All Work & All Play: A Life in the Outrageous World of Sports

"Have you ever had a friend, or a colleague at work, that you could listen to all day long? One who sees life as an anecdote, who finds a story in everything, who speaks with such unbridled passion, and sometimes crazy enthusiasm, that you don't want to miss a single syllable of their stream of consciousness?

That's what it was like to work with or around Jim. We had a front seat on a most enjoyable class act, but we may not have taken the time to appreciate everything about him: where he has been, to whom he has spoken, the way in which he relates the tales that have been his life….We know the stories, he lived them."
— From the Foreword, by Steve Simmons, Columnist, the Toronto Sun

Jim "Shaky" Hunt is one of Canada's best-known and most revered sports reporters. In his fifty years of sports journalism, he has covered everything from boxing to baseball, hockey, golf, and the Olympics. He has been arrested in the line of duty, interviewed a talking horse, and is a veteran of over fifty consecutive Grey Cup games. Hunt had to pinch himself often to see if the life he was living was all a dream. His work was play and his play was work. And all of it was fun.

All Work and All Play is Jim Hunt's colourful, rollicking memoir of a life lived in the outrageous world of sports. Written in his inimitable voice, it is entertaining, funny, insightful, and sprinkled with stories of some of the best-known names in sports, including Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Jackie Robinson, Jessie Owens, Jack Dempsey, Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, and many more. From "the most unusual interview" he ever conducted, with the young Muhammad Ali; to covering the legendary 1972 hockey series between Canada and the USSR; and sparring with the infamous Harold Ballard, Hunt takes us behind the scenes and right into the wild world of sports.