Op Bevroren Blog

Let’s say that near the holidays your beer league team has accepted a new teammate on its roster, a pleasant fella very new to town with a reasonably significant hockey background. He’s so new to town, in fact, that he is unaware of one of his new teammate’s hockey blogging hobby, an ignorance which could allow, were the circumstances warranted, for said blogger to air out, in url fashion, a discomfort he harbors with his new teammate. Let’s call this newcomer Michael.

We the recreational hockey player have all been in the glare of the newcomer’s discomfort — the unnerving tension and awkwardness associated with being the newbie in the room. Hockey’s rooms, even on the exceedingly recreational level, carry a camaraderie matched nowhere else among Saturday and Sunday athletes. It’s one built on the healthy traffic of razor-sharp barbs. But it’s tough being the newcomer to it, and thereby the outsider.

The outsider wants so desperately to fit in, fast and seamlessly. No room in no other sport knows the good-natured ribbing and jibes of hockey. The last thing a newcomer would want to bring to his first game is a reason to make him the center of ridicule.

So imagine, if you can, what manner of reaction might have been directed the newcomer’s way in my beer league room with the revelation of game gear garnered at some Hartford GoodWill: Cooperalls.

Circa 1982.

No brown leather gloves, no well weathered leather Red Horner specials. Just that ghastly, pleatless, shiny look from waist to ankle. It’s a bit like the look of Dr. Zachary Smith in ‘Lost in Space.’

How did they possibly survive all these years? (Answer: they are impervious to moths) Michael’s had some wear about them to be sure, but they were hardly the worst for wear in the room. At first the fashion attack appeared to be a belated Halloween prank, but then Michael actually put them on and waltzed out onto the ice for warmups.

Ours is a team that might be termed female-supporter-friendly-in-the-stands challenged, and Michael’s mess about his bottom half won’t be helping matters.

Clearly, team leadership has a decision to make; the fashion status quo cannot continue. OFB readers — no small number of beer leaguers among them — may have found their rooms similarly vexed. Just not this decade. Or last. I thought it wise to put this matter to a poll.