A day of light & darkness; Pens win & mourning Orlando

(862 words)

Page one editors at my old newspaper made a mistake in today’s editions: They chose darkness over light.

The darkness is the Orlando shootings.

The light is the Penguins last night winning their fourth Stanley Cup.

The front page was given over to the shooting. There was a huge picture of the mayhem, a scary headline and a big block of print recounting all the gory details.

There was a tiny overwhelmed banner at the top noting, yeah, the Pens won. This as the city is delirious with victory.

So I bought the competition instead. The Post-Gazette has the shooting on the top quarter of the page with the lower portion devoted to joyful celebration.

In today’s world, the two must co-exist. We can’t let darkness crowd out the light.

So today’s observations are about both:

• Winning a Stanley Cup is better than winning any other championship in all sports because it’s the victory that’s shared the most. You win a Super Bowl or World Series and it’s great for a week. The buzz from this Pens win will go on all summer. That’s because the iconic cup will be touring western Pennsylvania — the world, in fact — for months. Each player gets to take the cup for a day or two and it goes everywhere. It’ll be at graduation parties, golf courses, picnics, schools, car dealers, taverns. You and I will see social media pictures of our friends with it. Maybe we’ll be in those pictures. We’ll kiss it. We’ll drink from it. Babies not yet born will be placed in it. It’s going to make tens of thousands of people very happy and it’s a happiness we’ll carry with us for the rest of our lives.

• Banning Muslims from coming to America would have as great a chance of stopping the Pulse shooting as banning 20-year-old white misfits who live with their mothers would have had of stopping Sandy Hook. 

• Being at Game 5 was as memorable a sporting event as any I’ve attended. There were 20,000 people there. And I’m talking 20,000 people standing outside the building. It’s such a great phenomena. The city sets up a big screen — it’s probably “big” to only about the nearest 2,000 — and people set up lawn chairs and enjoy the camaraderie. Inside was incredible. I’ve never heard a crowd so loud. I spent the day bar-hopping with buddies convinced the Pens would win. Had they won, I’d still be hungover.

• I studiously avoid trying to inject politics into this blog. But if you want to read one on gun control from back when I did, I link below to a ’12 story about the NRA reaction to Sandy Hook and wonder what Wayne LaPierre thinks when he sees Ralphie shoot his eye out in “A Christmas Story.” I’m told it’s very good.

• I told everyone I know I would have loved to have seen the final go seven games, “but only if I could be assured the Pens would win Game 7.” I’m glad it happened last night.

• I’ll never understand how these killers — both foreign and domestic -- think they can get Americans to change our way of life just by killing a few dozen of us. I don’t see any LBGT going straight because of what happened in Pulse.

• My daughter — she’ll be 10 next week — rediscovered those gum band loom kits last week and made me a preposterous black & gold necklace to wear for luck at Game 5. She wondered why I was still wearing it last night when its presumed luck had failed. “Unlucky?” I asked. “One friend gave me a ticket to one of the greatest hockey games in Pittsburgh history. Another friend invited me to stay with him at a downtown hotel on his expense account. I had one of the best days of my life. And I have you for a daughter. It’s the luckiest necklace in the world.”

• Having said that, had the Pens had lost Game 6, I would've ditched the stupid necklace for Game 7.

• It’s impossible to calculate the number of Americans lone wolf killers would have to slay to get me to ever quit living like an American. We have our problems, but this America is still a really great idea.

• I watched the game at Dino’s with Paul and Joe. The girls at home aren’t that into hockey and I relish an opportunity to share this kind of fun with friends among a happy throng. When the rink announcer asked for a moment of silence for the Orlando shooting victims, you could have heard a pin drop in the bar. It was very moving.

• I was thrown out of Dino’s in, I think, ’94 for defying a silly no-hats ban the bar had back then. I made a hilarious popcorn-tossing scene as they frog marched me out the door. I’m glad they’ve either forgotten it or don’t hold a grudge.

• So there we have it, light and dark with light, I hope, prevailing.

We mourn. We celebrate.

May we all drink deeply from the marvelous cup of life anytime it comes our way.

Related …

NRA has become National Assault Rifle Association

I’m going to Game 5

Jump hugs with dangerous drunks

Safety lessons from spree killers

Pens vs. Sharks in Cup (and life)

Pens vs. Sharks in Stanley Cup (and life)

(717 words)

The Pens playing the San Jose Sharks for the Stanley Cup is less than idyllic for me because I’m one of those guys who gets annoyed having to pay attention to any news happening in any of the 39 world time zones that aren’t the one I’m in.

If it’s not happening in EST, I have trouble paying attention. Same goes for news about people whose names I have trouble pronouncing. 

It’ll be annoying for people watching the games with me because I’ll inevitably ask stupid questions about real sharks.

For instance, I’ve always wondered if these notorious man-eaters are uniformly voracious or if there are some sharks that are like some picky kids about cleaning their proverbial plate.

Dad shark: “Son, if you don’t eat your liver you’ll go to your room without your device privileges for the whole night.”

Son shark: “I hate liver! Isn't it enough I ate both the awful kidneys!”

I like it when best of seven series involving Pittsburgh teams are against teams within our sensible time zone against players whose names lend themselves to convenient heckling.

That’s why I was hoping we’d play the Brooklyn Nets, a EST team with players named Tad Young, Will Read, and Jarret Jack.

Of course, this would be highly unusual because the Nets are a professional basketball team and playing an NBA team in the NHL’s Stanley Cup would unprecedented.

And, oh, how the Pens would kick their asses.

NHL scouts routinely rate a team’s skating abilities. I’m sure they’d say an NBA team has very poor skating skills.

It’d be fun to watch Sidney Crosby zoom around a bunch of 6-foot-10 dudes who can barely stand up on skates. I’m confident Crosby could beat the Nets all by himself. Heck, our goalie could beat them all by himself.

Alas, we get the PTZ (Pacific Time Zone) San Jose Sharks and guys named Dainius Zubrus, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Joonas Donskoi.

I also hate the sports league propensity to try and achieve perfect fairness in scheduling. That means games 1, 2, 5 and 7 will be played in Pittsburgh, which gets home ice advantage because of its superior record. 

Those of you who are statistically minded will note the disparity in sequencing. Games 3, 4 and 6 will succumb to the scheduling equivalent of Manifest Destiny.

It upsets environmentalists like myself because of all the squandered  jet fuel it’ll take to zoom back and forth across the continent in the event the series goes seven games (it won’t).

It’s incredible wasteful.

It’d make environmental sense to play the games in a central location, like Lebanon, Kansas, the exact geographic center of the USA.

If you think Lebanon would be a convention mecca, you’d be mistaken. Population 279, one resident told me they’re so desolate they’re 60 miles from the nearest Walmart and that they buy toilet paper by the pallet.

Of course, the biggest question of all involving San Jose’s participation in the Stanley Cup is whose idea was it to put an NHL franchise in San Jose, an inland city with the same international prestige as Fresno.

Who wants to junket to San Jose?

It’s like taking a California team and making it come to Pennsylvania to play Scranton.

There shouldn’t be professional ice hockey in towns that never see roads covered in actual ice. And I reserve the right to alter my position once Global Warming renders the whole stipulation preposterous.

So it promises to be a fun week here in Pittsburgh and San Jose, too, I’m sure.

I grew up playing hockey and have remained a huge fan. This Penguin team is very appealing, too.

Being in a city that’s on a championship run is tremendous fun. No one knows this better than Pittsburgh fans. In my lifetime, I’ve celebrated six Super Bowls, three Stanley Cups and three World Series championships.

That’s 12 in five decades, for an average of more than two every decade.

By comparison, fans in Cleveland haven’t won squat.

Yes, it’s good to be us.

This week will prove it again.

It sounds like one of those hysterically hyped Animal Planet shows, but this series will confound the the aquatic natural order: The Pens will devour the Sharks.

Livers and all.

Pens in five.

Related …

Let’s move nation’s capital to Lebanon, Kansas

Youth hockey league in hot water over icing anthem

MOvember & my magnificent mustache

Fanning vs. shark: we need a rematch!

The winter day I nearly died in Minnesota