By Jack Dulmage of the Windsor Star - 2/12/74
I HAD A LETTER RECENTLY from a fellow in London, England, who suggested to me that the reason Bruce Norris was venturing into professional hockey in Europe is to make money.
If that is the case, then presumably he is prepared, to make some with his National Lacrosse League although he has been astute enough this time around to keep it out of his own building where it bombed, along with what was then known as the National Lacrosse Association, in 1968.
Jim Bishop, an executive vice president of the Detroit hockey club, whose duties have long baffled people, including Ted Lindsav, Al Ackerman, Sid Abel and the Windsor Warlocks, has been presented by Norris with a Toronto franchise which will plav in Maple Leaf Gardens.
Harold Ballard, who owns the Gardens and who took a bath by running a team in the defunct 1968 league, is at least as smart as Norris. No more baths. Harold is renting his building to Norris who underwent the experience in 1968 of using his own Olympia Stadium in which to go down the drain with a team that went along for the same ride.
BISHOP, AN OSHAWA SPORTING goods peddler who admits to having recruited the recently departed Ned Harkness, appeared on the Detroit scene in 1968 singing lacrosse hymns, verses for which he has an inexhaustable supply.
An old lacrosse hand at Yale, Norris enjoys a susceptibility to this activity which seems to account for his indulgence of the excursions of Bishop. Harkness had also been addicted to lacrosse at Cornell and Rensselaer.
Bishop has a penchant for starting professional lacrosse leagues faster than Gary Davidson starts football, hockey and basketball leagues, except that Davidson is not an amateur. Davidson’s leagues pay stiff entrance fees to Davidson, and they are still alive, although in some cases not very.
Bishop’s second defunct professional lacrosse league was the 1972 National Lacrosse League, a Canadian toboggan ride that included Windsor Warlocks, who have since come back to earth and rejoined the ranks of semi-pros.
LACROSSE IS A LIVELY. ROUGH summer pastime once professionalized bv hockey players back in days before they were rich, and now played for beer and skittles, commuting expenses and maybe a little handoff under the table to stars by guys who work for a living including college kids between semesters.
Bishop has long been telling people who listen, that lacrosse is going to knock North America on its ear. I dare say he believes it the way evangelists promote river immersion.
Lacrosse people tell me Bishop is an established outfitter of lacrosse teams, sweaters, sticks and such, apart from his altruistic sermons to the unconverted. Which reminds me, wasn’t it Bill DeWitt, the noted baseball entrepreneur, who got his start hustling popcorn and hot dogs at games of the old St. Louis Browns?
At some junctures of the 1968 caper, Bishop was imputing Oshawa juniors at rates that would defy modern interpretation of professionalism. An informant tells me that one player he knows about has been offered $2,500 to play 40 games for Toronto which professionally speaking is $62.50 a game.
JACK CHRISTIE. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the Ontario Lacrosse Association, told Rick Fraser of The Toronto Sun, “In unofficial talks we have been assured that they would not use any of our junior players. They’d be foolish if they did, for they’d be destroying the very foundation of future talent.”
Christie is apparently a convert, perhaps imagining a day when the amateurs can nail the pros for money, the way the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association extracts it from the National Hockey League.
Christie says, “It (the new pro league) will be a great incentive for the kids, and although I feel there will be some hardships in the first couple of years, I believe the pro league will prove most beneficial.’’
Another convert is an old Toronto coaching rival of Bishop, Morley Kells, who will renew the rivalry by coaching Rochester while Bishop coaches Toronto. Kells is executive assistant to Ontario Minister of Environment, James Auld. Kells and Bishop, it seems, have plenty of time left over from worrying about the environment and the Red Wings.
THE OLD 1968 LEAGUE was split into two divisions with Detroit, Peterborough, Toronto and Montreal in the east, and Vancouver, Victoria, New Westminster and Portland in the west.
This new thing is much tighter, a six-team affair in Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, Washington, Syracuse and Rochester, aimed obviously at strictly major markets, and in most cases operating out of big league buildings.
That makes it a different kettle of fish from anything tried before, but it’s the same old game they’re trying to sell.
Norris undoubtedly has a lot of clout when it comes to bargaining for cheap rentals in these particular buildings, so the overhead for starters, is probably within reason.
Ballard, who declined an offer to take another run because of losing the first time around (he took a bath in pro soccer as well), said, “We’ll give them a good enough deal on the rental that it won’t be our fault if they don’t break even.”
I think I’ll answer that letter from London.
