Remembering Tommy Manastersky, one of the last great Canadian dual-sport athletes

Tommy Manastersky, who passed away this week, might not be a household name amongst many CFL fans, but what he accomplished was still incredibly impressive. Long before the CFL was officially founded, Manastersky worked his way onto the Montreal Alouettes' roster in 1946 at the age of 17, turned into a stellar punt and kick returner for them and won a Grey Cup with the team in 1949. He took part in several further football campaigns with Montreal and Saskatchewan, but what's perhaps most notable about his career is what he accomplished off the gridiron. Manastersky was a solid hockey player who managed to win a junior hockey championship and make it to the NHL in addition to his CFL highlights, and his dual-sport career at high levels of hockey and football is something that we'll likely never see the likes of again.

Manastersky was a famed junior hockey defenceman who won the 1949 Memorial Cup with the Montreal Royals, a team that also featured future Canadiens legend Dickie Moore. Manastersky focused on hockey for the 1950-51 season, and he earned a call-up to the Canadiens for six games while spending one more with the Royals, 18 with the Pacific Coast League's Vancouver Canucks and five with the American Hockey League's Cincinnati Mohawks. It may not be the most flashy of hockey seasons, and Manastersky elected to return to football soon afterwards, playing with the Alouettes again in 1952 and 1953 and finishing his career with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1954. While Manastersky may not have been a superstar in either the NHL or the CFL, though, he was good enough to appear with dominant franchises in both sports. That's quite impressive, and it's an achievement that seems quite unlikely to happen in our current day and age.

Of course, dual-sport athletes weren't exactly unknown in Canada by Manastersky's time. In fact, many of those enshrined in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame are also famed for what they accomplished in other sports. For example, Lionel Conacher played football, hockey, baseball and lacrosse and boxed, Dick Shatto was a track star, Percival Molson played almost every sport you can think of at McGill, and Angelo Mosca went on to a memorable wrestling career. There weren't many who played several sports at top professional levels, though, and those numbers have dwindled dramatically over time.

Part of the decline of multi-sport athletes likely has come from the widening of the talent pool. The NHL, CFL and other leagues can now look around the world for players, so it's no longer just finding the best athletes in Canada that's the issue; there's a worldwide pool of sport-specific talent out there, so the likelihood that one player is good enough to shine in two top sports has dropped. (That's also a big part of why we don't see many football players play both offence and defence at high levels these days; with so many talented players out there, most teams prefer to pick two specialists instead of one generalist who has to divide his attention.)

Another part of the decrease in the numbers of dual-sport athletes is likely due to the increased specialization for each sport, which is starting at younger and younger ages. With more intensive training and positionally-focused instruction out there, those who don't fully commit to one sport or another can be at a disadvantage. Thus, the main area where we're likely to see dual-sport athletes these days is in Olympic sports that put a lot of importance on raw athleticism and don't have a ton of people participating in them in the first place; former CFL running back Jesse Lumsden's transition to bobsleigh is a good example. One athlete competing in both the CFL and the NHL seems improbable at the moment, though, and that demonstrates what was so special about Manastersky and the others who were able to shine in multiple sports.