Revisiting how the "toy department" covered Bill Masterton's death 55 years ago this week
Sports media do more than write gamers
Like much of the United States, I was riveted by the drama after Damar Hamlin collapsed during a recent Monday Night Football game. I did not watch it live, turning on the game about 20 minutes after the incident occurred without knowing anything about it.
The uncertainty of Hamlin’s condition drove people on Twitter to recall the circumstances around other sports tragedies, such as Hank Gathers, Chuck Hughes, and Dale Earnhardt, professional athletes who either collapsed and died or were killed during contests. Thankfully, Hamlin appears on his way to a recovery of sorts, though no one knows what that will look like.
Absent from my Twitter feed was any meaningful discussion of NHL player Bill Masterton, an original member of the 1967-68 expansion Minnesota North Stars who died 55 years ago this week, on January 16, 1968, 30 hours after being hit by two members of the Oakland Seals at the same time. NHL players generally did not wear helmets in the 1960s and Masterton’s head hit the ice “like a baseball bat hitting a ball,” according to André Boudrias in a 2016 story for ESPN authored by John Rosengren. Boudrias was the only North Star to wear a helmet that season.
Even after Masterton’s injury in the first period, the game continued, with the teams skating to a 2-2 tie. Much of the ensuing discussion focused on whether helmets should be required in pro hockey. Surprisingly, and stubbornly, most players resisted. 1979-80 would be the first season helmets were mandated for NHL players, but those signed to contracts prior to June 1, 1979 would have the option to not wear a helmet. Craig Mactavish, who won four Stanley Cups as a member of the Edmonton Oilers, retired in 1997 as the last player to not wear a helmet.
The hockey game continued. Initial newspaper coverage of Masterton’s injury was buried in the game story in the Minneapolis Tribune, the city’s morning newspaper.
On the 50th anniversary of Masterson’s death, KSTP-TV in the Twin Cities broadcast a remembrance of Masterton, featuring game footage unearthed from its archives moments before he would be fatally injured. No video exists of the actual hit, however.
Rosengren, a journalist who, like me, is a Wayzata (MN) High School graduate, suggested Masterton may have had underlying head injuries from a hit suffered two weeks earlier. Concussion protocols did not exist in 1968 the way they do today.
The Hennepin County medical examiner found evidence of a previous injury on the left side of Masterton's skull on the temporal region of the brain. States the autopsy report: "There was a blow to the left temple in a game some days prior to the fatal injury and the deceased is said to have complained of headaches in the left temporal region."
To the credit of the Tribune’s staff writer John Gilbert, and literally dozens of other writers across both the United States and Canada, the topic of helmets immediately commanded column inches in the ensuing days’ coverage. North Stars general manager Wren Blair’s quote in Gilbert’s story on the morning of January 15 summed up the general sentiment from hockey people about helmets, “When a player signs a pro contract, off comes his helmet.”
Even as venerable columnist Jim Klobuchar also laid out the case for helmets in the Minneapolis Star, the city’s afternoon newspaper, “what is really illogical or unprofessional about requiring a player to wear this protection?” hockey people resisted. Blair continued to show a complete lack of empathy, comparing Masterton’s death to John F. Kennedy in an unbylined sidebar in the Star with a headline suggesting a catastrophic head injury was part of the assumed risk.
Today Masterton is remembered by the NHL with the annual awarding of the Masterton Memorial Trophy to the athlete who exemplifies perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey.
It is unknown how much impact the 1960s and 70s sports columns had on the NHL’s decision to mandate helmets. Imagine how different that injury would have been covered today, at a time when sports journalists openly advocate for social change. How many journalists called for the NFL to cancel MNF when Hamlin was injured? All but one blowhard whose brother is an excellent restauranteur.
This evolution prompted me to wonder how I would have approached covering situations such as Masterton or Hamlin had I pursued the journalistic career the 20-year-old me thought I wanted? Covering “hard news” is not typically the domain of the sportswriter expected to know what a quarterback should do against a cover two defense. I know it is not apples to apples, but I remember reporting on a student’s suicide for the Times-Delphic during my sophomore year at Drake University. I recall going into the Goodwin-Kirk residence hall where he lived and finding students on his floor to interview. I was the paper’s sports editor, but the student had been a member of the football team. I had a relationship with the coach and the athletic department our news editor did not.
Jeff Pearlman, the excellent author of several books and the Yang Slinger, interviewed several sports journalists in the 24 hours after Hamlin collapsed to discuss their experiences with sports tragedies, big and small. It is absolutely worth your time to read these.
“We journalists, however, are afforded no such luxuries,” Pearlman writes. “Even though we feel the same shock, suffer the same nightmares, endure similar emotions—we are immediately thrust into action. Instead of seeking solace, we ask questions. Then more questions. Then more questions. And while we like to think that, somehow, our presences help in the healing process, well … that’s sort of debatable.”
Sports journalists are frequently called the “toy department” of whatever larger media enterprise that oversees it. The reporters who led the way that Monday night when Hamlin collapsed were sports journalists, schooled at places like Syracuse, Mizzou, and other elite journalism schools. Journalistic instincts took over.
If you do this sports journalism thing long enough, you’ll cover tragedy. Even though athletes are treated as Justice League-level superior beings, created from Tungsten and Krypton’s inner core, they are (in fact) made of the same shit we are.
That quote belongs on the shelf, next to the Superman action figures. At the end of the day, Masterton, Earnhardt, Gathers, Hughes, and Hamlin are people whose professions are a little different than most people. In the era of sports takes, sports journalists are do way more than write game stories and drink at Toots Shor’s. It’s high time to recognize that has been the case for a while.