On Racism and Herb Carnegie

I'm a lucky man. I've been raised in a household that held virtually no prejudices to any person, and I was raised by a family that instilled to me a sense of respect for all people. It also helped that my best friend in grade school was the daughter of a native of my small community and an immigrant from the Philippines, thus my interaction with an ethnicity other than my own came at an early age and let me know first hand that even people that don't look like me are still just people like myself. I think this is a valuable thing to learn when growing up.

I am sorry for people who have been trapped in a cycle of racism, in which their surroundings have branded into them a disrespect for other cultures and a misplaced anger, a fear of the other and a resulting hatred thereof.

To me a root cause of racism is a homogeneity of interactions during a persons first experiences in life. It is easy to hate something you don't know when you never even have to deal with it and never met a person that disagrees with you in this regard. To me, most racists, (as well as people with other prejudices) simply don't have a sense that other people are still just people.

So why am I talking about racism on a hockey blog? Thankfully it is not because some dumbass has thrown a banana at Wayne Simmonds or Evander Kane. Rather it's because I recently read Herb Carnegie's biography "A Fly in a Pail of Milk".

Carnegie was virtually the first black star player, but since he played his professional career during the 40s and 50s he was denied a place in the highest tier of professional hockey, the NHL. Most infamous is still an incident in which Toronto Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe proclaimed that he would pay any man $10.000 to turn Herb Carnegie into a white man.


However, while the book brings up the racism Carnegie faced during the childhood and his playing career, it does a whole lot more than simply tell us that racism is a bad thing. It also shows why racism is a bad thing. The biography does a wonderful job at portraying Herb Carnegie as a genuine human being, with passions, ambitions, talents and feelings. The respect he has for his parents, the love for his wife and their elopement, his struggle to balance his hockey career and his home life, his dejectedness after the New York Rangers refused to put him on their NHL team rather than a farm team, his desire to teach children valuable lessons about life as well as hockey, his passion for hockey and for golf, his thankfulness for being given a real chance at a career when he applied for a job in sales after his playing career ended. They all provide a sense of humanity, and it illustrates that racism is bad because it robs a person of this humanity.


That black men like Carnegie were and still are disrespected and had and still have to overcome artificial cultural barricades is most unfair because they are still just people. Carnegie himself also seems to touch on the root cause of racism I explored earlier. As he explains, he never faced racism from any teammate, who I presume have gotten to know him quite well. Rather the most racism he has experienced were from strangers, people in the crowd and executives. People who don't seem to understand that even people who look different than themselves are still people.

While I don't think that racism can be cured by forcing a racist to interact with a person of a different race on a real human level, I think it is most definitely a stepping stone and definitely something that would help kids that are growing up to never become racist. However, even reading a book like "A Fly in a Pail of Milk" could provide such an understanding of a person of a different race as a person just like the reader, and this is genuinely a good lesson to learn.

Book Review: Gordie Howe's Son

Hockey is an old sport. Many great and fantastic tales have happened within it long before I was even born. I am always interested in learning about them. When Mark Howe, one of the greatest players for my favorite franchise, released his biography and I was eager to read it. Unfortunately, the cover and title of the book made me a little anxious.

Of course it's rude and often wrong to judge a book by its cover, but personally I have always maintained that Mark being viewed primarily as the son of Gordie has been a slight detriment to his career. It may be one of the factors, alongside his time in the WHA, that prevented him from being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. The subtitle of the book "A Hall of Fame Life in the Shadow of Mr. Hockey" seemed to hammer this home as well, particularly the last cover above showing a childhood picture of Mark.

The subtitle could also be discarded as meddling by the publisher, attempting to make it more appealing to a more casual crowd who have heard of Gordie but not Mark. Bu the title itself seems to have been chosen deliberately by Mark. I was aware of the deep bond father and son share, probably best exemplified by Mark's Hall of Fame acceptance speech (which happens to be the end point of the book), but reading the book made me appreciate this relationship a whole lot more. The book does not only follow the career of a great player, but also showcases a true and truly wonderful example of a relationship between parents and children, one that everyone should strive to achieve.

This is not limited to Gordie either, as we also often encounter Mark's mother, Colleen Howe, as a mother as well as a hockey executive dealing smartly with a rather sexist society within hockey's confines, while lending support and guidance to her sons and her husband. This makes it only more tragic when in the second to last chapter we follow along as she suffers from Pick's disease, a neuro-degenerative disease robbing her of her personality and cognitive function, that would eventually take her life.

This is not the only tragedy Mark has encountered throughout his career. Unlike other books about the Flyers I have read, this biography is not shying away from discussing the death of Pelle Lindbergh, who lost his life in a drunk-driving incident weeks into the 1985-86 season. The devastation left in its wake is personal, and only eclipsed by the pain seen when, days before the HoF induction ceremony, Mark learns of the tragic plane crash that took the life of most of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team, Mark's friend and former defense partner Brad McCrimmon.

McCrimmon becomes one of the biggest examples of what the book does right: Presents people as who they are, genuine and multi-dimensional. The book scatters anecdotes throughout its narrative which helps the reader understand the various people as actual human beings, rather than people you read about in the paper, and one can appreciate those people for who they are.

Throughout his career Mark has encountered many characters, and the career itself had many ups and downs as well. We can see the great times, such as winning championships in the WHA while playing alongside his brother and father, becoming his own person and being accepted as an exceptional hockey player of his own in Philadelphia, or winning the Stanley Cup as a member of the Front office of the Detroit Red Wings.

But there is also a lot of frustration, such as a scheming and horribly mismanaged club in Hartford, the struggle of changing position from wing to defense with little to no guidence, and the disappointment of losing two Stanley Cup championships to the Oilers. The biggest toll however takes the recovery from being impaled by a goal-post while with the Whalers, an incident that could have paralyzed Mark as the goalpost nearly pierced his spinal column.

Throughout the book it seems that while the successes is fleeting, the tragedies and struggles appear to stay with you. Maybe that is simply how life is. It is however comforting that the book ends in a high note, with Mark's long and outstanding career finally being rewarded with the induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame, playing in the 2012 Winter Classic alumni game, and the retirement of his jersey by the Flyers, in addition to personal bliss experienced through the birth of a granddaughter and the marriage of a son.

The books is not a masterpiece of literature, but it is a genuine look into the career of one of the best players to ever play the sport. While Mark never fully escapes the shadow of his father, the reader can see how over the course of his life he becomes more than just "Gordie Howe's Son" and becomes a man of his own.

Book Review: Flyers Lives

A couple of months ago I was combing through Amazon in search for a hockey book. Amazon recommended "Flyers Lives" by Jakki Clarke and I picked it up. Of course the first thing I noticed was the name of the author, and sure enough it is written by Bobby Clarke's daughter. While this would definitely allow for some special "access", I was also somewhat worried about what this relationship between the author and one of the high ranking officials in the organization could imply.

But let's put first things first: The book is a collection of mini-biographies/interviews with twenty-one players throughout the history of the Philadelphia Flyers, reaching from the Broad Street Bullies to modern day. Each chapter focuses on one particular player, discussing his career, their relationship with the organization, as well as some personal anecdotes. Interestingly, the book also asks each player to weigh in on the current state of player development and advice they would give to parents.

The players showcased are in order: Bernie Parent, Bobby Clarke, Bob Kelly, Bill Barber, Dave Schultz, Paul Holmgren, Brian Propp, Tim Kerr, Brad Marsh, Mark Howe, Dave Poulin, Rick Tocchet, Ron Hextall, Chris Therien, Keith Jones, Keith Primeau, Danny Briere, Claude Giroux, Scott Hartnell, Chris Pronger and James van Riemsdyk. This list covers a lot of ground and most of the big names that have suited up for the Orange and Black. It also includes some people I would not have expected in such a book, namely Bob Kelly and Brad Marsh, and reading it also provides a nice sense of continuity and passing the torch. But it also has some omissions that seem odd, leaving a glaring hole in the 90s with none of Eric Lindros, John LeClair or Eric Desjardins getting their own section. It should also be noted that many of the retired players still have very close ties with the organization, as members of the front office, ambassadors, or broadcasters, and thus seem to be somewhat chosen due to availability.

The book in general seems a bit whitewashed. Eric Lindros is hardly mentioned, and Pelle Lindbergh's death isn't talked about at all despite having such a large impact on many of the players that are subject to this book. Given this, I am surprised that the tragic death of Tim Kerr's wife, Kathy, shortly after childbirth was brought up at all. However, the book surrounds it in Kerr's history of injuries, and the quote of Kerr following it seems to be in response to a question solely about his injuries.

While the whitewashed nature of the book could have been expected given the author's relation to the organization, the most peculiar part of the book are the last two chapters revolving around Chris Pronger and James van Riemsdyk. Both are no longer players of the organization through different circumstances. Pronger is in injury-related quasi-retirement, and van Riemsdyk was traded, a fact that the book acknowledges. As a fan of the organization this leaves a somewhat bitter taste behind when reading it, particularly as the end of the book. An additional chapter, with a general overview and a look forward into the future would have been nice.

The book as a whole seems somewhat rushed in order to capitalize on a recent fascination with the history of the franchise in the wake of the 2012 Winter Classic, an HBO documentary about the Broad Street Bullies, and the announcement of the plans for a feature film directed by Rob Zombie dealing with the same subject matter. The last two chapters seem to have survived and been included over more interesting and less bitter options due to deadline pressure.

The writing is technically competent, but one thing that bothered me throughout the book is the overuse of a framing device. Each time the book jumps forward a couple of years in the life of a player to the next important formative experience, the book puts it into the context of the current events of the day, e.g. what there were Olympics, political uprisings, or a certain significant event in pop culture. This leads occasionally to repetition, and also becomes a disruption to the flow of the reader when some pages are almost entirely a footnote, explaining who Brian Boitano or Bill Buckner were.

Overall, the book is a decent time-waster and at least a nice glimpse into the lives of several Flyers heroes of the past. However, it falls woefully short of the potential that lies within the concept, largely in part of executive meddling and/or in the interest of self-censorship. I would also have a hard time figuring out any reason to be interested in this book if I wasn't already a fan of the Flyers.