SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 19) - Mirin Fader (Sr. Writer - The Ringer ) - Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon

SportsLit

#Sports #Season 2 #Books #Neate Sager #Neil Acharya #Arts #Neil Acharya And Neate Sager

28:24

In our second installment of the Small Business Starter Kit series - we’re tackling a topic that’s sometimes tricky, sometimes confusing, but ever-present: taxes. Hosts Austin and Jannese have an insightful conversation with entrepreneur Isabella Rosal who started 7th Sky Ventures , an exporter and distributor of craft spirits, beer, and wine. Having lived and worked in two different countries and started a company in a heavily-regulated field, Isabella is no stranger to navigating the paperwork-laden and jargon-infused maze of properly understanding taxes for a newly formed small business. Join us as she shares her story and provides valuable insight into how to tackle your business’ taxes - so they don’t tackle you. Learn more about how QuickBooks can help you grow your business: QuickBooks.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

about a year ago 1:03:57

MP3•Episode home

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 Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon,” biographer Mirin Fader draws on some 250 interviews to present a silent sports star who experienced a religious metamorphosis. A fiery competitor who led by example in all aspects of his life, paying it forward with teammates and current NBA stars through the type of mentorship he benefited from early in his career. She also utilizes her extensive research to debunk myths surrounding Hakeem’s life and career.

Fader is a senior writer with The Ringer. Her début book, “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP,” reached The New York Times best-seller list.

85 episodes

SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 19) - Mirin Fader (Sr. Writer - The Ringer ) - Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon

SportsLit

published about a year ago

MP3•Episode home

Fader is a senior writer with The Ringer. Her début book, “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP,” reached The New York Times best-seller list.

85 episodes

#Sports #Season 2 #Books #Neate Sager #Neil Acharya #Arts #Neil Acharya And Neate Sager

All episodes

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 9, Episode 2) - Jane McManus (Founding Columnist - espnW) - The Fast Track: Inside the Surging Business of Women's Sports 43:29

18 days ago43:29

43:29

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.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 9, Episode 1) - Russell Field (Associate Prof. - U. of Manitoba) - A Night at the Gardens: Class, Gender and Respectability in 1930s Toronto 44:55

7 weeks ago44:55

44:55

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.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 19) - Mirin Fader (Sr. Writer - The Ringer ) - Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon 1:03:57

14 weeks ago1:03:57

1:03:57

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 Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon,” biographer Mirin Fader draws on some 250 interviews to present a silent sports star who experienced a religious metamorphosis. A fiery competitor who led by example in all aspects of his life, paying it forward with teammates and current NBA stars through the type of mentorship he benefited from early in his career. She also utilizes her extensive research to debunk myths surrounding Hakeem’s life and career. Fader is a senior writer with The Ringer. Her début book, “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP,” reached The New York Times best-seller list.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 18) - Ed Willes (Regina Leader-Post, The Province) - Never Boring: The Up and Down History of the Vancouver Canucks 1:09:31

17 weeks ago1:09:31

1:09:31

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 been boring across five-plus decades of torment. Relying on firsthand research and contemporary accounts from fellow Vancouver sports journalists, Willes provides painstaking details about the life-arcs of stars such as Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Pavel Bure, Markus Näslund, and Todd Bertuzzi. The author also playfully teases out the franchise’s many what-ifs. Willes is also author of “The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association” (2005) and “End Zones and Border Wars: The Era of American Expansion in the CFL” (2013).…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 17) - Atiba Hutchinson (Captain - Canadian Men's National Team - FIFA 2022 World Cup) - The Beautiful Dream 52:36

18 weeks ago52:36

52:36

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 success in Europe during the days when a true domestic league hardly existed. That perseverance led to a 20-season pro career that included championships, adulation, and celebrity outside Canada. And, after several frustrating World Cup cycles, Hutchinson was the 39-year-old captain when Canada broke through to qualify for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. Hutchinson joined us from his home in Turkey to discuss his life story. He joins Dwayne De Rosario as the second CMNT alumnus to appear on SportsLit.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 16) - Jason Kirk (Sr. Editor - Newsletters - The Athletic) - Hell Is a World Without You 1:24:20

20 weeks ago1:24:20

1:24:20

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 like Stifler.” Kirk, who calls himself a “lazy Christian pantheist,” is a senior editor at The Athletic and part of the long-running Shutdown Fullcast (“the internet’s only college football podcast.”). An Atlanta native, he and his wife Emily Kirk have also had a pod called Vacation Bible School.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 15) - Mike Keenan (Stanley Cup winning coach - New York Rangers 1994 ) - Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench 51:36

26 weeks ago51:36

51:36

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 discuss his exploits behind the bench, the front office, and off the ice. If he was do it all again, would he do it any differently? Find out.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 14) - Melissa Ludtke (Groundbreaking Journalist ) - Locker Room Talk 2:09:23

28 weeks ago2:09:23

2:09:23

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 denying her the same access the male reporters had at Yankee Stadium during the ’77 World Series. Neither the legal win nor the affray in the court of public opinion came easily. But within a decade, Ludtke notes, the ranks of female sports journalists had increased enough to start AWSM (Association of Women in Sports Media). Ludtke, a former TIME magazine correspondent, has also worked at Nieman Labs. She lives in Massachusetts and writes the Let’s Row Together newsletter on Substack.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 13) - Michael Cochrane (Partner - BT Legal) - Olympic Lyon: The Untold Story of the First Gold Medal of Golf 1:07:19

36 weeks ago1:07:19

1:07:19

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 deep research honed over decades as a lawyer, and a keen understanding of golf’s appeal the world over, Cochrane may have readers feel like they’re in George’s gallery following him around the course. A resident of Burlington, Ont., Michael Cochrane is a partner at Brauti Thorning LLP in Toronto. He hosted the program “Strictly Legal” on Business News Network (BNN). He has penned two other novels, and also has made two holes in one.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 12) - Jerry Grillo (Journalist) - Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize 1:26:24

37 weeks ago1:26:24

1:26:24

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-hitting slugging first baseman won four league home run titles, still has some unmatched batting feats, and shares the record for most career three-home run games. And he was almost forgotten by the keepers of baseball history. Grillo began researching a Mize bio in 2000. It is his second book, following, “The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton: A Basically True Biography.”…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 11) - Tiffany Brown, Erin Strout, Katie Steele - The Price She Pays 1:06:59

37 weeks ago1:06:59

1:06:59

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 The book is a candid guide to all stages of the sporting life, from introductory activities up to U.S. major-college athletics and the pros. It is unsparing of the traumas, but always optimistic, which meshes with 2024’s breakouts such as new leagues that are gaining traction, and the WNBA rookie class featuring the likes of Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Kingston, Ont., native Aaliyah Edwards. “The Price She Pays” is both timely, and telling about what fault lines need to be filled in. Brown and Steele are both licensed marriage and family therapists based in Oregon. Strout, who has written and freelanced for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Runner’s World, Women Running, and ESPN-W, is based in Flagstaff, Arizona. “The Price She Pays” was released by Little, Brown, and Spark on June 18, 2024.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 10) - Madeleine Orr (Asst. Prof., U of T) - Warming Up 1:17:48

39 weeks ago1:17:48

1:17:48

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 world that must burn about five times less fossil fuels to avert worst-case outcomes from climate change. Whether it is children learning a new game, or globetrotting pros, athletes need breathable air, drinking water, and relief from the ‘big bad’ of extreme heat (and winter sport athletes need snow, too). Far from a doom-and-gloom finger-wag, Orr shows that many athletes and sports organizations are on Team Green, and outlines the next steps.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 9) - Evanka Osmak (Anchor / Sportsnet Central) - Ali Hoops 39:17

42 weeks ago39:17

39:17

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 Sportsnet since 2007.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 8) - Noah Gittell (Author / Critic) - Baseball: The Movie 1:08:03

45 weeks ago1:08:03

1:08:03

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 fan, Gittell’s writing has graced The Atlantic, The Economist, Elle, Esquire The Guardian, GQ, and the LA Review of Books. He also keeps up a Substack, Good Eye: Movies and Baseball.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 7) - Mary Ormsby (Journalist / Author) - World’s Fastest Man*: The Life of Ben Johnson 1:16:07

47 weeks ago1:16:07

1:16:07

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 Canadian athletes at a time when steroid use was common in Olympic sports. Ormsby, who had a three-decade career with the Toronto Star, also pairs investigative work with a character study of Johnson. His second life has involved training soccer great Diego Maradona, racing against a car for charity, and finding grace and resilience to keep running.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 6) - Ken Dryden (Hockey Hall of Fame Goalie 1983 / Author) - The Class 1:14:39

49 weeks ago1:14:39

1:14:39

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 produce, “ The Class: A Memoir Of A Time, A Place, And Us.” Dryden’s classmates have led rich lives, finding their own ‘Stanley Cup’ in unexpected places. And, of course, Dryden won the Stanley Cup six times with the Montréal Canadiens in the 1970s and was the winning goalie in the decisive Game 8 of the Canada-USSR Summit Series in 1972. “The Class” is his ninth book.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 5) - Keith O'Brien (New York Times Best Selling Author) - Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball 53:24

50 weeks ago53:24

53:24

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 native like Rose, O’Brien draws on some 27 hours of dialogue with the baseball legend, and extensive interviews with Rose’s family, inner circle, and former teammates. “Charlie Hustle” is his fourth book, and second about sports.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 4) - Jack McCallum (Sports Illustrated) - The Real Hoosiers 1:30:30

1 year ago1:30:30

1:30:30

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 schoolboy titles barely a decade after the competition was opened to Black schools. It was the first time anywhere in America that a Black team had won ‘State,’ and that gets into some “freighted” history. Best known as a longtime NBA writer at Sports Illustrated, McCallum’s basketball books include Dream Team, Golden Days, and Seven Seconds Or Less. He also detailed a personal health challenge in The Prostate Monologues.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 3) - Morgan Campbell (CBC Sports Sr. Contributor) - My Fighting Family: Borders and Bloodlines and the Battles That Made Us" 1:30:20

1 year ago1:30:20

1:30:20

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 interconnected. Campbell is a CBC Sports senior contributor who spent close to two decades with the Toronto Star, the largest newspaper in Canada. He also performs boxing commentary, and was a boxing correspondent for The New York Times. His spouse, Perdita Felicien, was also a guest of SportsLit in 2021 (“My Mother’s Daughter,” S5E06).…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 2) - Jacob Pomrenke (SABR) - Joe Jackson vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club 59:40

1 year ago59:40

59:40

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 baseball. Jacob Pomrenke, editorial director of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), joins us to explain why the great Shoeless Joe Jackson sued his former ballclub, the Chicago White Sox; why the trial largely fell off the public reader; what has been left out of mainstream accounts of the scandal; and why it still matters today. As SABR writers have explained, the Black Sox Scandal remains a cold case, not a closed case.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 1) - Erik Kramer (Former NFL Quarterback) w/ William Croyle - The Ultimate Comeback 1:05:39

1 year ago1:05:39

1:05:39

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 undrafted by the NFL out of college. Now he is using his second chance at life to share his story with the world to help save the lives of others.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 8) - Rich Cohen (Rolling Stone, Co-creator - HBOs Vinyl) - When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season 1:14:49

1 year ago1:14:49

1:14:49

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 ferocity of a different time Like a hard foul in the paint, Cohen's prose will knock you down and stoke a hunger for more…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 7) - Ted Nolan (NHL Coach of the Year - 1997) with Meg Masters - Life in Two Worlds 1:24:18

1 year ago1:24:18

1:24:18

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 award in just his second season on the job but faced professional exile for nearly a decade afterward. Nolan’s journey to the NHL, both on the ice and behind the bench, began in Garden River First Nation, near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. He and his spouse Sandra have seen both of their sons, Brandon and Jordan, play in the NHL.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 6) - Doug MacLean with Scott Morrison - Draft Day 1:02:47

1 year ago1:02:47

1:02:47

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. This is a book with a hook — informative with lively anecdotes along the way. MacLean relates what it’s like to call the shots, and he does not mind firing a few more in this book.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 5) - Jonathon Jackson - The Making of Slap Shot (Revised 46th Anniversary Edition) 1:06:07

1 year ago1:06:07

1:06:07

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, and possibly since. “The Making of Slap Shot” was first published in 2010, and now has a second edition from Double J Media that includes behind-the-scenes photos contributed by cast members. See you down at the Ace’s.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 4) - Donovan Bailey (World and Olympic 100 metre gold medallist) - Undisputed: A Champions Life 50:48

1 year ago50:48

50:48

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 derailed by injuries. Decades after retirement, he makes it clear where he stands in the pantheon of Canadian sport. All you need to do is read the title — Undisputed: A Champion’s Life.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 3) - Dave Hill (Comedian/Musician/Writer) -The Awesome Game - One Man’s Incredible, Globe-Crushing Hockey Odyssey 1:10:33

1 year ago1:10:33

1:10:33

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, Ont., showing how the game provides an emotional release that you might not find in many other places. "The Awesome Game" is Hill's fourth nonfiction book. He also has a 2022 comedy special, "The Pride of Cleveland," produced by 800-Pound Gorilla Media.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 2) - Justin Davis (NHL Draft choice & Memorial Cup champion) - Conflicted Scars: An Average Player’s Journey to the NHL 54:08

2 years ago54:08

54:08

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 foreword by Hockey Hall of Fame coach Brian Kilrea and a cover blurb from Davis’s one-time OHL teammate Joe Thornton, a member of the NHL’s 1,500-points club.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 7, Episode 1) - John Gibbons (Blue Jays Manager - ’04-’08 / ’13-’18) - Gibby: Tales of a Baseball Lifer 1:14:49

2 years ago1:14:49

1:14:49

Baseball banter comes easily to John Gibbons, but it was a hard and winding road to get to that point. Over two stints covering 11 seasons, Gibbons won over Toronto Blue Jays fans. Getting the Jays back into pennant contention helped, but he became more relatable, a shrewd observer whom fans could imagine sharing baseball yarns and beers with up in the 500 level. Getting there involved 22 seasons in the minors, first as a catcher whose MLB days were curtailed by injuries before he moved into coaching and managing. “Gibby” was written with past guest Greg Oliver (S1E02, Grattoony The Loony). Gibbons lives in his native San Antonio with his wife, Christi, and cohosts The Gibby Show podcast with his agent John Arezzi.…

SportsLit

1
SportsLit (Season 6, Episode 14) - Suzanne (Suzy) Wrack (The Guardian) - A Woman’s Game 1:20:20

2 years ago1:20:20