by James Duthie
Eventually, Ken convinced me my metal content should be low enough to avoid horrible disfiguration. So I lay down, he contorted my arm to his sadistic satisfaction, told me not to move a millimetre. For the next 35 minutes.
“Sorry, we're running late today,” Ken small-talked as he got ready to send me in. “We had some problems earlier.”
Problems? What the hell does that mean, Ken? Problems. . . like the machine leaked some magnetic radiation and turned the last patient to slime? What problems, Ken?!?
“We had a patient. . . umm. . . have some trouble. . . and. . . uhh. . . it took a while.”
OK Ken, now you're freaking me out. Define “trouble,” Ken.
“It just can be a little uncomfortable for some people, and if you stop the test at any time, you have to start all over again. Which we had to do five or six times with the patient this morning.”
Fine. It was probably some old neurotic fraidy-cat. I'm a healthy, brave He-man. There will not be trouble.
And there wasn't. At least not for the first three or four seconds.
Here's a transcription of my thoughts as Ken sent me into the cylinder:
“OK, here we go. No problem. . . Just keep the eyes shut and relax. Hey, this is kind of cool. I feel like Sigourney Weaver in that sleep chamber in Aliens. Let's open the eyes. HOLY CRAP! My nose is almost touching the top. This is a freakin' tomb! I can't breathe! OUT! OUT NOW! MOMMY!!!”
They give you a panic button to hit. I was ready to squeeze it roughly nine seconds in, which might have been a record. I could have been the Usain Bolt of MRI. But then Ken's voice came through the speaker.
“Just relax and breathe,” he said. Apparently Ken could sense I was about to have a seizure.
“We're going to start now. There's going to be about seven or eight of these. . . lasting anywhere from two to four minutes. You're going to hear some very loud noises throughout the tests. Don't be concerned.”
Oh, I'm way past concerned, Ken. I'm not sure how to describe the noises. There were actually several. First, this low moaning, like whales mating (not that I know what whales sound like when they mate. . . they might scream BOO-YAH! for all I know). Then an annoying tapping, like Morse code. Tap tap tap. . . U. . . tap tap tap tap R. . . tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap DEAD! That's it! U-R Dead! Oh crap.
And finally, the chorus: An opus of the loudest and most annoying buzzing noises in the history of sound. Like a million alarm clocks. And no snooze button to be found. It was painful. Worse than anything I'd ever heard. Even John Tesh's Greatest Hits. And so it went for a full half-hour. Whale moans. Tap-tap-tap. BUZZ-BUZZ. All as loud as if my head was up against the speaker at a Nine Inch Nails concert. Though I suppose the migraine it gave me helped me temporarily forget that I couldn't breathe and was about to die.
Somehow I didn't. I survived. Which, at that moment anyway, felt like the single greatest accomplishment of my adult life.
“How was it?” Ken asked, as he pulled me out of his Chamber of Horrors.
Fan-freakin'-tastic, Ken. You sicko.
To sum up, MRIs suck. Put it this way. If America really wanted those Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo to talk. . . they should have given them an MRI.
“All right, NOW tell us where Bin Laden is. . . Oh and, by the way, you have a slight tear of your left posterior deltoid.”
I haven't got the results back yet. With my luck, it will be “INCONCLUSIVE. FURTHER TESTS NEEDED.”
Fat chance. I'd rather amputate.
• • •
Postscript: I was diagnosed with a small tear in my labrum, not bad enough to require surgery. We fixed it with a few months of physiotherapy. I was also self-diagnosed with claustrophobia, for which I blame Ken. He haunts my dreams to this day.
Chapter 27
Patrick Roy's Ride
October 2006
I feel like I'm on an episode of Pimp My Bus.
We are cruising through eastern Quebec with the Memorial Cup Champion Quebec Remparts, who are, by junior hockey standards, livin' large-antic.
They have satellite TV (at this moment tuned to the SportsCenter morning loop with the volume down and the tunes playing, and for the record, Dan O'Toole is hilarious on mute), a DVD player and those big spacious cushy seats with enough room between rows that Yao Ming could stretch out.
“I wanted to make this like a pro-team environment,” says the second winningest goalie in NHL history, his feet resting on a closed cooler, the contents of which I will never discover before I jump off the bus halfway to Val d'Or. (Could be food. Could be beer. Could be the body of a hitchhiker. I mean. . . he'd never get caught. Even if they get pulled over, what cop is going to ask Patrick Roy to take his feet off the cooler? These are the things you ponder on long bus trips.)
This is Roy's new life.
A guy who I always imagined would be lounging by a pool at a mansion in Florida, playing 36 holes a day on some posh private billionaire's track, is, instead, taking 13-hour bus rides across eastern Canada, coaching a bunch of teenagers.
“I'm a lot simpler than people think,” he says, staring out the window. (OK, I can't remember if he was actually staring out the window when he said that, but quotes always sound much deeper when the guy is staring out the window.)
“I enjoyed staying at The Ritz-Carlton and eating filet mignon every night, but there's nothing wrong with spaghetti and motels.”
Yes, Patrick Roy digs the Pizza Hut in Chicoutimi, and the Super 8 in Shawinigan. Who knew? And as we ride and talk, he seems more content than any former hockey star I've ever met.
“I could not think of a better way to spend my retirement,” he says.
But hold on. This cannot be the end game. He is not Brian Kilrea. Roy has always wanted more. So we cut to the chase.
“Do you want to be the head coach or GM of the Montreal Canadiens?”
I would ask this question three different times in the span of two minutes, never quite certain I got an answer. First try:
“I'm very happy in Quebec.”
“That doesn't really answer my. . .”
“I think they have a very good coach, he's a friend of mine and I think they have the best person as a GM in Montreal. I think they will be there for a very long time.”
“But what if they weren't?”
“If and if, eh? I guess my aunt would be my uncle. You could ask me the same question five years from now and maybe I'll have a different answer.”
Oh, I believe he would. Let's be clear. This is nothing but a hunch. I know Roy about as well as I know. . . say. . . Evangeline Lilly. Which is (sadly), not at all (despite numerous dreams to the contrary, most of which involve me running towards her yelling, “Open the hatch! Open the hatch!”).
But I bet you Patrick wants it.
In fact, I bet he wants it bad. I bet the way he left Montreal is the one single biggest regret in his hockey life, no matter how well it turned out in Colorado. I bet going back to the Canadiens would right that wrong in his mind.
I bet it's inevitable.
“I had a talk with Carbo,” Roy says. “He asked me if I want to join him. It was not an official offer, but I explained to him, I like what I'm doing. I touch everything here. I'm involved in every department of this club and I like that.” So, not yet. And he's right. Gainey and Carbonneau are talented hockey people who could be around for a while.
But someday, I bet, the Canadiens will come calling. And they'll give Roy the control he wants. And he will leap at it. And when that day comes?
I wouldn't bet against him.
• • •
Postscript: As the time of publication, Roy is still riding the buses. Guy Carbonneau was fired by the Canadiens at the end of the 2009 season, and replaced by Jacques Martin. Bob Gainey is no longer GM of the Habs. Roy was reportedly offered the dual job of coach/ general manager with the Colorado Avalanche, but turned it down. One tidbit I found out two years too late for this column: A hotel employee in PEI told
me that Roy left his favourite pillow at their hotel during a road trip with his team. He realized it only after the bus was two hours away. He turned the bus around, and returned to get the pillow.
Chapter 28
The Boys of Summer
August 2002
So, we're sitting in silence at the edge of the dock, our dangling feet making the only ripples on an otherwise glass tabletop lake, and the morning is darn near perfect, and suddenly he says: “Dad, what's summer?”
Hmmm. OK.
Buddy, summer is that smile you gave me when you finally hit the giant plastic yellow ball with the giant plastic red bat.
Summer is fantasizing that your team will sign all the big name free agents.
And then watching them getting outbid for Kip Miller.
Summer is watching your 11-year-old nephew get up on water skis after two years of failure, and several more of abstinence through fear, then seeing him throw his arms in the air, whoopin' and hollerin' and struttin' off the dock like he just beat Roy Jones Jr.
Summer is your first-ever 39 on the front. Followed by your 132nd-ever 54 on the back.
Summer is seeing the same nephew string and bait his own rod, cast like he was Redford in A River Runs Through It, and then, after landing a three-inch sunfish, scream for his dad to take it off the hook for him.
Summer is about Bud (weiser). Summer is not about Bud (Selig). Or Donald Fehr. Summer is not about either one of them.
Summer is taking your girl to one of the last drive-ins left in the Western world, getting giddy when you find out it's showing Minority Report, then screaming like Love-Hewitt when you realize the first half of the double-bill is Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
Summer is. . . about six months too short.
Summer is listening to your favourite jock-talk radio host do an hour on the Tour de France because it's the day after the All-Star Game, the ultimate sports dead zone, and he's got nothing else. Nada.
“The lines are open if you'd like to call in. Please call in. Please.”
Summer is letting your baby daughter try her first Mr. Freezie, and give you a look like: “Dang! You've been holding out on me. Any chance we can stock up Mom's left nipple with this stuff?”
Summer is doing a Pete Rose on Ray Fosse's bowl-over-the-catcher-smack to score the winning run. . . in the coed softball game at the company picnic, and the catcher is Helen, a 47-year-old mother of three in a sundress. Helen, your boss's secretary.
Summer is looking for a new job.
Summer is watching the boy-next-door splash and frolic all afternoon in his tiny plastic Barney pool. The boy is 36. His kids are away at camp.
Summer is doing your best Tiger fist-pump after reaching the green in two.
. . . On a par three.
Summer is going camping for the weekend to get away from it all. Then spending most of Saturday on your cell phone with your Roto-League buddies desperately trying to deal Roger Cedeno.
Summer is tasting a jumbo ballpark frank, blanketed in onions and sauerkraut and every condiment known to man. And then tasting it over and over again over the next three to five days.
Summer is 9:13 p.m. And still enough light to hit one more bucket of balls.
Summer is the blonde in the tank top on the roller blades who is about to cause a 32-car pile-up. She should be on Maaco's payroll. She is carnage waiting to happen.
Summer is the first two weeks of training camp, when even the Bengals can dream.
Summer is this very moment, with you and me and the sun and the lake, and the wish that autumn and everything after didn't exist. Or at least could hold off a while.
“Dad,” he says after a long silence. “What's autumn?”
• • •
Postscript: Readers often ask me if I make these scenes up. I don't. My three-year-old really did ask, “Dad, what's summer?” on the dock that morning. But my answer certainly wasn't as profound as the column. I had to read it to him two days later, after I wrote it. I was expecting some big “now I understand” hug at the end. But if I remember correctly, I think he said something like, “Daddy, you write dumb stuff.” Most would say that's a fair assessment.
Chapter 29
Pre-Game Peril
October 2007
Forget for a moment the headshots, the hits from behind, the separated shoulders from fighting. The latest grave danger in hockey is. . . well. . . it isn't even. . . from playing hockey.
It's from playing soccer before playing hockey.
Carolina Hurricanes forward Erik Cole was trying to juggle a soccer ball before a game Saturday night in Philadelphia. His foot met concrete instead of ball. Owweee (or some expletive-laden synonym).
Cole reportedly yelled in agony and had to be carried away by teammates. And unlike most soccer players who go down, he wasn't faking. There was no fracture, but he's out of the lineup at least a week.
Cole was taking part in a popular pre-game hockey ritual called “two-touch,” where a group of teammates stand in a circle trying to keep a soccer ball in the air. You can touch the ball twice, but then must pass to a teammate. (Note: “Two-touch” has different meanings in different cities. For example, in Toronto, it refers to the number of times the Leafs touch the puck in their own end each game.)
Last season, Flyers (then Predators) forward Scott Hartnell did almost exactly the same thing as Cole. He missed six weeks with a broken foot. And before a first round playoff game last spring, Sabres forward Maxim Afinogenov banged his head on the concrete playing circle-footie, giving sad new meaning to the term cement-head. Afinogenov played that night, but was scratched in the next round against the Rangers.
“I don't think he was right for a little while after that,” Lindy Ruff admitted months later.
Concrete can do that to a brain.
This is becoming an epidemic, people! Soccer hasn't seen players go down this often since Ronaldo. Or Rivaldo. Or Geraldo. . . Rivera. (I have no idea what that means, but it rhymed. And that was enough for me.) This must stop, boys! You are hockey players. That's dangerous enough. You don't need to be leaping for headers when there's an overhanging metal pipe. Ride the bike to warm up. Do yoga. Make out with a groupie. Anything!
When they say “Bend it like Beckham”, they mean the ball, not your fibula.
Some NHL coaches are considering banning the game. I would simply manage the soccer-circle roster carefully.
“Laraque, you can play with the soccer ball. Crosby, no.”
Of course, the problem isn't really the game. It's where the game is played: in small tunnels outside dressing rooms where there is mostly just cement and steel and. . . stuff that really hurts when you run into it. What NHL arenas really need is a two-touch court with padded walls and Nerf balls. Or put up one of those bouncy castles my kids jump on at the fair.
“Ovechkin, you have to get dressed! The team is on the ice!”
“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Until something is done about this pre-game footie fetish, the carnage will continue. And hockey fans will have one more reason to hate soccer.
• • •
Postscript: December 28, 2008—Toronto Maple Leafs forward Matt Stajan sent to hospital with eye injury after being hit with ball in soccer warm-up. March 12, 2009—New York Islander Kurtis McLean ruptures Achilles tendon during pre-game soccer warm-up. November 1, 2009—Vancouver Canuck Michael Grabner severely injures ankle playing pre-game soccer. Kids, I can't help you if you refuse to listen.
Chapter 30
The Brady Interview
February 2002
He was less than a first down away, and heading my way. Helmet off, hair champagne-drenched, eyes glazed in delirium.
The empty stool next to me was beckoning. At least I was beckoning it to beckon him. If I could just pry his attention away from the two dozen other reporters, and handlers, and hangers-on, hounding and surrounding him as he strolled towards the tunnel, I might have a shot at a one-on-one interview.
>
“Hey, Tom!” I bellowed. “Got a minute? We're live across Canada!”
Tom Brady turned and started towards me, smiling the smile of a 24-year-old who had just been given the keys to a shiny new. . .
World.
• • •
Sorry, Kelly Clarkson, but the real American Idol was crowned that Super Bowl Sunday seven months ago.
Sure, some thought he would be football's Chumbawamba. One huge hit and gone. But watching him dissect the Steelers Monday night, Tom Brady looked like he just might have a longer run than Marsha and his other namesakes did in syndication. And all I kept thinking about was that night in Naw'lins.
It had been barely a half-hour since Boston Tom became Broadway Joe, leading the Patriots to an upset of Namathian proportions. We were doing live post-game coverage on the carpet of the Superdome, right about the spot where Vinatieri's walk-off field goal had landed.
A few straggling confetti flakes were still falling from the rafters as Brady came towards us. Instantly. . . all those lame-brained post-game questions swirled around my head.
“How does it feel, Tom?”
Owwwch. The weakest of openers. Heck, Ahmad Rashad probes deeper than that. But geez, wouldn't you like to know? How could it possibly feel? Leading your team down the field in the final buck and change of the biggest game in the galaxy. . . to complete the most improbable, unfathomable season of any quarterback in history. . . to win the dang Super Bowl. . . and the Super Bowl MVP. . . and the car that goes with it. . . and the mega-money extension that would follow. . . Oh yeah, and the phone number of any Maxim covergirl you want.
