Rob Vanstone and Rod Pedersen discuss their Rider Grey Cup books
Rob Vanstone and Rod Pedersen discuss their Rider Grey Cup books
The Saskatchewan Roughriders won the Grey Cup in 1966, 1989 and 2007. Thanks to two local sports-media personalities, all three of those victories are documented in books that are informative and fun to read.
Rob Vanstone, the sports editor of the Leader-Post, has written two Rider Grey Cup books: West Riders Best — 1966: Before, Then & After and The Greatest Grey Cup Ever — 1989: Before, Then & After. Rod Pedersen, the voice of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, is the author of Green Magic: Canada’s Team Wins The 2007 Grey Cup.
Vanstone and Pedersen chatted with Inside Green about their efforts to capture the essence of Saskatchewan’s Grey Cup victories in book form. An excerpt of Green Magic appears on page AA10, and excerpts
of West Riders Best and The Greatest Grey Cup Ever can be found on page AA11.
1. What was the process behind you writing a book/two books about the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ Grey Cup victories?
Vanstone: The ’66 thing didn’t even start out as a book; it started out as a newspaper series commemorating the 40th anniversary of the team that ran over a week in 2006. The team had a big reunion that year. It just kind of morphed into something bigger than I ever imagined — something more rewarding.
Really early in the interviewing process — as much time and space is consumed by a five-part series that got huge play — I realized there’s way more to this story, just based on some of the early interviews I did. It got me thinking, “I wonder if there’s a book here?” After about four or five interviews, I started doing longer interviews, thinking, “There may be more here than a newspaper series can accommodate, so let’s get all this on the record. Let’s approach this like I’m doing a book just in case one emanates from all of this.” The newspaper series ran, and as I kept on working on it, I just fell in love with the idea of doing a book. I was fortunate that I was able to be aligned with Dan Marce of PrintWest. Dan worked with the Plaza of Honor dinner for a number of years and was on the Rider board and was so closely aligned with the Rider organization. He was a like-minded individual as far as wanting to get the story out. I had some people tell me, “You’ll never get that published. Who wants to read about a team that’s 40 years old?” Dan had a belief in the project that enabled it to go forward. Looking back, I marvel at the fact that it became this dream project for me. It’s the most fun I’ve had writing anything in my life.
As we were putting together the finishing touches on ’66, Dan Marce was in the newsroom one day and he said, “What’s next?” I said, “How about ’89?” He said, “Od,” and we shook hands. That was the extent we ever had to negotiate. His handshake was absolute gold. It was just a logical off-shoot of ’66.
Pedersen: Writing a book was a bucket list thing for me that I had wanted to do my whole life but I had no idea ever what it was going to be about. Out of the blue, Bob roung’s towner of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats] company, Lulu Publishing, called me and said, “Listen, we would like to commission you to write a book on the 2007 Grey Cup. rou come up with the title, you write the book and we’ll handle all the rest.” Lulu was creating a stable of CFL books. A book on Angelo Mosca was one. They wanted the story of the Riders from 2007 to be part of their collection of books. That was about June 15 of 2008, and they told me I had to have the manuscript done by Aug. 15, 2008, so they literally gave me two months to write the book — which was 50,000 words — if you can believe that. Thank God I had my blog. I basically went through my blog day by day throughout that season and just wrote
a story about it, because it was very hard to get the Riders to talk about the previous year, because they were into a new season and they didn’t want to look back. I had all the quotes, all the stats, all the game stories right on my own website, and I wove that into a book and I got it done by their deadline.
2. After writing the book(s), what is the biggest thing that struck you about the team(s) you were writing about?
Vanstone: The thing that struck me about the ’66 team was how close it was and everybody talked about that. There were only 32 players on the roster and it was mandatory that you went to the team party after the game, win or lose. rou could leave after 10 minutes if you wanted to, but you had to be there. That’s what really resonated with me, that and the fact that it was the first time it had ever happened — 56 years into the inception of the franchise, they win a Grey Cup. Just a massive explosion [laughs]. I think there was somewhat the same theme with ’89. In ’66, they’d gone 56 years without winning a Grey Cup, and, in ’89, a lot of those guys were part of a Rider team that’d gone 11 years without getting into the playoffs and had been in a situation in ’87 where the team almost folded. Players like Ray Elgaard and Roger Aldag took significant pay cuts just to keep the franchise alive. If there’s a common thread to the two stories, it’s the struggles the franchise overcame.
Pedersen: It was a really interesting story with Eric Tillman and dent Austin coming in. The return of dent, this kind of rag-tag team that no one thought much of that was made up of Winnipeg Blue Bomber, Ottawa Renegade and Hamilton Ti-Cat cast-offs, and they come together to win a Grey Cup. It’s an unbelievable story. It really is. It was a lot of fun to write that book.
I visited with dent Austin this season and I gave him a copy of the book, because he wrote the foreword and, when the book came out, I had shipped him a book down to [Mississippi] but for whatever reason he never got it. So anyways, I signed it to dent and gave it to him here when the Hamilton Tiger-Cats were in Regina, and you couldn’t believe the look on his face. He was so excited to get that book. He said he was going to read it that night. That’s the beautiful thing about that book. rou can pull it off the shelf, read it, and feel all warm and fuzzy like you did back in 2007.
3. Fans can read about all of the Roughriders Grey Cup victories in books. Do you think many sports franchises could boast a similar claim?
Vanstone: I’ve always laughed at it. Edmonton won two more Grey Cups in succession than the Riders have won in 102
years. If I had gone to the publisher and said, “I’d like to write a book about an Eskimos Grey Cup victory,” somebody would have absolutely doubled over and laughed at me. “Which one? They won five in a row.” The one that makes me laugh is — it might make some people cry — and this is in the ’89 book, there used to be a linebacker in the CFL named Mark dosmos and he played in four Grey Cups: 1970 with Montreal, ’72 with Hamilton, ’73 with Ottawa and ’76 with Ottawa, and he wore the same pair of cleats in all four of those games. It was he who received the Grey Cup after they beat Saskatchewan in 1976 — he was a team captain. Mark dosmos, by wearing the same pair of cleats in four Grey Cups, his cleats have one more Grey Cup than the Riders in their history. It absolutely boggles the mind, but if there is a silver lining to the fact that the Roughriders win so infrequently, it’s that those years become singular. rou don’t have to say anything else to a Rider fan except ’66, ’89, 2007. Because of that, they’re special. rou can write a book about a season for a team and celebrate the championship and the people. I don’t think you could do that in a lot of places, given the support that this team receives. It’s a special marketplace. rou go to a bookstore in the States and see how many books there are written about the New rork rankees, who have won 27 world
championships. It’s explored from every different angle. There are places where you could certainly document championship seasons. I’m not sure they mean more anywhere than here. I don’t think it’s anywhere close.
Pedersen: It says a lot, doesn’t it? This doesn’t happen everywhere. I’m honoured to have been one of the guys to write one of those books. I was just telling somebody the other day that Grey Cup championships are like your children. rou love them all; you don’t love one more than the other; you love them for different reasons. I’m just thrilled to have been able to have the opportunity to tell that story for Rider fans.
4. If the Riders win the Grey Cup this year, who gets the book rights?
Vanstone: [Laughs] What would we have done in 2009? I’ll give that one to Rod. I owe a lot of time to my wife, Chryssoula, especially after the ’66 one. That was three years where we basically put any kind of personal life on hold to get that thing done. I wrote a lot of it in Tulum, Mexico. I packed my carry-on with files, my wife packed her carry-on with files, and we took a three-foothigh pile of files down to Mexico so I could work on the book. The sacrifices my wife made to get the thing written — her name should be on the cover along with mine.
Pedersen: I’ve started working on it right now. rou can tell [Rob] that.