Ted Reeve

Edward Henry Reeve (January 6, 1902 – August 27, 1983) was a multi-sport Canadian athlete and sports journalist.

He was on two Grey Cup winning teams as a football player, a Mann Cup championship as a lacrosse player and three Yates Cup championships as a coach for Queen's University.

He is a member of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame.

As an athlete Reeve was noted for determination and inspiring team-mates.

He acquired the nickname "The Moaner" in later years after one of the characters in his newspaper columns, Moaner McGruffery.

Ted Reeve was one of Canada's best lacrosse players.

During the Grey Cup final in the 1920s his Balmy Beach team was leading by a narrow margin late in the game when the opposition was preparing to kick the winning field goal.

He had been forced to sit out most of the game due to a serious injury.

Despite being injured he went on the field and blocked the kick.

In his Toronto Telegram newspaper column the next day he wrote:

"When I was young and in my prime I used to block kicks all the time. But now that I am old and grey I only block them once a day."

After retiring as an athlete he both wrote a newspaper sports column and coached football.

He had been writing a weekly lacrosse column as early as 1921 when he was with the St. Aidan's junior rugby team in the Toronto Beaches.

He wrote for the Toronto Telegram from 1923 to 1971.

He first played for the Toronto Argonauts before winning the Ontario Rugby Football Union championship five times and then the Grey Cup twice in 1927 and 1930, all with the Balmy Beach club in Toronto.

Reeve played middle wing position with the Toronto Balmy Beach rugby team who were at the time one of the most powerful teams in Canada.

The often injured Reeve was admired for his toughness.

In 1927 the Telegram decided to discontinue his lacrosse columns.

While he was recovering from a broken leg, Reeve began to freelance his stories and sold a couple to a US publication.

He received an offer to join the Telegram full-time because editor C.O. Knowles liked his style.

He was told, "have a crack at it. If you can't do it we'll let you out."

His column Sporting Extras became known for its humour and was considered one of the finest sports features in Canada.

He won the Mann Cup with the Oshawa Generals in 1929 and the Brampton Excelsiors in 1930.

He turned pro with Montreal in 1931 in what was a new lacrosse league, but the league folded after one season.

After serving in World War I, he attempted to break into professional football with the Canadian Rugby Union, precursor of the Canadian Football League.

He was coach of the Queen's University football team from 1933 to 1938 where they won three Yates Cup championships the most famous of which was the 1934 victory by the 'Fearless Fourteen', a squad that dressed only 14 players all year owing to academic suspensions which Reeve refused to substitute for.

He then coached the Montreal Royals in 1939, the Toronto Balmy Beach in 1945 and 1946 and then the Toronto Beaches-Indians in 1948.

He received a National Newspaper Award for excellence in 1961.

Reeve had the reputation for living life to the full and his friends each had their own favourite "Ted Reeve" story they would tell.

One such story is from the time he was covering the Stanley Cup playoffs involving the New York Rangers.

The Toronto Telegram editors were finding that as the hockey series continued, the columns he was submitting from New York were becoming progressively shorter and shorter.

They only later discovered that after each game he and the coach of the Rangers, Frank Boucher, would meet at Hogan's Irish House, a drinking establishment that apparently never closed.

Eventually the paper's editors received his shortest column of all, consisting of just seven words: "They got me, boys, they got me."

On another occasion, Reeve overheard the Telegram's sports editor complaining "that fellow Bassett", whom Reeve had never heard of before at the paper, was always asking them to get tickets for hockey games.

That night in the VIP box at Maple Leaf Gardens, Reeve was introduced to Bassett and used the opportunity to deliver the reprimand, "You're the guy downstairs who's always bellyaching for tickets. Every time you get a couple from us, you're cheating some office boy out of them."

The next day, Reeve discovered that John Bassett was about to be the new owner of The Telegram.

When the Telegram went out of business in 1971, after writing for the paper for 50 years, he said "When I joined the paper they said it would be a full-time job."

He then wrote for the Toronto Sun which was launched only two days after the closure of the Telegram.

When staff at the Sun saw him arrive they stood on their feet and applauded, as his presence gave the fledgling paper legitimacy.

Reeve once lamented the trend of sports writers creating articles which simply consisted of nothing more than the coach's opinions on the game.