Offside: The Harold Ballard Story airs Sunday January 22 at 8pm on CBC and CBC Gem.
Harold Ballard was the principal proprietor of the Toronto Maple Leafs for almost twenty years of headline-grabbing mayhem. From the day he assumed possession in 1972 till his dying in 1990, he was a magnet for publicity.
In actor and director Jason Priestley’s new documentary Offside: The Harold Ballard Story, gamers, sports activities journalists and former workers describe Ballard as a person who appreciated nothing greater than a great time, a full money register and the eye of anybody who’d hear.
Not-so-humble beginnings
The group now referred to as the Toronto Maple Leafs was based in 1917. Over the subsequent 100-plus years, they’d see the best highs and the bottom lows the ice needed to supply.
Born in 1903, Harold Ballard was the son of a profitable businessman. As a wealthy man’s son, he pursued a lifetime of pleasure. “During the Great Depression, he had a playboy way of life,” journalist Mary Ormsby says within the documentary. “He by no means had a fear in his life.”
Passionate about sports activities, Ballard raced miniature speedboats and was even the flag-bearer for Canada on the Winter Games in St. Moritz in 1928. He went on to teach a minor league hockey group, and in 1940, turned president of the Toronto Marlboros, the place he developed a friendship with Stafford Smythe, the son of Maple Leafs proprietor Conn Smythe.
In 1957, an getting older Conn Smythe turned over management of the Maple Leafs to a seven-person committee headed by Stafford. Soon, Ballard was introduced on board to fill a emptiness and the stage was set for his final takeover.
Opportunity knocks
By 1961, the administration of the Leafs was within the fingers of Ballard, Stafford Smythe and newspaper writer John Bassett . The group went on to win three consecutive Stanley Cups between 1962 and 1964, and received once more in 1967.
Ballard’s important position was to maintain their house enviornment, Maple Leaf Gardens, full. Over the years, Ballard gained extra management of the day by day operations of the Gardens and dreamed up intelligent methods to extend earnings.
Rock concert events, non secular occasions and the well-known Mohammed Ali vs. George Chuvalo bout: Ballard booked all of them. By 1969, earnings had tripled to only over a million {dollars}.
“If there was cash to be made, he did not care who performed Maple Leaf Gardens,” says Bob Stellick, who managed publicity for the Leafs within the late ’80s.
He had a expertise for getting cash | Offside: The Harold Ballard Story
Harold Ballard would guide anybody at Maple Leaf Gardens, so long as it introduced in cash. The rumours of doing all the things to squeeze extra out of holiday makers are the stuff of legend.
That similar 12 months, an RCMP investigation accused Ballard and Stafford Smythe of revenue tax evasion and illegally taking cash from Maple Leaf Gardens to pay for private bills. They had been faraway from their administration posts, although they remained on the board — and the biggest shareholders.
In 1971, Stafford and Ballard managed to achieve the opposite shareholders’ assist, retook management of the board, and reinstalled themselves as president and government vice chairman. They finally purchased Bassett’s shares and gained full possession of the Maple Leafs.
Shortly after, Stafford died unexpectedly as a result of issues from a bleeding ulcer. At 68 years outdated, Ballard noticed a chance: he went into debt to purchase Stafford’s shares and gained a 71 per cent stake within the Gardens and the Leafs. He then put in himself as president and chairman of Maple Leaf Gardens.
A expertise for getting cash however a refusal to spend it
Less than a 12 months after turning into the principal proprietor of the Maple Leafs, Ballard was despatched to Millhaven Institution, the place he served one 12 months of a three-year sentence for 47 white collar crimes. In his absence, his son managed the group. But upon his launch, Ballard was again to his standard tips.
At the identical time, a rival hockey league — the World Hockey Association — was attracting numerous consideration and luring gamers from the NHL.
The WHA paid good cash and Ballard’s hardline refusal to pay resulted within the departure of a number of gamers. It was clear when legendary Leaf Dave Keon left the group for the WHA’s Minnesota Fighting Saints in 1975 that the membership was in ruins.
“If you suppose you are getting one other F-ing dime out of me, you are loopy” | Offside: The Harold Ballard Story
Harold Ballard’s stingy-ness was legendary. After Rick Vaive scored 50 targets for the third 12 months in a row, Ballard nonetheless refused to pay him any extra to play for the Leafs.
Even after an unimaginable playoff run in 1977, Ballard refused to pay the gamers what the WHA was providing. “That group might have gone the space,” says sportscaster Suneel Joshi within the documentary. “And then the subsequent 12 months, after all, all the things was damaged up.”
The curse of Harold Ballard
Player after participant left the Leafs or had been traded, and by the early ’80s, Ballard’s mismanagement had the group in shambles.
The new drafts, who shaped the majority of the group, had been younger and inexperienced. Teenagers confronted off in opposition to NHL legends.
“It was fairly loopy,” says former Leaf Rick Vaive within the documentary. “[Ballard] would not pay for a great normal supervisor that might make good selections. So these gamers … had been pressured into motion at 18 years outdated when most of them weren’t bodily or mentally able to play within the National Hockey League.”
Ballard’s persona and feedback to the media had been much more outlandish. “If Harold Ballard existed in 2022, he would have been cancelled in a short time,” says Sportsnet journalist Donnovan Bennett within the movie. “Pick what equity-deserving group he determined to offend…. He determined to offend all of them at totally different factors and was not apologetic about it.”
“He was abusive to his gamers. He was abusive to his normal managers and his coaches,” says Ormsby. “And he had this platform that basically went unchallenged.” In an notorious radio interview with the CBC’s Barbara Frum, Ballard’s misogyny was on full show.
“If Harold Ballard existed in 2022, he would have been cancelled” | Offside: The Harold Ballard Story
In an notorious radio interview with the CBC’s Barbara Frum, Ballard’s misogyny was on full show.
While Ballard’s outward persona was callous, he was an energetic philanthropist who steadily donated to charity. “Harold would donate $25,000, $50,000 at a time … to Special Olympics,” says former Leaf Lanny McDonald within the documentary. “On one situation: that nobody might ever discover out the place that cash got here from.”
On April eleventh, 1990, Ballard died on the age of 86. He left nearly all of his property to charity. An outrageous character in life, Ballard instantly turned one in all Toronto’s largest philanthropists.
Still, the legacy of the “Ballard curse” lives on for a lot of Leafs followers, who imagine that the selections he made as proprietor proceed to hang-out the franchise as we speak.
