Wayne Gretzky's Ghost Read online

  Philadelphia had been surly to the Central Red Army team since it had arrived. At practice the morning before, the Soviets had complained they were being held up by a late ice flood, and a fat man with a cigar had offered only his sympathetic “Tough shitsky.” It had become quickly obvious that this was to be no mere game, that—to the Americans, anyway—hockey is hell, too.

  As expected, it was Clarke who set the standard in the match, attacking from the moment he lost the opening faceoff, and his actions were backed by a continuous barrage of various salvos named Moose Dupont, Mad Dog Kelly, Bird Saleski, Hammer Schultz and Ed Van Impe. The team had obviously taken to heart the typed message coach Fred Shero had tacked to the dressing room bulletin board, a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly.”

  Comparing the Flyers’ 4–1 victory of January 11 to the Montreal contest on New Year’s Eve (a 3–3 tie) is like comparing a skin flick to a Bergman film, but Philadelphia still managed to demonstrate some skills other than merely mugging, and that Fred Shero may well be the greatest strategist the game has seen. After the depressing first period, the Flyers won by hockey skills alone, but it was still not what local TV announcer Gene Hart told his Philadelphia audience: “This has been an artistic success. This has not been the Broad Street Bullies.”

  And long after it was all over, the man who had worked hardest for the victory still stood, naked and trembling, pinned to his dressing cubbyhole by a swarm of glad-handers, journalists and photographers. Most of the other Flyers had showered, dressed and were either drinking beer or gone, but Bobby Clarke had not showered, nor even put his front teeth back in. Someone had given him a towel and he had hitched it around his waist, though it might better have been used to soak up the blood that oozed from an accidental ten-stitch cut above the hairline and down over starchy skin that looked sick, if not actually dead, when compared with the robust colour of Clarke’s friend Reg Leach, whom the photographers had pushed forward a few minutes earlier with their communal yell, “Kiss him, Bobby! Kiss Reggie on the cheek! C’mon boys, we need a shot!” Leach had laughed, but Clarke kept looking down, as he had all through the interviews, peeking up only when a photographer shouted. He was, as he always is in the dressing room, courteous and charmingly shy, which is why the media love him. He will always talk, and seldom gets impatient, while he’s in the dressing room.

  Getting words out of Bobby Clarke is not difficult—providing the words have a proper distance to them, meaning they relate to the game finished or the game coming, or to a teammate, an opponent, a coach. Words that hit at home do not sit as well.

  In any manner possible, Clarke will avoid letting people into his personal world, as this magazine has twice discovered. The first time we pursued him, about three years ago, a magazine writer flew down to Philadelphia only to have Clarke refuse to grant an interview, though a Flyers public relations man had promised one. So this time we checked first with Clarke personally, and he approved, but three days after the reporter’s arrival Clarke was still reneging on his promise, arguing that no one had told him about it—though he himself had approved it just the week before. “You’re not being fair!” he virtually screamed when asked if it was possible to talk before the departure of my already booked flight back to Canada. Finally, on the fourth day of the pursuit, he did agree, but only after much coaxing—and also after the flight had left.

  The Bobby Clarke who answers questions so readily about his games and the Bobby Clarke who reluctantly discusses himself are actually one and the same: the Jekyll and Hyde of pro hockey. He is a study in contrasts—a choirboy in white cassock who sneaks nips from the sacramental wine. He exudes innocence with boyish, Donny Osmond charm, but beneath the angel hair and baby fat coils one of the chippiest, dirtiest hockey players in the history of the game—a brat who is very possibly the best.

  Clarke is a rarity in the self-centred world of professional hockey: someone who will not talk about himself or his accomplishments, a star who never brags. It is a charming mannerism, one usually taken as his humility, and he is revered as a modest player in an era when modesty often seems as popular as brush-cuts. However, modesty may not be a fair interpretation of Clarke’s reluctance to talk about himself. Could it not also be a fear of opening up, a dread of coming to terms publicly with what a teenage crisis drove Bobby Clarke to do?

  When the magazine set out to learn more about Clarke, it was to profile him as hockey’s most valuable player (now that Bobby Orr is hobbled and Phil Esposito is fading) and not as hockey’s well-known diabetic who made good. But the more we got to know about him—and to not know about him—the clearer it became that everything he is today is rooted in an incident that took place on May 24, 1965, when he was sitting in the family living room in Flin Flon, Manitoba, and realized that his mother’s image kept going blurry. They rushed him to the hospital and he stayed a month and a half, completely missing his grade nine exams. (The school put him ahead anyway, but he left for good the next year.) His problem was diabetes, severe enough that even today a special diet is not enough, and he must give himself an insulin injection every morning.

  The year they discovered the diabetes, the doctors advised him that if he intended to stick with hockey he should switch to goal, but he wouldn’t listen, and that’s where who he is today began. Instead, he charged into junior hockey as if he were driven by another force, and soon passed other local players who were far more gifted but much less dedicated. He took his average talents and stretched them until he was judged one of the finest players in the entire Western Canada junior league, and though he had proved there was no need for him to become a goaltender, he was not yet satisfied. His family would sometimes hold meetings with him and tell him things might be fine now, but what about later—but he wasn’t listening then, either. He had changed into what he is today.

  “He just shut up about it when he was about sixteen,” his mother says. “I don’t think he ever blamed us, but he must have wondered ‘Why me? Why am I going to be different?’ We’d go and get him from the hospital and he’d want to walk back alone, and think. He never said a word about it, just left things like diet and medicine up to us. We don’t talk much about it even now.”

  “I’ve had it for ten or eleven years, so it’s a part of life,” says Clarke, now twenty-six. “But when I first came up, all anybody wanted to talk about was the diabetes, so I just stopped giving interviews about it. When I first got it, it made me feel different from the other kids, and there was a lot of insecurity that went with it.”

  The insecurity wasn’t helped much when Clarke became the seventeenth choice in the 1969 amateur draft. He’d already proved himself a more capable player than a dozen or more of those selected before him—the Flyers’ first pick, Bob Currier, never made it to the NHL—but the teams were shying away from him because of the diabetes.

  “What really bothered me was that hockey scouts were making themselves medical experts by saying I couldn’t last,” Clarke says. “But the Flyers at least invested in a phone call to their doctor who said sure, I’d be able to play.”

  It gave him another point to prove, and he set about it with such intensity that within a few years he was indisputably acclaimed the best defensive player in hockey. (Somewhat ironically, at mid-season this year the defensive master was leading the league in offence as well.) He is, as the clichés about him go, one who never quits trying, a player so determined to win that he will do absolutely anything to accomplish it—and often with disturbing results. (“Professionals are paid to win, not play” is the way he words it.)

  In 1972, he was first given national attention as a surprise addition to Team Canada. Coach Harry Sinden had selected all the best centres in hockey—the Espositos and Mikitas—and had wanted to add Walt Tkaczuk of the New York Rangers, as a possible insurance centre. Tkaczuk, however, had prior commitments to his hockey school, and Sinden’s choice came d
own to either Clarke or Dave Keon of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and he selected Clarke. Playing far above what was expected of him, Clarke contributed greatly to the Team Canada victory by eliminating the top Soviet threat, Valeri Kharlamov, when he disabled Kharlamov with a well-aimed chop to the ankles. Clarke was accused of, and did not deny, hurting the Soviet star deliberately, and quickly became the ultimate anti-hero in the USSR. “He jabbed me and I chased him,” says Clarke of the incident, “but I wasn’t swinging to break his leg. If I was swinging to hurt him, I’d have swung at his head.”

  Last year, Clarke swung again to deliberately hurt someone, and, ironically, it was at an old friend, Rod Seiling of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who had been Clarke’s roommate with Team Canada. During a game in Toronto, Clarke speared Seiling—considered to be the cruellest of all hockey tactics, as it involves the chance of puncturing a spleen or kidney with the blade of the hockey stick—and when Seiling went down, Clarke jumped on him and pounded Seiling’s face bloody.

  “That’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever done in my career,” he says now. “I was just fired up and I was frustrated. I said the first guy that comes around I’m going to get, and it happened to be him. That was definitely my low point.”

  And often, it is not his stick but his mouth that brings on the trouble. A year ago he called publicly for NHL president Clarence Campbell to step down, claiming he was too old to handle the job. Clarke was furious about Campbell’s suspension of two of his teammates for an incident during a game; he claims now he spoke without thinking, and wrote to Campbell later to apologize. He also apologized to Rod Seiling by phone the day after the spearing episode, and in Philadelphia after the game he was again apologizing, this time for referring to the Soviets as “sons of bitches.”

  “I didn’t mean I hate them as individual players. I just hate all the junk that goes with it. On Friday they showed up a half-hour late for lunch. They also said our presents weren’t good enough. Why should we give everything to them when they don’t appreciate it anyway? They smile and they’re friendly but really they’re crapping all over us. It seems like we’ve got to always kiss the Russians’ asses, but I don’t believe in all that. They should show us a little respect when they’re here. When we were there, we did as they said.”

  All this nastiness, of course, is in direct contrast to the image the Philadelphia Flyers would like you to believe in, as they so religiously do. During his seven seasons in the NHL, Clarke has become something of a travelling media event, one who comes wrapped in his own mythology. There were early stories that he suffered diabetes so badly he had to inject himself with insulin between periods. There was a story told of how, during a team meeting before the playoffs, a veteran Flyer had raised the question of fees being paid for work done around the city for various groups. Clarke had reportedly risen, thrown a $100 bill at the man and then asked those present if they could now get on with the serious business. And there are the many stories of how he is so often available for banquets and such, free of charge.

  None of these stories is fully true. Clarke has spoken only once at a banquet, and then for a friend, and he considered himself such a failure at it that he will not likely ever try again. When he does give his time freely, it is to such events as celebrity golf tournaments, where he doesn’t have to speak.

  And yet, there are other sides to his image. When Flyer backup goaltender Bob Taylor and his wife lost a baby, Clarke was there with money to help, though Taylor hardly needed the money; and whenever any player has need of a car, one of Clarke’s is sure to be available. Coach Fred Shero figures he gets about $1,000 a year from Clarke; this year he got a purebred Siberian husky. (“You treat us like dogs, so you might as well have one,” Clarke said when he handed over the present.)

  There is also the matter of his salary. Clarke, unlike most other hockey players, has no agent—he conducts all his own business. When his first Flyers contract ran out, he agreed to another with owner Ed Snider (for a rumoured $120,000 a year) and they shook hands on it. Later, before Clarke had actually signed the contract and was therefore under no legal obligation to the Flyers, the newly established Philadelphia Blazers of the World Hockey Association came along with a first offer of $1 million over five years. But Clarke honoured his handshake. Only recently, he renegotiated his contract himself, and it is now set up to pay him a certain amount over a great many years, virtually a lifetime contract.

  So there are, obviously, honourable actions to consider in trying to understand Bobby Clarke. And to hear his teammates say it, you would think Clarke is nothing less than a man who fully deserves his disciples. “He’s just the best captain around,” says Reggie Leach, Clarke’s best friend from the days when they played junior hockey together. “Yes-men are a dime a dozen,” says Fred Shero of his team leader. “Clarke is the most valuable player I’ve ever seen in sports.”

  With such devotion, Clarke can well afford to be a fighter, though he’s hardly tough: “I’m like a rat. I’ll fight when I’m trapped. But I can’t fight to begin with. I don’t like guys bouncing punches off my head, so I’ll fight if I have to. I’ve had a few draws. If I can grab his arms and hold on, I’ll call it a tie.”

  He knows only too well he’ll never lose badly, for Schultz, Kelly or some other Flyer will be there. “If he was at the bottom of a fight I’d jump in, even if it meant getting kicked out of the game,” says Leach. “I wouldn’t think twice about it.”

  And Clarke has used this moral support to prove his point until no further proof is needed. Though he has never shown any great natural talent, he has won the Hart Trophy twice as the league’s most valuable player, is now a perennial all-star centre, and last year was named Canadian male athlete of the year as well as the 1975 winner of the Lou Marsh Trophy, given annually to Canada’s outstanding athlete (when they phoned to inform him, Clarke hadn’t a clue as to what the trophy was about).

  Materially, he, his wife, Sandy (whom he began going with in Flin Flon when he was fifteen), and their two children are set for life. He is building a new home near Philadelphia, drives a Mercedes free (as a gift from Flyer owner Snider), a half-ton truck (thanks to a promotion deal with a garage), and has endorsements that include Sherwood sticks, Bauer skates and a Philadelphia clothing store that advertises “Mr. Mean Becomes Mr. Clean—Bobby Clarke in Jack Lang Clothes.”

  With that security, it’s possible to understand why a player as celebrated as Clarke has already moved to pave his exit from hockey. Last year he went to his old Flin Flon junior coach, Pat Ginnell, who now owns the Victoria Cougars, another junior club, and he asked Ginnell if he would like him as a coach when the time comes. Right now, Clarke places that date around 1979, which would give him ten full seasons in the NHL. He may stay longer, he says, if he is still playing as well and still enjoying it. But assuming he does play only the three seasons more, they are likely to be seasons in which he is at the peak of his career.

  He will leave then, or shortly after, because he has to. There will be no hanging around for Bobby Clarke. There will be no feeling sorry for him in his fading years. He was fed up with pity years ago.

  Bobby Clarke retired as a Flyer in 1983–84, following a season in which he scored 17 goals and had 43 assists—a good enough season to justify another in most players’ minds. But not in Clarke’s. He left having scored 1,210 points in 1,144 games. He won the Hart Trophy three times as league MVP, the Selke as the league’s top checker and two Stanley Cups. He served as Philadelphia’s general manager for more than two decades but never won another Cup. He is today a senior vice-president with the franchise.

  SKATING TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER: BORJE SALMING

  (The Canadian, 1976)

  Enrico Ferorelli’s perfect moustache is twitching. Looking lost in soft suedes and telephoto lenses, he is pacing the corridor outside the Toronto Maple Leafs’ dressing room, three fingers of his right hand anxiously rummaging through his kiss-curls. No one told him that they play only three
periods in hockey, not four, and he was counting on finally catching Borje Salming in the fourth. But the game is over and he has no picture, and Enrico blows quickly through his nostrils: What can go wrong next?

  Sports Illustrated wanted a Ferorelli portrait, not just any shot, and they flew in the freelance fashion photographer from New York to capture Salming as he’d never been caught before. First there was the morning practice: Salming refused to pose. Then there was Enrico’s idea that they go to Salming’s home: Salming refused. Salming simply wouldn’t pose; he told Enrico to grab shots of him during the pre-game warm-up, so Enrico came and set up his lights, but every time he yelled out for Salming’s attention, Salming deliberately turned away, and all too quickly the warm-up was over. Enrico tried during the game, tried his best, but never having seen a hockey game before, he kept setting up at the wrong end of the ice.

  “I’ve never had to take this kind of crap,” Enrico was saying when he realized he wasn’t about to be let into the dressing room afterwards, either. “Not even from Sophia Loren!”

  It is noon on Church Street: dark enough for headlights, overcast and pouring. It is September 22 and summer is officially due to end in four hours and forty-eight minutes, making this day a perfect rear end for a failed season. Inge Hammarstrom, the Leafs’ other Swede, the collar of his ecru jacket drawn tight about his ears, emerges from the heat of the Maple Leaf open kitchen where he has downed two full courses of boiled chicken and has grown increasingly impatient with this writer who asks more questions about Hammarstrom’s friend, Borje Salming, than about Hammarstrom himself. He would like to get away, but for the moment the weather has forced him to stand sheltered in the doorway, and when he speaks, his voice, already soft as fall milkweed, is barely audible above the frying sound the tires make in the rain.