Once bitten

Murphy said that the taunting and chippiness that has marked this series — much an outgrowth of the incident in which Vancouver’s Alexandre Burrows bit the finger of Boston’s Patrice Bergeron in Game 1, followed by episodes in which players on both teams thrust their fingers toward opponents’ mouths, culminating in a rash of misconduct penalties at the end of Game 3 — was garbage. —NYT

The Teachings of Parkus Grammaticus — Stray Thoughtz™

From yesterday's lesson:

Donald Keene: “I grew interested in the Orient and one day I bought a translation of the Japanese story ‘Tale of Genji’ in the Hotel Astor bookstore in Times Square, only because it was so cheap — two volumes for 49 cents. And that’s how I got hooked on Japanese literature.”

From my groundbreaking piece "Minor Poets, Major Works":

Thought: Maybe it’s the remainder tables that secretly move the culture forward. Up-and-coming writers, strapped for cash and dismissive of the books that are being published and getting noticed, gravitate toward these steam tables of overlooked lit, these shallow arks of the minor. I used to work in an office near St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York, and would drop in at least once a week. Cheaper than the new releases, even than most of the literary journals, were the remainders on the table in the back, which is where I first discovered John Ashbery and James Schuyler’s A Nest of Ninnies.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury—I rest my case.

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Stray thought: The Sabres lost the other night to the Flyers at...the Wells Fargo Center! Not the Spectrum! The change happened in 1996, so obviously I haven't been following hockey, really, but...still...

Anyway, this morning I read that Oakland Stadium is going to be called...OVERSTOCK.COM COLISEUM. (More here.)

Annals of facial hair (NHL edition): The talisman

Boyle said Monday that he was not really trying to impress anyone with his mustache, but was aiming to resemble the swashbuckling guy on Captain Morgan rum bottles. With one notable exception, his teammates are much less enamored of mustaches than Boyle.

“I’ve just got to get more guys on board,” Boyle, 26, said. “I just can’t grow a beard. This is all I’ve got.”

But a black mustache is about as much facial hair as the 24-year-old Rangers center Brandon Dubinsky can muster, too. And now Dubinsky’s mustache is being regarded by the Rangers as a talisman after they beat the Washington Capitals, 3-2, on Sunday to narrow the best-of-seven series to two games to one with Game 4 scheduled for Wednesday at Madison Square Garden.

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Dubinsky is a young player on a relatively young team that relied on its energy and resourcefulness to squeeze into the playoffs. Kind of like his mustache, his goal Sunday was no thing of beauty, but it counted as much as a pinpoint snap shot.

—Dave Caldwell, "Rangers Follow the Mustachioed in the Playoffs," NYT

"His noggin is more than two feet around"

Throughout his 14 years as a catcher in organized ball, [Earl] Bochy wore the same batting and catching helmets. "I had to," he says. "None of the teams I played for carried my size." Both helmets were specially made in 1975, his first year in A ball with the Covington Astros. The batting lid was so huge that when he made a game-winning hit late in the '86 season, his Padres teammates celebrated by filling it with ice and a six-pack.

"Whenever I got traded or played winter ball, my first priority was always to pack up my helmets," he says. "And before I arrived, I'd usually have to paint them. When I first got them in '75, they were Astros orange. They turned blue when I moved up to Columbus in '76, then back to orange later that summer when I got shipped to Dubuque. They stayed orange until '78, when I got sent back to Columbus. But midway through the season I made the big club in Houston, and they went from blue to orange. I played winter ball in Venezuela, where I had to paint them red. I added a coat of orange before the '79 season with Houston, and a coat of red before the next winter ball season, then two more coats—orange and red—in '80, a coat of blue when I went over to the Mets organization in '81, coats of red and brown when I came to San Diego in '83, and, finally, blue again in '90 when I played for the Orlando Juice in the Senior League. I'm not exactly sure where the helmets are now, but wherever they are, they've gotta be blue."

—Franz Lidz, Endgame, SI.com

(Via Jane)

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In other sports news: RIP Rick Martin:

(Via Arlo)

Double trouble — Hole in one

Hockey's Sedin twins:

“Because of their style of play, they are symbiotic and are effectively inseparable,” Gillis said. “As such, we will treat them as a single entity for contractual purposes while recognizing their individual needs and attributes away from the arena.” —NYT

Also: Dwight Garner on new Naipaul bio:

Even the cameos in Mr. French’s biography are crazily vivid. Here is his hole-in-one description of the editor Francis Wyndham: “Popular, gentle, solitary and eccentric, Wyndham lived with his mother, wore heavy glasses and high-waisted trousers, gave off random murmurs and squeaks and moved with an amphibian gait.”

Ideas, ideas...GOT IT!

The Rock's alive with the sound of music.

Julie Andrews will play boss to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in Tooth Fairy, about a minor-league hockey player who, after spoiling a kid's dreams, is sentenced to one week as a real-life tooth fairy replete with wand and tutu. Andrews is an administrator at the Tooth Fairy Dept. Ashley Judd also stars. —E! News

(Via Jane)

Whale of a time

From my 2003 Believer article on Charles Portis:

[In Dog of the South,] Dr. Symes’s mother, a missionary, periodically grills Midge on his knowledge of the Bible, a knowledge he repeatedly professes not to have. “Think about this,” she says, pointedly fixing his thoughts to the matter of last things. “All the little animals of your youth are long dead.” Her companion Melba promptly emends the truism: “Except for turtles.”

I wish I could find that line in Borges about being the last person alive to remember seeing something—something small, not a major cultural event but the way the sky was on a certain day in a certain part of the country. (Shades of "Funes the Memorious"; am I actually just misremembering that story?)



Borges and Portis came to mind when Dzyd Arlo sent me this link to the Times's NHL blog, in which Jon Baum reflects on the increasing rarity of hockey players associated with the now defunct Hartford Whalers (favorite team of this brilliant historian).

I like that the Whalers had a regionally relevant name, and one referring to an outdated trade; now Whalers are becoming as scarce as whalers; but perhaps all hockey players will be whalers soon enough.

[Cue: "Bob Marley and the Hartford Whalers."]

Son of Table-Talk of P.G. for May 30, 2008

I. Oroboros [sic]—the game! (From Idalia.)

II. Baseball and poetry, sure. But hockey and poetry? At the Poetry Foundation, Dizzies Team Member Rob talks to Randall Maggs, author of Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems.

III. Check out (get it?) the librarian muxtape.

IV. At Jacket Copy, Dzyd Ben packs books for a trip.

When the other team attacks

Like Perec, the author of this NYT article on zambonis likes to quote Peanuts. (He also has an amazing name: Hary Hurt III!)

Apart from the inventor, few people did more to transform the Zamboni into a pop cultural icon than the cartoonist Charles M. Schultz. A Minnesota native and hockey fan, Schultz made over 50 references to Zambonis in his comic strips and films. Schultz provided a miniature Zamboni for the tiny bird Woodstock to use when his birdbath iced over. But he awarded the honor of driving most of his imaginary Zambonis to Snoopy, the ice skating beagle.

“As the world famous hockey coach, what do you do when the other team attacks?” asked Charlie Brown.

“Circle the Zambonis!” Snoopy replied.

(Thanks to Jane.) Required listening here.

L is for...

...Lindy Ruff.

The NHL fined Sabres' head coach Ruff $10,000 for his role in Thursday night's slugfest in Bufffalo between the Sabres and Ottawa Senators. Ruff is charged with sending his more physical players onto the ice with the intention of roughing up the Sens in return for the cheap elbow/shoulder hit on Sabres' Chris Drury that sent him to the sidelines indefinitely with concussive symptoms, 20 stitches, and a swollen right eye.

The faceoff following the Drury hit erupted into the most bizarre battle I can recall watching. Sabre rookie Pat Kaleta, a Western NY native playing in his first NHL game ever, was among the enforcers. The mess eventually involved every player on the ice for both teams, with the highlight being the sight of the two goalies skating away from their creases and toward each other, knocking off their own masks and gloves before throwing punches. Ray Emery, the Sens' goaltender who formerly had Mike Tyson painted on his helmet and is a noted boxing buff, clearly enjoyed his first game back from a three-game suspension for another fight; the ear-to-ear grin on his face never vanished as he easily fought wiry-framed Sabres' goalie Martin Biron to the ice. Emery's smile remained as he was attacked by Sabre Andrew Peters in a move that violated that unwritten rule of hockey: never fight the goalie. Lindy Ruff proceeded to climb over to the box that separates the two team benches and start a yelling and finger-pointing match with Senators' coach Bryan Murray, a former colleague. By the end of the madness, over 100 penalty minutes were divided between the teams and three players were handed game misconducts, including the two goalies. The game ended with an exciting 6-5 shootout victory for the Sabres; it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Thursday's game created mad anticipation for the final season matchup for the two teams yesterday in Ottawa. The Sens won this time, 6-5, though the Sabres fought back from a 3-goal deficit to tie the game 5-5 in the third period. Watching the game yesterday, one can't help but agree with this comment. The injury to Drury, Sabre co-captain and team-leading scorer, will undoubtedly be the one with the strongest impact; Drury is arguably the most valuable player to the Sabres and, perhaps, to the league. The Sabres are still playing like the league-leading team that they are, although the current roster contains just a fraction of the players that started out the season. Now with eight players out of the lineup, Ruff is truly working some magic with these rookies, many of whom are playing in their first NHL games. Ruff was NHL coach of the year last season when he brought a team full of rookies to the Eastern conference finals; let's see if he can repeat that honor while leading them to the Stanley cup finals.