February 5, 2006

I am told that, to fit in at Boston, I will have to become a baseball fan. Baseball, as we all know, is a sport involving lots of strategy. It involves so much strategy, in fact, that the players have to spend 9 of every 10 minutes standing around strategizing as the grass grows serenely around them. There is so much strategy going on in baseball, that occasionally the players' brains start to liquefy from all that strategizing, which results in the brains leaking out the players' mouths in the form of wads. Then people watching back home must spout off a long list of numbers that, after translation, turns out to be the number of millimeters the grass has grown since anything interesting has happened.

I don't buy it. So the Red Sox won a World Series. So what? The citizens of Boston have plenty of sports teams to choose from, many of them playing sports in which stuff from time to time has been known to, well, happen. One of the sports, I have discovered, is hockey. I now am a veritable expert on the sport of hockey, having now seen one game live and up-close-and-personal this past Thursday. Of course, by up-close-and-personal, I mean in the boonies of Boston Garden (or whatever it's called now), but I did not complain. I've decided that hockey is an excellent sport to watch, especially if you have no idea what's going on.

Football is a fun sport to watch, but you have to know something about it to enjoy it, I think. I mean, this is a sport where, from the perspective of an outside observer, it just looks like a bunch of men forming weird patterns on a grassy field and running into each other. You may not know, just from looking, where the ball is at any given moment. I mean, sometimes nobody seems to know where the ball is, including the TV camera operator who is, supposedly, being paid to know where the ball is, rather than off getting himself some nachos during the only five second period in the entire game where his camera view would have settled a game deciding referee call. Speaking of which, did anybody see the Bruins vs. Canadiens game this Thursday? I did! Which is more than could be said of the camera operator.

They actually took a point away from Boston for some bizarre technicality while one of the key cameramen was gone somewhere. “This isn't normal,” said the guy sitting next to me who had been watching hockey since 1986 or something like that. I mostly just nodded, having no clue. As far as I knew, the scores in hockey went up and down all the time at the whims of referees (who, to listen to complaints, are simultaneously biased against both teams). But that's the great thing about hockey. You don't have to have a clue to enjoy it! In strict terms of guys-getting-slammed-against-walls-per-minute, hockey is well in the lead of most sports.

It seems like whenever I happen to watch some sports-type event, which isn't often, it's always some especially bizarre game. Like when I decided to join my father for some NBA watching one day when I was home from Harding, only to witness the fans and players pummeling each other with random items from the concession stands. “This is Detroit ,” my dad said. “Oh,” I said. I think “This isn't normal” could be my personal sports watching motto. I fully expect the next game I watch to be invaded by cross-dressing aliens (the guy on my left will blame the refs).

The “Bruins” is, I think, a cool name for a sports team, involving, as it does, bears. It sounds like a good team name. This is not the case for the Montreal Canadiens, whose name is somewhat uninspiring. Really, any kind of name would be better. A goofy name, like the Golden Gophers or the Senators, or a counterintuitive name, like the Mexicans. What justification could such a name possibly have? Are they afraid people will forget what country Montreal is in?

But not trying seemed to be a Canadian theme that night. You could tell because they keep track of “Shots” for both teams. The Canadiens, by the end of the night, had 17 or 18. The Bruins, by sharp contrast, had 800 quadzillion. It was a subject of interest to me how they keep track of shots (also why they keep track of shots). As far as I could tell, they used the same system employed by my brothers at counting strokes in miniature golf. “That's two strokes.” “I just moved the club a little bit!” “Three.” “I was swinging it idly while talking to you!” “Four.” And so on.

However, I will fully forgive the Canadiens for their poor showing Thursday night, seeing as how their country is the source of some of the most excellent chocolate candy I ever ate. Also various maple flavored items carry a lot of weight with me. Ironically speaking.

As for violence, there weren't any out-and-out fistfights as far as I could see. There were, however, plenty of people slamming each other up against walls. This is, evidently, an extremely common phenomenon. It's probably the way hockey players learn to stop themselves after sliding around the ice at top speed. They won't hit a wall unless there's a player there to cushion the blow. These walls that surround the ice are also clear plastic, so that the lucky few who sit right up close can see their favorite hockey players grotesquely smooshed up against them. It keeps things interesting.

The best part of any hockey game, however, is without doubt the Zamboni machines. These are like giant riding lawnmowers for ice, plus beer ads. Every game, some fortunate little kid gets to ride in one of the Zamboni machines between periods. Lucky punks.

The not-as-best part of any hockey game is the guy sitting immediately behind you shouting orders to the team as if he were playing a video game. “Shoot! Pass! Pass! No, I mean, shoot! Shoot!” He probably could've been placated with an unplugged Nintendo controller in the manner of a four-year-old little brother, but, unfortunately, we forgot to bring one.

Hmm. I guess I should get back to watching the Super Bowl. It may just be me, but the half time show would've been a billion times better if Mick “Old Man Pelvis” Jagger were replaced by a couple of Zambonis. Oh well, you take what you can get.