The Wingham Advance-Times, 1984-03-21, Page 31:Page 10—Crossroads—March 21, f984,
,d
dill Smiley
Storrnotroopers on ice
iimmilwasiosw
We are well into another
season of what passes these
days for that once -thrilling
Canadian sport of hockey.
Far more interesting than
being a spectator at games
will be watching from the
sidelines some renewed and
determined attempts to de-
crease the potential mayhem
in the former sport.
As any intelligent eight-
year-old knows, hockey is no
longer a sport, it is an enter-
tainment, superior to profes-
sional wrestling in this de-
partment only because it is
faster, bloodier, and most of
the participants, though not
all, are not fat and middle-
aged. Some are fat and
young.
Some are also middle-
aged. Some are old enough to
be grandfathers. And eighty
per cent of the so-called ath-
letes in this new form of
Grand Guignol vaudeville
are grossly over -paid.
A few discerning sports
writers, and a good many
former fans of the game, are
sick at heart over what has
happened to what was once
the fastest and most thrilling
game on earth.
The great majority of the
so-called fans, however,
along with most sports writ-
ers and nearly all of man-
agement, derides any at-
tempt to restore the skills
and thrills of what used.to be
the most skillful and thrillful
sport of them all — profes-
sional hockey.
Perhaps that is because
the current crop of fans con-
sists of yahoos looking for
blood, the sports writers are
sycophants looking for an
angle, and the owners are
stupid, as they have always
been, looking only for a buck.
In my view, a determined
effort should be made to
stamp out the viciousness
that has turned prohockey
into a Roman circus.
Assault and battery on the
ice should be treated the
same as it is on the streets —
with a criminal charge.
Let's put cops in the
arenas and lay charges
against the goons who try to
decapitate an opponent with
a stick, or emerge from a
spearing duel with the
enemy's guts wrapped
around the point of their
sticks.
Such a Move, of course,
will likely be greeted with
hoots of scorn by the yahoos,
the sycophants and the man-
ipulators,.
Or as ariety, the showbiz
magazine, might put it in one
of its succint headlines:
"HOCK JOCKS MOCK
SOCKS". Translated, that
would mean that hockey peo-
ple make fun of any attempt
to stop the fighting and vio-
lence in the game.
But such a move would be
welcomed, however, by a
majority of the people re-
motely interested in the
game: the better sports writ-
ers, who have seen it go
steadily downhill; kids who
want to play hockey for fun,
without beingterrorized;
parents of kids who play
hockey; real fans of the
game, who have seen their
favorite sport turned into a
carnage of clowns.
Surely even the robber ba-
rons of hockey, the owners,
with their nineteenth century
mentality, can see the hand-
writing on the wall, large
and clear. The game is going
down the drain.
Let me give some frin-
stances. When I was a youth, -
our town had a Junior A
team. They played it fast and
tough and clean. The refer-
ees jumped on slashing,
spearing, boarding, kneeing.
Fights were infrequent. In a
town of 4,000, there were
1,500 at every game. A hun-
dred cars would accompany
the fans to playoff games 50
miles away.
When I was a youngish
man, I lived in a town of
2,000. We had an Intermedi-
ate C team, made up of
young local fellows who lov-
ed the game. So help me,
there would be 1,200 at every
match.
Today, I live in a town of
11,000 which boasts a pretty
fair Junior B team. The
crowds at games run around
two or three hundred.
Hockey Night In Canada
used to bind this whole na-
tion together, from radio
days well into television. Its
ratings have dropped dis-
astrously.
What's happened? A lot` of
things. First, the quality has
gone down and the price has
gone up. That's a no -no in
any business.
Sixty per cent of the pros
today couldn't have made a
fair -to -middling senior ama-
teur team twenty-five years.
ago. f
Arena owners, egged on by
greedy players and those
parasites, their managers,
have hoisted the cost of
tickets to the point where
ticket scalpers are commit-
ting suicide.
But most important of all,
the sheer viciousness of to-
day's game, with its Nazi
At wit's end
by Erma Bombeck
Educators are often criti-
cized for not bringing "real
life" into the classroom. It is
one thing to conjugate verbs
and say in Spanish, "Which
way is the bullfight?" It is
another to know what marri-
age and raising children are
all about ... a condition des-
tined to affect nearly all of
them.
David Parry's sociology
class at Blackhawk High
School in Beaver, Pa., is at
least taking a crack at it. To
simulate married life, he has
students pair off, spin a
wheel of fortune to learn
what their gross income is,
set up a budget, and live off
it.
Each pair then "gives
birth" to a hard-boiled egg.
They name it, decorate it,
house it, and figure out how
they are going to raise it.
The responsibility does not
end in the classroom. Mr.
Parry requires that the egg
be attached by string to one
of the partners or a guardian
24 hours a day for a week.
There are bugs to be worked
out. Even though he has the
students tie a string to one of
their toes and hang "the
child" over .the bed, he says,
"I still can't figure out a way
to have them awakened at
night or I would."
storm-trooper techniques, its
open support of "intimida-
tion", its appalling message
for young players that vio-
lence beats skill and speed,
has made a great segment of
real fans turn their backs on
it in disgust.
When the players are all
millionaires, and the arenas
are half empty, maybe the
morons who control the sport
will get the message.
THE
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Actually, there are a lot of
similarities between hard-
boiled eggs and children —
which his students have a1 -
ready discovered. They may
look fragile, but they're a
surprise. I've dropped a few
of them (eggs and children)
m my time and fully expect-
ed them to destruct, but
somehow they roll with the
punches and show up for the
next day. 1
You'd think being in hot
water would do them in, but
they become tougher for it
and a little more durable.
They can even sustain a few
cracks in their exterior and
survive. _
You can do a lot of things
to make eggs look different.
You can paint them in differ-
ent colors, adorn them with
gold, place them in a satin -
lined bed or a bed of pencil
shavings, 4.t, under n&atb,
they're pretty much the
same.
It shouldn't take Mr.
Parry's class long to figure
out that the Cheaper by the
Dozen theory is a myth and
that • dragging anything
aropnd all day andnight' is,
in their vernacular ... awe-
son►e.
Offhand, I'd say Mr. Parry
has done- one of two things.
He has either done for hard-
boiled eggs what Mr. T has
done for the three-piece suit,
or he has instilled in a class a
lesson on responsibility that
I suspect they'll remember
for a long time.
Never use gasoline to
clean tools, clothing or skin
warns the Industrial Acci-
dent Prevention Association.
Always use a proper clean-
ing agent and follow direc-
tions for its use, heeding all
safety precautions. Chemi-
cals can help us -'in many
ways but they can also cause
serious injury or death if
mishandled.
Kfl
von.
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