Hockey Dreams by David Adams Richards Read Free Book Online Page A

handed the boy a baseball glove, bat and ball, and said that from now on he would take care of this boy’s poor sick mother. Then Garth turned to the audience and thrust his arms out wide — and the lightswent down and a star shone, all proclaiming the spirit of Christmas.
    When the lights went up, Garth was still standing there — all the children on stage with their heads bowed, John L. Sullivan wearing his glove and holding his bat against his shoulder, as if he knew what to do with it.
    “Boooooo,” came a voice from the back of the audience, “Boooooooooooooooo.”
    I bit down on a hard candy and broke a tooth filling. From December until mid-March of 1961 that tooth would plague me. My face would swell up like a bun, and on occasion I could only see out of one eye.
    There was only one boo. Everyone else kept applauding, and Garth bowed, and finally the audience stood.
    There is a mythology to the American sports person that we have long embraced — just as Mrs Grey’s crème de la crème did in that play. Of course it is the sports person in general; they fire our imagination, even heighten our personality. Soccer is one example.
    Yet the Americans have taken this concept of sports hero and have manifested it in a way in which it has never been done before. Sports is somehow synonomous with the grandeur of the concept of America as a whole.
    I have thought of that play many times. The reflections I have about it are many and varied. I have seen many movies like it. It is about generosity. It is also about American generosityand baseball as a symbol of bravery, goodness and innocence. It was the present Mrs. Grey gave to us for Christmas.
    This was something that Stafford and I knew, but couldn’t quite put our finger on — their heroes are so often our heroes, their movies and plays so often performed here, that we sometimes get confused when shown the American flag on their sweaters or hockey helmets — or worse the Canadian flag on ours.
    But, regarding hockey, it gives us a strange ultra schizophrenia that, like most schizophrenics, goes a long way to hide its sickness from others and itself.
    The Canadian psyche is not wrong, it is just different. Some of our greatest moments have been in defeat rather than in victory (sometimes we do blush when we win).
    For example, George Chuvalo loses to Mohammed Ali and is considered by Ali to be the toughest man he ever fought. He was pummelled and never knocked off his feet. He fought back in every round.
    To fight back like this a man must love as much as he ever hated. That’s one of the clues for my respect for boxers.
    He never won the title himself, but might have won it against Terrell, except something happened — the judges. They awarded Terrell the decision.
    A man I know, Yvon Durelle, knocked down Archie Moore three times in round one of their first fight. He lost in the eleventh round. If only the title fight had been held in New York, where the three-knockdown rule was in effect, insteadof Montreal, he would have won the Light Heavyweight Championship of the World.
    Archie Moore, who was knocked out by Rocky Marciano, says that no one ever hit him harder than Yvon Durelle. For all his trouble, Durelle carried us with him into that ring and held us spellbound, staring into the face of one of the greatest boxers who ever lived without batting an eye.
    But Chuvalo being the toughest and Durelle being the hardest puncher doesn’t translate into a world championship. Almost nothing in Canada does. But that’s okay.
    The thing is, most of us never worry about this. It is a part of our nature not to worry about things such as this. Our dichotomy is so often the dichotomy of wanting to place rather than win. And that in so many ways is because of our association with the States.
    Our nation is often at its best when it is fighting for others. Other people’s vision helps us tip the scales. Once Canadians have vision, a vision about what they have to do,