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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-01-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013. PAGE 5. My friend Arnie is an investment speculator. Every time he buys a pack of Marlboros he scoops up a handful of lottery tickets as well. “I figure it’s only a matter of time,” he says. Did I mention my friend Arnie is an optimist? Sub-species delusional? Any Vegas gambler could tell him he’s got a better chance of dying from cigarette-induced lung cancer than winning a lottery jackpot, but Arnie isn’t looking for reality; he’s dreaming the dream. Still, chasing moonbeams is better than catching one. Buying lottery tickets is a harmless enough waste of time, the real trouble starts when you win. Ask Jack Whittaker. Unfortunately it would cost Arnie $15,000 just to ask Jack Whittaker the time of day. That’s what Whittaker charges now to talk publicly to anyone. Not that anyone’s lining up to pay. Jack Whittaker doesn’t need the money. He knows all about winning lotteries. He’s the king. On Christmas Eve back in 2002 he bought a one-dollar Powerball ticket at a convenience store in West Virginia. He woke up the next morning to discover he had won just won the jackpot: $315 million. Followed by six zeroes. Did it change his life? Well, I guess. He was already a moderately wealthy man with a plumbing business and over 100 employees, but still. Three hundred and fifteen million dollars.... Actually, after taxes and opting for a one- time payout rather than 30 years of installments, Whittaker’s take withered to about $93 million – but hey! First thing, Whittaker gave $100,000 to the owner of the convenience store where he bought the ticket. Then he bought a brand new Jeep for the clerk who sold him the ticket. And what the hell? He wrote her a cheque for $123,000 so she could buy a house too. Ninety-three million dollars? Whoo-ee! He donated $7 million to build two churches; another $14 million to the Jack Whittaker Foundation, to help the needy. He paid for a little league park to be built. He bought himself a helicopter; sent his wife on a trip to the Holy Land and bought his beloved granddaughter Bragg not just one new car but five of them. The money brought a lot of changes to Jack Whittaker’s life. It also fostered attitudinal changes. Whittaker had always been a flamboyant party guy in his trademark Stetson and braying laugh. Ninety-three million dollars ramped ‘flamboyant’ up to ‘obnoxious’ and ‘party guy’ to ‘troublesome drunk’. He got arrested. A lot. Mostly for drunk driving but also for disorderly conduct and unlawful possession of firearms. His reaction was always the same. “It doesn’t bother me because I can tell everyone to kiss off. I won the lottery.” His wife of 42 years did kiss off, filing for divorce after Whittaker had been exposed too many times in too many strip clubs next to women who weren’t Mrs. Whittaker. His former friends drifted away too, replaced by foxy ladies, good-time Charlies and other riff raff of the leech persuasion. For Jack Whittaker, everything went south after he won the lottery. Even his beloved granddaughter Bragg turned sullen and bitter. As the favourite relative of the biggest lottery winner in history, she also became a magnet for opportunistic low-lifes. At 16 Bragg went into rehab to treat her addiction to Hillbilly heroin – Oxycontin. In 2004, barely two years after Whittaker’s win, Bragg’s drug-riddled body was discovered wrapped in a plastic tarp and stuffed behind a junk car. Jack heard about it over the phone. He was in rehab for alcohol addiction at the time. Now it’s 10 years later and Whittaker, surveying the ruins of his life, says he wishes he could travel back in time to tear up that ticket and throw away the pieces. Good deal for the folks who run the Powerball Lottery though. They made sure the papers and TV stations got good photos of Jack receiving the monster cheque; and of Jack riding through New York in a stretch limo; and of Jack and his wife Jewel being interviewed on The Today Show the morning after. That’s the kind of publicity that sells a lot of lottery tickets. As for Jack’s business, his marriage, his health, his dead granddaughter, well... What was that phrase the U.S. Military used to use when they accidentally bombed a few Vietnamese or Afghan or Iraqi civilians? Oh, right: collateral damage. Arthur Black Other Views Can’t lose if you don’t buy a ticket It was my girlfriend Jess’s dream that “Fans Lockout the NHL” be a headline if and when the lockout was settled. Well, here we are and now it’s a headline, but is it a true headline? I fear that it isn’t. Over 100 days were spent talking tough. The players said the owners didn’t care about the game of hockey, the owners said the players weren’t playing fair. However, the majority of the talk came from fans. One of the most memorable moments of the past three months was during a press conference conducted by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Bettman dutifully answered questions from members of the media when the scrum was interrupted by some hockey fan with nothing better to do than stand in front of some New York City hotel and beg Bettman to talk to a “fan” as opposed to the players or the owners. This, unfortunately, is the problem: fans who need hockey to function. The NHL has proven to be like an absentee father. For a few years he might be great, but then, without any warning, he’ll just take off for a year, leaving you without all of the every- day wonders that a father can provide. But when he returns, what does he come equipped with? Presents. So the NHL, both the players and the owners, have treated their fans like monkey meat for nearly four months. They’ve blown through deadlines like the All-Star Game and the Winter Classic (the latter was of particular interest to those in southwestern Ontario thanks to the inclusion of the Toronto Maple Leafs and, for those in the western portion of the province, the Detroit Red Wings). But they’re back now and with them they’ve brought presents. The present, of course, is hockey. And we’re meant to forget all that the last four months have given us. Not bloody likely, right? Wrong. Everyone is over the moon about hockey and unfortunately it seems like hockey will feel no residual effects from this four-month stand-off. Every single one of my friends who had been talking tough, saying they didn’t even miss hockey and that when it comes back they wouldn’t watch were the first ones to trumpet the news of the lockout’s end. They’re just happy to see the puck back on the ice they say, but they don’t see the bigger picture and the message that they’re sending to the NHL. Forget that a 48-game schedule seriously compromises the integrity of the competition for the Stanley Cup, players are now whining that this is too quick of a turnaround for them to prepare for a season. What exactly have they been doing for the last four months? And if our hearts are supposed to bleed for them when they’re not playing, and now they’re supposed to bleed for them now that they are playing, when can we stop feeling sorry for them? There’s a great Seinfeld analogy from a conversation between Jerry and George talking about “hand” in a relationship, referring of course to the “upper” hand. George wants the hand, because he’s never had it before. Well in the relationship between sport and fan, fan always has the hand, too often I think we forget that. Perhaps if fans didn’t rush back to arenas to watch what the NHL is going to pass off as hockey for the next four months, the league would learn that constant labour negotiations and work stoppages damage its image, and ultimately, their product, but like the absentee dad, both sides of the NHL walk away with their heads held high, ready to clear a spot on their mantle for the forthcoming Father of the Year trophy. Fans lockout the NHL Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense So, reliable readers of The Citizen, where were you in the wee hours of Jan. 3? Were you, like me, sitting agape in front of your televisions (or computer) wondering just how Team Canada, with a lockout in effect, could play so poorly that they would let our southern neighbours trounce them 5-1? I stared at my computer in disbelief as the final minutes played out. I wondered how, with all that talent, we could fail at playing our game. Then I realized, the lockout isn’t Canadian. The lockout may hit Canadien... er Canadian fans and businesses the hardest, it may have the biggest effect on Canadians, but it isn’t a situation bred by Canadians and it isn’t one that any true Canadian would want to continue. I know Canadians. I read countless news stories about Canadians every week and the majority of them like being at work I think. They probably wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they couldn’t do their job. So this strike, it isn’t a Canadian thing, and that means that all the teams had an advantage. Does it matter that our southern neighbours beat us? In the short term I guess it does. They like it when they win, they think it puts them one up on us for beating us at our game. It may sting, but look at that sentence, even if we lost, its still our game. Regardless of who we face off against and the result of the game, it will always be our game and that’s not because we’re consistently the best at it. It’s our game because we breathe it, we eat it and we live it and that’s why we’re the best at it when we are. Sure, we may lose every now and again, and sure, kids these days seem to be gravitating to broomball... the virtues of which I will not spend time debating, but it doesn’t matter. Until my generation doesn’t exist anymore, hockey will still be the domain of Canada, even if we get drummed out of every World Juniors Championship from now until I’m pushing up daisies. Every team in the World Juniors benefitted from the fact that those primadona players, whiny coaches and that troll of a man Gary Bettman were holding up yet another season of the National Hockey League so it should be expected that there will be more competition at the event. Regardless of where you want to place the blame, the United States team on the ice that morning was completely different than the team Canada handily defeated earlier in the tournament. Like last year, we were left hanging our heads in disappointment. Unlike last year, there was no rallying cry to make the game exciting. One might read that and think that I’m down on the game. I’m not. Until the NHL season starts, any higher calibre hockey is good, even if it is 4 a.m. Sure, I would’ve loved to see a win, but, like I said, none of the headlines or pundits will ever say “The United States takes over as the nation of hockey,” the worst they will say is that they beat us at our own game. That’s fine. I can handle being beat at my own game in an annual tournament because there will always be another one. I can handle the few friends I have from south of the border poking fun at me because I was so excited to watch Canada sweep all the way to the gold medal round. What I can’t handle are the people berating these junior players. Let’s face it, even before the NHL lockout, hockey was on a descending slope. It’s a world where the antics and accolades of people like Paul Henderson and the Hanson Brothers (somewhat fictional as they may be) are unknown to many youngsters, and that’s a dangerous world for the pastime. One only needs to look at how the fans identify the players to know that the involvement just isn’t there anymore. Instead of the nicknames of my childhood (and a little bit before) like The Great One, Number Four, The Rocket, Super Mario, Mr. Hockey, Satan’s Wallpaper, Saint Patrick, The ‘Bulin Wall, Mario Jr., The Golden Jet, the Golden Brett, Grapes, Captain Canuck and Stevie Wonder (and that list could go on and on), we now have The Kid and Alexander the Great... really, those are the only nicknames that come to mind (and I prefer Sydney Crosby’s other moniker, Criesby). So what I’m getting at here is beggars can’t be choosers. I may say I’m unhappy that we lost, but I certainly won’t berate the players for their performance. I have read the various reviews of the game from Canadian hockey analysts and that’s exactly what they did; talked about what every single player did wrong. It’s in human nature to believe you can do something better, but, unless we’re talking about St. Patrick critiquing Subban or Super Mario giving a few pointers to Criesby, I don’t think anyone can know how it feels, beyond the members of the 2013 Canadian IHF Junior team, to step on to the ice against a perennial rival with the hopes, fears and, if the worst-case scenario is realized, the apparent scorn of an entire nation on the line. I can’t say I wouldn’t crack under that kind of pressure, then again I can’t say I’ve ever had the opportunity. If I was out there, I’d do what I do whenever I play hockey; dump, chase, hope to catch some fool with his head down and pray for the best. That’s all any of us can ask of the gods of hockey. Good job Juniors, even if only I think so Denny Scott Denny’s Den