Bobby Orr: 12 things I learned from Bobby Orr's autobiography, 'Orr: My Story"

5. Modest first contract

AP
Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins crashes to the ice after tripping while scoring the winning goal in sudden death overtime at Boston Garden, May 10, 1970. The Bruins beat the St. Louis Blues four straight games to bring the Stanley Cup to Boston for the first time in 29 years. Blues goalie Glenn Hall is in the nets.

With no fanfare, Orr signed his first professional contract to play junior hockey for the Oshawa Generals, while still only an 8th-grader. Arva Orr, Bobby’s mother, didn’t want him moving away from home, so a contract was negotiated that called for Bobby to travel from home to the Generals’ games, mostly played on weekend within driving distance. The handwritten contract, drafted by scout Wren Blair on Brunswick Motor Hotel stationery, is still in Orr’s possession and represents a kitchen-table era in signing players. Among other stipulations, it called for stuccoing the Orr’s family house, providing his dad with a used car, and making sure Bobby got a new suit. He’d never owned a suit and felt like “the coolest dude in town” when he tried it on.

5 of 12

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.