SIMMONS: My life with sportswriting legends — what an education
Steve Simmons #SteveSimmons
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Author of the article:
Steve Simmons
Publishing date:
Feb 16, 2021 • 1 day ago • 6 minute read 
Steve Simmons had the pleasure of rubbing shoulders with sportswriting legends Milt Dunnell, left, of the Toronto Star, and George Gross of the Toronto Sun. SUN FILES Article content
The drives from Philadelphia to Atlantic City were my favourites.
I drove. Milt Dunnell talked. I listened and tried hard not to interrupt, which is something I do far too often.
He was 52 years older than me. We both loved to cover boxing. We both hated to fly. So, early on, when Mike Tyson fought so often in Atlantic City, we would wind up travelling from Toronto together. Milt, the legendary Toronto Star columnist. Me, hanging out with this columnist I had read and revered since I was a kid.
Who could have a better job than this? Travelling to fights with Milt Dunnell. Taking in his stories. Watching the way the boxing world welcomed him. Just being around.
He was part of the very small inner circle that Muhammad Ali kept. There weren’t many of them. But he would later tell stories about Ali and his trainer Angelo Dundee and that crazy cornerman Bundini Brown, so many afternoons spent in Ali’s hotel room — and these weren’t stories he’d read about or heard about second-hand. These were stories he was there for.
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I started thinking about Milt on the day before his former colleague Frank Orr passed away. At home, we were watching a documentary on the killing of Sam Cooke and there were many shots from ringside of what was then the Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight. Clay’s last day before changing his name.
I stopped and paused the screen for a moment and there was Milt. Right in the middle of everything on my television. And, for a moment, I could hear his voice from those car rides, retelling stories about places he’d been, fighters he’d known.
Milt Dunnell passed away 12 years ago. He will live in my mind forever.
Milt Dunnell lived it all and saw it all, and our Steve Simmons considers himself lucky for having known him. SUN FILES
I would never refer to Dunnell as a friend, the way Frank Orr was a friend or Jim Hunt was a friend. Many years ago, one of my kids asked me who my best friend at work was. I answered Jim Hunt.
He said: “Isn’t he that old guy?”
And I said something like: “He’s the youngest old guy I’ve ever known.” And probably the funniest.
I got to cover Stanley Cup playoffs, Grey Cups, and Super Bowls with Hunt. He was the best storyteller I’ve ever known. He may not have invented frolic at the Grey Cup, but he was part of the history. If I have one regret it’s that I never sat down with Jim with a tape recorder and got him to tell me those truly unbelievable, twisted, funny Grey Cup stories of the ’50s and ’60s. He didn’t just know them. He lived them.
We used to go to lunch as a group once a week. I tried to never miss them. I didn’t want to miss one bite or one story. They were that delicious. Jim Hunt passed away 15 years ago.
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The newspaper business is in trouble. You hear that almost every day. But if there was such a thing as a heyday for Canadian sports journalism, I was fortunate enough to live through that era and begin my career at such an important time.
I got to be friends with Frank Orr and Jim Hunt, got to know Dunnell and his cohort Jim Proudfoot, always shared a laugh or two with Trent Frayne and Jim Coleman — one loved tennis, the other loved horse racing. All were legends of Canadian sportswriting. I even briefly met Neil Young’s father, Scott, and upstairs in my office, I have a row of his work on my bookshelf. This isn’t name-dropping. This has been a life blessed, through a time that may never exist again.
Who could have better fortune than to enter the business, start a new career when Dunnell and Proudfoot wrote columns for the Star, when George Gross and Frayne wrote for the Sun, when Jim Taylor owned Vancouver and Red Fisher owned Montreal? All of them gone now. Each of them, in very different ways, part of a story here, a funny line there, a personal experience, a memory of some kind that will never fade.
The late, great Jim Hunt, whom Steve Simmons considered a friend. SUN FILES
Dick Beddoes came to my high school on career day. The room was filled and the questions were asked, one after the other. Everyone wanted to talk about the Leafs. Beddoes, who was then the colourful sports columnist at The Globe and Mail, was clearly frustrated by the kind of questions he was being asked.
“Does anybody here want to talk about newspapers or journalism?” he asked the room. “If all you want to talk about is the Leafs, please leave now.”
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The room emptied. I was the only one left. We talked about newspapers for about 10 minutes. Years later, I reminded Beddoes of the conversation and he pretended like he remembered it. I won’t say we became friends, but we were friendly, professional colleagues.
In Beddoes’ final years, he hosted a sports talk show every Sunday night on what was then CFRB. When he could no longer do the show, out of the blue he phoned me and asked if I could fill in for him. I was thrilled by the call. I said I would do my best.
I went to the radio station the next Sunday to work the show, having never really hosted a talk show before. In those days, the person doing the show basically operated it as well, with buttons and levers in front of him. It was rather confusing. The first time I tried, it got so bad that the host of the previous real-estate hour, Alan Silverstein, driving home, turned around and drove back to the station and guided me through the second hour.
The second week was worse than the first. There was no third week. Beddoes has been gone for 30 years. I can still see his hats, hear his loud voice, thankful for the relationship we had.
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One more Dunnell story. We flew to Las Vegas together for a Sugar Ray Leonard fight years ago. The in-casino press conference, which was being satellited around the world, was scheduled for around noon. Our flight was slightly delayed, which meant we were forced to rush directly to the hotel, rolling our suitcases along with us as we entered the ballroom. By this time in his life, Milt didn’t move very well.
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We got to the packed room, where Angelo Dundee was speaking from the podium, and we tried to find a seat. In the middle of his fight talk, Dundee just stopped, which for him was something of a miracle. The room went silent.
“I’ll wait until Milt Dunnell gets his seat,” Dundee said.
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And everyone in the jammed ballroom was looking around wondering who Milt Dunnell was.
But that was how he was viewed by those of significance in the boxing world. He stopped time. And I got to witness it.
From then on, every time I saw Dundee or spoke to him on the phone, the first thing he would ask is: “How’s Milt?”
Dundee died in 2012, four years after Dunnell passed away at the age of 102.
I was just happy, at any time, to share the car rides and the taxis in from the airport and hear the stories. What a precious time. What an education.
ssimmons@postmedia.com
twitter.com/simmonssteve
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