History of the A's

Athletics Retrospective - Norm Corcoran

THROUGH THE SPORTS GATE

by JACK GATECLIFF

The St. Catharines Standard

Wednesday June 29, 1955

At 23 years of age, Norm Corcoran has had a fairly full sports life. However, he still has two immediate aims. “Corky” would like to play with a Mann Cup lacrosse team and make a regular position in the National Hockey League. He feels this is the year he may be able to realize both these set purposes.

Although he was born in Toronto and cut his sports teeth in the Queen City, Norm has strong roots in St. Catharines. His uncle . . . Joe Corcoran . . . played field lacrosse with the old Athletics and is still intensely interested in all Garden City sport, although confining his active participation now to fishing.

Norm played his first hockey in Toronto under the auspices of the Kinsmen Club, then graduated through the usual minor leagues until entering St. Michael’s College. He played one year of midget at St. Mike’s, then jumped directly to the junior “A” Majors.

Art Jackson, coach of the Teepees at the time and a former St. Michael player himself, took an immediate liking to Corcoran’s hockey style and waged a summer campaign aimed at obtaining Norm for the St. Catharines club. He finally convinced him that St. Catharines was the right type of a hockey town in which to live and, as Norm says . . . “I’ve never regretted the move.”

He credits Art Jackson with providing him with the hockey fundamentals that have carried him through five years of American League Hockey and finally qualified him for a genuine shot at the ultimate aim of every hockey player . . .the National League.

As far as junior hockey is concerned, Norm has only one regret. Following the lead of teammates Red Sullivan and Jack McIntyre he turned professional with the Boston Bruin organization in the autumn of 1950. At the time he was still eligible for two more years of junior hockey. He now wishes that he waited for at least one more season before stepping into pro.

A “natural type” of athlete who can easily adapt himself to almost any sport, Corcoran in his first summer in St. Catharines decided to try his hand at baseball. After a junior ball practice one night, he drifted over to the Haig Bowl, picked up a lacrosse stick and decided on the spot to try out for the junior Athletics.

Although his lacrosse experience was confined to one 10-minute “pick-up game” in Toronto, Corcoran was an immediate sensation on the boxla crease. Boasting an uncanny side-stepping shift which even senior teams have not yet solved, Corcoran could work his way through the entire opposition that first year but had trouble shooting the ball when in close.

“The next season I worked on shooting rather than shifting and finally got my shots on the net, but I’m still not satisfied with that part of my game,” he stated this week. If Corky is not happy with his shooting, the rival goalies certainly don’t share his view. Corcoran now has one of the best underhand shots since the fireball days of Bucko McDonald.

It is perhaps interesting to know that Norm ranks Jim McNulty, former St. Catharines player now on the west coast, as the outstanding lacrosse player he has seen. “Not only can he shoot and is almost impossible to stop, but I have also found him the most difficult player to get past when he falls back on defence.”

Corcoran compares McNulty with Eddie Olson of the Cleveland Barons who has led the American League in scoring on three separate occasions. Although Olson and McNulty play different sports, Norm feels that their style is virtually identical.

Needless to say he ranks Moon Wootton as the toughest goalie in senior lacrosse to put the ball past and in hockey his number one nemesis has always been Johnny Bower, formerly with Cleveland and now in the New York Ranger chain.

After five years with the Hershey Bears, Corcoran greeted his trade to Detroit Red Wings with mixed emotions. As all minor league players agree, Hershey is the ideal place to play if you intend staying in the American League. Crowds are always good, the players and their families live at the Hershey Hotel for a minimum rent, and the pay, as American League salaries go, is good.

Also over the years he had many St. Catharines players with him in Hershey such as Skip Teal, Jack McIntyre, Ellard O’Brien, Red Sullivan, Jim Robertson, Ralph Willis and Norm Defelice, making the team at times appear like a Teepee reunion.

“I liked it there but maybe if you stay in any one place too long you get in a rut,” philosophized Corky. Corcoran received a letter from Detroit General Manager Jack Adams immediately after the Boston-Detroit trade was announced. Adams stated in his letter that Norm would be given every possible chance of making the Red Wings and that “every position at training camp will be wide open.”

This is the chance the wiry, slightly under six-foot Norm has been waiting for. “Believe me,” he says, “when I go to that Sault Ste. Marie camp in September I’ll be working to nail down one of those right wing jobs.”

If determination counts, he’ll make it.

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