Episodes
Saturday Oct 15, 2022
Saturday Oct 15, 2022
Friday Oct 07, 2022
Friday Oct 07, 2022
Corey Hirsch played 14 seasons as a professional goalie, including 108 NHL games.
He raised the Stanley Cup and came within a postage stamp goal of backstopping Canada to an Olympic Gold medal.
But the save of his life never happened on the ice.
It happened when he stopped short of driving off a cliff.
The plan was to finally be rid of intrusive thoughts he couldn’t shut off. Now he has learned how to deal with them.
Corey’s brain lies to him, it tells him things that aren’t true.
It is called OCD and the form he has is probably not what you think it is.
People such as Hirsch can drown in irrational thoughts about harming themselves or others, contracting deadly diseases and/or need constant self-assurance about their sexual orientation.
Corey, like so many others that suffer from this mental illness was ready to end it all…but he didn’t, he got help and came forward.
While so many out there suffer, often in silence, Hirsch uses his platform to make sure they aren’t alone.
Five years after his important mental health revelation in The Players' Tribune, his new book with Sean Patrick Conboy goes deeper into that journey from despair to hope.
Monday Sep 26, 2022
Monday Sep 26, 2022
Ken Caminiti was the type of ball player that fans loved.
He electrified third base and the batter's box with a formidable combination of grit, finesse and power.
However, it was what the one-time unanimous NL MVP (1996) did after his playing days that stands above the great fielding plays, all-star appearances and revitalizing the San Diego Padres franchise.
In 2002, Caminiti came clean about baseball's worst-kept secret.
Author Dan Good paints a portrait of a big-hearted man who lived life on the edge and how his public confession forced Major League Baseball to confront its steroid problem.
Join us as Good discusses his book Playing Through the Pain.
Monday Aug 15, 2022
Monday Aug 15, 2022
Rickey Henderson is as enigmatic as he was dynamic on a ballfield.
Major League Baseball's all-time leader in runs scored and stolen bases and greatest leadoff hitter of all time vexed and perplexed teammates, fans and the media as much as he did opposition over a 25-season career.
Even up until his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009, questions of who Rickey actually is and what has driven him to be so singular have remained.
In June 2022, Howard Bryant (senior writer, ESPN, and a two-time Casey Award winner) released Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original. In the 380 pages, he provides the context that helps explain Henderson’s motivations and Henderson’s value in the age of advanced analytics.
Sunday Jul 10, 2022
Sunday Jul 10, 2022
We finally landed Survivorman.
Les Stroud is a creator who is best known for his world famous TV show, but he is also a musician and an author.
In March 2021, he released Wild Outside: Around the World with Survivorman, his first book aimed at a youth audience. It recently won a Yellow Cedar Award presented by the Ontario Library Association for nonfiction books intended for readers in grades 4 to 8.
Using condensed and illustrated versions of his adventures, Stroud intersperses nature facts with advice on spending time outside, no matter where that is.
After the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic delayed his appearance on SportsLit, Les joined us to discuss this book as well as his latest projects, plus some humble career tales from a man who does things his way.
Wednesday Jun 15, 2022
SportsLit (Season 6, Episode 3) - Tyrone (Muggsy) Bogues - Muggsy
Wednesday Jun 15, 2022
Wednesday Jun 15, 2022
Tyrone (Muggsy) Bogues is one of the most recognizable “names” in NBA history.
At five-foot-three, he is the shortest player to ever play at basketball’s highest level and he succeeded with four teams across 14 seasons during the rugged 1980s and '90s. A testament to his focus, talent and toughness.
In April 2022, he released Muggsy: My Life from a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball, written with Jacob Uitti (Triumph Books).
Muggsy pays tribute to a loving family who supported him through his maturation into a true player from inner-city Baltimore to the time he established himself as a pro point guard, whose career peak came as the engine of the expansion Charlotte Hornets.
His playing days lasted from 1987-88 until an abbreviated season with the Toronto Raptors in 2000-01.
Currently, Bogues is an ambassador and community advisor with the Hornets franchise in Charlotte. In between watching the NBA Finals where close family friend Steph Curry goes for a fourth title with the Golden State Warriors utilizing a playing style that he helped push, Muggsy joined us to talk about his life and how it has inspired the lives of others.
Wednesday May 25, 2022
SportsLit (Season 6, Episode 2) - André Lachance & Jean François Ménard - Team Chemistry
Wednesday May 25, 2022
Wednesday May 25, 2022
Just Win Baby!
Sounds simple enough, but how do you get there?
Talent alone isn't always the answer.
The inner game is often the hardest aspect to manage.
André Lachance (Manager – Women’s National Team - Baseball Canada 2004 – 18) and Jean François Ménard (Author - Train (Your Brain) Like an Olympian) have years of practical and professional experience in mental performance coaching from boardrooms to a baseball diamond and even the circus (Cirque du Soleil).
Utilizing what they have learned, the duo combine to offer their strategies on building team chemistry.
Monday May 09, 2022
Monday May 09, 2022
Fifty years on, the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the then-Soviet Union remains the most famous international hockey series ever played.
In "1972: The Series That Changed Forever," Hockey Hall of Fame-honoured writer Scott Morrison draws a complete narrative of that classic confrontation a half-century ago.
What started out with good intentions between the sports’ reigning world power and a country that wanted to show that it was the best, when it chose to ice the best, became so much more in real time that September. The final result was as close as it gets, and for the Canadian and Soviet stars whom Morrison has come to know, it has bonded them uniquely over time.
It is a series that Canada won and where hockey won. One side showed it could play with the NHL superstars, the other went to extraordinary lengths to assert their skill and will, and in turn, this Cold War on ice created a legacy they celebrate together.
Friday Nov 19, 2021
Friday Nov 19, 2021
Brian McFarlane has written so many books he has lost count, but never one about his life in hockey.
Approaching age 90, he finally decided it was time, at the behest of Michael Holmes, executive editor at ECW.
McFarlane is familiar to generations of fans from his three-decade tenure at Hockey Night in Canada as well as working in the U.S. with CBS and NBC.
His connection to the game is deep. As a standout NCAA player, he scored over 100 goals in his college career. An astute businessman, he brought the game to children and new audiences with Peter Puck. That was just one of his many ventures.
Sunday Mar 28, 2021
Sunday Mar 28, 2021
An Olympic misstep might be how the public defines a career, but it hardly defines a high-performance athlete’s life.
When Perdita Felicien crashed into the first hurdle in the 100-metre final at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, all the reigning world champion from Canada could do was watch the race play out on a video screen high above the track.
Though her dreams were dashed, she would stand proud and tall again — it was in her DNA. In My Mother’s Daughter: A Memoir of Struggle and Triumph (Doubleday), Felicien fastidiously constructs a poignant narrative that extends far beyond sport.
By bringing her mother Cathy Browne’s tale of leaving St. Lucia to resettle in Canada to light, we can better understand the contemporary Canadian experience.