The Best American Sports Writing 2011

by Jane Leavy

  This was a one-off, however. The only alternative for fight fans is to attend a minor league game. Minor leaguers scrap partially for the support, but mostly because it can launch a professional hockey career. A 1995 York University study of young hockey players found that "increased levels of violence [fistfights], more than playing or skating skills were seen to lead to greater perception of competence by both team mates and coaches." In some cases, fighting can vault a player to higher levels and higher-paying leagues.

  This is true for Jon Mirasty, an enforcer for the AHL's Syracuse Crunch and recipient of a fawning profile in ESPN The Magazine. In 2007, Mirasty, who weighs 220 pounds despite standing just five-foot-ten, had retired from low-level pro hockey and was set to coach in an obscure league in northern Alberta. Due to his reputation, Mirasty was recruited later that same year to try out for the Crunch, then a minor league affiliate of the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets. He made the team and has since played NHL exhibition games for the Jackets. Mirasty, who was well into his sojourn to nowhere, now fights for a decent living. He has a following. He is a staple on hockeyfights.com, a video and chat forum with user posts such as "Guys you want to see get beat up" and "Who's the biggest puss?"—each answered with remarkable wit and sincerity. During the hockey season, the site draws nearly nine million page views each month.

  Mirasty's agent, Eric Beman, makes his living as a personal trainer and represents hockey players—enforcers only—as a hobby. Beman's company, One Punch Sports Management, is registered with the PHPA, an agency that represents the professional players in the AHL, CHL, and ECHL. The listed business email address has a hotmail.com suffix.

  If there was any question about fighting's place in the sport, especially its lower reaches, consider what happened on December 12, 2008, in the Ontario Hockey Association's top-tier sentor league—and what happened afterward. With 2:14 left in the game, Don Sanderson, a defenseman for the Whitby Dunlops, a minor league team, fought Corey Fulton of the Brantford Blast. Sanderson lost his helmet during the brawl and both fighters fell to the ice. Sanderson's bare head smashed into the ice, and he lost consciousness. Sanderson was rushed to hospital, where he soon fell into a coma. Three weeks later, Sanderson died. In Canada, the incident received as much media attention as the Obama campaign. Shortly after the public outcry, the junior Ontario Hockey League created a rule that suspends any player who removes his helmet to fight. But the OHL took great care not to excise fighting from its game altogether. A ban on fighting in this league, or any other, would be akin to a ban on tackling in the NFL. What the OHL did was merely make fighting safer. It didn't outlaw its savage element; it simply domesticated it.

  The stars need protection (Wayne Gretzky so appreciated Semenko's services that in 1983 he gave Semenko the car he won as the all-star game's MVP). The lesser players need a job. The league needs to sell the game. That's why fighting isn't going anywhere—the incentives are too strong to keep it around. Coarse and slapdash as it may have been, fight camp was teaching kids to cope with hockey as it is, not as we might wish it to be.

  Brad walked us from the cramped dressing room and onto the ice. Todd threw a bucket of pucks on the plastic ice surface. Some of the smaller kids began shooting against the net while the older kids stood by to the side and talked among themselves while Derek and Brad began rehearsing some fighting moves on the other side of the ice. They seemed to be making it up on the spot. The entire class gathered to watch,

  A few minutes later Brad arranged us from tallest to smallest at the blue line. "Turn to your right," he said. "That's the guy you're going to fight." I looked to my right. On skates Dominic stood at least six-foot-five. It still wasn't clear how violent the fights would be, and I was genuinely scared of taking a bare-knuckles punch from Dominic. His size and quiet confidence almost nullified my moral objection to fighting a 16-year-old. Still, I was prepared to play the morality card if he broke my nose.

  "Listen up," yelled Derek. "This is how to prevent someone from hitting you." Derek grabbed Brad's jersey, and Brad wadded a handful of Derek's teal bathrobe. "There are three main types of jersey grips," said Derek. "The high shoulder grip, the elbow grip, and the wrist grip." Brad and Derek demonstrated each grip but did not throw any punches. Derek told us that the elbow and wrist grips are not ideal. "These are desperate," he said, "you want to go for the high shoulder grip." Brad took Derek's jersey at the shoulder and told us to watch carefully. Derek drew back his arm and slowly threw a punch at Brad's face. As Derek's fist came closer, Brad pushed his jersey-gripping hand forward into Derek's shoulder. It hemmed Derek's reach. Derek pushed his fist harder, and Brad pushed his shoulder in kind, robbing Derek of range and power to hit him. "The goal here is to take size out of the fight," said Brad. "I've fought guys much bigger than me and they never landed a punch because of this technique."

  Derek ordered us to square off with our partners. I grabbed Dominic's jersey and he grabbed mine, though his thumb accidentally clenched a loop of my skin. He twisted the fistful of nylon and flesh and cocked back his arm while I prepared for the inevitable dental work. He threw his first punch. I squeezed my fist around a wad of his jersey with so much force that my finger tendons immediately pulled. I pushed against his shoulder and closed my eyes. When I opened them I saw his fist, six inches from my nose. I could see individual blond hairs on each knuckle. He punched again and I pushed. Nothing. When it was my turn, my punches were similarly stymied. Dominic released his grip. "Wow, that really works," he said, offering a pinched smile that was either polite or deeply condescending.

  The rest of the kids were still jostling, and the rink was filled with the sounds of grunting and skates clawing into plastic ice. Brad shouted over the commotion. "If the guy lands a punch with your hand on his shoulder, it's not going to hurt," he yelled. "It's a glancing blow with almost no force. If you looked at the videos in there, it only looks like the other guys are landing punches. But they aren't." That was all we would learn about defense.

  Derek then showed us how to break defensive techniques like the high shoulder grab. The two instructors stood in front of us again, grabbing bathrobe and jersey. "The first step is to get your hand on the inside," Derek said, his right shoulder in Brad's grip. "Now punch in an uppercut motion—hard—on the inside. It doesn't matter if you land the uppercut and chances are that you won't." Derek threw an uppercut and didn't come near landing it. "That's only step one," he said. "Now watch." Derek drew his gripped arm back as though he were elbowing someone behind his head. The move not only tore his shoulder immediately out of Brad's hand but left his arm drawn back and ready to punch. Brad was now defenseless. "Now I'm ready to use my weapon," Derek said, looking at his fist. "Okay, now you try it."

  The kids looked at each other. A few laughed nervously, as if it were sex ed. Dominic and I took each other's jerseys with mutual shoulder grips. Before we could decide who would go first, Dominic threw the uppercut, slammed back his right elbow, and removed my grip. "I could've killed you there," he said.

  I tried the move and was just as successful. My fist was near my ear, and Dominic's head was back, his mouth drawn into a grimace. I was ready to use "my weapon." Suddenly, the class exploded into chaos. Kids traded partners. They used unsanctioned and untaught moves. A pair of 13-year-olds started a playful war. It looked fun. I skated out of the scrum until a 14-year-old wearing G-Unit jewelry grabbed my jersey and challenged me to a fight. I asked him if he was sure. He hadn't finished nodding when I grabbed his jersey at the shoulder and pulled it over his head. I administered three stage punches into the lump inside and accidentally connected one. He stopped struggling, and I let him up, allowing him to poke his head through his jersey collar. "Good fight," he said, and moved on to fight someone else.

  Trevor, who was on the ice to supervise, had seen enough. He yelled at us to "smarten up" and arrange ourselves on the blue line again. Our next lesson was the art of the cheap shot. Brad and Derek resumed the now-familiar mutual shoulde
r grip as we watched. "Fake a few punches," said Derek, feinting toward Brad's face. "Then squat to get under his grab arm, move your head to the right, then quickly stand up tall again." Derek finished the sequence. He'd broken Brad's grip and turned his shoulders perpendicular. "Now unload on his kidneys!" said Derek, stage-punching Brad in the back. "Try it!"

  Dominic's first attempt spun me sideways. I struggled against the move but couldn't break it. Then my back caved in. I felt nausea. Dominic had "accidentally" punched me in the kidneys. "Sorry, dude," he said.

  "A lot of players discount body shots but they got me some critical advantages," Derek said. "I was able to reset my grip so I could go back to hitting him in the face."

  Brad took over the class for the last lesson, on how to square up properly. He told smaller players to engage cautiously. "I like to let the other guy skate around me for a while. If you're smaller, wait for him to lunge toward you. That way you can get on the inside. If you don't get close to him, he'll use his reach to keep you on defense, and you'll get killed. Remember, it's not about size. It's speed and technique and how fast you can grab him and start throwing punches."

  Brad and Derek exchanged vacant looks at each other. They spoke to each other, sotto voce, until Derek shook his head. "That's it, guys," he said. The session was over. We had spent a total of 40 minutes on the ice.

  Trevor thanked the kids for coming out as they began skating off. "One more thing," Derek shouted before we left. "WHAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN HOCKEY FIGHTING?"

  I wasn't sure. Was it most important to not get hit and send the message? To hijack game momentum and win and protect your star? Was it to launch your pro career, conceal dirty moves, punch your friends, and undermine the legitimacy of your sport while simultaneously enriching it? Or was it just something to give Philadelphians a reason to get up in the morning? But I went with the chorus line on this one.

  "DON'T GET HIT," we yelled back in unison.

  "That's right," said Derek. "And, uh ... have fun. That's also important."

  The next morning I found blood in my urine. Dominic's kidney punch had turned it a syrupy red. At the meeting of my right bicep and shoulder, where he had grabbed my jersey, I found a deep bruise that was larger than a slice of processed cheese. Still, the damage was light: full set of teeth, face uncut.

  Derek, Brad, and Trevor, however disorganized, had taught legitimate techniques that really worked. That the fight camp was as successful as it was became less of a miracle the better I got to know the instructors. After the camp, I had a beer with Todd, Trevor, and Derek. Over chicken wings and pints of Molson at The Press Box, a nearby sports bar, I learned that Trevor was a little shy, Todd a dedicated family man, and Derek, while playing in Quebec, had taught himself to speak French so he could talk to girls.

  "So there you go," said Trevor, making one final PR move as I picked up the check. "Fighting can be taught, but we teach them to be responsible."

  I didn't catch the responsibility message in any of the lessons. Trevor continued, insisting that he wasn't churning out goons. Of all the kids he'd taught, he claimed that only one had turned into a problem and was now looking for extra action on the ice. It didn't matter; none of the details had made it into any of the media coverage. So he had become a pariah, a sort of Barnum figure minus the self-awareness. I wanted to know: with all the controversy, with the loss of insurance and business, was it worth it?

  "CTV news was negative," said Trevor, staring into his food. "But then they interviewed Wayne Gretzky and he said the camp was a good idea. If Gretzky had said, 'That's the stupidest idea ever,' I would look like the biggest idiot in the world. But he didn't."

  Epilogue: Trevor has since sold the business and is uninvolved with Puckmasters. Todd Holt remained to help with some of the coaching duties. And fight camp, as far as I know, is on hold.

  The Franchise

  PATRICK HRUBY

  FROM ESPN.COM

  IN THE BEGINNING, there was the word. And that word was no. On a cloudy morning in 1984, three men met in an Amtrak dining car winding through the Rocky Mountains, en route from Denver to Oakland, California. The first was Trip Hawkins, a closet Strat-O-Matic Football junkie and founder of video game maker Electronic Arts (which has a relationship with ESPN to integrate content into its games). The second was Joe Ybarra, Hawkins's lieutenant, a high school chess champ turned pigskin fanatic. The third was John Madden, the former Super Bowl-winning coach, hardware store pitchman, televised NFL evangelist, and poet laureate of interior line play.

  Boom! He'll remember that number!

  Then, as now, Madden had no use for airplanes. He was nearly as leery of computers. This was before Google, PlayStation, or the Internet. People didn't carry credit card-thin smart phones in their pockets, and video games were quarter-eating diversions for nerdy boys. Madden was a football guy. Intelligent as hell, sure. Unafraid of the telestrator. Once taught an X's and O's class at Berkeley. Yet was totally unmoved by "Pac-Man fever." Honestly didn't know what the heck a PC did. Booming and boisterous, an alpha male to the core, Madden brandished a cigar throughout the meeting—one nearly a foot long with the diameter of a quarter; a veritable kraken of Cohibas to be gazed upon with despair. A chew toy.

  Spittle-splattered but unbowed, Hawkins made his pitch, the same one he previously had delivered in a fast-tood parking lot outside Madden's Bay Area office: Help me build a game. Lend your expertise. I'll put your name on the box.

  Madden was intrigued. Maybe, he thought, this could become a coaching tool. Pick a play, run it on a machine, see if it works. No need to scrimmage.

  He sketched formations on paper, lines branching in every direction—little masterworks of unintentional abstract art that Hawkins would later frame.

  The onetime Oakland Raiders coach talked philosophy: Where's my playing field ? Below sea level and it rains a lot ? Then give me Gene Upshaw. Put the defense on skis and push them all day long.

  Hawkins listened. Ybarra took notes. The duo promised they would create as sophisticated a simulation as home computers would allow. Real football, with seven players to a side...

  Right there, Madden balked—even though he was technically under contract with EA to endorse a football game. "If it's not 11-on-11," he said, "it's not real football"

  "That was a deal breaker," Madden recalled. "If it was going to be me and going to be pro football, it had to have 22 guys on the screen. If we couldn't have that, we couldn't have a game."

  The Consummate Video Game

  Everyone knows how the story ends. Madden über alles. Twenty-two guys on the screen? Try a 22-year-old pop culture phenomenon, a video game once immortalized in a television commercial featuring the apocalyptic strains of "O Fortuna" from the Carmina Burana cantata—and the effect was only slightly over-the-top.

  You can measure the impact of Madden through its sales: as many as 2 million copies in a single week, 85 million copies since the game's inception, and more than $3 billion in total revenue. You can chart the game's ascent, shoulder to shoulder, alongside the $20-billion-a-year video game industry, which is either co-opting Hollywood (see Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia) or topping it (opening-week gross of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: $550 million; The Dark Knight: $204 million).

  You can witness the cultural power of Madden: grown men lining up outside Wal-Marts for the game's annual midnight release; rock bands, such as Good Charlotte, going mainstream via inclusion on the Madden soundtrack; a pokerlike underground circuit of cash tournaments; the black-cat mojo of the Madden cover curse superseding the Sports Illustrated cover jinx; Madden himself being recognized less for his Hall of Fame coaching and broadcasting career than for a game that beat him into Canton.

  Alternately, you can listen to Cleveland Browns kick returner Josh Cribbs.

  "I used to play Madden all the time with [former teammate] Kellen Winslow [Jr.]," he said. "When Kellen got married, he did it at his house. After the ceremony, he went to play Madd
en! He just got married. His wife is sitting there. And he's playing. We all made fun of him."

  It's a Madden, Madden, Madden world. We're all just playing in it. How did this happen? That's the story you don't know ... And it's a story that could have starred Joe Montana.

  Dreaming of Joe Cool

  They wanted Montana. Wouldn't anybody? Think about it: you're Hawkins; a pigskin game is your lifelong dream. As a child, he played wingback on a flag-football squad. He also fell in love with the 1967 edition of Strat-O-Matic Football, a paper-and-dice pigskin game that was, in a rudimentary way, the Madden of its era.

  A bright and precocious teenager, Hawkins created a Strat-O-Matic knockoff and attempted to start a business. His next-door neighbor in La Jolla, California, was former AFL president Milt Woodard, which gave Hawkins the opportunity to send a proposal to Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt. Hunt wrote back. Beat it, kid.

  No matter. Hawkins ordered parts. Set up an assembly line in his family's living room. Borrowed $5,000 from his father and took out ads in NFL game programs.

  He lost every penny.

  The flop was a slap in the face. How could a great football simulation not sell? Around the same time, he got his first computer and, with it, an answer. Strat-O-Matic was too hard. Players had to crunch too many numbers, obliterating the necessary suspension of disbelief. Solution? Put the math inside the computer. Let the machine do the work.