On SKATING RINK

January 13th

On SKATING RINK
I used to be a really huge hockey fan, but I’ve pretty much abandoned it for baseball. Even though they are mostly in different seasons, and I still feel a little weird being excited for the 2nd month of baseball while the Stanley Cup Playoffs are still on. My friend Paul Frank dislikes hockey solely because it takes attention away from baseball. That’s how much I love baseball. I first turned to hockey when I came back from London, England in 1993 and I had missed the hoopla around the Blue Jays World Series run in ’92, and thus was a little heartbroken. I was totally with baseball in 1989 and 1990, and then they won without my help. They never needed me at all!
The Leafs needed me though – they were on the brink of success, just like the Jays were in 1989 (As seen in the classic film Sky High: The story of the 1989 Toronto Blue Jays). This promise of Leaf success proved to be misleading, and over time my disappointment grew. I still stuck with hockey and ignored baseball, though, mostly because my friends were all big hockey fans, and my favourite video games were hockey games. Then I went to university, and abandoned sports for having a life. Now I don’t like hockey any more for these reasons:

1) Felix Potvin doesn’t play for the Leafs anymore.
2) Now that I look at it, goaltending seems more like luck than I thought it was. I used to love goalies, now it seems like they just stand there and get hit with the puck.
3) I HATE the rule which gives the overtime/shootout loser of a game a point, because it makes overtime less exciting because the stakes are lowered, it screws up historic statistics by inflating the value of points (because some games are worth 2 points and some are worth 3), and it is obsolete because now, with the shootout, all games have a winner no matter what. The whole point of the rule was to reduce the amount of ties, and now there are no ties.
4) I have gone back on my belief that franchises in the South, especially Stanley Cup franchises in Tampa, Anaheim and Carolina, are as worthy of existence as more traditional markets. That seemed to make sense as long as fans were coming to all the games, and it seemed like hockey was going to grow as a sport, but it looks like that ain’t happening. Contract the league! Move North!
5) Up until this year, the Leafs were a collection of free agents going nowhere fast. I’ll cheer for winners or losers, but they have to be lovable losers. This year’s are more lovable, but also more anonymous.
6) There are so many different ways to score in baseball!
7) All my comedian friends love baseball.
8) I can go to 26 baseball games in a year for $114. I can only go to Leafs games if I am lucky enough to get tix from my parents.
9) Baseball games are a party.
10) You don’t feel bad if you fall asleep during a baseball game
11) All the stadiums are different in baseball. It used to be that way in hockey, but not anymore. I miss Maple Leaf Gardens.
12) Baseball is a game for stats geeks. I am a stats geek.
13) Baseball links me to when I was nine. Hockey links to me when I was fifteen. I was cooler at nine than fifteen.

I’m glad I was able to get that off my chest.