This isn’t your typical Father’s Day tribute. I’m not saying that to make this article any more cooler than the other hundred Father’s Day articles you will read or have read today. This is a story about a man, a boy, and a sport. One that you won’t expect.
Me and my father aren’t exactly close. I like basketball, and going to beer gardens, he likes ice skating and gardening. My mom and me shared a bond growing up: basketball. We watched it all the time and my dad? He was in the garden growing his plants and vegetables. He talked to me through my mom. He was neat and orderly and my room looked like a paper bomb went off in it. Papers, magazines and clothes strewn all over the place. Over the last 5 years I’m pretty sure he’s taken up the policy: only enter if ABSOLUTELY necessary. I’ve found it funny that my dad knocks to enter my room while my mom knows no such manners and flings the door open like Kramer. I finally figured that my dad enters my room so infrequently that he must consider himself a guest and be polite and show manners.
So of course, naturally the two most fondest memories of my dad and I are sports related. Here is ONE of those stories:
Every year I tell myself I’m going to watch more hockey and I find myself watching the Knicks and being more and more depressed. Mind you the Rangers play at the Garden and all I need to do is turn on MSG every day or every other day and I will catch a game but I never bother doing it. Nevermind that the Rangers would cause me just as much disappointment so perhaps my subconscious is telling me to avoid such pitfalls.
I really don’t have a good excuse as to why this happens but it does.* But I swear by my two hockey experiences. Once my mom got tickets through work. She came home and told me she got tickets to a game. Right then and there my eyes went twice their size and thought that my mom was instantly cooler and said “cool, who’s playing?”. She held the ticket in her hand and she put on her glasses and did the classic old people move. You know the one where they move the paper forward and back, squint their eyes and then search for enough light like the part of the room they are in is just too dark?
*= I use this line more than I care to use it. I really don’t have a good excuse….wait…
I still remember her saying it: “the EYESIanders”. Mind you, my mom speaks perfect english but when she sees words she is unsure about she panics and goes into indian mode.*
*=classic defense mechanism for immigrants. Its the go-to move for those who try hard to hide their accents. They usually hide their accent in front of two crowds: americans and their kids. Always.
My heart dropped. The Islanders? Hockey? I was disappointed. But the dilemma was this: she only had two tickets. I was too young to drive and too small for my parents to send me with a friend.*
*= By the way the age in which your parents are fully confident you can do something by yourself hasn’t been determined but I’m pretty sure its somewhere around 62.
So my devious mom decided that me and my dad should go. I can’t say that me and my father weren’t talking to each other for any specific reason, we’ve always struggled to communicate with each other but I knew how disappointed I was that it was my dad coming. So, we went to Nassau Colisseum, which wasn’t exactly the ideal place to bond with my dad.*
*= In fact, I have been to countless Met games and never took my parents. In my defense I’ve thought about it. I don’t have a good enough excuse….
But the experience was awesome. The pace was even faster than television and the fans were great. It was an Islander/Ranger game and at the time I was a Ranger fan- riding the bandwagon of the 1994 team.*
*= That 94 team is one of the special teams in league and sporting history. The historical significance of winning after 54 years. Messier’s guarantee for game 6 and then answering the call with a hat trick. Matteau! Matteau! Matteau! Finally Messier screaming and shaking the cup after winning it in 7. I know people will scream East coast bias but it always seems more important when a Northeast team breaks an extended streak of never winning a title. (See, Red Sox Boston)
The interstate fued was alive. We saw 4 or 5 fights in the stands between Islander and Ranger fans and my dad was surprised and excited to attend his first sporting match in America. But the point was, I liked hockey and it grabbed me.
The fighting, the beards, and the beauty of all that violence on ice was exhilirating and a sport made better by listening to the radio call because you’re constantly on your toes. There is only ONE speed on hockey broadcasts: fast and faster. Its soccer calls on adderol. Also the fans being on the ice and banging on the boards like your watching gladiators on ice and you’re in the Roman Colisseum is also very awesome.
Then the lockout happened and suddenly the playoffs weren’t on ESPN anymore and when that divorce happened I chose Barry Melrose and ESPN over following the NHL to Versus and NBC who had broken my heart and given up the rights to the NBA.*
*= Recently someone had put up a status prior to a Finals game about missing the NBA on NBC opening montages and its true. It almost isn’t fair that the NBA messed that up. This season in NBC’s hands would have been legen…wait for it…dary.
But since 2005, I began this tradition of tuning into potential clinching games and watching the post game celebration of the Stanley Cup Finals. Its unlike ANYTHING going in sports. Have you seen it? I hope you have because every sport ought to emulate what hockey does.
It starts, naturally, at the end with the finish of the game. Hockey’s known for its fighting, white men with beards and missing teeth. When its over, and after a brief celebration, both teams meet at center ice to congratulate each other. Even though competition demand that there only be one winner everytime- this moment affords the losing team to gain a victory. In hockey there is actual physical aggression and legal fighting but it always finds itself within the confines of the game and rarely does it turn out ugly like in other sports where order isn’t present. The losing team congratulates the winning team and immediately the hatred and angst disappears into mutual admiration. You have to wonder how, but it all seems to work.
In other sports like basketball and football the post game handshake seems somewhat forced and not everyone participates. You can thank your AAU buddies and then leave, with over 16 other players and coaches waiting to congratulate you. The Super Bowl is worse with the confetti raining down. Unless you have a friend on the other sideline you are elated for you don’t go through the effort of crossing sidelines.*
*= I realize the size of the NFL sideline (53 players alone not including coaches, trainers etc.) makes everyone shaking hands impossible but I find the coaches shaking hands almost to signify that the real players were the coaches. Like Bill Belichiek and Tom Coughlin were playing a real life game of Madden and the players on the field were almost irrelevant.
Then the ceremony begins. A long red carpet is spun down with a makeshift podium and then it happens. Two officials carry Lord Stanley’s Cup. They have white gloves on. Nobody touches Lord Stanley’s Cup until the victors do. Gary Bettman, or as I like to call him the Keyser Soze sketch*, then does the formal thanks to the owners, players, etc for a great Stanley Cup Finals and he invites the Captain to come and get the Cup.
*= Seriously, look at those two photos. You telling me the Hungarian wasn’t drawing Gary Bettman? Whatever
This moment is always more electric when the home team wins. The Captain then accepts the Cup, waves his teammates to come over and then he raises the Cup while everyone cheers and the Cup then gets passed around until everyone has had a chance to raise the Cup. Once that’s over with the Captain gets the Cup and he comes to center Ice where they gather to take an iconic group picture.
Here’s where it gets that prom feel. That wedding feel. That once in a lifetime event feel. Yes some have raised multiple Cups but nothing personifies the team better than this portrait. With guys standing and some lying on the floor with sweaty jersies on. It looks like one big fraternity picture- post kegger. Everyone drunk and high off the feel and still ready for more because the night is still young.
You think it ends there? No, the Stanley Cup then spends time in every teammates hand for a few days. There must be thousands of stories of the Stanley Cup findings its way into bars and homes and house parties and all that. The sheer volume of possible locations is kind of crazy. The Cup’s journey goes around until a new champion is crowned. Then a new set of stories begin but that celebration stays the same.
Amazing.
So back to Nassau Colisseum almost 15 years ago in some meaningless November game, as I’m riding back with my father, exiting the Nassau Colisseum we begin to talk about what we just witnessed. We talk and talk and talk and don’t mind the idiotic drivers holding up traffic. We don’t make it home till after 12. I saw my dad drink beer outside of family parties and he did the “here take a sip”. We shared stories.
Well, everytime I do my now annual routine of watching the Stanley Cup Finals end, I think back to that night where a young boy and his dad found one night where we shared a sport. Where the silence was swallowed up by fast paced action.
I always wonder what wouldve happened had Hockey caught on with my dad and we watched it. Who knows if we would have had more conversations over the years or been closer. Everytime I watch hockey I think of Organized Chaos. Organized being my dad, chaos being me. Corny? Yes. But its still our moment.
As for the other moment of bonding? When India won the Cricket World Cup, he called me at work to say “INDIAAA WOOOOONNN”. He had never called me other than to wonder where I was or to ask me why I wasn’t home. But here we were, brought together by sports. It was a strange yet endearing moment.
On this Father’s Day its not about how many memories you have, its about the memories you DO have and for me and my dad we will always have that one night in the Colisseum.
P.S.- If what I wrote to you didn’t register..its ok, just watch this and I hope you get it.
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