In the spring of 1960 several officials of the Boston Bruins hockey team made a trip to a town called Gananoque in Ontario, Canada. They had gone to see the All-Ontario Championship Tournament played by the kids in the Bantam Division. Bantams are barely into their teens. The Boston officials had heard about a couple of youngsters who showed promise, and they wanted to scout the boys for future consideration.
For a few minutes the Boston officials watched the two boys they had come to see, but they soon turned their attention to a player on the Parry Sound team. He wore number 2 and played defense. The scouts could hardly believe their eyes. Although the boy was only 12 years old and smaller than most of the others on the ice, he was skating rings around everybody. He always seemed to have the puck and he was always a step ahead of the other boys. The officials were amazed. The youngster also had extraordinary stamina. He played for 58 of the game’s 60 minutes, leaving the ice for 2 minutes because of a minor penalty. Parry Sound lost, 1-0, but number 2 won the trophy for Most Valuable Player in the tournament.
Of course, the Bruins could not sign a 12-year old boy, but they wanted to make sure they would have a chance to talk to his parents. They decided to “sponsor” the Parry Sound team. In those days sponsors paid for a team’s equipment. The parents were usually so grateful that they signed with that team when the boy came of age.
Eventually the Bruins did sign the youngster from Parry Sound. He went on to star in Junior hockey, and when he was 18 years old he joined the Bruins.
His name was Bobby Orr. Almost everybody agrees that he was the finest defenseman ever to play in the National Hockey League. The Boston scouts knew he would be a superstar when Bobby was only 12 years old!
From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Orr
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-passion-of-bobby-orr/
I tried to find the video of the CBS Sunday Morning segment on Bobby Orr, but looks like CBS has that shit locked down pretty tightly. So the best I could do was the article version. When Mo Rocca says that Bobby Orr doesn’t like talking about his quiet acts of charity, he’s not kidding. In the video version, Orr looked super irritated when Mo brought up some of the work he does. Good for Orr, too. The whole idea of being of service to others is not for a pat on the back, but to do it without thought of reward, because knowing you did something good for someone is reward enough. Otherwise, it’s just a business transaction.
on the note of scouting…
me daughter was a scout when she was lickle er… (scouts are unisex over here)
she hated every minute of it and would not wear the uniform for love nor money…
now shes 18 and has decided the uniform is the awesomest thing ever and wears it to school
girls are fucking wierd….and mines wierder than most
(me being a totally normal and functional human being..im assuming she gets it from her mum)
Which eventually lead to Al “The Eagle” Eagleson becoming Orr’s agent, the extremely corrupt prez of the hockey players union, becoming buddy of William Wirtz Chicago Blackhawks owner and selling Bobby Orr down the river to Chicago for pennies on the dollar.
I still seethe about Al and how he schoomzed his way into screwing over hockey players and their families.
Isn’t he the one who went to prison?
Yep. Big scandal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eagleson