Upton Bell Collection at UMass Lowell Libraries: Orr

One of the greatest sports figures of all time breaks his silence in a memoir as unique as the man himself. He has never written a memoir, authorized a biography, or talked to journalists about his past, but now he is finally ready to tell his story. Bobby Orr is often referred to as the greatest ever to play the game of hockey. From 1966 through the mid-seventies, he could change a game just by stepping on the ice. No defenseman had ever played the way he did, or received so many trophies, or set so many records, several of which still stand today. But all the brilliant achievements leave unsaid as much as they reveal. They don’t tell what inspired Orr, what drove him, what it was like for a shy small-town kid to suddenly land in the full glare of the media. They don’t tell what it was like when the agent he regarded as a brother betrayed him and left him in financial ruin. They don’t tell what he thinks of the game of hockey today. He is speaking out now because “I am a parent and a grandparent and I believe that I have lessons worth passing on.” Orr: My Story is more than a book about hockey—it is about the making of a man.