Much Ado About Nothing

77

I was at Varsity Stadium in downtown Toronto in 1952, at age 6, to watch the Toronto Argonaut Football Club of the Canadian Football League (founded in 1873 - 150 years ago) win the Grey Cup Championship. The winning touchdown was recorded by a pass from Argo QB Nobby Wirkowski to tight end, Zeke O'Connor.

30 years later, I worked at Canada's largest sports magazine publishing company, International Sports Properties. Two of our products were the gameday magazine for the CFL teams and The Grey Cup Magazine.

As you may know, I've somehow led a charmed life and met several of my childhood sports heroes (the Notre Dame/Argo football star, Zeke O'Connor, may have been my first). These memorable encounters have helped me to create an essay/blog of my experiences which has attracted a readership of more than 30,000 people from around the world.

Somehow, Zeke and I became 40-year-long friends.

Once he'd retired from the sport, he became a senior executive at Sears and joined in partnership with Mount Everest conqueror, Sir Edmund Hillary, devoted his life to helping others, specifically, Special Olympic athletes which, coincidentally, is a charity that I've been raising money for the past 30 years.

Since that day in 1952 as a 6-year-old,  I've been an Argo fan and somehow also developed a 40-year friendship with the CFL's most famous coach in history, Argo skipper, Leo Cahill ... a guy so devoted to winning he decided it was a good idea to announce ...

"only an act of God can stop us now"  before a playoff game ... which, of course, was outrageous and ended with a predictable result.

As connected as I was to my Argos, I was also a huge fan of an opponent ... the Montreal Alouettes defensive end, # 77 Junior Ah You who had rejected an offer from the NFL's Boston Patriots for a spot in Montreal. 

I'm not really sure what it was about him that attracted me.

He was an outstanding player or maybe it was the catchy name. I spent a lot of time, pre-Google, trying to find out everything I could about him.

In the 1970s, my next-door neighbour was a CBC TV sports director responsible for CFL games. For my 31st birthday, which happened to fall in 1977, he gifted me with a pair of 50-yard line tickets to an Argo/Montreal game and following the game, presented me with Junior Ah You's #77 Alouette jersey as a surprise gift.

Wow!

Things like professional player jerseys were rare at that time, unlike today. For me, my #77 jersey was too valuable to wear so I've kept it in a prominent place in my collection of sports memorabilia -- until now.

On November 17, I reached an age milestone, 77.

 

To celebrate my advance to seven/seven, we took a 16-day trans-Atlantic cruise from the world's Eternal City, Rome, which included stops in Italy, Spain and France. 

I thought it would be fun to take my Junior Ah You jersey along for the ride on my 77 adventure. The plan was to have Junior join-me-in-spirit as we visited the Colosseum, The Trevi Fountain and the ruins at Pompey. 

I started a search for Junior in his hometown in Hawaii. I found that he and his family had operated a very successful restaurant. However, during COVID, his business dried up. When I actually reached him, I sensed that things weren't going as smoothly in his life as they should. So, I abandoned my celebration-with-Junior idea but did manage to capture a photo of me, Lorraine and Junior on the boat.

I thought that photos of me in my 77 jersey on my 77th birthday in famous places might be fun but Junior may think my nonsense was just Much Ado About Nothing. 

I think reaching seven/seven is like hitting the lottery.