by James Duthie
'Cause Jerry's first ball hitting, and Lopes is mitting, and the final out has now been made. And I can see no reasons, cause there are no reasons, why the Series should even be played. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Tell me why. I don't like Monday. Tell me why. I don't like Monday. Tell me why. I don't like Monday. I want to sho-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooot Rick Mon-day down.
What do you want. . .. I was 14.
I'll remember taking a glove to every single game, even when I was too old for it to be cool, desperate to catch one foul ball. One night, I went to get a rubber weenie, and was strolling towards my section when the Cardinals' George Hendricks looped one in that direction. Seconds later, there was my buddy on the big screen, gleaming like he'd just caught the freakin' Hope Diamond.
The ball had bounced off my seat, and into his hands.
I won't remember '94. That traumatic memory has been suppressed, and will likely only come out about 20 years from now in therapy.
I dug through some boxes in the basement the other day, searching for Expos mementos. All I came up with was a wrapper from a “Cro-Bar,” the Warren Cromartie-inspired, and oh-so-tasty, answer to the Baby Ruth candy bar.
One lousy souvenir. But beaucoup de souvenirs, as they say in Moe-Ray-Al.
And those cannot be shipped to DC.
• • •
Postscript: The Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005. They have yet to have a winning season in Washington.
Chapter 42
Kerry Fraser's Hair Scare
November 2006
I have seen the Eighth Wonder of the World. Up close.
I have watched it. Studied it. Even touched it. I spent an entire day in its presence. It is mystical, magical, unexplainable. And most of all, immovable.
It is Kerry Fraser's lid.
For more than three decades, Fraser's coif has been astonishing fans in hockey arenas across North America. He hears the whispers everywhere he goes.
“Is it real?”
“How does it stay like that?”
“That was !#*@!NG high-sticking you A*&@%!” (OK, that last one likely doesn't have anything to do with the hair. Likely wasn't a whisper either.)
Well, if I may paraphrase Teri Hatcher (referring to a different body part on Seinfeld): it is real, and it's spectacular. And it is also about to be hidden away. Buried beneath a helmet.
This, my friends, is a tragedy.
Sure, making helmets mandatory for referees is wise and, frankly, long overdue. But hiding a hockey treasure like Fraser's hair? That's akin to keeping the Mona Lisa in the closet at the Louvre.
Or worse. We have seen what helmets do to hair. Messing it. Flattening it. And sometimes it seems, rubbing it right off, leading to hockey's most horrific mutation: the receding mullet. Al Iafrate anyone? (Completely unrelated Al Iafrate anecdote: He appeared as a guest on our show two years ago. He rode his Harley into the studio, wearing a sweat suit. We set up a radar gun on our fake rink (RIP), and he took a shot from a small wooden riser, with zero room to step into it, and hit 99 mph. One take. In flip-flops. Ridiculous.)
Two months into the season, we are still waiting to see Fraser's Helmethead debut. Back in September, he was helping his daughter move, and dropped a TV on his big toe, shattering it. (Too bad. I'm convinced if he had dropped it on his head, it would have bounced off that lid like a beach ball. It's impenetrable. NASA really needs to take some samples.)
Rehab complete, he will finally don the bucket Thursday as Tampa visits Boston. As that terrifying night closed in, we went to visit him at his home near Philadelphia to see how he is coping with the impending end of his perfect 'do.
We found him quivering in the corner like a wet puppy. OK, not really. But he acted that way brilliantly in an NHL on TSN sketch we were taping about Fraser's supposed fear of Helmethead.
Seriously, we've shot a bunch of shtick pieces over the years, and never had a more eager leading man. He picked us up at the airport, let us stay at his house, cooked us breakfast and chauffeured us all over Philly while we made him do ridiculous stunts while wearing a hockey helmet. Let's see Philip Seymour Hoffman do that!
But the star was the hair. No matter what we did, it wouldn't budge.
We made him wear the helmet as he ran up and down the Rocky steps a half dozen times. When the helmet came off, the hair was perfect. He wore it through a workout in the gym. Stayed perfect. He skated for an hour with it on. Perfect. And when we finally soaked it and used half a jar of some paste or grooming cream to make it look bad for a dream sequence shot, he ran his fingers through it once and it bounced back up like a freakin' Weeble.
So he will undoubtedly triumph over Helmethead. In fact, Fraser's hair may be the single greatest genetic gift I've ever seen. Next to Eva Longoria.
• • •
Postscript: Fraser took the helmet off for good after the 2009–10 NHL season, retiring after more than 37 years as an NHL official. He refereed more than 1,900 regular season games, the most in history. Both the man, and the coif, are likely headed for the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Chapter 43
Tv Ecstasy
December 2004
These are the three moments that changed my life:
1. When, after dressing as Run from Run-DMC, and rapping a Shakespearean sonnet for a Grade 12 English oral mid-term, my teacher exploded: “You, son, are an idiot. And you should go work in TV because that's where all idiots end up.”
2. When, while waiting in line outside a bar on a frigid January night in Ottawa, this impossibly hot blonde tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if she could borrow my gloves. To show her gratitude, she bore my three children. A little excessive maybe, but I'm not complaining.
3. When I bought my PVR.
Not necessarily in that order.
You know how people always say, “How did we ever survive without the Internet?” Or bank cards, or cellphones, or. . . Maxim. Well, that's the way I feel about my Personal Video Recorder. (Aside: PVR is the name given by Bell to its digital recording product. You may also know it as TiVo, or some other brand name given by your respective cable or satellite provider. Despite the fact this writer works for a company owned by Bell, he has not received any complimentary equipment for his endorsement. Which, by the way, is a crock. You think he'd get a dish, or a phone, or free Internet, or something. Nope. Jack-Squat. Not even a T-shirt. He got more swag when he worked at Ponderosa in the '80s. At least they let him eat the leftover Jell-O.)
Where was I? Oh yeah, PVR. The greatest development in video since Girls Gone Wild. If you don't have it, or you don't know what it is, you're a TV caveman. You're probably in a loincloth trying to make fire as we speak. Seriously, you might as well still have Beta.
PVR makes you God of your TV. You can pause live shows, rewind (I believe the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction was the moment PVR officially arrived: “Dude, was that her boob?!?”—rewind—“Holy crap, it was!”), and record things off TV with the push of one little red button. No tapes. No poor-quality playback grainier than the lunar landing (the first one). No timers more complex than logarithms. The PVR is Fisher-Price easy.
And that's only half of it. You can fly through commercials and pre-game shows and intermissions at 300x speed. (Wait. Uhh. Oh-Oh. Forget I said that.) For a sports fan, this is the best invention since cheerleaders. You can watch games in a fraction of the time. Anytime!
Back in January, my kids had two birthday parties to attend on the day of the NFC and AFC Championship Games (not enough parents take into account future playoff schedules when they conceive. . . so selfish). So I PVR'd 'em. In the seven hours I would have spent in front of the TV watching the games live, I instead:
Made both parties
Took down the Christmas lights
Worked out (jazzercise, as always)
Made dinner
Did the dishes
Bathed the kids
Walked the dog
Seduced the wife. . . twice
Watched both games in two hours flat.
(OK, I made up that one part just to sound impressive. Truth is, I never make dinner.)
This past weekend alone, I PVR'd SportsCenter, three college basketball games, Dave Hodge's show, the end of the golf tournament and Kangaroo Jack. (I did that one for the kids, until I saw Estella Warren. I owe an apology to Jerry O'Connell. He was my favourite punch line when I heard he was in a movie with a talking marsupial. No one mentioned the make-out scenes with Estella. I now believe Jerry O'Connell is the pre-eminent actor of our generation.)
Nothing PVRs better than golf. You can record an entire final round and watch it in about a half-hour. Golf is actually much more entertaining at 15x speed. Even Bernhard Langer plays fast. And it's not like you miss much without the commentary.
Roger Maltbie: “That's a good-looking shot.”
Dan Hicks: “Nicely done.”
Johnny Miller: “I was better.”
One warning. PVR is a TV viewer's crack. You cannot stop. You end up recording stuff you'd never watch normally.
“Hey, look! There's an all-new Hope & Faith on tonight!”
And I can no longer watch live TV. It's too darn slow! If I want to watch something at 8:00, I'll sit around until 8:30, just so I can PVR and skip the commercials. There's no sadder moment in a PVRer's life than hitting the fast-forward button during an ad, and getting the “LIVE” message. It's crushing.
PVR doesn't just make TV better. It makes you a better person.
Remember this?
Her: “Honey. . . don't forget tonight we're going to look at lampshades!”
You: “But what about the footba. . .”
Her: “You promised!”
You (defeated): All right, Schmoofie.”
Now it's:
You: “No problem, babe. Just let me set the PVR!”
Her: “Sorry, hun. . . already set for Desperate Housewives!”
OK, so it's not perfect.
• • •
Postscript: The new PVRs make my original look like an 8-track. They can record two things at once, and have a gazillion hours of storage space. If I end up in a coma, or prison, or something, I have already instructed my children to tape all hockey and football games, plus every episode of SportsCenter, Dexter, Entourage, Californication, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Amazing Race and The Bachelor (we all have our skeletons).
Chapter 44
Golden Sunday
February 2002
Son, I'm not sure when I'll let you read this.
Maybe in 2010 when you're 10, and we're watching the Olympics together. Maybe when you're 18 or so, and really starting to understand passion and patriotism. Maybe another 15 or 20 years beyond that, when you have your own kids and start to get all sucky and emotional like your Dad. Maybe it'll just be the first time you ask me what “That Day” was really like, and you look at me like you really want to know. Or maybe your little sister will ask me first. That'd be cool, too. Or maybe I'm just doing this for myself, so I'll never forget the feeling.
It doesn't really matter.
The thing is, someday, somewhere, someone will ask you where you were when Canada won Gold in 2002. And instead of saying, “I was only two, I don't remember,” you can tell them this:
Your father was a wreck all morning. Pacing like the night you were born. Thankfully, I found John Cusack back-to-back classics on MoviePix to kill the agonizing wait.
First up, Say Anything, featuring one of the best movie scenes of all-time, when Lloyd Dobler stands outside his girlfriend's house, holding a ghetto blaster over his head playing Peter Gabriel's “Your Eyes” (their song) after she dumped him. I instantly ponder running out on to the street, holding a ghetto blaster high above my head, and blasting “O Canada”.
Next up, The Sure Thing. Just the title was a good omen, I figured. We all search for omens on a day like this. And there were more to come.
Around lunch, you come running back in from the grocery store with your Mom, carrying some special gold coin they were giving out with a carton of Coke. It was a Team Canada promotion, with a Scott Niedermayer likeness on it. Most days, I'd chuck it in a drawer. But on this day, I delicately place it on the mantle like it was your Great Grandpa's ashes or something, then decide it belongs on the TV, so it may transmit good vibes to Salt Lake in some weird poltergeist kind of way. (In the history books, you'll read about the famous Loonie buried in the ice. In our family, the legend will be the Niedermayer Coke Coin on top of the Sony.)
When you wake up from your nap just before game time, I let you pick out a clean shirt. (Son, you have an unhealthy obsession with clothes for a two-year-old boy. Your Mother thinks it's cute. I'm somewhat concerned.) When you point to your red Roots sweatshirt with Canada on the front, I almost begin to weep. You never pick that shirt. This is too good!
By game time, all the neighbours are over, 20 strong, and you're nowhere to be seen. Off in the playroom, oblivious to your Father's impending ulcer.
Son, it was awesome. I'll spare you most of the play-by-play, because I've saved you the tape. Maybe you can watch it the same day you read this (although I'm guessing VCRs are probably the 8-track tapes of your generation, so you may be screwed).
We reacted like we'd won the lottery with every Team Canada goal, and lost a loved one with every near miss. (When Mario missed an open net, I believe I performed an exact recreation of Willem Dafoe's death scene in Platoon, when he gets shot about 50 times in the back, throws his arms in the air and then falls face-forward to the ground in super slo-mo.)
There is one image I'll never forget. The Great One (that guy I told you about so many times), after the outcome was clear and the world was lifted off his shoulders, gazing down towards the ice, pumping his fist and yelling a distinctly Canadian phrase that any amateur lip-reader couldn't possibly miss: “F----n' Eh!” Your Grandma won't be happy with me, and I'll probably have to yell at you if you repeat it (unless you're, like, 32 now), but trust me, at that moment, it was Shakespeare.
You see, right or wrong, we'd always been known as this polite, conservative, insecure nation. The US's timid little brother. And 50 years without a gold in Our Game didn't help the fragile ego. We needed to kick some ass for once. And on that day, we did.
With three minutes left, I came and pulled you out of the playroom. You came reluctantly I might add. If you had your choice you would have spent the greatest sports moment of my generation doing a Franklin the Turtle puzzle. I sat you on my lap on the floor. Even if you had no chance to remember it, I wanted you to be able to tell your friends you did watch it.
I even stuck the video camera on top of the TV, shooting back at us for our reaction. Upon reviewing it later, I realized that when Sakic scored, I leapt up and almost pile-drove you into the hardwood. Sorry.
We shouted down from 10, and you just looked around, giving us your patented “I believe these people are aliens” stare.
And then it was over.
And neighbours jumped on furniture, hugged and sang “O Canada”. And you ran around the room high-fiving every single one of us. And it was the same scene in just about every family room in the country.
Downtown (every Canadian city's downtown), they rushed out of the bars and ran, and screamed, and honked, and sang, and cried, and leapt into the arms of strangers, and hung out of car windows, and shut down major arteries, and played street hockey until the wee hours of Monday.
I thought more than once about jumping in the car and joining them. Instead, I just sat on the floor with you, paralyzed with glee, watching the Canadian players holding their kids, letting them play with their Gold Medals as if they were some cheesy coins they'd found in a carton of Coke.
Afterwards, when everyone had gone home, you sat on my lap, and we watched the endless shots of people cheering from coast to coast. Then all of a sudden you pointed at the screen, and blurted out one of the newest words in your tiny, but ever-expanding, vocabulary.
“H
app. . . eeee!”
Son, you have no idea.
• • •
Postscript: I wrote this column in a hazy blur at two in the morning after Canada's gold medal win. At the time, it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime moment. It was our generation's 1972. That is, until Vancouver, 2010, came along, and blew the 2002 moment away. My guess is that 30 years from now, everyone will remember where they were when Crosby scored to win gold in Vancouver. And the 2002 gold will become an afterthought. It just didn't have that one defining goal that Crosby gave us, or Paul Henderson before him.
But 2002 will remain special to me, because I got to watch it as a fan, with my boy and baby daughter with me. I couldn't be there when they watched the 2010 game at home with Mom, their baby sister, and half my son's hockey team. Dad was stuck at work. Of course, his workplace was 30 feet away from where Crosby scored. So he wasn't complaining.
Chapter 45
Collateral Damage
May 2005. (The full NHL season has been lost to the lockout. Commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL Players' Association head Bob Goodenow continue to meet, with little progress.)
• • •
Hey, Bob, Gary! Got a minute? Before you get together this week to make “no significant progress,” I was wondering if you could drop by my neighbourhood? I've got some pals I'd like you to meet.
See over there, just up the street from my place? Those are the Hilliard boys, Chris and Mark, two brothers (14 and 16) who are sports freaks. So are their buddies, Jeff, Travis, Braden, Kevin, Dylan, David and Paul. For the last few springs, they've had the best street hockey game in the hood (OK, hood is a stretch for our little suburban Pleasantville, but I feel it gives me street cred). Every day after school, they'd be there. They didn't even have to call each other. Just show up with a stick at 4:00 and it was, “Game on!”
