Pickle Barrel
“WE HAVE incredible talent here in
Canada,” says Dave Hodge, across a
desk at TSN. The elder statesman
of sports broadcasting looks elegant
in his dark blue suit, but his
normally stoic expression breaks as
he lists the roster of his favourite
performers. At 62, Hodge has spent
four decades as a Canadian
sportscaster, as the voice of
reasoned, intelligent sports
journalism from behind the iconic
desk at Hockey Night in Canada and,
now, at TSN. But if you think you
can call this one, guess again.
Because he’s not talking about
Gretzky, Lemieux, and Crosby.
He’s talking rock stars.
Hodge has a Gemini Award for Best Sportscaster and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Sports Media Canada. He’s been called “the consummate broadcaster” and “the standard of our industry” by peers. He doesn’t wear flamboyant suits; he’s thoughtful, humble and eloquent both on and off camera. And in addition to an encyclopedic knowledge of sports, he is a devoted fan of rock ’n’ roll.
“Yeah, there isn’t a sports figure that begins to get me excited,” says Hodge. But besides introducing every TSN hockey game, he’s introduced local talents, like Kathleen Edwards, Sarah Harmer and Justin Rutledge, at their live shows. “That’s excitement,” he says.
I’ll admit it: When tipped off to ask Hodge about music, I made an understandable, if erroneous assumption. Jazz, I thought, or maybe Dylan, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. So when he answers my initial query with the challenge: “Name it. You tell me what you’re listening to, and I’ve probably heard of it,” I was, pardon the sports metaphor, caught off my game.
“People are surprised,” he admits. “First of all, I’m too old to be into that stuff, apparently. And you’ve got to know about it, and then you’ve got to like it, and then you’ve got to be willing to participate in it.”
Hodge certainly does participate. His collection of CDs numbers in the thousands. “I hesitate to tell you exactly how many because it makes me sound freakish,” he confesses.
And he goes out to clubs to hear live shows about once a week.
“For most of my life, I wouldn’t go to clubs because I didn’t want the hassle, people asking, ‘Are the Leafs going to win the cup this year?’ And also, even though I was a heavy smoker for a lot of years, I didn’t want to go into the smoke-filled rooms no matter how much I wanted to hear the music. But now that’s not a problem, and not to play the VIP card, but I can go backstage.”
About a year ago, he decided to see Ottawa songstress Kathleen Edwards play at the downtown rock club the Phoenix. “She found out I was coming, and [asked] did I want to introduce her, so I said, ‘Sure, that would be fun,’” he says. Edwards and her husband are now good friends with the Hodges. “She’s opened a lot of doors for me to meet basically anybody I wanted to see,” he says. That list includes, among others, Blue Rodeo, Jason Collett and the Tragically Hip (with whom Edwards just finished touring). “So now I’m out catching as much live music as I can,” he says smiling. “Between sports and music, that’s kind of my life.”
Hodge was born in Montreal, and his family moved to Winnipeg when he was five, but he spent most of his childhood in our area, right near Bayview and York Mills. He graduated in 1964 from York Mills Collegiate, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. And he’s not the only York Mills grad in his field: The school has produced such sports notables as ESPN’s Dan Shulman, Sun Media reporter Steve Simmons, Olympic athlete Terry Leibel, sports owners Tom and John Bitove and Global’s Cash Palmer.
While he describes himself as less than an exceptional student (he sums it up with the phrase “He’d do better if he applied himself”), he definitely started his sportscasting career early. “Kids would be playing on the street or in the park, and while playing, I’d be announcing the game,” he says. “People who knew me then were not the least bit surprised to find out what I did for a living once I got started.”
After a year at Ryerson, Hodge got his first job as a sportswriter for the Daily News in Chatham, Ontario. He soon moved into radio and then, at the age of 26, became the host of CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada. “Getting that job and being on the air for the first time was pretty overwhelming,” he says. “I’d never aspired to do that job on that show, to be thrust into that role at what I consider to be too young an age.” He stayed at HNIC for 16 years, famously fired for throwing a pencil on air in frustration when an overtime game was cut into by the news. He joined TSN in 1992, first as host of TSN’s Inside Sports, a live daily show. “I couldn’t do that now,” he admits. “That was a younger man’s [game]. That was crash and burn potentially every day.” In 1996, Hodge had a heart attack. “It was probably a direct result of working too hard,” he says.
Hodge now hosts the Leafs coverage and his own show, TSN’s The Reporters with Dave Hodge, where a panel of sports reporters tackle current issues and events every Sunday morning. “I’ve been criticized over the years for being too serious,” he says. “The Sunday show allows me to fool around. There’s a certain irreverence about the way we deal with what we’re talking about.”
Columnist Steve Simmons, who works with Hodge on The Reporters, is also a York Mills grad (class of ’76). “I’ve done a lot of television and a lot of radio with a lot of people. He is the most professional and most prepared person I’ve ever worked with,” he says. “He demands something of quality, and he expects it, and I think he makes our show. He raises everybody’s ability.”
After 40 years in the business, Hodge is still a fan. “We’ve lost a bit of the enjoyment of the game because there’s so much else to cover,” he says. “People say, ‘So, hockey’s your favourite sport?’ and I’m supposed to say yes,” he says. “But other sports — baseball probably would be the prime example — I enjoy because I’m not so professionally connected to them. I can go to a baseball game and be more of a fan than I can at a hockey game.”
Fandom, be it in music or sports has been a constant, if coincidental, theme. Hodge met his wife, Sharyn, on July 6, 1972, at the Red Lantern, a sports pub on Merton Street. “I was there by myself, and she was there on a date,” he recalls. “She was at the jukebox, actually. I offered her a quarter, so she could play something.”
“He [asked for my number], and I didn’t give it to him,” Sharyn says. “He told me he worked at CFRB. I knew he would be able to find it.
“I told him he could hunt me down if he wanted, and he did.”
They’ve been married for 32 years and have two children, Lauryn, 29, and Dennis, 27, both avid sports fans. Hodge works from home most of the time, watching the games and listening to music with Sheryl and their two daschunds.
“I have the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, and I think that will probably be my swan song,” he says. “That seems like a natural course of events. I’ll be 65.”
And then Hodge will need another new hobby. “A retired friend advised me: ‘Don’t retire to stop doing something, retire to start doing something.…’ I have to find something to start doing.”
Hodge will still be a fan but
remains coy about one thing. “I
can’t imagine that I’ll still want to be
a groupie at these rock shows.” 
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