Hockey vs. Baseball

This post is in honour of the 2008-09 season that starts in just a few short days. Originally, this piece was part of a bigger piece that extolled the virtues of Canada and used, only for comparison purposes, our neighbours to the south. This is not meant, in any way, to insult any American readers.


Hockey is to Canada what baseball is to the United States. There are Canadians who profess to dislike hockey, but I’m pretty sure they’re just kidding. A Canadian who doesn’t like hockey is like a college student who doesn’t like extra money; I’ve never met one, and I doubt they exist.

Americans, however, seem to prefer baseball. Baseball is very boring to watch. In baseball, the batting team spends most of its time sitting in a dugout and spitting out streams of tobacco. The players in the field spend most of their time crouched and ready to move in case the batter happens to hit the ball, which doesn’t happen that often. Sometimes, when the batter actually hits the ball and it’s flying out into the infield, he can run to first base. But usually, by the time the batter gets there, the first baseman is already holding the ball. Then the player is out and he has to go back to the dugout, sit down, and spit out streams of tobacco.

And then there is hockey. Hockey is two and a half hours of fast-paced, action-packed, sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat excitement. Both teams play at the same time and skate so hard and so fast that each player only plays for about a minute at a time so he doesn’t get winded. Where baseball consists mostly of people standing still in one place, hockey is about constant motion. As columnist Andrew Coyne from the National Post writes, “It’s ice dancing, only with more bruises and fewer sequins.”

Speaking of bruises—hockey players are known for their bruises and scars and missing teeth. Baseball players are disabled by violent sneezes (Sammy Sosa), sleeping on their eyes funny (Chris Brown), and straining their elbows flipping sunflower seeds (Greg Harris). In May of 2006, during the playoff games, Oiler, Ryan Smyth was accidentally hit in the face with the puck. Smyth lost three teeth, cracked both lips, and after a quick trip to the locker room for stitches, was back in the game to score the winning goal in overtime. In 1964, Bob Baun of the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup playing on a broken ankle. We can see why we consider our hockey players so heroic. Hockey players play their game harder than anyone expects of them; baseball players miss games for accidentally rubbing chili juice in their eyes (Bret Barberie).

One of baseball’s advantages is that most of the players still have all of their teeth. Besides that very minor detail, hockey is, all around, the better sport.

Conscience got your tongue?

There are some subjects I’m just not allowed to write about because of who I am and where I come from. I make judgments from the hip and then awkwardly backtrack when I realize how ridiculous I sound. So it goes without saying there are just some topics I shouldn’t express opinions about.

I would love to pose solutions to fat people and rant about the inanities of dieting. But I’m not fat, I don’t diet, so I’d be a big fat hypocrite. I like to think I know about eating right and staying trim, but honestly, it’s just that I’ve managed to stay one step ahead of genetics and my metabolism. I don’t have big bones or put on festive weight. I don’t fear bikini season or skinny jeans. I’ll just keep my big mouth shut.

I’m also not allowed to tell poor people what to do. I’d really like to though. There’s nothing I like more than a Cinderella story where the underdog gets all the success and riches they rightly deserve. But that’s one of those perfect world scenarios. Most poor people don’t really fit into that formula, not with phrases like “economic strain,” “market recession,” and “financially challenged.” I can’t tell poor people what to do when I don’t know what any of those mean.

And I certainly can’t talk politics ‘cause I don’t know anything about politics. All I know is that I dislike Stephen Harper and his beady, little rat eyes. Never trust a man with beady rat eyes. Now some may say that crazy folk show too much eyeball, but I say those “crazy” people’s motives are far more transparent than the beady-eyed folk’s. I know the runaway bride is gonna plead insanity and that the cursing homeless dude is gonna spit at me, but I have no idea what Harper’s up to.

I would truly love to wank about society’s ills, but I can’t because I’ve got it pretty good already. Other people are closer to and more familiar with these ills than I am and so I’ll leave the arguments up to them.

I’ll just hold my tongue for now.

- Girl on the Corner (holding her tongue ever so gently)

Mr. Dressup vs. Mr. Rogers

Both Mr. Dressup and Mr. Rogers were popular children’s TV hosts. Their shows ran from the late 60s, and although both these men have since died, their shows have been seen by the current generation of children.

Fred Rogers and Ernie Coombs (Mr. Dressup) came to Canada from the United States in 1963 to develop a children’s show for CBC. Ernie Coombs liked working in Canada so much that he stayed here to work on a show called Butternut Square. His show, Mr. Dressup premiered in 1967. Fred Rogers appeared on CBC as well in the early 60s, then went back to the United States. His show premiered in 1968. Having seen both shows as a child, I can say without hesitation that Mr. Dressup was better.

Mr. Dressup would go into his Tickle Trunk every show and become a wizard, or a pirate, or a big, feathery bird; Mr. Rogers would go into his closet every show and change his shoes. Mr. Dressup was intelligent, fast-paced, and exciting; Mr. Rogers felt that preschoolers could not understand what was being said unless he spoke slowly. His website claims, “He leaves time for children to reflect and respond, and he takes time to prepare them for what will come next and to explain what has happened before.” Kids already know what happened—they were there. And when he “takes the time to prepare them for what will come next,” he is taking away the exciting element of surprise. Mr. Dressup was always part of the fun. He thought up the skit that he and his puppet friends would act out; he often showed us how to make the costumes at craft time, and on every single show, he let go of his pride to have fun with his viewers. Mr. Rogers actually made a point of never appearing in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. According to his website, he felt that his young viewers would have a hard time sorting out who was a real person and who was make-believe. Funny that we Canadian kids didn’t have a problem figuring out the difference between make-believe and reality while watching Mr. Dressup.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood wasn’t all bad; he had some fun tours of factories, and the cranky puppet known as Lady Elaine was pretty entertaining. But when comparing the two, I think we can all agree that Mr. Dressup had the better show.

The Alleys of Edmonton: Chianti Café & Restaurant (105th St and 82 Ave)

Everyone has heard of an elephants’ graveyard, but what of pigeons? They too have their own ancestral places of death, which each successive generation is instinctively drawn towards as mortality nears. I’m quite certain that there are many of these spots, each unique to the pigeon culture of a particular neighbourhood. But near Whyte Avenue, the pigeons’ graveyard is unquestionably located in the alley behind a pasta restaurant.

I first realized this sobering fact many summers ago when I was a street cleaner working on the avenue. If my experiences are to be trusted, finding more than one dead pigeon in an alley during the course of a single summer is exceptional. Typically, wherever I found a dead pigeon seemed to radiate some aura that prevented other birds from dying there. It was as if the other birds could smell the taint of violent death in that spot and avoided it.

Strangely, the alley behind Chianti Café & Restaurant seemed to be immune to this rule. During the span of one summer, I regularly spotted dead pigeons in that grease-stained tomb of an alley. The birds seemed drawn there by something immutable, some irresistible urge that compelled them to the place where their forefathers had died, where their children would die, where they themselves would die. This was when I realized I had discovered that hallowed, mythical place: the pigeons' graveyard.

The alley has an aura of spiritual mystery to it. The grease from the dumpsters is so compacted that it seems the whole alley is sheathed in the substance. On hot days, you feel your cholesterol rising as you walk through it, breathing the fatty air. Having been sustained by the greasy leavings of the dumpsters of Whyte Avenue, it is only reasonable that the pigeons should come to such a place to die—rather poetically, the thing they love kills them.

There are no violent deaths in this alley, as there are in the other alleys—no car accidents, no animal attacks. The pigeons come here to die peacefully, supping on grease one last time, gorging themselves until their little hearts, looking like they have been dipped in wax, flutter briefly one last time in joy and sorrow and then slowly, quietly stop.

When touring the alleys of Whyte, be sure to stop by this sacred ground and take in the meditative pleasures of its serenity. There are no maps for places such as this, where death and life merge much like the dumpster grease and asphalt. Like the elephants' graveyard, the pigeons' graveyard exists more in the realm of legend than reality, making this a particularly rare and special opportunity. I urge you not to miss it.

Afterwards, stop at Chianti for some fine dining. I hear it’s excellent.

Country meets town, and the result is tormenting

My parents met 27 years ago at a party. This, in itself, is not at all unusual. What is unusual is how my parents ended up at the same party.

My father grew up on a farm. He spent every summer waking at the break of dawn to milk the cows, work the horses and man the tractors. When school started he did all that, caught the bus to school, and then did more of that before bed. My father didn’t really have a social life--if he had time to fool around he wasn’t working hard enough--and the only friends he had were from Gym Khana (if you don’t know what that is, just understand it’s a farm-kid thing).

My mother, on the other hand, grew up in town, far from the struggles of her farm-born peers. She spent her summers at “the lake”, waterskiing, suntanning and enjoying her free time. Her main focus was school, which she excelled in, and where she also formed all kinds of friendships--some of which are still in place today.

And so, for my father, a country-bumpkin rig hand, and my mother, a somewhat spoiled city kid, to be attending the same party at the same time, fate had to be in play.

Now, as much as this history amuses me, it also troubles me a bit. Because, from this unusual meeting at a party came marriage and then, uh, me. (That’s not the troubling part).

The troubling part is that I, a by-product of country meeting town at a party, have no idea where I belong in the world. Part of me shares my mother’s love of being pampered, and would willingly spend the rest of my days shopping and having my nails done. However, the other part of me shares my father’s urges to wade through the muck or saddle a horse and ride as far away from everyone and everything as I possibly can.

When I’m in the city, I miss the country; and when I’m in the country, I dream of the city. Leaving one to go to the other always kills me inside, and as soon as I’ve arrived at one place I’m arranging the next trip back.

So for now, I leave my heart in the country to work in the city, and thank my lucky stars that I still have the country to escape to when the city gets to be too much to handle.