Have book, can’t travel
Mark Hebscher’s book tour takes an unscheduled COVID-19 break
The spring book tour was going to be great. Various stops in Canada and down the eastern seaboard of the United States would give him a chance to move some product and share a little-known story that deserves to be heard.
To make sure he wouldn’t run short, Mark Hebscher ordered hundreds of copies from the publisher at his own expense, which arrived by the caseload. Just as everything was being shut down.
“Literally the day I got them,” the longtime sportscaster says, “I’m getting notes (from organizers) like, ‘Looks like we won’t be able to get this in.’ ”
He chuckles as he talks about it. What else is he going to do?
It was not long after Hebscher had lost his job with CHCH that his then 16-year-old son was working his way through a Canadian trivia book and threw a Trebekian curveball at him. Who was the first Canadian to win an Olympic medal?
Hebscher knows his stuff. He’s been in sports forever. So this was tough but not that tough.
He fired back his answer wrapped in a healthy dose of self-confidence. You can’t trick your old man.
“Nope,” his boy said. “George Orton.”
Hebscher had never heard the name. This shocked him. He immediately went to the computer and started searching and found not very much at all. Intrigued, he started digging. Online and in person. Here’s what he found.
As a three-year-old in the mid-1870s, George Washington Orton had fallen out of a tree at his Strathroy home and been so badly injured doctors said he’d never walk again. Worse, one of his arms was basically dead. But, at 10, he started walking. Nine years later, as a student at the University of Toronto, he set a North American record in the mile run.
This should have been the start of one of the most-publicized athletes in Canadian sports history. But, when he left to go to the University of Pennsylvania, the Canadian media all but forgot about him. As their backs were turned, he introduced hockey to the Philadelphia area, helped launch the world-famous Penn Relays, earned a master’s degree and PhD, learned nine languages that he spoke fluently and came up with the idea of putting numbers on football jerseys long before it was done in baseball.
Then, at the 1900 Olympics in Paris, the renaissance man won the steeplechase before claiming bronze in the 400-metre hurdles 45 minutes later.
It’s a remarkable tale that had been lost in the mists. Little information was out there. What was, wasn’t always accurate. To the point that Hebscher discovered a photo of Orton in one Hall of Fame that wasn’t even of him but of his brother.
“For 100 years, they had the wrong photo of this guy,” he says.
With his background in TV, Hebscher immediately set his mind on doing a documentary about Orton. When that fell apart, someone told him he should turn everything he’d found into a book. That led to “The Greatest Athlete (you’ve never heard of).” And eventually, the ill-fated Spring of 2020 book tour. He’s now trying to figure out what to do with the cases and cases of books sitting in his home. The irony of it all being that the time people have the most time to read is the time it’s hardest to get books into their hands.
He’s been telling the story of Orton whenever he can and posting stuff all over social media making clear that autographed copies were available. One guy sent him a message saying he’d take a couple. To which Hebscher replied they’d be on their way the second payment arrived.
“Oh,” the person replied. “I thought it was for free.”
Sigh. He’s not panicking, though. Next year is an Olympic year. That’ll help. People always care more about track and field when it’s in front of their eyeballs. Besides, these aren’t perishables. If they don’t move now, they’ll go someday. George Orton will eventually reclaim his place in this country’s sporting history with a push from Hebscher.
And the author will eventually reclaim some of the room in his house currently being taken up by full boxes of books.