when you replace Elgin Baylor’s and John Havilcheck’s NBA with one populated by high school and college dropouts, and suffuse it further with a pervasively broken home generating culture, you get . . . trouble.

You also get microphoned Stuart Scotts when you define deviancy down.

I’m wading into what Simon and Garfunkel would term troubled waters. And it truly merits a (courageous) sociology dissertation. But the premise behind this comparison is two-fold: (1) the MSM can’t quite seem to get their arms around the culture that is hockey . . . and (2) it’s damned interesting to speculate why they consistently fail to see any distinction among the caliber of human beings on the playing fields, courts, or rinks.

Quality human beings — most often, not always, but most often — are bred within quality family structures. Hockey’s distinction in athlete is one, I submit, that is anything but coincidental. One of the more telling exhibits I came upon at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto years back was that of a family station wagon bearing the likenesses of a standard hockey family within: Mom and Dad up front, kids behind, all bundled up in protective layers, school and hockey bags in tow. Its premise was simple and yet powerfully instructive: it takes extraordinary commitment of extraordinary family units over an extraordinary period of time to make a hockey player, whose development begins in pre-dawn darkness most often in rural outposts in bone-chilling, often car-killing temps. You get through that and meeting season ticket holders doesn’t seem like much of an imposition.

Contrast this with the armored SUV that adorns the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.; parental units within are replaced by posse.

I kid. I think.

“Uniform systems” in hockey are related to technological advances addressing perspiration displacement; with increasing frequency in other sports they relate to a lone color: orange.

“Icons” in baseball perjure themselves before Congress, while the rest of the sport’s lab rats scurry for cover and the game’s statisticians add another column to the scoring line: number of Grand Jury appearances. Matchups between Indiana and Detroit, among others, on the hardwood bear a ‘Braveheart’ element of hand-to-hand to them. In at least one large Midwestern city reknown for its chilli the residents are under an autumn-long curfew. I understand why there are firearms in Ted Nugent’s cache, but Michael Vick’s?

Who has the higher mortality rate these days, Spanish bullfighters or NFL cornerbacks?

But we are told that hockey is in trouble.

Tell you what, I’ll keep my low television ratings, the MSM can keep its sporting heroes.

[OFB update: a helpful reader has pointed out to us that the number of Bengals in perp walks the past year is now tallied at nine.]

[OFB update II: How do NBA enthusiasts carry themselves at the league's All Star Game festivities in Las Vegas? Breitbart News reports with 362 arrests by Vegas police, including shootings that left three people in critical condition.]

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Posted at 11:29 am. Filed under Blogs, Dan Steinberg, ESPN, Internet, Media, Washington Capitals, Washington Post.
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Old-time Hockey — Toronto St. Michael’s Majors

9 Comments

  1. Rage wrote:

    Not to be a total homer for your blog, but it’s actually NINE Bengals.

    http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2739009

    Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 11:48 am | Permalink
  2. Rage wrote:

    Nice article (finished reading it now), but let’s not get toooo pissed at the NBA. Ours is the only sport that allows fighting on the ice. Granted, there haven’t been any fan violence issues, but isn’t that just because the MSM doesn’t care?

    Didn’t Domi punch out that guy who leaned into the penalty box? Didn’t Kovalchuk throw his broken stick(s) into the stands during a Caps game last year?

    We’re all in glass houses, though your point about family units is well heeded.

    Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 12:02 pm | Permalink
  3. pepper wrote:

    Apparently NHL’ers are more tolerant and progressive than their counterparts as well -

    % of the league’s athletes which would welcome an openly gay teammate:
    NFL - 56.9
    NBA - 59.6
    MLB - 61.5
    NHL - 79.9

    Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 12:40 pm | Permalink
  4. odessa steps magazin wrote:

    I wonder if those stats have to do with the abundance of Europeans in the league, where the perception is that of more tolerance.

    As I said yesterday in the Steinberg article, the stereotype has always been that hockey players were the most polite and accomodating of the major pro sports in the US.

    Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 2:15 pm | Permalink
  5. Biff wrote:

    “Matchups between Indiana and Detroit, among others, on the hardwood bear a ‘Braveheart’ element of hand-to-hand to them.”

    Other than that one quote, I’m inclined to agree with everything you wrote. But to get upset about the violence in basketball while simultaneously touting a sport that openly encourages an atmosphere of on-ice violence seems a tad hypocritical.

    Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 7:37 pm | Permalink
  6. EricS wrote:

    I’m kind of at a loss as to why things seme a little cool right now between Steinberg and the Caps locker room. Things seemed great up through the new year. Maybe they’re a bit jelous of all the Wiz coverage. The Caps coverage in town has bene getting better, incrementally. Tarik really seems to care about doign a good job, unlike LaCanfora, and the Times have usually bene good to the team.

    It’s definately catch-22 to try and get more coverage in a town that’s already saturated with sports coverage. We can’t get any because we’re not popular, and we’re not popular because we can’t get any coverage.

    Friday, February 16, 2007 at 1:12 am | Permalink
  7. Gustafsson wrote:

    From The Smoking Gun

    Wife: Jason Kidd A Serial Abuser, Adulterer

    Friday, February 16, 2007 at 10:07 pm | Permalink
  8. freightcane28 wrote:

    Nice picture of Willie Williams, ex-Cane/UL Cardinal, not Sean Taylor. Get it right, have some respect for a life lost and quit generalizing!

    Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 11:20 pm | Permalink
  9. Gustafsson wrote:

    freightcane,
    Thank you for the input on the picture.

    In reference to the rest of your comment, do you not realize that this post was written some 9 months ago in February 2007?

    Thursday, November 29, 2007 at 7:43 am | Permalink

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