Su Blog Frozen

ma anche il miracolo su ghiaccio. You’d have an easier time dislodging Dustin Penner from in front of the crease than convincing me that Herbie’s Heroes didn’t instill in Ronnie a sense that welcoming the nation’s sporting heroes to the people’s house was a wise bit of spirits boosting for a beleaguered nation. This was the dawn, too, of the Magic-Bird era on the hardwood, so more fantastic feats could be chronicled by White House photographers.

But times have changed — the Department of Homeland Security likely has 40 percent of today’s pro athletes on a watch list — and so should outdated, ridiculously scripted, and altogether phony rituals.

Instead, I’d advocate the adoption of a rigid criteria for athletes’ earning a White House visit. Here’s my five-point plan for reform:

1. Miracle workers — genuine, one-in-a-million odds overcomers — get a visit. Chemical-free Tour de France winners come immediately to mind.

2. *The 2004 Boston Red Sox get a visit. They ended a curse. The next Chicago Cubs’ team to win in October gets one as well — they’ll have eradicated a disease.

* With my inclusion of modern pro baseball here I must restrict White House access to these two teams, as the rest of the Majors is basically pharmacologically poisoned, and my reformed system of admission is going to be strict as it relates to performance-enhanced cheaters and thugs. One lone rostered athlete appearing in a perp walk or detox and his teammates — even if their season is dynastic — are off to the Secretary of Commerce’s weekend beach house instead.

3. Obviously, because of this moral turpitude clause, the entirety of the NBA would be excluded from admission.

4. Nation-engrossing triumphs that tug on the heartstrings merit White House visits. I was a college freshman in 1986 and in my campus’ student union and glued to the big screen television broadcast of Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters at age 46. I’m a non-golfer, but that day, like seemingly every other student around me, I had tears of awe-joy streaming down my cheeks. Jack and similar authors of such feel-goodness are White House-bound.

5. No college kids, no X Gamers. They’re one in the same, aren’t they? The collegians spend too little time in the classroom as it is. If their governors wanna fete them, fine.

We should be down then to fewer than seven sports-related visits each year, which sounds about right. This is, after all, a busy man, with a lot on hs mind, and I also think there ought to be more Boys and Girls Scouts and firemen and women and EMT heroes than dropout jocks clogging the President’s greeting line.

When the Caps win the Cup, I don’t want them celebrating at the White House — unless Dick Patrick is President. They can come to my house, for strippers, kegs, and tattoos. Actually, when the Caps last won something really significant, the 1998 Eastern Conference title, they did precisely the right thing. They hastily organized a reception very late that night at the team’s Piney Orchard practice facility. Those of us who were there that night will never forget it, turning on to Piney Orchard Parkway after midnight and seeing cars crammed next to one another miles short of the rink. Ken Beatrice played a lead role in fomenting such an outpouring, fairly ordering all Caps’ fans to Piney that night. As I recall, the team bus eventually pulled up around 2:30 in the morning. There wasn’t six inches of free space within that facility in the middle of the night. No pomp, no circumstance, no prepared remarks, just an underdog out on the Piney ice in the middle of the night lavishing the love from a success-starved fanbase.

Not one iota of phoniness.