FORECAST WAS ALWAYS SUNNY FOR SUGARFOOT
A fixture at McMahon Stadium, Stamps legend Ezzrett Anderson will be missed
For the longest of time, if anyone wanted to find Sugarfoot Anderson, all they had to do was head over to the east side of McMahon Stadium.
“He always had a smile on his face, he always wore his Grey Cup rings and he always drew a crowd as guys would migrate from the field because they loved taking to him,” said longtime Stampeders equipment manager George Hopkins, who met Anderson the day he was hired as a ball boy in 1972.
“He always sat there on the sunny side of the field. That was his place.”
It was a metaphor for his life that also spoke to his passion for the football team he used to play for.
A six-foot-four, 210-pound pretty boy with the slickest of hands in his prime, his rounded shoulders, goatee and size 15 feet ambled around McMahon for more than 50 years after his playing days. A Calgary institution. Armed with one of the best laughs and hearts the local sports scene has ever been blessed with, even the most miserable of fellas could have his day turned around by shaking Anderson’s massive mitt and exchanging chuckles.
Anyone who had that pleasure — and there are tens of thousands who will remember it well — were saddened to learn Anderson passed away at age 97 on Wednesday.
A Stampeder receiver from 1949-55 who is now recognized on the club’s Wall of Fame and in the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame, Anderson made his mark in the community long after that as a radio host, a service station owner, a mechanic and a lifelong ambassador for the Stamps, where he also spent many years as a salesman.
“He was the kind of person who had time for everybody,” said longtime Stampeders president Stan Schwartz.
“He loved to share his journey and the players loved to hear it. We could always count on him to represent the organization at any function. He just loved the football club.”
Dave Dickenson said Anderson was one of the first people he recalls meeting when he joined the Stamps as a hotshot quarterback from Montana in 1997.
“You liked him right away because he seemed to enjoy every minute he had with you — that doesn’t happen anymore,” said the Stampeders head coach, who learned plenty from Anderson about the merits of using a football career in Calgary to establish lifelong roots here.
“Him and Herm Harrison were the two guys who could show the U.S. guys that you could stay here and have so much pride in the city and the organization and he wasn’t even from here.”
Ezzrett Anderson grew up in Arkansas, where racism played a prominent role in his life. Yet, he exhibited no bitterness, anger or hate.
Just love, understanding and compassion.
His father went from being a slave sold for $100 to catching for Satchel Paige on a Negro Leagues barnstorming tour.
Blessed with his father’s size, athleticism and genes (his father died at age 102), the high school star on both sides of the ball played two years of football at Kentucky State, where it was well-documented he could throw the ball 80 yards.
As one of the first African-Americans to break the colour barrier in pro football in the mid-1940s, Anderson played for several Los Angeles teams, including the L.A. Dons, named after actor Don Ameche. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and several other high-profile entertainers were also involved in the team, opening the door for Anderson to attend swanky parties with the biggest names of his era.
Everybody loved the man they called Shug.
“Hell, I’ve jumped in between (John) Wayne and (Frank) Sinatra to stop them from fighting at (a Hollywood party)," he once told me.
Such connections led to him gaining his Screen Actors Guild and Screen Extras Guild cards from the early 1950s, which he proudly carried in his wallet well into his 90s. He appeared in 32 movies, including roles in Cecil B. deMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949 with Angela Lansbury) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952 with Charlton Heston), which involved a scrape with a tiger.
Both during and after his stint with the Stamps from 1949 to 1955, Anderson also appeared alongside acting greats like Anthony Quinn, Lee Marvin, Ava Gardner and Gene Hackman, amongst others.
One of his proudest roles was in the original 1949 film The Story of Seabiscuit starring a teenaged Shirley Temple.
"Shirley (Temple) was a beautiful, lovely lady and very smart. She’s not like those divas of today,” he told me 14 years ago when the remake came out.
“When we’d have lunch in the studio, she’d talk politics. I wasn’t interested in any of that stuff, but I’d listen.” He was a great listener. As a trail-blazing athlete, he counted boxer Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson as his friends, the latter with whom he played two years of football alongside in L.A. in the mid-’40s.
While some may have been skeptical when he told tales of their close friendship and how Robinson long debated which sport he’d pursue, Anderson happily provided proof with picture of the two arm-in-arm at his Royalite gas station on 5th Avenue when Robinson came to visit his pal as part of a celebrity dinner.
Honoured by the Stampeders alumni last year, Anderson’s family also had a celebration of his life — a journey unmatched by many, anywhere.
The fact that it wound its way into Calgary was this city’s good fortune.
Asked why he decided to call Calgary home, Anderson’s standard response was simple.
“Nobody ever gave me a reason to leave.” He has left us now. And perhaps the reason is so he can spend even more time looking down on the sunny side of McMahon Stadium, where his laugh, handshake and mere presence always made it just a little bit brighter.
He loved to share his journey and the players loved to hear it. We could always count on him to represent the organization at any function.