Jim (Shaky) Hunt, 79 - Legendary Sports Reporter and CFL Supporter

[Steve Vale]

The guy who always asked the question in the Grey Cup media press conferences:
"What is your position on your players having sex the night before the Grey Cup game?''

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1141944645426

Jim (Shaky) Hunt, 79
Legendary sportswriter covered Stanley Cups, the Masters, Super Bowls, the 1972 Canada-Soviet Union series, and every Grey Cup game between 1949 and 1999

Mar. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM
DONOVAN VINCENT
SPORTS REPORTER

Every year, for as long as sportswriters can recall, Toronto Sun columnist Jim Hunt asked the most critical question at the coaches' press conference during Grey Cup week.

"What is your position on your players having sex the night before the Grey Cup game?'' he would ask the coaches, always eliciting good-natured laughter from his colleagues.

So entrenched is this quirky tradition, that when he couldn't attend the last few Grey Cups, another journalist stood up to pose the question in his absence.

Jim Hunt died shortly after suffering a heart attack Wednesday. He was 79.

He began his 50-plus years in journalism when he joined the Toronto Daily Star in 1948, working first as a city news reporter. One challenging assignment saw him smuggling a gun — he opted for a fake one made of wood — in a gun case into Maple Leaf Gardens in 1956 during a Leafs playoff game against the Red Wings.

The point was to test the Gardens' security. He was able to get past the ticket-takers and the Star ran the picture of him and the gun case on the front page the next day.

He moved on to Queen's Park, then to the Star's sports department under Milt Dunnell in 1953 and later the Star's former weekly magazine as sports editor.

In 1967 he went to what was then CKEY radio in Toronto becoming a sports director of the AM station and eventually news director.

After that he was hired by the Toronto Sun as a sports columnist in 1983, his last stop, (although he would later co-host a sports program with Bob McCown on The Fan radio station while with the paper).

Long after he'd retired from full-time work he continued writing a Tuesday column for the Sun, his last one running Feb. 28.

"The CKEY job gave me the opportunity to cover the 1972 and 1974 Canada-Soviet Union hockey series. The best job was at the Star Weekly because it afforded me the opportunity to travel around the world. But the job I enjoyed the most was writing a column for the Sun,'' he once said.

Nicknamed "Shaky'' — a handle the Sarnia-born Hunt earned due to his shaky skills as a goaltender playing hockey in his youth — he is fondly remembered as a "character'' who had a loud and distinctive voice and loved telling good stories.

"If I was a floor below in the press box I could hear him,'' recalled George Gross, the Sun's corporate sports editor who covered hockey with Hunt back in the early days and who also hired him.During his career Hunt covered Stanley Cups, the Masters, U.S. Opens, Canadian Opens, British Opens, Super Bowls, Olympics and the 1972 Summit Series. He attended every Grey Cup game between 1949 and 1999.

Along the way he interviewed a long list of well-known figures in the sports world and outside it. He had lunch with Marilyn Monroe. Took notes while chatting with Yankee great Mickey Mantle. He interviewed legendary boxers, Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali.

His interview with Ali took place in a midtown Manhattan hotel room prior to Ali's 1964 upset win over Sonny Liston. After telling Hunt what he was going to do to Liston, the young and brash Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) burst into one of his trademark verses.

"After I beat Liston I'll be sad, then there'll be no one to make me mad'' Hunt recalled in his 2005 book — written with Steve Simmons — All Work & All Play: A Life in the Outrageous World of Sport, which is a collection of stories from his time as a reporter.

He described what it was like covering the hockey riots in 1955 in Montreal that were set off after the NHL suspended Canadiens great Maurice (Rocket) Richard for attacking a Boston Bruins player with his stick, and later going after a linesman who tried to stop him.

Hunt said it was a day he'd never forget, "one of the blackest in the history of hockey,'' he wrote in his book.

He also wrote a biography in the mid-1960s on hockey legend Bobby Hull.

Hunt's daughter Kathryn said there was rarely a dull moment in the Hunt household while she was growing up.

"Dad had such an exciting career. He always entertained us with his wonderful stories,'' his daughter said.Hunt leaves Caroline, his wife of 54 years, daughters Kathryn, and Cally, and sons Rod and Andrew. He also leaves brother Don, brother Jack, and six grandchildren.

A visitation will be held Monday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Humphrey Funeral Home, 1403 Bayview Ave.

A memorial service will be held the next day at 11 a.m. at St. Cuthbert's Anglican Church, 1399 Bayview Ave.

[Steve Vale]

Re: Jim (Shaky) Hunt, 79 - Legendary Sports Reporter

Loud, proud, a legend

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Columnists...81549-sun.html

Bill Lankhof

The weather reports yesterday predicted thunder overnight, although some people believe it merely was Jim Hunt making his entrance into heaven.

Shaky never went anywhere quietly.

Hunt, 79 when he died of heart failure on Wednesday, was a man who had an inexhaustible love of family while conducting a passionate affair with the world of sports.

Tributes poured in for Hunt, whose unmistakable booming voice marked the unofficial opening of every major sporting event in this country for almost 50 years.

"You didn't have to be in the press box to know Jim Hunt was in the building. You could be two floors away and hear him. He had this thundering voice," Sun Media corporate sports editor George Gross said. "And whether he was at the Super Bowl or Exhibition Stadium or the office, that never changed. When he walked into a room he had a presence."

Hunt was a member of the first journalism graduating class at the University of Western Ontario when he was hired by the Toronto Star in 1948. He moved from the Queen's Park bureau to sports in 1952. In 1961 he joined CKEY Radio and, when it closed, went to the Toronto Sun in 1983.

Those are the statistics. But they don't even begin to tell the story; fitting for a guy who, as a sports columnist, never let anything as blase as a statistic get in the way of his opinion.

"He loved to debate and could do it well, whether it was sports, politics or society in general," Sun sports editor, Pat Grier said. "There was a fierce intelligence behind that youthful playfulness. He loved life and what he did, and got the most out of it. You could say he reached the age of 79 without growing old."

Jim Coleman, one of Ol' Hunt's newspaper contemporaries, once described him as "the world's oldest adolescent." Hunt's Sun colleague, lunch companion and golf partner, Mike Rutsey, said. "He was so much fun to be around because he was always upbeat and he didn't have the snarky cynicism that is so prevalent in today's press boxes. Jim was always a joy and saw wonderment in everything and that's going to be missed."

He covered Stanley Cups, the Masters, U.S. Opens, Super Bowls, Olympics and the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series. "He was a good journalist and when CKEY shut down I wanted him because I knew he had been such a fine writer with the Star's Weekend magazine," Gross said. "He had an incredible memory and it made him one of the best storytellers since Hans Christian Andersen."

Except that the ones Jim told weren't fairy tales. Sometimes it just seemed that way. Like the one about how he met Marilyn Munroe in Niagara Falls in the 1950s. Or, the time he dressed up in a trench coat and dark glasses and walked into Maple Leaf Gardens toting a rifle over his shoulder to prove there wasn't any security.

STORIES

"People loved him for his stories and he loved telling them," daughter Kathryn, 44, said yesterday. "And it got to a point that we could finish them for him. He brought his job home through his stories. I remember in public school when he had a slip of the tongue on radio and mispronounced Steve Schutt ... the teachers and kids were all talking about it.

"We realized quite young that he was special to a lot of people. If we were out for dinner people would often recognize him and come over and talk. They shared their enthusiasm of his work. He touched a lot of people," Kathryn said.

Tall. Gangly. He wore his clothes and his omnipresent grin with a rumpled elegance and a devilish sense of fun. He had an ego but never any pretensions about himself or his profession. He could be wonderfully self-deprecating. Like the time the Star magazine sent him to Quebec City. He was to interview Punch Imlach, then the coach there, and Jean Beliveau, who was the best player not in the NHL.

He went by train to Montreal and met his brother and some friends and they took him to the press club and got him absolutely stiff. They told him, "Don't worry, we've got your train fare to Quebec" for the next day, which is when he was supposed to see Imlach and Beliveau.

They put him on the overnight train. Shaky falls asleep on his berth and wakes up as the train chugs into the station early the next morning. "He gets off and, he's walking, saying, "Wow! The train station here really reminds me of Union Station," Rutsey said, "and he walks out and he's staring at the Royal York Hotel. He said it took him five minutes to realize his brother and cronies had sent him back to Toronto as a gag. He had to rush to the airport, and at great expense to the Star, fly to Quebec City to make his appointment. He loved telling that story."

His abiding love was the Canadian Football League. Between 1949 and 1999 he attended every Grey Cup game. "I don't know if the Grey Cup was all about Jim Hunt or if Hunt was all about the Grey Cup," former CFL commissioner Jake Gaudaur, now 86, said. "He's going to be looking down and reading what people are saying about him and say: 'What a lot of claptrap.' "

Hunt had an outrageous way of transcending events and becoming the story himself. And so, for years, the Grey Cup's media conference with the two coaches wasn't complete until Jim had asked the question: Were the coaches going to allow the players to have sex leading up to the game?

Edmonton's Joe Faragalli uttered the now infamous response: "Actually, the sex itself is calm and soothing. It's the chasing that wears the players out.' "

Shaky had his story. Everyone else had a laugh. The end to another perfect day - and just a snapshot in a perfect convergence of a man and his profession. The last time he had a real job, he was fond of saying, was lifting whiskey barrels one summer at Seagrams when he was in school. "My dad always felt blessed because he thought he had the best job and loved it every day," Kathryn said.

In a profession that can be murderous on family lives, Hunt was married for 54 years. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn. They lived in the same Leaside home they bought 44 years ago. He spoke proudly, and often, of his four children, Cally, Kathryn, Rod and Andrew and six grandchildren, including Ben, who is in his first year of journalism at Ryerson.

"He was a loving, caring father. He wanted to share our lives with us," Kathryn said. "He had strong opinions. He could get very feisty and that was all part of my dad. But he was never dogmatic and he saw the humour in everything."

Nobody could ever accuse him of being shy. Everyone knew what Shaky felt about everything. At one of Shaky's retirement parties (he never did actually retire, his last weekly column for the Sun appearing Feb. 28) former CFL general manager Ralph Sazio recalled, "When I first came up from the U.S. I went to my first game and I was sitting in the press box. I asked, 'Who's that big, loud guy in the front row who doesn't know anything about football?'

"Just last month a scout for the Bills was in the press box with me and he asks, 'Who's that big, loud guy in the front row who doesn't know anything about football?'

"Thirty years later and the answer is still the same: Jim Hunt." Nobody enjoyed the tale more than Shaky.

The nickname? It came thanks to his intramural goaltending career at Western and had nothing to do with his legendary disregard for English grammar.

Jim never was bullied, even when Blue Jays slugger George Bell once screamed, "I keel you, Hunt!" He was never over-awed by the famous and the powerful. He had an ongoing battle with Leafs owner Harold Ballard, who once banned him from the Gardens. "But at the end of Harold's life he asked dad to come up and interview him," Kathryn said.

He saved some of his sharpest criticism for the CFL, perhaps because he loved it so much. "He'd criticize things I've done," Gaudaur said. "His style was to question without restraint. He'd criticize when he thought it was merited. It was amazing how often he was right. I hate to admit that ... you couldn't take offence. He was fun to be around regardless of what he said about you, your organization or the sport."

Visitation is Monday from 7-9 p.m. at Humphrey Funeral Home, 1403 Bayview Ave. The memorial service is Tuesday at 11 a.m. at St. Cuthbert's Anglican Church, 1399 Bayview Ave.

"I'm not sure how a person becomes a legend," Gaudaur said, "but if it means a man who gives everything to his craft then Shaky belongs among the legends of Canadian media."

[Steve Vale]

Re: Jim (Shaky) Hunt, 79 - Legendary Sports Reporter and CFL Supporter

Life one big adventure

Steve Simmons
http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Columnists...81547-sun.html

At dinner a long time ago, my eldest son, who wasn't very old at the time, asked the kind of question little boys tend to ask.

"Dad," he said, "who's your best friend at work?"

I paused for a moment and answered the only way I knew. "Jim Hunt," I said.

"Jim Hunt?" he repeated aloud. "Isn't he that old guy?"

"No," I corrected him. "He's just about the youngest man I know."

The telephone call came yesterday morning informing me that the youngest man I've ever known was dead at the age of 79.

Jim Hunt wasn't just a friend and a confidant and a colleague. Truth is, he was my hero.

He loved sports and media and being a personality. He loved life on the road and the big event and was almost as proud of his own accomplishments as he was of his lovely wife, Carolyn, and the remarkable achievements of their very successful children.

They have all grown up now; he never really did. He never wanted to, never stopped living or laughing. Life to Hunt was an anecdote, an adventure. He went everywhere and covered everything: Sports, politics, television, newspaper, radio. It didn't seem to matter so long as there was a story to tell.

Circumstances may have slowed him down the past few years, but to the end, he never stopped telling those stories, writing them, living them.

All of them related in the only tones he knew -- loud and louder.

We were from different generations: I grew up listening to him on CKEY radio every morning before going to school. We became friends during the 1986 Stanley Cup final just after he went up to introduce himself to a rookie named Brett Hull, who was about to play his first NHL game.

"I know who you are," Hull said. "You wrote a book about my dad."

Over time, we covered Grey Cups together, Super Bowls together, Stanley Cup playoffs together. You couldn't have asked for a better linemate. He was the show. The rest of us just played the part of audience.

He was of a different time, a different world, back when sports writers had intimate knowledge of the people they wrote about, but as times changed so did he. He never got old or stale. He changed with the times. He became a pundit as pundits became fashionable. He even did the impossible for several years on sports radio: He softened Bob McCown.

"The great thing about being my age," Hunt told me once when he was in his 70s, "is you can say anything to anybody and get away with it. Nobody gets mad or takes you seriously."

I never got mad but always took him seriously. We had our roles. He entertained me, I took care of him.

If he didn't know how to plug in his computer, I did it for him. If he didn't know how to file his copy, I helped him. One time, we were travelling to Edmonton for a Stanley Cup playoff game and the movie was about to be played on our flight.

Hunt fumbled around trying to get his headset to work when it was apparent he hadn't connected it properly. I plugged him in, turned up the volume, and then the movie came on.

The first five minutes or so of Three Men And A Baby have no spoken words, only music and Hunt was listening happily. Then the first words were spoken, and with headset on, and with as loud a voice as he had, everyone on the plane suddenly knew Jim Hunt was on board.

He announced, screaming, "This movie's in French!"

Quickly, I flicked the dial, turning the movie to English. Another Hunt story was born. Another to tell.

Years later, at the Grey Cup, Hunt was to receive a special award from the Canadian Football League he loved so much. Only it was to be a surprise.

I called Carolyn and made sure he packed an appropriate jacket and tie for the trip to Winnipeg. Then on awards night, I tried to prod him into going to the event.

"I'm not going," Hunt shouted. "Those things are so boring."

"Why don't we go and then go out for dinner afterward," I pleaded.

He relented and was near speechless as his name was called and he was rewarded for a lifetime of loving the CFL.

Years before that, Hunt, who didn't suffer fools well, was in the Argos locker room following yet another loss at Exhibition Stadium. On that day, Chuck Ealey threw five interceptions and, like all quarterbacks, was asked about it afterward.

"It was God's will," said Ealey, a religious man.

Said Hunt, without missing a beat: "Can't God read defences, either?"

That was Jim Hunt. Ol' Hunt, as he called himself. Shaky, as we called him. Ear-splitting and full of mischief. He knew Muhammad Ali and Mickey Mantle and Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, was in Moscow when Paul Henderson scored, argued with George Bell and Dave Stieb, fought with Harold Ballard, made trades for the Argos. He lived our sporting history.

And will remain alive in so many of us, forever.

[TurfToe]

Re: Jim (Shaky) Hunt, 79 - Legendary Sports Reporter and CFL Supporter

Thanks for posting that! I was going to make mention of it yesterday - heard the news on the radio while I was driving home.

Hunt was not only a great Canadian sportscaster, he was a great news man. And he had a tremendous love for the CFL. Anytime people would whine about "Eastern Bias" in the sports media I'd roll out a Shaky Hunt story. He may have been based in Toronto, but Canada was his playing field.

He'll be missed.

Do you know if George Gross is still kicking. George is/was a lot like Hunt... except that George at last count was approximately 287 years old! Another classy old school news/sports reporter who truly loved the CFL.

[Steve Vale]

Re: Jim (Shaky) Hunt, 79 - Legendary Sports Reporter and CFL Supporter

Thanks for posting that! I was going to make mention of it yesterday - heard the news on the radio while I was driving home.

Hunt was not only a great Canadian sportscaster, he was a great news man. And he had a tremendous love for the CFL. Anytime people would whine about "Eastern Bias" in the sports media I'd roll out a Shaky Hunt story. He may have been based in Toronto, but Canada was his playing field.

He'll be missed.

Do you know if George Gross is still kicking. George is/was a lot like Hunt... except that George at last count was approximately 287 years old! Another classy old school news/sports reporter who truly loved the CFL.

It looks like it - there was a Sun column from him online for Jan 29 of this year...

[Steve Vale]

Re: Jim (Shaky) Hunt, 79 - Legendary Sports Reporter and CFL Supporter

Musings on Shaky
Bill Lankhof
http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Columnists...89096-sun.html


The clergyman spoke words of spiritual healing.

Friends spoke of good times and family spoke of a gentle, loving father.

But, nothing spoke more succinctly than the handbill passed out in the St. Cuthbert's Anglican Church foyer yesterday: Looking up from it, a photo of Jim Hunt with a grin as warm as a woolly blanket on a snowy night and sparkling eyes that bespoke of fun.

The memorial for the 79 year-old Toronto Sun sports columnist was billed as A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of Jim Hunt. And, somewhere in his heaven Shaky could be heard, in that curious gravelly-falsetto, thundering: "WhA-A-A-A-t's Up Doctor!" at the sight of a full house.

Shaky loved nothing better than a good story and yesterday there were a lifetime of them.

"Nobody enjoyed Jim's jokes more than Jim," his brother and Toronto Sun co-founder, Don said, setting the tone for the tributes and eulogies. "I never understood why they called him Shaky. He could hold a drink as firm as anyone."

In death, as in life, he attracted paupers to prince's -- from a lady who said she was just a reader and came to say good-bye, to media stars and local sports icons. Not to mention, the service may have set a record for number of sportswriters in ties and suits in one place. And, not a ketchup stain, in sight.

It was that kind of service, a touching mixture of humour, of recounted childhood memories, effervescent tales, a grandson who called him his "best friend," and the solemn rendition of his favourite hymn, Let There Be Light.

Oh, yes, and a few tears. These events never pass without a tinge of the bittersweet. Nor should they, for in the moist eyes and in the tightening of throats, there is love.

The Reverend Frank Lee told an audience that Hunt and his legacy will live on in people's hearts and in God's eternal village.

"Our memories are not just faded photographs. We must remember the perspective of eternity and that God does not forget ... the faces of those we can only remember," Lee said.

His son, Rod, told of a father who, despite having to wake up at 5 a.m. every weekday to do a radio show would, instead of sleeping in on Saturday "be up at the crack of dawn to help me deliver The Globe and Mail ... He took me to Canadian Opens and one day we went to Dave Keon's house," Rod said, but "what made him special to us was the family times."

Every Christmas Shaky would be the first one down, surrounded by massive piles of paper and gifts all around him. Grandson Ben, who's following him into journalism, inherited his love of the Michigan Wolverines. Ben pulled out a team jersey, waved it, then sang Hail To The Victors and stepped from the dias saying, quietly: "Goodbye, Poppie."

If there was anything Shaky loved more than a good story it might've been a good nap. Tim Wharnsby, of The Globe and Mail, in his eulogy recalled a particular football game. "The highlight of the Argos game: On TV they showed Jim sleeping in the press box." Shaky was the world's greatest napper. Any time. Anywhere.

Several generations of those who shared a press box with him chuckled: Bill Stephenson, once the voice of reason on CFRB, the CBC's Brian Williams and TSN's John Wells, former Leafs owner Steve Stavro, and Don Chevrier, former voice of the CFL, former CBCer Fred Walker and dozens of sportswriters, from a career that spanned more than half a century, and many of the Sun sports department staff.

Wharnsby, who first met Hunt when both worked for the Sun, often is told that he's quiet. It probably is part of what made him the perfect foil for Shaky, who could never shut up. "If you spent the last 780 Friday afternoons having lunch with Jim Hunt you'd be quiet, too," Wharnsby said. "He'd show up, start by saying, 'Doctor, what's up' ... and two hours later we'd leave."

Wharnsby recalled a golfing trip to Ireland: "We told him that for every 15 minutes he could stay quiet we'd give him an Irish pound. He was doing really good but then we stopped at a pub. We didn't hear him say anything but he went to the washroom. This guy comes out and says: 'I hear you're going to Castlegaurd.' We knew Shaky had opened his mouth. He had to give back all his Irish pounds."

Hunt played the same game with his own kids on trips to Florida. "The only difference was for every 10 minutes they were quiet," Wharnsby said, "he gave them a nickel."

The best thing that can be said of any man is that he has the love and admiration of his family. Everything else is details. "He taught us three lessons," his son, Andrew, said. "First, take the time to be with your family ... you'll never look back at your life and wish you spent more time at the office."

Second: "Find a passion. He found journalism."

Third: "He taught us not to be afraid to speak up and express yourself."

Jim Hunt was three-for-three. He batted a thousand. On life's scoreboard it doesn't get any better than that.