Until 1972, no American writer had ever covered Soviet Union hockey.
That changed when Sports Illustrated sent a reporter into the country to cover the Summit Series, considered by many to be the most transformational hockey event ever played.
That reporter was Rye’s Mark Mulvoy, and that trip was one of the many experiences in his legendary sports journalism career. He is now a Hockey Hall of Fame inductee and a 53-year resident of Rye.
“I covered the greatest of all series in ’72: Canada-Russia — four games in Canada, four games in Russia — and wrote a book about it with Ken Dryden,” said Mulvoy, referring to one of his many published works, “Face-Off at the Summit.” “I made three trips over to the Soviet Union, and one before that to study their program, meet their teams, check out how their operation was …. It was the first time those two powers ever met at that level. I wrote 80,000 words in six days (for that book).”
In an Oct. 14 guest speaking appearance at “Tuesdays at 10,” a Rye group that meets monthly, Mulvoy delved into the biggest moments of his career, how both the sports and journalism landscapes have changed, and the biggest issues in sports today, including the rise of gambling and new developments in college sports, such as name, image, and likeness payments.
Originally from Dorchester, Mass., a Boston suburb, Mulvoy grew up in a growing sports market. He knew as a teenager he wanted to pursue professional sports writing.
“Boston was a great city,” Mulvoy said. “We had two Major League Baseball teams, we had the Bruins, we had the Celtics. We were just getting football in 1960 with the Patriots …. I just loved sports. My high school yearbook at BC High said, ‘aspires to become a sportswriter.’”
Mulvoy got his first taste of covering sports part-time for The Boston Globe while attending Boston College (class of 1964), where he convinced his advisors to allow him to major in “general business,” because no journalism courses were available at the time.
He became a full-time writer for The Globe after college, covering the Boston Red Sox before making the jump to Sports Illustrated a few years later and moving to New York.
What started as a writer-reporter role at SI — still covering baseball — turned into ghostwriting for Jack Nicklaus’ golf column and rising up the ranks to eventually become the magazine’s youngest-ever managing editor at 43.
For more than a decade, Mulvoy was the face and name of sports’ biggest stories — all while traveling the world and finding new territory for the magazine and sports journalism.
As an investigative reporter, Mulvoy and his staff brought many big stories to light, including Pete Rose’s gambling and drug use by NFL players in the 1980s. He also wrote about Michael Jordan’s stint in professional baseball, and was a driving force behind SI’s decision to make its popular swimsuit issue annual.
“You had to react to news, is what it amounted to,” Mulvoy said. “The NFL did have a drug problem at that particular time: the cocaine menace. Fortunately, we just had the resources and got people to talk to us …. Every story was legally checked, fact-checked. You can’t jeopardize your integrity.”
The state of journalism was different in many ways then.
“In the old days, if you wanted to talk with people, you’d have lunch with them,” Mulvoy said. “I remember before a major NFL playoff game one Saturday in Baltimore, I took Bert Jones — the quarterback of the (Baltimore) Colts — and his girlfriend to lunch. Now, there’s no chance that’s going to happen. This state-controlled media, it’s killed journalism.”
Mulvoy wrote many books on a variety of major sports. His other personal favorite is “Happy to Be Alive: The Story of Darryl Stingley,” based on the life of a promising NFL player who became a quadriplegic after an unnecessary hit by Jack Tatum in the 1970s. During the book-writing process, Mulvoy played a part in getting the New England Patriots and the NFL to cover Stingley’s medical bills.
“The Darryl Stingley book had great social impact,” Mulvoy said. “We were able to get him taken care of for life.”
Mulvoy may be retired from the newsroom, but he still finds joy in sharing stories from the sports world — both in speaking engagements and while playing golf at one of Rye’s courses.
