Cold

Now that spring has sprung in Boston, it’s far too warm to walk the streets in full protective hockey gear. But the fact that these four goalies were walking out of a bar–along with the fact that their jerseys suggest they play for team Molson rather than either the Boston Bruins or Montreal Canadiens, who duked it out in a red-hot NHL playoff game at the TD Banknorth Garden last night–suggests that all hockey fans, regardless of team affiliation, share an affinity for beer. After all, both hockey and beer, like revenge, are best served ice cold.

This is my contribution for this week’s Photo Friday theme, Cold. Since we had plans to be in Boston yesterday afternoon, J and I tried to get tickets to last night’s playoff game…but now that the Bruins are winning, their tickets are a hot commodity, leaving J and me out in the cold.

 

Priceless!

Among female Bruins fans, 19-year-old Canadian cutie Milan Lucic is a favorite for his boyish good looks and eager willingness to fight for his own. If you’re a high school girl lusting after Lucic, the economics seem simple enough: for the cost of a Bruins ticket ($32) and “Charlie card” subway fare to get you there and back ($4), you can hope #17 will offer to escort you (in your fabulous $300 dress!) to your senior prom. A girl’s gotta dream!

Not everyone loves Lucic primarily for his looks: that aforementioned “eager willingness to fight” has earned Lucic some acclaim as the Bruins’ unofficial enforcer, and with that role comes a more macho contingent of Lucic-lovers. Saturday was the Bruins’ last home game of the regular season, so as a part of “Fan Appreciation Day,” Lucic and his teammates gave the shirts off their backs to randomly selected fans, who filed onto the ice after the game to receive autographed, game-worn jerseys. No fighting was necessary.

The Bruins lost Saturday’s game to the Buffalo Sabres, but that’s okay. Having already clinched a spot in the NHL play-offs, the Bruins were playing primarily for pride–and their much-appreciated fans–on Saturday. Knowing you’ll be in the play-offs whether or not you win the game at hand is, indeed, Priceless.

Click here for additional photos from Saturday’s Bruins game. Fan Appreciation Day featured many random give-aways, but J and I, like the Bruins themselves, didn’t end up winning.

 

The audacity of Houston

I hope this isn’t an omen of Barack Obama’s presidential hopes, but at Saturday night’s New England Revolution home opener, the soccer-loving contingent of Texans for Obama (clad in the stands in blaze orange) had their Si se puede/Yes we can optimism dashed by the Revs, who beat the Houston Dynamo 3-0. So much for the Audacity of Hope, at least if you’re a Texas soccer fan.

Click here for more images from Saturday night’s soccer game. Lest today’s post be interpreted as a dig against Obama, the picture at right, snapped in the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary in January, accurately describes my political allegiances then and now.

 

Emotions

Normally, if a guy the size of Glen “Big Baby” Davis got right in my face and started screaming, I’d probably have a heart attack. But when “Baby” appears in excited, larger-than-life glory on the JumboTron at a Boston Celtics home game to rally the crowd, fans don’t get scared: they get loud.

On Wednesday night, J and I watched Big Baby and the rest of the white-hot Celtics stomp the Phoenix Suns at the last home game we have tickets for this season. What I love about attending basketball or other sports events (as I’ve argued before) is the way the emotions of the game completely erase whatever worries or concerns I bring with me to the arena. Watching sports on TV can be similarly cathartic, but there’s something about being in an enormous arena with a sellout crowd of other rabid fans that works wonders for one’s stress levels. It’s possible, I’ve learned, to read student papers while watching televised sports; Stan Lombardo, for instance, once admitted that he worked on his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey while watching college basketball on TV. But grading papers or translating Greek classics just isn’t feasible if you’re actually at a basketball game. If you’re actually attending a professional or college basketball game, it would give a whole new meaning of March Madness even to try to squeeze in some work.

The ancient Greeks, of course, were the first to argue that drama is cathartic, and the ancient Greeks were equally fond of sports: they are, after all, the inventors of the collective catharsis we call the Olympics. I suppose on Wednesday night I could have set down my grading pen in order to watch a play…but they typically don’t let you scream, swear, and stomp your feet at plays. Drama can be psychologically cathartic because you become subsumed in the emotions of others: watching Medea poised to kill her children, for instance, you might re-visit every hellish break-up or desire for revenge you’ve ever experienced. But both watching and (especially) reading plays is essentially a quietly passive act: the actors on the stage or the characters on the page are doing something, but you as viewer or reader are “active” only in your own engaged mind.

For me, the most powerful emotions involve motion. When I have something troubling on my mind, I could sit down and try to mental it out…or I could go for a brisk walk and let my feet do my thinking. If watching a film or play offers emotional release by taking you out of yourself long enough to empathize with the concerns of fictitious characters, sporting events are equally cathartic with the added benefit of bodily involvement. No, can’t “participate” in an NBA game by jumping from your seat and taking to the hardwood to give the home team a hand…but the players, coaches, referees, and even arena security guards don’t expect you to spend the entire game completely silent and spellbound in your seats.

At least one of my sisters and several of my friends who are big-time film buffs would probably be dismayed to hear me admit it, but I actually have a difficult time sitting still for even the most engrossing movie: even my Zen school, with its emphasis on sitting meditation, expects practitioners to remain seated for only about thirty minutes at a stretch before getting everyone up for walking meditation. Does it come as a surprise, then, that I actually prefer walking to sitting meditation, and that my favorite form of collective catharsis isn’t sniffling through a sad movie but leaping to my feet to scream over a great play or swear over a bad call?

In other words, when none other than Kevin Garnett appears on the Celtics JumboTron exhorting fans to GET ON YOUR FEET…

…I am very grateful to comply. Yes, sir!

This is my day-late contribution to this week’s Photo Friday theme, Emotions. I shot the JumboTron images of Glen Davis and Kevin Garnett at the Celtics vs. Pistons game on March 5; the rest of today’s images come from Wednesday night’s game against the Phoenix Suns.

 

In-between days

T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruellest month, but in New England at least I’d argue for March. Now in March, Massachusetts ballfields are bare…and muddy. Imagine being a New England kid who’s just itching for the Little League season to start, and all you see in the place of a field of dreams is a field of mud.

As I explained this time last year, “March madness” in New England doesn’t simply refer to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament; it refers to The Big Itch we all feel here in the Northeast as spring is in the air but not yet entirely arrived. This morning, the sun was shining and suburban birds were singing…and the temperature was hovering around freezing. Yes, we can see the ground; yes, the snowdrops and crocuses are poking tentatively out of the earth…but at any moment, we New Englanders know the weather will turn, we’ll get one (or two, or three) more snowfalls, and it will feel like January or February again, not the “spring” announced on our paper calendars.

But, hope springs eternal, especially in spring. In the process of making travel arrangements for the May conference I’d mentioned earlier this week, J and I discovered that the 2008 ALA conference in San Francisco perfectly coincides with the Red Sox road schedule, so we’ll be able to continue last year’s tradition of seeing our hometown boys on the road (this time in Oakland), where we can actually buy face-value tickets rather than paying an exorbitant amount of money to set foot in Fenway Park.

So while Curt Schilling and Kevin Youkilis are blogging in Japan as they continue to train for the Red Sox international season opener against (yes) Oakland, I’m spending the in-between days of March looking forward to May, when the Red Sox once again face Oakland in Oakland, and spring will be here for real.

 

Fighting words

On Saturday, instead of fighting the pre-Saint-Patrick’s-Day crowds at the Irish pub where we have lunch nearly every weekend, J and I went to the one place in Boston where you don’t have to use St. Patrick’s Day as an excuse to get drunk or have a fight in the middle of the afternoon. Who needs green beer when you can watch an honest-to-goodness hockey fight?

Pacifists will, I’m sure, claim that hockey is a brutal and bloody sport…and at least half of that statement is correct. If you’re a mother looking for a safe and quiet sport for your little darling, hockey probably isn’t the best choice. As graphically illustrated last month when Florida Panther’s forward Richard Zednik had his carotid artery sliced by the errant skate of one of his teammates, most of the bloodshed in hockey doesn’t come from fights. Instead, most of the bloodshed in hockey happens as an accidental by-product of a game that’s played by intensely passionate players on the slipperiest of playing fields. If you’re skating with sticks on blades, already you’re in a precarious place; when you add two teams’ worth of players intent on doing just about anything to get their puck in the other team’s goal, you just upped the blood ante. Throwing a fight into the mix is the least of your worries.

And yet, the bare-fisted fisticuffs J and I witnessed on Saturday between the Bruins’ Shawn Thornton and the Flyers’ Riley Cote was the first honest-to-goodness hockey fight we’ve seen in the half dozen Bruins games we’ve attended this season. In the NHL at least, on-ice fights are tightly regulated events. Yes, fights happen; yes, referees stand back and allow them. And yes, both teammates and spectators cheer wildly for their side in any given fight. But all that isn’t to say there are no holds barred in a hockey fight.

If you watch enough hockey fights–and yes, they do replay classic fights alongside highlight-reel goals as a way of pumping the crowd at any given NHL game–you’ll notice an unwritten code that players follow. Fighters drop their sticks rather than using them as weapons, for instance, and they drop their protective gloves for the same reason: the punches that fall in a hockey fight are bare-fisted, not weighted with heavy protective gear. Raising a hand against a referee is strictly verboten during a fight, and strict rules prohibit teammates from joining the melee. The moment either fighter falls to the ice–or the moment any official decides a particular fight has gone long enough–referees descend to haul both participants to their respective penalty boxes, and even the most feisty fighters comply. As soon as any given fight has ended, participants accept their penalties and the game continues: business as usual.

I’d argue that an occasional hockey fight helps minimize the overall amount of violence exhibited in the game. Because there’s an orchestrated (albeit not officially sanctioned) manner in which players can vent frustrations by engaging in momentary fisticuffs and then being done with it, grudges don’t linger for long in hockey. Instead of insisting that rivals somehow magically get along, professional hockey protocol admits that tempers sometimes fly and an occasional tussle can serve as an important safety valve. Compared to the kind of injuries hockey players are used to receiving from the exertion of play itself, an occasional black eye or bloodied nose seems a small price to pay for a game that on most days manages to be intensely physical without erupting into complete lawlessness.

I can’t help but wonder whether there’s a social lesson to be learned from the unwritten rules that govern hockey fights. Instead of expecting two teams to compete without conflict, the ethics of hockey fights allow disagreement and heated emotion. You don’t have to love your rivals; you simply have to play–and sometimes fight–fair. In these days after Barack Obama distanced himself from Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s fighting words about race in America, I can’t help but wonder whether we all can truly get along if our attempts to be politically correct stifle honest conversation.

The world’s a lot bigger than a hockey rink, but passions on the slippery playing field called “life” sometimes get heated. Rev. Wright was right in many of his oft-quoted comments: growing up as a fatherless black boy in America is different from growing up as a privileged white woman, and presumably nobody ever has called Hillary a “nigger.” You don’t have to agree with or even like Rev. Wright’s comments; in the hockey rink called “America,” though, you have to respect his right to make them. What concerns me most about the Rev. Wright’s comments is the pressure put upon Barack Obama to calm or even erase the upset they caused. If our politically correct attempts to “make nice” prohibit honest dialogue about things like race, is it any wonder that long pent-up frustrations sometimes erupt into something more dangerous than a black eye or bloodied nose?

In her book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich argues that professional sporting events are one of the few remaining places in modern America where the public and communal expression of joy is permitted. I’d go a step or two further to wonder what’s wrong with a society where professional sporting events are one of the few remaining places where it’s okay to disagree and even lose one’s temper, the expression of fighting words being seen as a natural and even necessary part of the game. We all want to live in a society where we are judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our Zambonis, but still: without the ability to speak freely and even fight, how will we ever learn how to all get along?

Click here for more photos from Saturday’s Bruins game. We might credit the luck of the Irish for the outcome of the game, the Bruins winning in overtime after scoring a game-tying goal in the last minute of regulation play. Wooooo!

 

Up against it

There’s no dramatic reason why I haven’t been posting much lately; it’s just that Real Life has been playing me close and in my face.

Today J and I went to see the Boston Celtics play the San Antonio Spurs: my much-anticipated birthday present. One thing I enjoy about watching sports is the way a good game takes you completely outside yourself. For four full quarters, you concentrate every speck of attention on a handful of guys trying to shoot an orange ball through a round hoop. For the duration of the game, you aren’t thinking about the housework, unanswered emails, or unwritten blog-posts you left at home; instead, you and an entire arena of strangers are united in one single endeavor: Us Against Them.

In real life, both of my semesters are in full swing, so I have the usual papers to read, classes to prepare, and a recommendation or two to write. J’s been sick with the cold I almost avoided, and my apartment back in Keene is in dire need of a thorough cleaning. I remembered yesterday that it was my nephew’s birthday: too late (again) to get a card and check to him on time. None of these things are exceptional: all of them are simply Real Life getting in my face and playing my “game” for all it’s worth. Am I up for the challenge?

It’s easy enough to shoot an orange ball through a round hoop when no one’s guarding you, but how’s your game when you have a defender in your face talking trash? Life, it seems, is no different. I could keep up with my classes at Keene State if I didn’t teach online, and I could keep an immaculate apartment in Keene if I didn’t spend weekends with J in Newton. If I didn’t teach, I’d have have time to mail birthday cards, and if I didn’t go to basketball games, I’d have time to blog.

But how less rich, nuanced, and diverse would my life be if I eliminated any one of these endeavors? If I didn’t teach, have relationships, and go to basketball games, what would I write about? Watching any player–even a superstar–shooting hoops on an empty court is far more boring than watching a close game between well-matched opponents; it’s the competition and challenge that add both suspense and savor. If I weren’t double-teamed by the players called Time and Real Life, how boring would it be to watch me shoot metaphoric hoops alone and unguarded?

In today’s big game against the defending NBA champions, the Celtics relied heavily on their bench players as starters Kevin Garnett and Kendrick Perkins are both out with injuries. In post-game coverage, Celtics coach Doc Rivers explained how he prepared Boston rookie Glen “Big Baby” Davis for his match-up with veteran Spurs superstar Tim Duncan. “We had to remind him that Duncan is really good,” Rivers noted. “What we told Glen was, ‘He’s taller than you. You’re heavier than him. You’re not going to grow today.’” Instead of focusing on Duncan’s extra inches, Doc Rivers suggested, Davis should focus on his strengths as a wide-body: “[B]ecause you have a low center of gravity, get into his legs and try to push him off the block. You can’t get frustrated.’”

Everyone occasionally needs a good coach to set them straight, and Doc Rivers is as good as they come. As much as I’d like to school those double-teaming defenders called Time and Real Life, I’m not going to grow any extra inches, an extra brain, or an extra grading eye today or any other day. Instead, I come back to my center of gravity, settle into my own legs, and try to push Time off the block. Given the multiple demands of Real Life, I can’t get frustrated.

Click here for a handful of mostly blurry photos from today’s game, including several showing Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis watching court-side as the Celtics beat the Spurs 98 - 90.

 

More than fair-weather

This dismal picture says all you need to know about the mood in New England after this weekend’s Super Bowl loss. Today in Keene, we’re weathering the second straight day of mostly on-again, sometimes off-again wintry mix; tonight, we’re supposed to get a messy brew of sleet, freezing rain, and between six and eight inches of snow. That means tomorrow, dejected Patriots fans will have to slog, slide, or four-wheel-drive through a treacherous parfait of winter precipitation: snow on top of ice on top of slush. Tasty!

This morning on my way to do this week’s errands before the slush sets in, I spotted one woman wearing what looked to be a brand-new Patriots ball-cap. Was she a newbie fan lured by this season’s spell of eighteen straight wins? Or did she buy her new hat at deep discount after Sunday’s Super Bowl loss made those eighteen straight wins a moot point? Mediocrity is easy: simply be consistent in your attempt to be so-so, and an occasional bout of brilliance won’t gild your halo too convincingly. But perfection’s a bitch. Eighteen straight wins don’t mean a thing if you can’t finish the Big One. And so this week, this season’s crop of Patriots converts are learning the hard way what longtime Boston sports fans already knew: no matter how much we love them in good times and in bad, our beloved boys have a way of breaking our hearts in the end.

This resigned familiarity with heartbreak, after all, is what defines a true Boston sports fan. When I first watched Still We Believe when it debuted in the spring of 2004, before the Red Sox finally broke their infamous World Series curse, I couldn’t help but wonder what people outside New England would think about the insane mood swings of the die-hard fans featured in the film, which follows the Red Sox’ heartbreaking 2003 season. Could anyone but a long-suffering Sox fan understand that the fans in the film were extreme but not exaggerated?

Yes, Boston sports fans have a hard time trusting even the biggest lead, knowing as we do how easy it is to lose it all in the ninth. Yes, Boston sports fans can and do turn on a dime, lamenting today that our team “sucks” because it lost a game and boasting tomorrow that “we’ll win the championship, baby” because we won a single game. One of my favorite “characters” in Still We Believe–a fan by the name of Angry Bill–nearly convinces himself he’s having a heart attack because of the intense conniption fits his favorite team inspires. “It’s OVAH,” he explains in a quintessential Boston accent after swearing off, again, his favorite team after a particularly painful loss. “O-V-A. Ovah!” The very essence of Boston sports fanaticism is loving your team so much, you can’t stand to look at them after they’ve dashed your hopes…again. To any other fan, these wild mood swings seem crazy: it’s only a game, after all. But to fans of New England teams, the agony of defeat always lurks right alongside the thrill of victory, and we have the mood swings and almost-ulcers to show for it.

I think there’s a connection between the emotional roller-coaster that is Boston sports fanaticism and the mostly on-again, sometimes off-again drama of New England weather. If you live in a place that is consistently mild and mostly sunny, you can afford a certain sangfroid when the athletic going gets tough. But if spectator sports are your source of solace and distraction during a season that consistently spits sleet, slush, and snow in your face, you’ll respond with appropriately meteorologic moods when things go bad. If you don’t like the mood in New England, just wait a minute, for it will change…with the weather, with the scoreboard, or with the league standings. In a region that spends half the year wondering when winter will be over, you have to excuse the locals if we occasionally get all Seasonal Affective on you. It comes with the territory.

So today, I tried to lift my slush-sagged spirits by heading to the grocery store for a spot of color, as I’ve done before. Earlier in the week, after hearing several of my students discussing the Super Bowl, I announced that there would be NO MORE TALK of this past weekend’s tragedy. “It’s OVAH!” was my official response to Brady and the Boys; still smarting from the disappointment of daring to believe an 18-0 record would culminate in a Super Bowl win, I didn’t want to hear any mentions of the game that dashed those hopes. What kind of masochist wants a play-by-play of heartache?

Today, it wasn’t too painful to see the occasional Patriots logo on the back of a Jeep or a brand-new Pats hat on the head of a female passerby, and I even smiled a bit at the cheerful innocence of freshly baked Valentine’s cakes. On Monday morning when I tossed my Patriots sweatshirt in the laundry, I vowed not to wear it again until next fall, knowing that in time my heart will soften and I’ll be ready to give Brady and the Boys a second chance after we spend a season or so apart. In the meantime, I hold out hope for the Celtics, I still love those consistently mediocre Bruins, and I am counting the days until Red Sox pitchers and catchers report to spring training. At least it will be another couple of months before the next season-ending heartbreak.

 

Over Red’s dead body

The Boston Celtics were the last team in the NBA to get cheerleaders (pardon me, “dancers”) because Celtics icon Red Auerbach thought pretty pompom girls were a distraction from the game. According to one account, Red’s exact response to the question of when the C’s would get cheerleaders was “over my dead body”; in another, Red claimed the Celtics organization was “just waiting for me to die so they can get cheerleaders.”

Well, Red’s dead, they named the TD Banknorth Garden’s parquet floor after him, and now there are dancers striking poses over Red Auerbach’s signature. Rest in peace, Red. As for me, I was watching the score during a pivotal fourth quarter time-out last night, not the scantily clad women rolling around on Red’s floor.

Click here for a photo-set of images from last night’s loss to the Detroit Pistons. Personally, I think those sexy Celtics girls jinxed the game when they danced onto the floor at the exact moment the Pistons stole the Celtics’ lead and never gave it back. Call me old-school, but I believe basketball is about fundamentals, not fancy, ass-shaking frills.

 

More than a few good men?

I’m going to guess a man was working the Kelly Rink scoreboard in Boston College’s Conte Forum on Friday night, when the BC men’s hockey team lost in overtime to Northeastern University. Only a man would think having “too many men” is a bad thing!

After having gone to two Boston Bruins games this year, J and I decided to give college hockey a try. Boston College is within (healthy) walking distance of J’s house, so we figured a day-after-Thankgiving stroll to and from BC would be a good way to celebrate Black Friday on foot. Whereas NHL games are memorable for their drunken fans and on-ice fights, college hockey is much more staid. Not only are college referees more strict when it comes to controlling player roughhousing, the announcer at Friday night’s game reminded fans that they should uphold BC’s reputation by exhibiting proper sportsmanship. That and the absence of beer–Conte Forum is a dry arena–meant that a sober time was had by all.

Whereas J and I enthusiastically root for the Bruins, on Friday night my loyalties were divided. I have hanging on my office wall diplomas from both Boston College and Northeastern University: BC is where I got my Masters degree, and NU is where I got my PhD. So although J and I agreed to cheer for BC since its Chestnut Hill campus is closer to home than NU’s downtown Boston one, I found myself watching Friday night’s game without any rabid attachment to either team. When you watch a sober game with an attitude of “may the best team win,” you can enjoy good plays regardless of which team executes them.

Because college hockey games are less rowdy–and significantly cheaper–than professional games, they attract a good number of families. Sitting next to me was a man shepherding a handful of boys; next to J was a man with his son. As much as I enjoy the pomp and festivity of professional sporting events, I realize that many fans can’t afford their high-class prices. Part of the appeal of a BC hockey game was the fact we could walk to and from the arena, but another big draw was the fact that on eBay, J bought tickets for our mid-level seats for what we would have spent on hotdogs alone at a Bruins game. We might be super-fans, but that doesn’t mean we’re super-rich.

One great irony of Friday night’s game was the fact it was the first BC or Northeastern game of any kind I’d ever attended. Yes, I went to and graduated from both schools…but as a grad student at each, I didn’t have time to watch sporting events. And so as J and I approached the Boston College campus and tried to find Conte Forum, I had to admit the only time I’d been inside was when I’d lined up in cap and gown before marching at graduation. Extracurricular activities are a fun part of any undergraduate experience, but one of the shocks you experience when you enter grad school–and especially when you start teaching–is the realization that grown up grad students don’t typically have time for undergraduate games.

So perhaps Friday night was my chance to reclaim some of the grad school glory I missed the first time around. When I was a grad student and teaching fellow at Boston College, I had too many books and papers, not too many men, to occupy me; there wasn’t world enough nor time to play or watch games. And when I was a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University, I lived too far from campus–at times, a full state away–to take a leisurely Friday night stroll there and back.

Now that my student days are over and I’ll forever be an eagle/husky hybrid-alumna, I can enjoy rooting for either or both of my alma maters. Having too many men might be a bad thing, but you can never have too many allegiances.