While I was trying to finish my post on Hal Patterson in time for the 99th Grey Cup (The League's 31st), the brainiacs in the CFL Heritage Division decided to put on the disgraceful event in this clip as a way of reconnecting with CFL history. Someone dubbed it the latest, late hit in football history. Who knows what they were trying to do. The only thing learned here was one more exception to the rule that there's no such thing as bad publicity. The CBC, which is now shut out of actual football broadcasting—because the private sector does it so much better—supplied one of their contract clowns to do "stand-up" comedy for the event. Ron James managed to mangle the name of one of the participants in his report of the ensuing donnybrook. And he's so today's CBC (he absolutely has to mention soldiers somewhere in the recounting of what was spoiled by the unfortunate fisticuffs). I suppose we can be thankful for the sake of our national dignity that they did not send Don Cherry. For anyone interested in what an actual news organization would make of this, the folks over at the CBC Archives made this story from 1964 quietly available.
This is sad for any number of reasons. However, it’s saddest because this was a week when the CFL should have been remembering other, better people who passed away. You can find the Joe Briggs post on Hal Patterson here. Another former CFL all-star and Argo, Ed Harrington, died this week on November 26, 2011. It's a mark of something that the two bozos in the Mosca-Kapp video are in the CFL Hall of Fame and that Harrington is not. Anyway, after you've wallowed around in the white trash version of the CFL, you can rinse off by taking a look at actual human dignity in the video below.
Yes, you heard that right. Harrington spent his professional life after football working with the most vulnerable. The trophy on his shelf that he's proudest of is a football given to him by some of the kids he worked with at Clifton House for Boys in Toronto. After they all signed it, they asked if he'd mind if they used it to play one last game. He must have learned something at, Langston College, the tiny black college he attended in Oklahoma, that Mosca and Kapp didn't manage to learn at Notre Dame or UC Berkeley.
In fact, it's not very hard at all to tell another, better story about CFL oldsters. They could have talked to Harrington's teammate, Jim Corrigall, whose life story is offered as inspirational news at the local high school where he shows up to help as a volunteer coach. They could have invited Dick Shatto's widow to tell about how he asked to have his ashes scattered where he played at Exhibition Stadium. He knew it had become a parking lot and he didn't care. Playing with the sad sack Argos of that era was a big deal to him. Or they could have followed Norm Stoneburgh, an old East York boy and a Shatto teammate, around for a week while he counselled the homeless and dying or delivered welcome baskets to refugees and others in need. They could have talked to Johnny Bright's daughter, who recently helped open a public school in Edmonton named after her father; Bright worked in the Edmonton school system after he retired. Bright had been knocked out of the 1951 Heisman Trophy race by a cowardly, premeditated and racist late hit, the major reason why Bright chose the CFL over the NFL. He had good reason to feel bitter about that incident. Unlike Joe Kapp, he seemed to put it behind him and get on with his life’s work in education.
They could have told almost any story about any former CFLer and found something inspiring, or heart-warming, or at least not cringe-inducing. It would have taken years to find another couple of boots-and-broken-beer-bottle bozos like Mosca (strikes at people with his cane when provoked) and Kapp (thinks a fable about abusing animals named after your CFL opponent of fifty years ago is funny). It's about choices.
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