Your Humble Blogger and his Perfect Non-Reader were amongst the four thousand four hundred and fifty-six people in attendance at our local hockey team’s game last night. We had a good time, as did the other four thousand four hundred and fifty-four people, as far as I can tell.
As Gentle Readers may or may not know (or care), YHB has been a big fan of college hockey for many years now, and hasn’t watched professional hockey much at all. In the college game, there is no fighting. Oh, it’s a physical game, and people get hurt, and often somebody takes out a fellow on the opposite team and then is slammed into the wall himself, and there’s the odd roughhousing, and I’ve seen guys hit after the whistle. It’s hockey.
But last night, at 18:02 in the second period, two guys shook off their gloves and pulled off their helmets. They circled each other for ten seconds or more, with their fists up in the Marquess of Queensberry pose, whilst the referees circled around them, watching intently. The crowd went wild. The loudest cheers of the night. Then one threw a punch, and the other threw a punch, and then they went into a clinch, with a fair amount of punching in the ribs, and they went down onto the ice, with the player on top knocking the player on the bottoms head into the ice. Then, the referees approached and pulled the players apart, sending the visiting player off and out of the game.
I can tell you some of the specifics, because not only did the big screen show the fight in close-up, but they repeated the film just as if it had been a goal or a great save. In other words, the referees allowed the fight to take place, the crowd encouraged it, and the ownership and venue presented it as a highlight of the evening.
Now, as I say, I know this is hockey. It’s not Camp Easy-Peasey-Squeezey-Fun-Time. I enjoyed the (clean but) brutal checks against the boards. I hollered for the center to get in front of the net, knowing that the only way to get there was to force his way in, which is why you have a big guy in there. I explained to the Perfect Non-Reader that although, yes, they were fouls and the perpetrators should be held in the penalty box for two minutes, holding hooking slashing roughing and even cross-checking are all part of the game, and that no, it wasn’t usually an accident, other than the part where the ref sees it. And I wasn’t, you know, really surprised by the fight. But I was, in the event, shocked.
Trying to examine my reaction from the next day, I think that what shocked me was not the violence, nor even the howls from the (tiny) mob for more violence. I think the reason I was disturbed was the lack of pretense about it. There was no sense that the crowd was cheering a home player who was defending himself from the bad guy from Texas, or even that they were cheering for retaliation against bad behavior from the visitors. No, it was just glee at the fight.
I believe that our pretensions are valuable. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are who we are in our minds. True, people actually do a lot of things that aren’t in the stories they tell themselves about themselves, and that’s clearly a Bad Thing. But they do them with shame, and often they will not do them when there’s anybody looking, and there are lots of times that we don’t do them at all, either because you never know Who is looking, or because we really don’t want to break our illusions that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are true.
Which is why I am so appalled by Our Only President’s attitude toward torture. I know the US uses torture. I would guess that there hasn’t been a year in the nation’s history that some law enforcement officer hasn’t tortured a prisoner. But for more than a generation, now, we have told ourselves the story that we don’t do that. We tell ourselves that we are better than that. And we have been, mostly, when people were looking. Enough to keep telling ourselves the story, anyway. Not anymore.
I know people go to hockey games to see fights. I just wish they felt a little bit bad about that, just enough to pretend that they are there for the hockey.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
It seems possible to me that people have come to believe that fighting is actually part of the game of hockey, at least as it’s played when played as a spectator sport. I mean, when people go to the fights, they’re going for the fighting, and no one’s ashamed of that.
I sympathize with your point, but I’m not sure I can agree that the Pretense is a good thing. Allow me to challenge you in what I hope is a gentle and respectful manner. Here are three things we might say about torture in this country:
1. Denial: “We do not torture.”
2. Rationalization: “We do torture, but only when [insert justification].”
3. Acceptance: “We do torture. So what?”
The first statement is the Pretense we’ve been living under. The second statement is what our President is now saying (essentially). The third statement is where we are afraid we might be heading. I think your point is that from Denial (1) to Rationalization (2) to Acceptance (3) is a slippery slope, and as long as we stayed at Denial, we could never make it to Acceptance.
The problem is, torture is still happening, and if we want it to stop, we have to move out of Complacency (1) to Discomfort (2). Sure, Discomfort (2) might lead to Resignation (3) but it might lead to Dissent (4 – We need to stop torturing). Isn’t that what happened with Slavery in this country?
Bringing it all back to hockey (that was the point, right?), it sounds like you have moved from Denial (1 – violence is only glorified in professional hockey) to Discomfort (2 – ok, maybe violence is glorified in college hockey some of the time). So, where do you head from here, if anywhere?
Irilyth—That’s the thing; for years I followed college hockey and not only were there no fights, but nobody seemed to miss them. And in this game, as far as I could tell (knowing nothing about the players and the teams) the fight had no actual effect on the game, other than taking one guy off the ice. It wasn’t strategic fighting in any way, just a little punch-out.
Matthew—Please challenge me all you like; it’s what this Tohu Bohu is for, as I’ve said many times before your arrival. In the best case scenario, I will change my mind and have a better perception of the universe. Second-best is that I need to clarify my views to myself in order to clarify them to challenging Gentle Reader, which is a Good Thing. Either way, I get improved opinions.
In this case, I’m going to begin with clarifying. I don’t think that Denial is altogether the right category, at least not as a single category. The view that we don’t torture is, I think like the view that we don’t shoplift or we don’t park in handicapped parking without a permit. Of course we know that people do it, but the actions are outside the Pale, if you will, and the people who do them should (in theory) be caught and punished. In the categories of Done and Not Done, they are Not Done, not because they aren’t actually done, but because they are Not Done, if you follow me. Speeding, on the other hand, is not Not Done, as even though it violates the laws is doesn’t violate the social rules, or the norms as I call them in my Putnamy way.
Thus, when we move from (a) to (2), we move from torture being a thing that is Not Done to a thing that is Done. I think that increases the quantity of torture that is done (as opposed to Done). When cops beat suspects with phone books, they knew it was Not Done (well, by the last generation or so), and the farther outside what was Done it was, the less it could be done. Thus, I think that your (2) is less Discomfort than Comfort. Particularly since it is clear that cops often would beat up the suspect out of a sort of revenge or punishment, which makes the [insert justification] plastic enough to admit of almost any impression.
But to move back to hockey, which as you say is my real point, I think that in College Hockey fighting (by which I mean gloves-off fighting of the kind I described) is not done largely because it is Not Done, and in professional hockey (including the minor-league game I was at) fighting is not only not Not Done, but Done, and is furthermore done. There are lots of reasons for this, but for my experience it was a drop into a different world with different norms, and worse ones.
On the other hand, I should make it clear to those Gentle Readers who don’t watch hockey of any kind that if I were to break down the violence in the game into three categories: (1) gloves-off punching, (B) ordinary play-of-game hits, and (iii) illegal hitting-from-behind or other roughing with the gloves on and the sticks in hand, it’s clear that they are in ascending order of potential damage and violent intent. Even with the fight in the middle, this AHL game was much less violent than a BU-BC Beanpot final, and the crowd much less eager in cheering for bonecrunching “good hits”. Hockey is a violent sport, and its fans (me me me) are in no way superior to the bellowing yahoos at prizefights, all-in wrestling, or total fighting, in terms of our getting our nasty little kicks out of somebody else’s pain.
So what’s my beef? I suppose there’s this, in the back of my head. If my Perfect Non-Reader ever plays ice hockey (YHB spits twice through his fingers), I hope she learns to hit hard and get hit hard safely, but I hope she never learns to punch anyone in the face. I hope she learns that punching people is Not Done. And if she never plays ice hockey (YHB touches wood), I will not be worried about her getting cross-checked or speared, but I will still be worried about the whole punching in the face thing.
Thanks,
-V.
Well (1)st of all let me compliment your ennobled attitude regarding “being challenged.” I truly admire that spirit of openness and find it rare.
(B)ndly, your clarification on “We do not torture” makes perfect sense, and apologize for having missed the inflection/intonation with which it was typed. We do NOT torture as opposed to WE do not torture. (We DO not torture. We do not TORTURE. Said with my best John Cleese impersonation)
But (iii)rdly I am reacting (badly, poorly, knee-jerkedly) to “hockey is violent sport.” I know it is a true statement, but I don’t understand why it must be that way.
There is a fine line between playing within the rules and “no holds barred,” and it would seem that hockey would be hard at work erasing that line. For what purpose? Here you have players moving at high velocity on skates trying to overtake a small but skull-crushingly hard projectile over a contained field of ice. There’s already enough skill, finesse, and danger involved that the addition of pointless violence seems, well, pointless. Yet even you admit that the violence is part of the thrill.
I am baffled, especially when one compares this sport to baseball, a sport where the activity happens in tidy, civilized bursts with plenty of time in between to sell beer. I would think if any game was in need of enlivening with fisticuffs, it would be baseball.
I don’t know that the hockey-violence thing is due to a “need to enliven the sport,” so much as it exists in an atmosphere of license, where there’s already a fair amount of contact, so what the heck? Like, in baseball, the rest of the game is so civilized that if there’s a fight*, it’s somewhat of a shock to the system. In hockey, well, these guys just slammed into each other at a combined total of – let’s call it 40 mph? – anyway, at high speed. So, what difference if they also hit each other with fists?
* And it’s not like there isn’t fighting in baseball. I don’t think most Americans would be baffled by the connotations of the phrase “clear the dugouts.” They ain’t talking about the annual dugout hose-down. And if there’s a widely recognized vernacular phrase for a fight during a baseball game, chances are they happen pretty frequently.
peace
Matt