WARMINGTON: After MacLean's overdue apology to Grapes, others need to follow suit
Cherry says former co-host apologized for interview commenting on his health, alleged Sportsnet 'exit strategy'
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It was a sorry excuse for how to treat a longtime friend and partner, one that deserved a big “I’m sorry” from one broadcast star to an even bigger legend.
That mea culpa had to happen and now it has.
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WARMINGTON: After MacLean's overdue apology to Grapes, others need to follow suit Back to video
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Ron MacLean has apologized, Don Cherry said, for his media interview suggesting his former partner was in a hospital in Boston in 2019 and that the illness led to Grapes planning an exit strategy from Coach’s Corner.
This was confirmed by Cherry himself.
“Ron came by the house Sunday and he said he was sorry,” said Grapes of his partner of more than 35 years on Hockey Night in Canada before the infamous “Poppygate scandal” that got Cherry fired from Rogers Sportsnet in 2019.
Cherry was owed the apology. He is owed one from MacLean for what he did back then — essentially saving his own hide and throwing his partner to the wolves. But his comments in the Kingston Whig Standard, which ran in other Postmedia papers, were unconscionable.
MacLean told award-winning sports scribe Gare Joyce, “I think that pneumonia scare was it. The pneumonia said to Don, ‘It’s time.’ He had to think, ‘Why is this grind suddenly so hard?’ He was ready to have an exit strategy. From that moment on, he was plotting a way out. The first opportunity (to end Coach’s Corner) was going to be a happy one for Don. And I thought he did it well.”
The story also said Cherry was in a Boston hospital as a result of the pneumonia.
Cherry said he was not in a Boston hospital, did not miss time on his show that season or the beginning of the next and did not orchestrate his exit. In fact, he told the Toronto Sunhe feels management was looking for a way to move him along.
Whether the information was correct or not, MacLean should not have talked about Cherry’s health nor made the suggestion his departure was the result of an elaborate “exit strategy.”
Cherry said he was “disappointed” MacLean would do that and that he wasn’t welcome at his home any more.
But MacLean went to his home. How that meeting went is unknown. MacLean has not returned a request for a comment and other than confirming it happened, Cherry declined to say much other than he “ignored” what he was told.
Cherry told me Saturday he didn’t have any feelings either way for MacLean anymore and it felt like that did not change after the apology. It seems there may still be some work to do by MacLean to repair this relationship.
In a letter to the editor Monday in the Toronto Sun, Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Orr wrote, “I only have one thing to say to you Ron MacLean. Shame on you.”
While MacLean has not spoken publicly, he is quoted in a Toronto Star column saying, “I was completely out of line to engage in the conjecture and to share details of Don’s health scare in 2019. I am deeply sorry. I’ve apologized to Don.”
It’s a start, but it’s time to fix the damage done to Cherry by the hockey, broadcasting and political hierarchy.
Cherry should be bestowed every hockey accolade there is and the Order of Canada, too — for his hockey contributions, but also for his avid support of Canada, its military, police, first responders and nationalism. There is nobody more about Canadian hockey or Canadian patriotism than him.
On top of that, he should be reinstated by Sportsnet so he can retire with the honour he deserves after six decades as a player, coach and broadcaster. No one is saying Cherry should go back on air, but they could do it symbolically. They could do a special segment with Cherry and MacLean one last time on his porch, as I have done numerous times since they threw him under the bus.
It’s not hard. It’s the right thing do to.
They need to do something. He’s 91 and Cherry is an iconic, historic and beloved national treasure. Even those he has criticized have said that. He’s never been racist, misogynistic or discriminatory. He just tells it like it is — and that is what made him who he was, why he was so good and the reason his show was appointment viewing for so long.
Nobody wanted to miss Coach’s Corner. And sorry, Ron, it was not because of you. It was because of Cherry. He was the star of the show.
When MacLean was fired back in the day, it was Grapes who worked behind the scenes — and with me on some of it — to get him back on the air. MacLean has not been a good friend to Cherry in return.
However, his effort to apologize for this and to try to make things right is appropriate and noted. Now it’s time for everybody else who has cast away and cancelled this legend to do the same and make amends on the mistreatment of a great Canadian while they still can.
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