Take Me Out To The Ballgame

For it's one, two,
Three strikes you're out
At the old ball game!

I thought to myself, how can I be a Montrealer and not comment on the first ever (in the history of all sports) cancellation of a full hockey season..For those of you who don’t know what Montreal is...Montreal IS hockey. Pretty much all Canucks are hockey-obsessed, but being the undisputed legends of hockey (with 24 Stanley Cups), Montreal is definately suffering more than its share this year. First it was the loss of the Expos, and now this!

Hockey here is beyond politics, beyond religion, beyond even family. It is in the very makeup of the people. It is their oxygen...and without it there is no life...at least that’s what it seems like for someone like me who’s always been immune to the affliction.

Pacino, on the other hand, he has Hockey in his Molecules. He is the poster boy for addicted hockey fans. He grew up with the game flowing in his veins. Since the beginning of fall, he’s been watching old games that are being re-broadcast, listening to the press conferences all these months, resigned to the possibility of a cancelled season, yet in him there stoked a glimmer of hope that someway, somehow, his beloved game would be saved. Alas yesterday, his hopes were dashed and he looked like a little forlorn boy who lost his favorite toy as he declared yesterday to be forever know as "Black Wednesday" (Yes, I really did have to stifle a giggle when he said that!).

The fact that no Stanley Cup will be awarded this year (the first time ever - besides like 100 years ago when there was a plague or something to that effect) is so sobering to him that I couldn’t help but feel guilty for the millisecond of joy I felt for not having to endure an entire season of playoffs again (did I mention I don’t watch sports on TV, and that in the past, sports has superseded anything else that I might have wanted to tune into for my viewing pleasure).

The way I see it is that they’re all a bunch of rich and spoilt men acting like a bunch of babies over who gets to rule the playground....and who suffers in all this...the devoted fans that made them who they are today by shelling out the dough for tickets and merchandise. The fans who grew up watching them, wearing their jerseys and hats, collecting their cards, idolizing them, and in the process making their coffers full. Without these fans, they wouldn’t be able to live in their fancy homes, wearing their fancy duds as they drive their fancy cars. What a way to thank their bread and butter...didn’t their mothers teach them never to bite the hand that feeds?