Long Ride On A Hobby-horse Memoirs Of A Sporting Life

Babe Pratt, Red Dutton, Fritz Hanson and Tommy Gorman are only a few of the legendary figures featured in sportswriter Jim Coleman’s long-awaited memoir. Long Ride on a Hobby-horse is a nostalgic and hilarious look back at some of the most memorable players, coaches, characters and highlights in Canadian sports and journalism, written by a leading newspaperman whose career spans six decades. Jim Coleman has, he says, known some genuine oddballs. There was the veteran newspaper editor whose parrot would spring into action at the sound of military music and circle menacingly around unsuspecting guests; the reclusive reporter who regularly commuted to his office by canoe or snowshoes; The Good Kid, a diminutive and roly-poly carnie who was a big spender and hustler around the racetrack; Break-the-Bed Louis and Whitey the Pest, two of many larcenous characters in Toronto’s underworld. There are nostalgic accounts of sports highlights – the first time a team from Western Canada won the Grey Cup; the Calgary Stampeders’ national football triumph in 1948; the time goalie Red McCusker held an opposing team scoreless while he was drunk; defenceman Jean Pusie’s on-the-ice buffoonery, and many other memorable events and players.