Remember Don Cherry? He’s back, in podcast form. Joe Warmington of The Toronto Sun (the Cherry-sympathizing political columnist who broke the news of Cherry’s firing last Monday following anti-immigrant remarks on Coach’s Corner the preceding Saturday) wrote Monday that the 85-year-old Cherry is starting a podcast with his son Tim and grandson Del:
You people out there who want the 85-year-old Cherry back, here’s the news you have been hoping for. You people who wanted him to fade away are out of luck as the former NHL coach of the year is going to be able to exercise his free speech, after all.
Don Cherry’s Grapevine is back once again. This time as a podcast.
…The Toronto Sun has learned you won’t have to wait long for the first installment of the new Grapevine. It will drop Tuesday morning and be available on Spotify and other streaming services every Monday during the hockey season.
And yes, the very first one will address Cherry’s firing from Sportsnet.
“But that’s not all we talked about,” Cherry told me Monday. “We are talking hockey, of course. It’s going to be terrific. In this one I am talking about The Rocket (Maurice Richard), one of the all-time greats.”
No one was stopping Cherry from being “able to exercise his free speech,” Joe, as free speech protections tend to be about governmental interference, not a private broadcaster deciding that your much-criticized on-air remarks (and lack of apologies for them) mean they don’t want to work with you any further. And no one was stopping Cherry from talking, as the remarks he’s made since that firing have indicated. But now he’ll have the chance to deliver his hockey rants again, and in a format where he’s not limited to the amount of non-commercial time during the first intermission of a hockey game.
The first episode of this new podcast comes out Tuesday, and they’re planning to release a new one every Monday following that. And while this is just an audio-only podcast for now, Tim Cherry told Warmington it could grow into a video show with cameras and sponsors. So if more of Don Cherry’s thoughts on hockey is what you want, you’ll soon be able to get that.
