Take it with a grain of salt...
Posted on 02/07/2016 8:45:16 AM PST by MtnClimber
I grew up in the kind of neighborhood where I could walk with my football to the field near my house, kick the ball around a few times, and - within minutes - my friends would be pouring out of their homes ready to play for hours on end. Those were some of the greatest times of my life. On that field, a skinny, nerdy kid who was more comfortable with graph paper and 12- and 20-sided dice could learn how to take a hit and - just as important - how to deliver one. I gained confidence, I was humbled (more than once), and I fell in love with America's new athletic pastime. However, there are some on the left who want to deny kids those kinds of days, to turn America against its favorite sport. To them, football is just too male, too martial, and too darn American.
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Perhaps he looks like a “fat slob” who will likely die an early death. From what I have seen of him, he understands full well how his image presents to people (and pokes fun at it) but people who have played with and against him have thrown that image prejudice in the trash after they have encountered him on the field of competition. 100% of people who know what it takes to be an athlete on an actual field of competition who have played against him would disavow you of your superficial analysis.
But if you say he isn’t an athlete, you really don’t know what you are talking about. Nothing personal there, but if you say he isn’t an athlete, without knowing anything about him, how can you say that? Based on his physical appearance alone?
What “objective measure” do you use to define an athlete? How fast he can run? How much weight he can lift? How high he can jump? And so on...
And if those are the “objective measures”, what are your parameters? Someone who runs the 100 yard dash in 10 seconds? 12 seconds? 20 seconds? Someone who can bench press 150 lbs? 250 lbs? And so on.
And who is the arbiter of those “objective measures”? The AMA? The NFL? The NBA? The USA?
You?
I don’t really know what “objective measure” you refer to.
Take it with a grain of salt...
Why would you have a timed game with a 60-minute clock, only to keep the thing running even while most of the running time on that clock is spent doing something other than playing the game?
Even better ... watch an international game or an Olympic tournament rather than an NHL game. It's a much better game on the open ice.
I once read an article suggesting that tennis legend Bjorn Borg was an extraordinary athlete even compared to others at the top of their professions. His resting heart rate was once measured at less than 40 beats per minute, which was a big reason why he was able to perform at his peak even in long, grueling matches.
I don’t think life expectancy and health risks have any bearing on whether someone is an athlete or not, I just don’t think there are objective measures. Someone who does nothing more than watching his diet and living everyday life may life a healthy life to the age of 99, but they can’t be called an athlete.
If an athlete must engage in a sport, then it boils down to what the definition of a sport is.
We can all agree that at one end of the spectrum (from a purely physical point of view) taking a nap in a comfortable hammock isn’t a sport. At the other end of the spectrum might be a marathon run. What lies in between?
I played hockey for a long time, and that seemed like a sport to me, even though as a goalie, I didn’t have to skate the same way everyone else did. I played basketball and that seemed like a sport, football as well. Wrestling, definitely.
Is skydiving a sport? How about scuba diving? Or mountain climbing? That is pretty specialized, and doing it can’t be healthy or lifespan extending, especially if you are climbing Everest.
I have good news for you on the hockey front, too: in terms of technique and skill, goaltenders are expected to be the best skaters on their teams these days!
When I was eight years old I moved to Japan and lived there for several years. The first time I saw sumo wrestling was at some warehouse where a bunch of Japanese guys worked, and at lunch time, they would do sumo wrestling. I had never seen it, didn’t have any idea what it was, and saw two big fat guys facing off and throwing salt in the ring (I didn’t know it was salt, I thought they were just throwing handfuls of dirt...it was very puzzling)
And when they started doing the posturing like the picture shows, it was utterly befuddling. I had no idea it was a sport.
LOL, I became the goalie because I moved there and had never ice skated before, so the only thing I could do was be the goalie, if I was going to play pond hockey with all the guys.
I found out a couple of key points to remember:
First, everyone ALWAYS needs goalies. Always.
Second, as a goalie, you could never bail and not show up. People would excoriate you if you did that. The worst thing to do was not show up, and hear later they had to turn one of the nets around.
Third, playing goalie could be painful. When I first started playing with friends (as a transplanted southerner) and became the goalie, my equipment consisted of a first base mitt, a regular hockey glove with two squares of wood paneling sandwiching foam attached to the glove with phone wire, and folded up carpet samples stuck up the pants of my dungarees.
No mask.
They wanted to “practice” with me while we waited for the ponds to freeze, so I stood in front of a metal shed at the top of a driveway, and they laid a sheet of paneling at the bottom of the drive way so they could slapshot the puck off something better than asphalt.
The shed was “the goal”.
The puck was not a regulation puck, but a street hockey puck, one of those ones that is just a tad lighter than a real puck but is made of some kind of harder material like plastic, not rubber.
It had sharp edges.
The kid wound up and slapped the puck at me, since the driveway was somewhat slanted, as the puck came flying at me, it was rising.
It hit my unprotected thigh right above the knee. Holy crap, that hurt. I jumped around in place for about a minute, cussing and breathing heavy, gritting my teeth. Damn, did that ever hurt. But I did what you had to do. Cussing and shifting in pain from foot to foot, I got back into position in front of the shed and set myself up again.
He wound up and fired the puck...it rose as it came, and hit me in the exact same spot. Unbelievable. That REALLY frikking hurt. I hopped around for twice as long, cussing guttural curses through my gritted teeth, than, shaking my head from side to side thinking how much this sucked, took position again in front of that shed.
He reared back and slapped the puck with a full swing, and as the puck came towards my stick side, I stuck my paneling/foam/phone line homemade blocker in front of it, and the puck deflected off and came up hitting me at nearly full speed high on my cheek right under my eye.
I took all the stuff off and threw it angrily on the ground yelling and cussing about how much this game sucks!
That was my southern boy intro to hockey! To this day, my buddies still laugh about it. They were watching me throw that shit on the ground and were saying to each other “Holy crap, I can’t believe he got back in front of us that third time!”
But you could have used a few more lessons in playing goal:
1. Never, ever show pain in front of the other players. Relish the pain, and wear it with pride. I played goalie in floor hockey in high school, and I was pretty good at it. Better yet, a lot of the jocks in my gym class who never thought much of me suddenly had a ton of respect for me in the locker room after gym class when they saw all the welts all over me. They couldn't believe that I would stay in goal for an entire gym period after getting peppered like that.
2. Acquire a strange, eccentric habit that will make other players (opponents and teammates alike) certain that you are a lunatic. This is one of the defining characteristics of hockey goalies. LOL.
I played as a defenseman in my younger days, and I had my share of blocked shots that did some damage. I took one shot high on my ankle -- right below the bottom of the shin pad on the front of the skate -- that made my foot completely numb for two hours. I had to take two Tylenols several times every day for a week just to deal with that pain.
You must definitely be a fan of "Slapshot"!
Before I fell victim to kidney stones, being hit in the big toe by a blistering slapshot ranked up there pretty high in the pain level, even wearing the goalie skates.
LOL, defensemen and blocked shots, now THAT is hazardous. At least I had padding in the right places...my best friend played hockey in league when we were in High School, and the night I told him I was joining the Navy, he had shown up at my house while I was working on my van, and he stuck his head in the door...his nose was twice its normal size and on one side of his face! I had to take him to the hospital where he got the forceps, cocaine drops and cotton up the nostrils!
This is in the days before they made the kids wear face cages...he had been skating backwards as a guy came in on him. He had his stick out in front of him, the guy fired the shot, it hit the shaft of his stick and ricocheted right into his nose!
It’s called: The Rules.
Why do soccer balls spend most of their time flying around the field in possession of no one?
Again: The rules.
If we want to play a game where grown men get all sweaty quarreling over the possession of some object; then there are a myriad mays to conjure up something that’ll keep guys occupied for a few hours.
And let's not overlook the dangers of high level chess!
It'll positively mess with yer mind!!
I’m actually not a big fan of “Slapshot.” For some reason I don’t like caricatures of hockey. I prefer documentaries and more realistic stories. I’d recommend “Miracle” and “Pond Hockey” for any serious hockey fan, along with the great CBC documentary “Home Game.”
We agree to disagree. Beating a frozen moose turds around on a frozen lake....but hey what else is a Kanuk to do.
LOL, you gotta be the first hockey player I ever met who isn’t a big fan of “Slapshot”! (At least American or Canadian)
It is most definitely an insight into minor league hockey as it used to be...a caricature, but a window nonetheless.
And I have seen those you mentioned as well.
Have you ever wondered why so many Americans claim they don't like hockey ... and yet this is usually recognized as the greatest moment in the history of American sports?
:-)
The patriarchy has been demolished.
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