Cryptic Canuck Presents...It's 1973 All Over Again

Cryptic Canuck Presents

It's 1973 All Over Again

By Cryptic Canuck

In 1973, Cryptic Canuck was twelve years old.

Cryptic Canuck lived in a two-channel universe, CBC and CTV. Sometimes, he would watch Radio Canada.

Sports on television was extremely limited. One or two major-league baseball games per week. One or two hockey games per week. A CFL game or two each week. And one NFL game each week.

Without much to watch on television, Cryptic Canuck started to get into reading sports magazines in a big way. Cryptic Canuck was an inveterate reader. He could not get his hands on enough sports information.

This began as a hobby, but soon it became an escape from a world that was difficult for a twelve-year-old to fathom.

The year 1973 was one of the strangest years ever, in the world, and in sports. 

Although 1973 was a year of collective team excellence, it was also a year of little individual excellence.

The Miami Dolphins completed a perfect 17-0 season by defeating the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII, in January, 1973.

Baseball was changing. In the 1972 off-season, the American League adopted the designated hitter. The rule change took effect in the 1973 season. No longer were AL fans subjected to the exploits of weak hitting pitchers.

Frankly, that was about the only thing that Cryptic Canuck truly understood about 1973.

The Montréal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 1972-1973. In an 8-7 Chicago win in Game 5, Hall of Fame goalies Ken Dryden and Tony Esposito were shelled for 15 total goals.

The New York Knicks won the NBA championship in 1972-1973, the most recent title for the Knicks.

The year 1973 was filled with rising geo-political tensions. The Cold War between the USA and the USSR was at its height. Cryptic Canuck remembers watching the evening news on CKSO television. The 6PM news anchor would report a story about how many atomic bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles that each side had built. The twelve-year-old mind of Cryptic Canuck wondered why it was necessary to blow up the world 10 times over when we already had the capability to blow up the world five times over?

Cryptic Canuck was told in no uncertain terms that the constant trips to the drugstore and the corner store to pick up numerous sports magazines was having an impact on the family budget. Cryptic Canuck was told that if he wanted to read sports magazines that he would have to order them through the mail. The post office in Espanola became much busier.

The spring of 1973 witnessed one of the most phenomenal sporting exploits of the twentieth century. Those exploits had a twist. The feats were not accomplished by a male athlete or a female athlete. They were done by another type of athlete. It was the coronation of the finest equine of all time, the legendary Secretariat.

Secretariat won the thoroughbred Triple Crown, setting track records at the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

The Belmont Stakes run was the stuff of legend. Secretariat took the lead in the backstretch, and he ran away from the field. Cryptic Canuck was screaming at the television, because Secretariat won that race by an incredible 31.5 lengths!

In another forum, the Women's Liberation movement took centre stage in 1973. Early in the year, retired tennis great Bobby Riggs boasted that he could beat any woman alive in tennis, even though Riggs was already well into his 50’s.

Riggs boasts sounded credible when he beat Margaret Court in May,1973, and he proceeded to ratchet up his rhetoric.

Billie Jean King was the next tennis player to take up Riggs challenge. King had a fantastic 1973, winning the Wimbledon singles, doubles and mixed doubles.

The match between King and Riggs was scheduled for September, 1973, in the Houston Astrodome. Twelve-year-old Cryptic Canuck wondered why men were playing tennis against women in baseball stadiums on Astroturf?

In the first set, King crushed Riggs with her tennis racket, and in the second set, she put a few volleys up Riggs’ rear end. King was Queen of the Court. She won the Battle of the Sexes in straight sets.

Billie Jean King had achieved on the tennis court what women were demanding, acceptance and national recognition of equality for women.

In baseball, the five-year-old Montréal Expos made their own brand of history. Canadian baseball fans experienced their first pennant race. The Expos, led by outfielder Ken Singleton, and the pitching of Steve Renko, rookie Steve Rogers and ironman reliever Mike Marshall, were improbable contenders in the National League East division. The Expos finished fourth that season, only 3.5 games behind the division champion New York Mets.

The Oakland Athletics, led by the frugal, innovative and progressive ownership of Charlie Finley, proved that team unity was a myth. The beat each other up in the clubhouse, and they defeated all competition on the field, winning the World Series over the Mets.

Later that fall, auto racing legend Jackie Stewart won the last of his Formula One World Championships.

The impressionable mind of Cryptic Canuck was introduced to politics. One day in history class, our teacher, Mr. Shepitka, informed us that there was political controversy in the United States, because of the alleged illegal actions of United States President Richard Nixon and many of his closest advisors.

Later that day, my mother asked Cryptic Canuck what he learned in school? Cryptic Canuck replied that he learned about "Tricky Dicky." This was important knowledge. The Watergate Scandal led to the resignation of President Nixon, and the fallout from the scandal had profound ramifications.

My mother was astounded! There was a discussion between my parents that day wondering what Cryptic Canuck was learning in school?

Mr. Shepitka taught Cryptic Canuck some important lessons that have never been forgotten. Cryptic Canuck discovered that history was not all about what could be read in a book. History was a living, breathing thing with a real existence. He also made me appreciate that a person could live through history without realizing it.

War and regional conflict exploded into focus in the fall of 1973. The Yom Kippur War between Israel and several Arab countries grabbed international headlines. Canada and the United States sided with Israel in the conflict.

The impact was immediate. Saudi Arabia declared an oil embargo that impacted most western countries, including Canada and the United States. Within a few weeks, there was massive television coverage showing enormous lineups of motorists trying to get gas at the gas station. This became known as the 1973 Energy Crisis.

Cryptic Canuck asked my father why there were huge lines of people waiting to line up for gas? My father did not know, except to tell me that gas was a lot more expensive.

Leave it to Cryptic Canuck's paternal grandfather, George, a Romanian immigrant and a wise World War 2 survivor, to explain things. He put it to Cryptic Canuck succinctly. Hia explanation was that, "the world was being run by crazy screwballs."

The most bizarre intersection of sports and politics occurred during the 1973 Intercontinental playoffs leading to the 1974 soccer World Cup between the USSR and Chile.

In September, 1973, Augusto Pinochet led a bloody military coup in Chile removing the democratically elected Salvadore Allende in Chile.

The first match in the USSR in November, 1973 ended in a 0-0 draw. The return match was to be played in Santiago two weeks later. The Russians were extremely concerned for their safety entering Chile. There were calls to play the game in a neutral country, but FIFA refused.

The USSR did not fly to Santiago, claiming that playing in Chile was too dangerous. Chile showed up on the pitch in a deserted stadium. Chile awarded a 1-0 walkover victory, and a berth in the World Cup.

The significance of those events did not hit Cryptic Canuck until 2011, when he travelled to Chile. Our van went by the soccer stadium in Santiago, Cryptic Canuck remembered that the soccer stadium was a place where Chilean dissidents were tortured and murdered by the Pinochet regime.

A superstar emerged on the gridiron. O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills set the NFL rushing record in 1973 with 2,003 yards.

Sports Illustrated devoted their year-end issue to name its Sportsman of the Year. The nominees in 1973 were Jackie Stewart, O.J. Simpson and Secretariat. Jackie Stewart was named the Sportsman of the Year, but Cryptic Canuck was overjoyed to see that his copy of Sports Illustrated proclaimed, "The Sportsman of the Year is a horse."  The majestic Secretariat adorned the cover.

In his twelve-year-old mind, Cryptic Canuck mused that the 1973 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year nominees were a car, a horse and The Juice.

Actually, Billie Jean King should have been named the 1973 Sportsperson of the Year, but the all-male voting panel did not believe that women were actually athletes.

Amidst the darkness, there was a glimmer of light on the local sports scene.

In 1972, an agreement was reached where the former Niagara Falls Flyers OHA franchise was moved to Sudbury to become the Sudbury Wolves, under the ownership of the late Bud Burke. The Sudbury Arena was in its prime in 1972.

The OHA Sudbury Wolves completed their inaugural season in 1973. The Wolves were led by Morris Titanic, Tom Colley, Eric Vail and noted pugilist Randy Holt, who amassed an incredible 294 penalty minutes. The Wolves made the playoffs in their first season in Sudbury.

Fast-forward to 2025, and you could almost swear that it was 1973 all over again, but this time it is even more strange.

Substitute Donald Trump for Richard Nixon.

Substitute worldwide trade gridlock for an oil embargo.

Substitute National Sovereignty for Women’s Liberation.

Substitute any obnoxious male athlete for Bobby Riggs.

Substitute (you name the war) for the Yom Kippur War.

Haiti recently qualified for the 2026 soccer World Cup. They did not play one qualifying game in Haiti due to the ongoing conflict in the country.

Substitute the Toronto Blue Jays for the Montreal Expos.

The Sudbury Wolves have never won a Memorial Cup since they arrived in Sudbury.

This 2025-2026 Wolves team is worse than the team that was inherited from Niagara Falls all those years ago.

Substitute social media and podcasts for news and sports.

We have become a society overrun with information. We consume the information we want, to conform with our point of view, from the source we desire, whenever we want it.

With the progress regarding the dissemination of information, are we better off as a world?

In our crazed desire to consume information continuously, have we lost the ability to reflect critically upon the information provided, to listen to one another, and have we become too exhausted to understand each other?

We seem to have lost the ability to respectfully disagree with each other, and the loss of that ability is placing many societies on the brink of something that could be very tragic.

Cryptic Canuck can hear his paternal grandfather from the grave… "The world is being run by crazy screwballs."

The late John Lennon said it best:

Nobody told me there would be days like these

Nobody told me there would be days like these

Strange days indeed

Most peculiar, mama 

Let us reflect on the current reality. We are living and breathing real history on a daily basis that impacts all of us. The present is too crucial to ignore. We all need to step up to meet history head on.

Cryptic Canuck fervently hopes that we will learn from history so that the future does not become an uglier version of 1973 or 2025.