Sports FIRE AND ICE

June to early October is the long arctic night of the hockey fan. The playoffs are over, the Stanley Cup has been decided, and all anyone can talk about is baseball, baseball. A nice game, but a bit slow and technical. Words like “hit” and “shutout” have a hollow, tinny ring, and all those 2-1 and 3-2 scores could just as easily be the odds at Louisiana Downs. So while the boys of summer go about their business, I tinker with my 47 Motorola console, testing each tube, making sure that the dial is still properly marked: T for Toronto, D for Detroit, M for Montreal. My mother won it for knowing the exact number of police call boxes in Fitchburg. Massachusetts, and it’s the one possession, other than a battered ’65 Oldsmobile. that I brought West with me. On a stormy night you’d swear I was listening to Radio Free Europe. From time to time a care package arrives from home with a new Bruins bumper sticker or maybe some clippings about the latest escapades of Derek Sanderson. About once a month I wander over to NorthPark in search of a Bobby Orr T-shirt or maybe an antenna strong enough to pull in the North Stars while Garner Ted Armstrong is trying to bring me the plain truth about today’s world. It doesn’t matter that I never find either one. These excursions are only a form of therapy, obligatory until The Hockey News starts coming with the weekly dope on trades and firings and the activities of booster clubs. By August I’m wondering what’s going on up in Flin Flon and Moose Jaw, places that seem imaginary to me the rest of the year. I inquire about the cost of a weekend trip to Chicago or Denver, vowing that this season I’m really going to do it. I check to see that my Bauer Special Pros are sharpened and ready to go. After all, 35 isn’t that old. Look at George Plimpton, or Paul Newman, for God’s sake. Dreams die hard.

As Cowboy fever spreads, I spend more and more time around Fair Park Coliseum, on the pretext of dropping in on the Impressionists at the Museum. People say that the place should be torn down, that it’s got terrible sight lines and is too handy for the muggers. But then some people would say anything. Tear down the place where Bobby Kromm used to do war dances on Bob Lemieux’s sportscoat? (Or was it the other way around?) Where mask-less Andy Brown, the Texan goalie, once chased us halfway to the parking lot, twirling his stick like a lariat? Where the Hawks beat the Oilers in overtime to win the Adams cup and our section nearly drowned in a typhoon of Schlitz? Whole novels have been written about less. Even in the dead of summer the Coliseum retains the smell of leather and chilled sweat. I come upon a ticket stub or a page from last season’s program and soon I’m chanting my mantra, “Oh Gordie, Oh Rocket, Oh Boom Boom.”

Very softly, however. Whatever else can be said for the sunny Southwest, it’s not yet the promised land for the true hockey fanatic, the Emmett Kelly types in stained topcoats and frayed trousers who haunt places like the Boston Garden, chattering on about how they were once teammates of Eddie Shore’s and wouldn’t you be willing to swap a ticket in the second balcony for a couple of slugs of their William Penn. “Obstructed view even, I’ll take it.” No restaurants around where the waiters refuse to bring your manicotti until you’ve gone over the standings with them (“Blue cheese on the salad, please.” “In a minute. What’s going to happen to the Sabres without Martin?”) In eight years nobody’s asked to see my scrapbook of the ’72 Cup or to handle the puck I caught off the stick of Gilbert Perreault, after it had creased the fall of the lady in front of me. That’s all Yankee stuff. Down here hockey is still largely a rumor, something to watch between Super Sunday and the start of spring training, perhaps, but not worth getting excited about. Some people go so far as to suggest that you could dress the Montreal Canadiens in Black Hawk uniforms and nobody in town would know the difference. An ugly way to talk. Blasphemous almost. We’re just good homers, that’s all. Show up a good crosscheck or a bit of highsticking and we’ll whoop and holler with the best of them. Up jumps chicken man, shaking his scrawny bird at the referee; the dasher walker, balancing on one foot like one of the Flying Wal-lendas, starts tip-toeing cautiously around the rink. A lone, slightly cracked glass banger goes to work over in section B. Even the folks in the Tepee Club will put down their Bloody Marys long enough to scream “Stick ’em Randy,” “Smash em Bam Bam.” You could be in Philadelphia. Well, Johnstown.



It’s only on the fine points that we fall down a bit. Walk into a 1-0 game and for a moment you think you’re at a memorial service. Except for the plop of the puck ricocheting off the boards, the arena is almost completely silent. The fans who aren’t reading the print off their programs are busy chasing down the beer man or tossing popcorn into the air and snagging it with their teeth. The guy behind you is worried about his car in some far corner of the lot. and the fellow on your right is a granny knot of frustration over all the tight checking.

’”Look at those guys, playing with the puck like it was a yo-yo or something. What kind of hockey is that?”

“Tight defensive game,” you say timidly. “Lots of good position play out there tonight.”

“Jeesus! I’ve seen more action at a church picnic, and it didn’t cost me $4.50 either.”

“Not like the old days,” you reply, just as a defenseman steals the puck and dumps it lazily, nonchalantly, into the offensive zone. “Fort Worth! Old Andy Brown!”

“Damn right, Don’t remember too much about the game part, but what fights. Real brawls!”

Everything takes time, you say silently. Be patient. Enjoy yourself. Maybe this year another Tony Esposito or Bobby Clarke will turn up, or some kid right out of juniors will make it to the big leagues and the Game of the Week in one dramatic leap. Then you can write your friends in New York and Chicago, telling them to keep their eye on little Pierre from Dallas. “Tough kid. Great shot.” That’s something. And then there’s always the chance that a few of the old pros will come through, the Hebentons and Pro-novosts and Plagers, guys you’ve heard about forever who are still knocking a-round, mostly for the hell of it. Watching them makes you want to lace up the Bauer Special Pros and take a few snappy turns around Llove. So what if you can’t really skate to “Donkey Serenade” or “If I Were a Rich Man.”

And on nights when the hockey isn’t so hot, there are other diversions unknown to people in colder, more fortunate regions. Two-for-one beer nights, for instance, which the cagey veteran can usually turn into four-for-one beer nights. Or hockey bingo. Just like church bingo except you use pucks for markers. Even the celebrity puck-shooting contests have a certain eccentric appeal. Can the mayor skate? What’s Judy Jordan’s wrist shot really like? Things like these can sometimes make an evening, a whole week if you happen to win.

These, plus the hope, always flickering, never flaming, that one of these daysall your patience and loyalty will be rewarded. Dallas will finally make the bigleagues. The newspapers keep talking a-bout $20 million rinks, private boxes withGittings portraits and plush-covered LouisXIV chairs. Just stick to the basics. 1keep thinking. Sturdy wooden seats, plenty of beer, a few peanut vendors, and aplace to buy a good blue hot dog with thegreen mustard. Everything else will takecare of itself. Soon there will be Phi! Es-posito posters in Skillern’s. scores on the10 o’clock news, maybe even street hockey in Highland Park. With a franchise I’dno longer have to scrimp for that trip toChicago. Chicago would come to me. AndAtlanta. And New York. And Vancouver.For the chance to see Guy LaFleur andBobby Orr I’d sell my Oldsmobile. probably even send a contribution to GarnerTed Armstrong. What’s a few bucks compared to the satisfaction of being able tosmile back smugly at people who’ve beensneering for years at my “Ice is Nice”patch? To be among the elect at last! Andonce a day, when nobody else was around.I’d turn toward Reunion Tower and chantreverently, gratefully. “Oh Gordie. OhRocket. Oh Boom Boom.” knowing thatthere were people out there who understood.