Spring Ritual
I don't watch sports outside of mixed martial arts, and Olympic synchronized diving (The only sport, incidentally, in which showering with your teammate after your performance is televised), but if the St. Louis Blues or the Minnesota Wild make the playoffs, I'll try to catch every game until they inevitably get knocked out. This has less to do with the fact that I played the sport in my formative years than with my Old Man, who was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and has been following the Blues since they began playing in 1967. They've never won the Cup, and haven't come close in many, many years.
All my life, playoff hockey was a ritual of Spring. It seems like we were always on a family vacation during the playoffs, and always watching games in unlikely places. One time, we watched on a tiny TV at a sports bar that doubled as a male revue, separated only by a thin curtain. During the third period, we could hear the DJ announce, "Ladies! Do you like what you see? Do you want to see him TAKE. IT. OFF???"
Years later, the Youngest and I saw a ghost while we were catching a playoff game in Dinky Town. I damn near blew my grades in '99 when the Blues made the second round. I've pissed off a lot of people beating them to a TV playing a game for which they have no love.
But my most enduring playoff hockey memory was when I was child living in Duluth, Minnesota. In Duluth, playoff hockey did not signal Spring as much as cabin fever. The days were longer, but the weather was still cold. In this pre-satellite TV, pre-Internet era, we had no way of watching the playoffs, so my Dad would sit in his minivan in our cold garage, wearing a heavy winter coat, tuning into KMOX 1120AM St. Louis. He told me that he couldn't get the signal during the daylight, or from any other radio in the house, but at night, with his minivan radio, it would come in*. Sort of. I tried listening with him a couple of times, but the signal was mostly static - like 80% static. I've never wanted to hear the results of a sporting event half that much.
Last week, the Youngest emailed the news that the St. Louis Blues made an unlikely, late season run, and just might make the playoffs. Last night, the wife and I caught the third period of game 1 at a sports bar a few blocks away on a big screen, high definition TV sans audio, which was very irritating, almost unwatchable. Which made me think of my Dad, hunched over alone in the garage, listening to the static of a team that has been losing for decades.
Last night, the Blues lost by a goal, and will inevitably get knocked out of the playoffs. Spring arrives. Blues lose, and the cycle of seasons keep on turning, like the summersault tuck of a synchronized diver.
*From Wikipedia: Medium wave and short wave radio signals act differently during daytime and nighttime. During the day, AM signals travel by groundwave, diffracting around the curve of the earth over a distance up to a few hundred miles (or kilometers) from the signal transmitter. However, after sunset, changes in the ionosphere cause AM signals to travel by skywave, enabling AM radio stations to be heard much farther from their point of origin than is normal during the day.
I don't watch sports outside of mixed martial arts, and Olympic synchronized diving (The only sport, incidentally, in which showering with your teammate after your performance is televised), but if the St. Louis Blues or the Minnesota Wild make the playoffs, I'll try to catch every game until they inevitably get knocked out. This has less to do with the fact that I played the sport in my formative years than with my Old Man, who was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and has been following the Blues since they began playing in 1967. They've never won the Cup, and haven't come close in many, many years.
All my life, playoff hockey was a ritual of Spring. It seems like we were always on a family vacation during the playoffs, and always watching games in unlikely places. One time, we watched on a tiny TV at a sports bar that doubled as a male revue, separated only by a thin curtain. During the third period, we could hear the DJ announce, "Ladies! Do you like what you see? Do you want to see him TAKE. IT. OFF???"
Years later, the Youngest and I saw a ghost while we were catching a playoff game in Dinky Town. I damn near blew my grades in '99 when the Blues made the second round. I've pissed off a lot of people beating them to a TV playing a game for which they have no love.
But my most enduring playoff hockey memory was when I was child living in Duluth, Minnesota. In Duluth, playoff hockey did not signal Spring as much as cabin fever. The days were longer, but the weather was still cold. In this pre-satellite TV, pre-Internet era, we had no way of watching the playoffs, so my Dad would sit in his minivan in our cold garage, wearing a heavy winter coat, tuning into KMOX 1120AM St. Louis. He told me that he couldn't get the signal during the daylight, or from any other radio in the house, but at night, with his minivan radio, it would come in*. Sort of. I tried listening with him a couple of times, but the signal was mostly static - like 80% static. I've never wanted to hear the results of a sporting event half that much.
Last week, the Youngest emailed the news that the St. Louis Blues made an unlikely, late season run, and just might make the playoffs. Last night, the wife and I caught the third period of game 1 at a sports bar a few blocks away on a big screen, high definition TV sans audio, which was very irritating, almost unwatchable. Which made me think of my Dad, hunched over alone in the garage, listening to the static of a team that has been losing for decades.
Last night, the Blues lost by a goal, and will inevitably get knocked out of the playoffs. Spring arrives. Blues lose, and the cycle of seasons keep on turning, like the summersault tuck of a synchronized diver.
*From Wikipedia: Medium wave and short wave radio signals act differently during daytime and nighttime. During the day, AM signals travel by groundwave, diffracting around the curve of the earth over a distance up to a few hundred miles (or kilometers) from the signal transmitter. However, after sunset, changes in the ionosphere cause AM signals to travel by skywave, enabling AM radio stations to be heard much farther from their point of origin than is normal during the day.
posted by Mezz0 at 10:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home