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September 30, 2008
Life is a Spectrum
TFP Columnist Dennis Bernstein reflects on
the old Philadelphia Spectrum.
[Los Angeles, CA] -- It seems these
days that every month an old sports arena closes to make way for a
state-of-the-art pleasure palace.
As a youth watching sports, the sole
purpose of these structures were to establish a home advantage; the
loud tin roof that made Chicago Stadium decibel count hit three
figures, the smoke-filled Montreal Forum where dozens of Stanley Cup
championships reside and the museum that was and is Maple Leaf
Gardens.
In my old home town of New York City,
the vogue is building new stadiums. No doubt you've heard (ad nauseum
for those not Yankee fans) of the closing of the House that Ruth
Built. Across town, the pilots that fly into LaGuardia Airport will
lament not having Shea Stadium to use as a landmark, probably the only
group of people regretting the Mets move into the new Citi Field next
season.
The football Giants and Jets got a
bit of infamy over the past month by failing to do due diligence when
negotiating with an insurance company called Allianz over naming
rights of their new stadium in the swamps of Jersey. It seems as if
the insurer didn't let them know that they did business with the Nazis
in the Second World War. Whoops, you think people might like to know
that little tidbit, you know?
These days the sole purpose of a new
building is to be a revenue driver and nothing more.
So as these old edifices come vanish
from site, their memories remain while the concrete, iron and steel
come tumbling to the ground. I had the good fortune to tune into the
NHL Network this past Saturday not knowing the telecast of the final
match between two NHL franchises at the Wachovia Spectrum was being
contested. Outside of Philadelphia, it may be just another hockey barn
closing, but for me it stirred memoires of my formative hockey years.
The Spectrum was a standard cookie
cutter building, a poor second cousin to the majesty and legacy of its
cousin 90 miles north, Madison Square Garden. It had drab orange seats
and held 17,007, a smaller building than most constructed at the time
and they could have built a better roof the first time around. On
March 1, 1968 the roof actually blew off forcing the team to play the
final month of the season on the road. Although I was born and raised
in the Bronx, the Spectrum has special meaning in my hockey history as
stood in the shadow of the pit that was known as Veterans Stadium.
I became a fan of the New York
Rangers in 1965 as a 7-year-old, but as fate would have it, my family
moved to central New Jersey six years later. These were the days
before cable in our home; we're talking UHF, VHF and rabbit ears here.
With the frustration of seeing the
Rangers choke every season in the playoffs, a hockey team dressed in
white, orange and black with a funny logo that was a poorly drawn
flying P got my attention. Their games came in on WPHL TV Channel 29
with fuzzy reception but the way these guys played came through
brilliantly despite the visual impairment. It seemed as if they fought
every game and they had this captain, Bobby Clarke, who had no front
teeth and was a diabetic. After watching one playoff round in 1973, I
was hooked. The one thing that Philadelphia did far better than NYC
was how the city planners situated all the sports arenas in South
Philadelphia, an easy drive from my home and even simpler to leave
after a game; a 5 minute drive got you back on the Walt Whitman Bridge
and I was home in an hour.
Twenty five years later, I've evolved
into a semi-known hockey scribe due in some parts to the legacy of the
Philadelphia franchise and where they skated.
The Flyers did the old lady right
this day, honoring the historic hockey times experienced in South
Philly. You can flame on Philadelphia fans in general for not being
classy, but the Flyers' faithful sold out the joint for a pre-season
game as soon as it was announced and were as vocal as a regular season
crowd this day.
You can bang on Ed Snider for being a
controlling, over the top owner, but if you watched Saturday's
telecast, you would have seen the sense of community and family he has
established with the franchise.
While the team hasn't returned to its
championship glory of the 70's, the Flyers remain among the most
stable and profitable in the NHL. The Flyers brought back 11 of the 16
previous captains in the franchise history and to add to the
pageantry, they named their budding star Mike Richards their 17th
captain. They threw in a bit of nostalgia by giving the executives and
broadcasting team bright orange blazers to wear, a color so bright
that only other day it could be worn on is Halloween. The telecast by
Comcast Sports Network was smartly produced, with Jim Jackson, Keith
Jones and Steve Coates providing the stories about the Cup wins, the
1975 Cold War game against the Russian Red Army and interviews with
former players like Bill Barber, Kevin Dineen and Eric Desjardins.
Although an NHL contest hasn't been
at the Spectrum in 12 years, they've kept the building in the family
too. It's the present home of the AHL Phantoms and the Flyers will
skate for one final time on Spectrum ice against their AHL affiliate
on October 7. The Phantoms will play their 2008-09 season in the
building so its demise will be stayed until late spring.
A touching moment was an interview
with the late announcer Gene Hart's daughter and wife; they spoke
about how Gene truly loved his craft and how grateful he was to have
called all those games over the years. It reminded me of the time when
I was just getting into hockey writing and was at the Nassau Coliseum
for a game between the Flyers and New York Islanders.
During the Flyers Stanley Cup years,
Hart and Don Earle were the announcing team, later Earle was replaced
by former Flyer netminder and current Tampa Bay Lightning color man
Bobby "The Chief" Taylor.
Hart was always the Shakespeare of
the two regardless of his partner. His nightly remarks told the
audience how literary he was and it seemed silly that he had to
proclaim, "He scores for a case of Tastykakes!" as a promotion for an
advertiser when a Flyer scored a goal but as the consummate
professional with did it with style and grace.
I've chatted with the biggest stars
in the game from Mario Lemieux to Wayne Gretzky to Sidney Crosby over
the years, but as I sat in the press room on that night, I found
myself intimidated by his stature was unable to go up to Gene and
thank him for all those fun and informative nights.
But the most poignant moment of the
entire day was encapsulated in one sentence. During the third period,
Coates sat next to Clarke in a seat in the lower bowl and asked him if
he'd like to skate on the Spectrum ice again.
In Clarke's steely, low keyed manner,
he said, "I'd give everything I have to skate one more shift that
meant something."
It's that attitude and those memories
that makes hockey the wonderful game that it is.
Dennis
Bernstein, the man behind SCORE! Media and an NHL
Analyst with ESPN Radio, is the Los Angeles
Correspondent for The Fourth Period Magazine and a Columnist
for TheFourthPeriod.com.
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