Frozen Dreams - Why I Love Hockey
Near the end of Cameron Crowe's largely autobiographical film Almost Famous, main character William Miller, a fledgling music journalist, finally gets the interview with rock star Russell Hammond that he's spent the whole movie pursuing. His first question is, "Russell, in your own words, what do you love about music?". Hammond answers, "To begin with, everything.". I feel the same way about hockey. More specifically, I guess I would have to say I love the speed and the intensity. The game is so fast that anything can happen at any time. Hockey players are among the quickest, most graceful, and best-conditioned athletes in the world. They're also among the toughest athletes in the world. They have to be. To paraphrase comedian George Carlin, hockey consists of two activities: skating, and beating the shit out of somebody. I don't know how hockey players absorb the punishment they take night after night. I think that hockey players surpass even football players in their ability to play with and through pain. Football games are only once a week. Hockey players routinely have to play three or four times in a seven-day period, with sometimes extensive travel in between games.
The sheer speed of hockey is breathtaking. A goal can happen suddenly, at any second. The action is sometimes end-to-end, the teams trading rushes and scoring chances. Contrast this with the other major sports. In basketball, teams score all the time. They sometimes score in spectacular fashion, I'll give them that, but each team typically scores at least 80 points a game at the professional level. In football, you can usually get a pretty good sense of when a touchdown is going to happen. Even when a long scoring play occurs, it takes a while to develop. In hockey, the puck can be on a player's stick one second, and in the net the next. Don't get me started on the pace of baseball. Even with the different rules the league has tried to institute to speed things up, a baseball game still takes forever. In a typical at-bat, the hitter strolls to the plate, takes a few practice swings, adjusts his uniform, looks to the third-base coach for the signs, digs around in the batter's box until he finds the perfect spots to dig his cleats in, and finally waits for the pitch. If there are runners on base, the pitcher may step on the rubber, then step off the rubber. He may step back on the rubber, look over at the runner, and then step off again. He may throw over to first a few times. When he finally decides to pitch, the hitter may step out of the box and go through his whole routine again. Then, the pitcher may repeat his routine all over again. When we finally reach the point where the pitcher seems to be ready to actually deliver a pitch and the hitter actually stays in the box to receive it, the pitcher and the cather may disagree on which pitch to throw. The pitcher may shake the catcher off a time or two. Depending on the situation, this may necessitate a formal meeting between the pitcher, the catcher, the pitching coach, and the entire infield. Then, the umpire comes out to break the meeting up, and the whole process starts all over again. By this time, I've reached REM stage. Don't misunderstand me. I like baseball, and I play fantasy baseball. I can't remember the last time I watched a whole game, though. If you want to kill a whole afternoon or evening sitting through it, then God bless. It's not for me. Not anymore. Life is too short.
Soccer is another sport that bores me to death. The field is two miles long and a mile wide, and each team only gets a handful of scoring chances a game. The rare 3-2 score is an offensive explosion. No thanks. For the short time that professional indoor soccer was a sport, that was pretty exciting. The playing field was smaller and had walls that were in play, so that led to a speedier game and more scoring. You could not have paid me enough to be a goalie, though. That must have been the worst job in all of professional sports. If a goalie only got blasted in the face with the ball ten times in a game, he must have considered it a good night.
Professional lacrosse looks fairly promising. It seems to come close to the vicious beauty that is hockey, but I haven't watched enough of it to know. I don't understand the rules. Maybe I'll give it a shot if I haven't missed the whole season already. No matter what, though, there is absolutely nothing like hockey. It's the greatest game ever invented.
Cheers!
I also once heard that hockey players are almost universally regarded by journalists as the nicest people among professional athletes. The writers say that hockey players are the people most likely to buy them a beer if they see them in a bar. How many beers do you think Randy Moss, Barry Bonds, or Ron Artest have ever bought for sportswriters? Even Kevin Garnett, who by all accounts is a pretty good guy, is also known as the biggest cheapskate in town here in Minneapolis. He supposedly doesn't even tip the pizza delivery guy. Can you imagine Wayne Gretzky not tipping the pizza delivery guy? Neither can I. I rest my case.
The sheer speed of hockey is breathtaking. A goal can happen suddenly, at any second. The action is sometimes end-to-end, the teams trading rushes and scoring chances. Contrast this with the other major sports. In basketball, teams score all the time. They sometimes score in spectacular fashion, I'll give them that, but each team typically scores at least 80 points a game at the professional level. In football, you can usually get a pretty good sense of when a touchdown is going to happen. Even when a long scoring play occurs, it takes a while to develop. In hockey, the puck can be on a player's stick one second, and in the net the next. Don't get me started on the pace of baseball. Even with the different rules the league has tried to institute to speed things up, a baseball game still takes forever. In a typical at-bat, the hitter strolls to the plate, takes a few practice swings, adjusts his uniform, looks to the third-base coach for the signs, digs around in the batter's box until he finds the perfect spots to dig his cleats in, and finally waits for the pitch. If there are runners on base, the pitcher may step on the rubber, then step off the rubber. He may step back on the rubber, look over at the runner, and then step off again. He may throw over to first a few times. When he finally decides to pitch, the hitter may step out of the box and go through his whole routine again. Then, the pitcher may repeat his routine all over again. When we finally reach the point where the pitcher seems to be ready to actually deliver a pitch and the hitter actually stays in the box to receive it, the pitcher and the cather may disagree on which pitch to throw. The pitcher may shake the catcher off a time or two. Depending on the situation, this may necessitate a formal meeting between the pitcher, the catcher, the pitching coach, and the entire infield. Then, the umpire comes out to break the meeting up, and the whole process starts all over again. By this time, I've reached REM stage. Don't misunderstand me. I like baseball, and I play fantasy baseball. I can't remember the last time I watched a whole game, though. If you want to kill a whole afternoon or evening sitting through it, then God bless. It's not for me. Not anymore. Life is too short.
Soccer is another sport that bores me to death. The field is two miles long and a mile wide, and each team only gets a handful of scoring chances a game. The rare 3-2 score is an offensive explosion. No thanks. For the short time that professional indoor soccer was a sport, that was pretty exciting. The playing field was smaller and had walls that were in play, so that led to a speedier game and more scoring. You could not have paid me enough to be a goalie, though. That must have been the worst job in all of professional sports. If a goalie only got blasted in the face with the ball ten times in a game, he must have considered it a good night.
Professional lacrosse looks fairly promising. It seems to come close to the vicious beauty that is hockey, but I haven't watched enough of it to know. I don't understand the rules. Maybe I'll give it a shot if I haven't missed the whole season already. No matter what, though, there is absolutely nothing like hockey. It's the greatest game ever invented.
Cheers!
I also once heard that hockey players are almost universally regarded by journalists as the nicest people among professional athletes. The writers say that hockey players are the people most likely to buy them a beer if they see them in a bar. How many beers do you think Randy Moss, Barry Bonds, or Ron Artest have ever bought for sportswriters? Even Kevin Garnett, who by all accounts is a pretty good guy, is also known as the biggest cheapskate in town here in Minneapolis. He supposedly doesn't even tip the pizza delivery guy. Can you imagine Wayne Gretzky not tipping the pizza delivery guy? Neither can I. I rest my case.
posted by Dave at 7:26 AM
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