took the life of another baseball great, Lou Gehrig, had come to Pete Frates. He went for a second opinion to Dr. Merit Cudkowicz at Mass General. After she confirmed the bad news, and Pete was exiting her office, he turned around and asked,

“Doctor. How much money would you need to find a cure for ALS?”

Taken aback at such an unusual question, she answered, “I’d need a billion dollars.”

To which Pete replied, “I’ll work on that for you.”

Some day, when medical textbooks describe the cure for ALS, they will point to that day, April 1, 2012, as the starting point, the call to battle.

Pete Frates and family on the day he received the BC Varsity Club Medal from club president Richard Schoenfeld, second from left.

Team Frates was born that day. Pete set to work – calling, texting, emailing – everyone he knew from his many endeavors, athletic and otherwise. He asked if they’d join in the fight. And the “Circles of Pete” began to form.

A little more than a year later, Pete and Julie Kowalik, a 2012 BC graduate, were married at her family’s Marblehead home. Their daughter Lucy was born in 2014.

Two and half years after that second opinion, and an online conversation between Pete and Pat Quinn, another ALS patient, the Ice Bucket Challenge emerged as a worldwide, social-media-driven phenomenon.

Dumping cold water on someone’s head as a way of raising money for charity was Quinn’s idea. To Frates, it was like that pitch he hit out of Fenway Park. To his parents, he said,

“This is the vehicle I’ve been waiting for.”

Team Frates swung into action with the Ice Bucket challenge. The Boston College community was particularly responsive, with athletes like Matt Ryan, Brian Boyle, and Sean Marshall taking prominent roles. You’ve seen the film clips of those who’ve accepted the challenge – the famous athletes, show business titans, captains of industry, and two presidents of the United States. More than 2.4 million tagged videos about the challenge have appeared on Facebook.

In its first year, the Ice Bucket Challenge raised over $200 million. The work continues, the ice water continues to flow, and most importantly, there’s hope for a cure. The FDA has approved two new experimental drugs, with more in the pipeline.

Thanks to $1 million in challenge money, researchers discovered the NEK1 gene in Project MinE, a global gene-sequencing effort, involving 11 countries and 80 researchers.

None of that progress, none of those positive steps toward finding the cure for ALS, would have happened without Pete Frates and those who admire him, love him, and would do anything he asks of them.

“He’s had more friends that anybody ever could have,” says Diane. “A life well-lived.”

Clark Booth: Boston’s Most Erudite Sports Reporter Ever

But the World of Sports was Just One Place Where He Wrote and Spoke with Class, Wit, and Elegance

Clark Booth
Writer, broadcaster, man of letters, and world traveler – one of Boston’s finest ever.

Mr. Booth passed away on July 28 at the age of 79. I knew him — not well, but I corresponded with him several times over the years and considered him a friend.  He personified class and dignity. He wrote superbly, and while he loved sports and its people, he always had the events and people of the sporting life in proper perspective.

Clark was appropriately critical of much that has to do with “big time” sports – particularly of the sanctimonious hypocrisy of college sports and sporting factories. I loved his label for Bobby Bowden’s Florida State football operation: a “penal colony.” But there was no bigger booster of Boston College hockey and Jerry York. To Clark Booth, York’s BC team was an oft-cited example of college athletics as it should be.

Back in 2005, I happened to be researching a hockey story and made a call to Harvard’s great Gene Kinasewich. My call came to Gene’s home on the very day that he died. That passing, too, was a big loss for Boston sports. Knowing Clark’s soft spot for hockey, I contacted him, gave him the news, and forwarded some of the background materials I had already assembled about Gene. Clark was effusive in his thanks to me, and he penned a wonderful encomium to Gene in his column in the Boston Pilot. He also wrote a very nice review of my and Reid Oslin’s history of Boston College Hockey.

Please first take a moment to click on this link and read Clark’s self-penned obituary. It’s a perfect summation of his career, in sports and beyond. It also radiates his boyish enthusiasm for sport, for people, and for life in general.  That obit is Clark Booth speaking!

Sports was just one area in which Clark excelled. If you read that obit, you have an idea of how many other fascinating people, events, and projects he covered down through the years. Had he remained focused on sports, I am sure that many more people than I would rank him among the very best – with writers like Grantland Rice, Red Smith, and Shirley Povich, and with broadcasters like Al Michaels and Jim McKay. He was that good.

The closest comparison to Clark from members of the Boston sporting press would be Globe columnist Ray Fitzgerald. Ray had a classy writing style too, and like Clark Booth he was a truly nice man.

Clark was a Holy Cross man. Twenty-four years ago, I was editing a special Silver Anniversary edition of a publication for the BC Hall of Fame, and I called Clark and got his permission to reprint his magazine article about the BC-HC football rivalry. It’s worth a read, and it appears below. Ironically, the teams will begin playing each other in the 2018 season, after a hiatus of 32 years. I don’t know whether the games will be good or even competitive, but they certainly won’t be the same.

Clark Booth. Requiescat in Pace!

Clark Booth on the Boston College-Holy Cross football rivalry after it ended in 1986.