4 — Sunday, Nov. 1, 1992 — North Shore News A religious experience i WAS never much of a sports fan, up until the 1992 World Series, eh? Partly it’s because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered memorizing statistics, although I admire the discipline. Another reason is that I’m gen- erally terrified of crowds. There’s always the risk of a stampede, at the very least the certainty of lineups, which is almost as bad for us impatient types. In the TV age, this certainly shouldn't be much of a barrier to being a sports freak. But the fact is 1 don't like watching television very much, either. There’s kind of a mental lineup, if you know what { mean. Some of this failure to appreci- ate organized sporting activities goes back to a major childhood trauma, called hockey practice. This had an extremely negative impact on me. There have been times, | regret to say, when my feelings about sports have in fact amounted to an almost pathologi- cal dislike. Our phys-ed teacher had the power to order us boys in his class to be on the ice at the hockey rink by 8 a.m. on Saturday mornings. It was part of school. You had to do it. Like singing the national anthem and God Save The Queen. it was Winnipeg. And it was winter. Wind chill factors of 20 and 30 below were fairly normal in January and February, if bitter memory serves me with any accu- tacy at all. We are talking living white-death Eskimo hell. First of all you had to get up and get out of a nice warm bed — on the one day you should be able to sleep in! You could hear the wind hissing around the icicles outside. Then you had to push back the drifted snow blocking the storm door, and force your body to step out into the arctic vacuum — a totally unnatural act, | contend, Walk a mile to school, hunkered against a north wind. There'd be the brief ecstasy of standing, socks steaming, beside the furnace in the changing shed by the rink, but the next thing I'd know whistles were blowing and everyone was clunking awkwardly in their skates out into the sting- ing spray of crystals being blasted over the crests of drifts straight into our faces. Because I was skinny, uncoor- dinated, poorly motivated and an absolutely pathetic skater, I'd get stuck with being goalie. With all due respect to history’s great goalies, squatting on skates in the middle of a shooting gallery while freezing to death is just nat my idea of self-realization. By consistently demonstrating the highest level of inability in the entire class, 1 was soon enough dropped from the hockey team. What am I saying, soon enough? It could never have been soon enough! As for watching the sport, I just couldn’t acquire a taste for the sight of blood on the ice at Friday night inter-high games . 0% OFF every order 20 600 frames to choose from Free Reproduction Print with every order aver $120.00 GALLERY Sui generis Edgemont Village 3053 Highland Blvd., NMan. Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL This was a hold-over from the Roman Coliseum, I'd argue. A bastion of barbarism. A low, base thing. Like bear-baiting and dogfights, surely it ought to be banned. This attitude colored my feel- ings about virtually all sports. Football. Soccer. Boxing. Wres- tling. Even horse racing struck me as being cruel to the animals. Basebal! was an exception. It had the virtue of being a game that was played in summer and fall. That was certainly a point in its favor. Piayers hardly ever broke each other’s arms or noses. Like cricket and lawn bowling, it was as close to a harmless diversion as you could get without actually nodding off. I philosophically approved. But that was about all. You certainly couldn’t cal) me a fan. { thought people would be bet- ter off using their time to read or paint or go hiking or camping, appreciating nature, sail, climb, swim. And thus passed the first half century of my life, a wasteland from the point of view of ap- preciating the pleasures of orga- nized sports — until, at last, the World Series of 1992 arrived. And smart-ass Bob, the bookworm and nature-freak, came to see the light. [It sneaked up on me. People would say, ‘‘Them Jays, eh?" — And so I'd say back: ‘Go Jays."” This seemed to satisfy most of them, although they might start rattling off some strange-sounding names if I didn’t get away fast enough. But | was safe once | got back to my family. Nobody was any more interested in any of that than me. At least, that’s how it was. Until one day | came home and noticed that my wife and teenage son were glued to the TV, watching a baseball game. I could see their minds had been taken over by some mystic force. As it turned out, it was the first game of the World Series, the Jays and the Braves at Atlanta, Canada in the Series for the first time in the history of the planet, and I was hooked... Six games later, the entire fami- 988-2211 ly was cheering exhaustedly along with the neighbors and the horns were honking at 2 a.m. and we were all crazy with ecstasy when Dave Winfield’s extra-base hit brought Devon White and Robbie Alomar home in the Pith fora 4-3 overtime win, and all those guys in long johns were jumping all over each other, and back here at the other end of the TV we were madly giving each other high-fives and hugging and hooting, and cracking open the champagne. Ah! Now I get it! It’s a teligious experience. Them Jays, eh? Heather Harris loves to tone not only because it gives her a lot more energy and helps her fose inches — Heather has arthritis in her hip and toning taakes her fee! great. 76; 1 HR. 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