Finally

Panthers Coach Paul Maurice with Stanley Cup

It's over. No, not the long national nightmare, the 2023-2024 N.H.L. hockey season, ending with Game 7 being played in Sunrise, Florida on an improbably late date in June—after the start of summer—and seeing the Florida Panthers avoid a fourth straight loss in beating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1.

That's right, after winning the first three games of the finals, the Panthers let the Oilers back in, allowing them to win three straight. Each team won on the other team's ice. Shades of the 1941-1942 season when the Toronto Maples Leafs took the final four games against the Detroit Red Wings to win the cup in the ancient era of 6 teams and all Canadians playing the game.

The game is no longer dominated by Canadians. When I was a die-hard fan there might have been one or two players who were from the United States. No one wasn't from North America. Bobby Clarke, the Hall-of-Fame center for the Philadelphia Flyers would comment when he got in the front office that allowing someone to play hockey who wasn't from North America was taking a job away from the continent.

Boy, do things change. Players are now from all over the globe. The Team Canada tournament in 1972 introduced the parochial world of Canadian hockey to European style hockey when the Canadian all-star team struggled, but eventually came out ahead of the Russians. It was an eye opener.

The game now moves continuously more than it ever did. Whistles are not blown when the players try and freeze the puck along the boards. There can be 5-6 minutes of continuous play before there is a whistle for a penalty, offside or icing.

The center zone was shrunk to add more space behind the goal. allowing players to make plays from back there. Two line passes have been allowed that create great solo scoring opportunities when the  passes land right on a player's stick, allowing a player to burst over the blue line and challenge the goaltender one-on-one.

The Stanley Cup is the most emblematic trophy in all professional sports. And also the oldest. It's history goes back to the early 20th-century. Sure the N.F.L. M.L.B. and the N.B.A. present trophies, but these do not have the history of the Stanley Cup and they were created decades later.

Players from those winning teams don't get to take those trophies around during the off season and show them off to their friends and public. My friend Johnny M. and I have eaten breakfast at Poopies in Glens Falls, New York for many years when we were upstate for our annual pilgrimage to Saratoga racetrack.

The owner, Jerry Di Manno who works the grill, grew up in the area, likely in the house that is above the eatery and knows everyone in the town. Glens Falls is the home of the Adirondack Red Winds, an A.H.L. affiliate of the parent club the Detroit Red Wings.

After the Red Wings won the cup someone stopped by Poopies and allowed Jerry to the photographed with it. The photo is one of the many assorted photos on the walls of the small restaurant.

Hockey is unique in that thee are other historic trophies awarded at the end of the season; serious silver hardware. These awards/trophies are for several playing achievements other than just being the champions. There is the Conn Smythe trophy awarded to the M.V.P. playoff player in the incredible long playoff rounds that can go 28 games if each bracket goes 7 games.

This year's winner was Connor McDavid, a center for the losing Edmonton Oilers. It was only the second time that a player from the losing team won the award. Connor amassed an incredible 34 assists and 8 goals for 42 points in 25 playoff games, third behind Wayne Gretsky and Mario Lemieux in a playoff season..

The trophy depicts Maple Leaf Garden as it stood on Cabbage Street in Toronto. In the middle 70s I saw a game there between the Maple Leafs and the Chicago Blackhawks. Toronto fans then were quite reserved and didn't make much noise. You also couldn't bring a beer back to your seat. Conn Smythe was a principal owner of the Leafs from 1927-1961. Hockey trophies honor individuals.

Other named trophies will be awarded to their recipients this year at the Sphere in Las Vegas, televised by ESPN. There isn't anything that can't be made into a TV show.

Art Ross Trophy

There are a slew of other named trophies: Vezina for the best goaltender; Hart for the M.V.P. for the season; Art Ross, scoring title; Calder, rookie of the year. There are more. It's what makes hockey unique.

All trophies are on display at the Hockey Hall of fame in Toronto. Always worth a take.

In the early 70s all the hockey trophies were on display in the Madison Square Garden Rotunda. My friend Andy and I went to see and take pictures. The pictures I think were lost by the processor. I took more picture when I visited the hockey Hall of Fame in the mid-70s.

But the Stanley Cup is the Holy Grail. It is brought to the arena by the custodian, Phil Pritchard, when there is a game that can result in a team winning the Cup. Needless to say, it is there for a Game 7.

Phil has been the custodian for over 30 years, and handles the Cup like an auction presenter at Sotheby's. He treats the Cup as if he was handling the Mona Lisa. He always wears while gloves, and the rule is no one else can touch the Cup until they've won the cup. Then, they don't wear white gloves as the cup gets passed around after being presented to the captain of the winning team. The Cup is impressively shiny. Phil takes good care of it.

His care extends to saving the gloves he was wearing as he presented the Cup each year for the past 30 years. He bags the gloves in what could be called an "evidence bag" and marks the year. He's got quite a collection.

Panthers/Oilers...another pair of teams I have no affinity for other than liking hockey. The good news for the Florida fans was that they won the Cup at home.

Goodness knows, they paid plenty to attend all those playoff games. At least they came away a winner.

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CAPTCHAS

Do anything online and you've probably been made to pass a "human" test by identifying motorcycles, fire hydrants, street lights, traffic lights and other urban objects before being allowed to proceed to what you really want to do: spend money. No, I am not a robot.

Sometimes the challenge is to identify the letters and numbers that are displayed in a topsy-turvy hard-to-read font. These seem a little harder than the object matches because it's like trying to read a physician's handwriting.

We're being subjected to CAPTCHA tests. That of course is an acronym much like SCUBA and RADAR. I don't know if it's waiting to be used as Jeopardy clue, but it stands for; Completely Automated Public Turing to tell Computers and Humans Apart. You're welcome.

The Turing reference is to Alan Turing the genius mathematician who is credited with helping to crack the German Enigma codes at Bletchley Park during WW II and who was a very early pioneer in using the computers he invented.

Alan Turing had a test that could be used to distinguish if you were dealing with a computer or a human, and this is long before AI (Artificial Intelligence) has come on the scene. 

As currently designed, CAPTCHAs are a grid of pictures that the user is asked to categorize based on a question; e.g. click on the grids that contain bicycles. Doing so successfully allows the user to proceed to the next series of prompts, which will lead to buying something.

BOTS, or robotic algorithms, attack, or get into computers and either cause damage, or beat the line for Taylor Swift tickets. Thus, the software developers try to determine that a human (you) is trying to proceed with the purchase and you're not an automaton who can scoop up untold chances to buy something.

Until now, I've never failed to pass a CAPTCHA test after two attempts at most. But developers are trying to make the tests harder to thwart bots that can end-around the authentication process.

The Wall Street Journal did an A-Hed piece by Katie Deighton of how developers are upping the degree of difficulty in getting past the human test. The piece was in April  but I just excavated the edition from my pile of unread papers. I did this after I failed my first CAPTHA test when ordering maple syrup and was asked to "find the pattern" in the grid of images.  

Find the pattern? WTF? What do you mean? I was having SAT test-taking PTSD when after maybe 12 attempts I couldn't figure out what the pattern was when presented with ducks, frogs and turtles. I pressed "SKIP" several times but didn't get anything that seemed to make the answer obvious. I was apparently not a human.

Okay, maple syrup people, I've dealt with you before. You better have an 800 number to call, or I'm off to a different merchant. They did have a number, and I placed the order the old fashioned way: I talked to someone. They didn't apologize for the impenetrable CAPTCHA, so I didn't get to know what answer they were looking for.

Mr. Deighton's piece describes the gamesmanship developers are resorting to make sure a human is trying to do something on the computer. She doesn't describe being asked for a "pattern," but does offer examples of challenging directions:

"Touch this spot to move the ship under the spiral galaxy." "Whoops! That's not quite right." At this point I'd be talking to the computer and telling it to go pound salt. "Move the ship under the spiral galaxy! Not the other kinds!" Yeah, pal, I did. Do you want my money of not? I'm not trying to get 800 on this SAT test.

Ms. Deighton tells us "developers and cybersecurity experts who design Captchas are doing all they can to stay one step ahead of bad actors figuring out how to crack them."

I have to say. being 75, I've barely ever played a video game. My two daughters were not brought on video games. If this kind of hurdle keeps presenting itself, I'll just default to a calling the 800 number, if they have one. Otherwise, there won't be a sale. Is anyone out there worried you might be killing business?

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No. 24

You have to be at least as old as I am to remember that when Willie Mays hit 4 homers in a game at County Stadium in Milwaukee against the Braves for the New York Giants in 1961, that the Daily News the next day described them as not being "Chinese homers." This was immediately understood to mean that they all travelled very far over the fence before coming down.

And what would a "Chinese" home run be? Well, it's hardly an adjective that's now used, but it used to mean a homer that didn't travel very far before it went over the fence, usually a "short porch."  Old baseball stadiums had very much asymetrical configurations. The old Yankee Stadium was famous for its short right field porch of 296 feet. The Polo Grounds in Manhattan where the New York Giants played had a right field line of 258 feet, and just as famously a center field that was 483 feet as seen in the photo of the famous Mays over-the-shoulder catch. (You can see monuments in the outfield.)

The Old Yankee Stadium with its short porch right field was compensated by a 487 foot center field fence. Ball parks of the older era were not the cookie cutter parks that came into vogue in the 1970s as the old ones were demolished. I don't know if its true, but I once heard that the cock-eyed dimensions were a result of ball parks of the older era that had to be built on a singular lot, often very odd shaped; streets were not appropriated for clearing the way for a ball park's construction.

The new parks gave up far fewer inside-the-park-homers and triples where the ball could roll and almost disappear. The Old Yankee stadium had the monuments deep in center and left center field and were in play. If a ball got back there and started bouncing around those monuments, easy triples and inside-the-park-homers resulted.

Fenway Park has the Green Monster in left field, only 310 feet from home plate, but of course you have to hit it over the 37 foot Green Monster.

My father grew up in Manhattan and was a New York Giants fan. I never saw a Giants game there, but I did see New York Met games there while they were waiting for what would be Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadow Park.

We went to some night games at the Polo grounds and perhaps it was my imagination but the games didn't seem to be well lit. Night games now in comparison seem much brighter. Maybe they didn't have as much candle power illumination in the early 60s, or it was the general gloom of the Polo Grounds itself that made you think you were in he dark. The stadium looked like a bombed out battleship, all steel girders. I saw a New York A.F.L. Titans game there was well.

I probably got to see Willie Mays play once when the Giants were in the World Series against the Yankees in 1962. I don't remember which game it was. My father and I sat in the center field bleachers,  a day game, of course, and I'll swear admission was 75¢. Bleachers were considered general admission, with no seat assignments. Right field bleachers were preferable, but were the first to get filled up because of their relative short distance from home plate.

Joan Whitney Payson, sister of John Hay (Jock) Whitney, who owned The Herald Tribune (the paper I still miss), was a "sportswoman."  She owned Greentree Stables, and her horse Stage Door Johnny won the 1968 Belmont Stakes, keeping Majestic Prince and the jockey Bill Hartack from achieving the Triple Crown. It was my first day at the races.

She was big baseball fan, and adored Willie May, and as soon as the Giants decamped for California she set out to get a National League ball club back in New York. She did. The New York Mets, whose blue and orange colors are evocative of Dodger blue and Giants orange.

Mrs. Payson lived long enough to see her favorite ball player back in a New York uniform when Willie Mays was on the 1973 New York Mets roster and in the World Series. The Mets didn't win the World Series. Mays, like a lot of other superstar ballplayers only had one World Series win. Ted Williams had none.

Of course that didn't diminish Mays's numbers. They were outstanding. One story that Mays liked to tell was when he faced Satchel Paige toward the end of Satchell's career in the Negro Leagues.

Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal relates the story that Willie told him of facing Satchel, hitting a double off him and then coming up to the plate later in the game. Paige purposely walked halfway from the mound to home plate and told Willie: "I'm going to throw you three fastballs and you're going to go sit down." after the at-bat.

Willie swung at the first wo pitches. Two strikes. According to Willie's telling, Satchel threw the third pitch and before it hit the catcher's mitt Satchell was walking off the mound for what he knew would be strike three, and you're out.

Willie swung, and did sit down.

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Working on the Pile

Mary Chapin Carpenter is one of my favorite recording artists. I've seen her in concert many times over the years at different venue, even at Mohegan Sun in their parking lot before they built an indoor arena. Safe to say, I have everything she's recorded. From her first album Hometown Girl with Heroes and Heroines she doesn't just have songs, but has lyrics that tell a story. There's always a story with Mary.

Now that my bathroom iPod alphabetical playback by song title has reached the letter "G," I heard one of my favorites, "Grand Central Station." When it came on, I replayed it. Never mind that what she's singing about is really Grand Central Terminal, poetic songwriting license is allowed. Two syllables rather than three fit better.

She wrote he song soon after 9//11, and it appears on her "Between Here and Now" album. Since the events of 9/11 are now 22 years ago, the imagery of the song might be lost on someone who didn't experience the events of that day firsthand, or live in the immediate aftermath. Much like Don McLean's "American Pie," you need a back story.

The Twin Towers wee not the only buildings that were destroyed. Five others were as well, leaving a massive. smoldering pit of destruction. When the dust settled the job of digging out and removing the debris started. Along with the title ground zero, the area became known as the Pile.

Police, firefighters, construction workers were sent out to recover anything that could be DNA tested for identification. People were really turned into dust.

The air around ground zero was not good. The collapse of the buildings released A LOT of asbestos, and cancer cases started to show themselves not too long after. In fact, there are still law firms that advertise that if you were at the site or near there on 9//11 and have now been diagnosed with cancer, you might be entitled to reimbursement from a special fund that apparently still has money. 

Along with looking for bone fragments, anything that could be identified as belonging to someone was retrieved from the site. My co-worker Isabel's wallet was recovered and was turned over to the NYC Police Department's Property Clerk. Isabel survived, and treated us to a show-and-tell of her very singed wallet when she got a notice to retrieve her wallet.

I don't remember how much longer after her retrieval, I received a notice that my id cards were recovered. My Empire BlueCross BlueShield id card, as well as my World Trade Center access card were to be picked up from One Police Plaza.

When I picked them up and signed for them, the officer Jerry told me the story that a wallet from someone on one of the two 767s was found on the street several blocks from the site. Her husband came and picked it up.

The around the clock recovery of anything from the site went on for months. It became known as working on the pile. Someone I know whose brother-in-law was working for Connor Security after retiring from the phone company was assigned to the lobby of one of the buildings at the fire station.

He was lost, and I went to the funeral in Lynbrook despite the fact that there was no body or anything from a body that was recovered. Dead was presumed.

The search for remains was so intense that many months after that funeral the morgue notified the widow that DNA from bones was recovered from a site that was approximated where her husband might have been in the lobby when the building came down. There was now positive DNA evidence of her deceased husband. I don't really know if they held a second funeral service. Talk about closure.

All the images of post 9/11 and Grand Central are there in the song. ...Flyers coverin' every wall, faces of the missing are all I see..."

Even before the dust settled at ground zero people were walking near the site holding photos of loved ones who didn't come home. Penn Station and Grand Central became filled with photos and flyers posted on a makeshift wall. As soon as you entered Grand Central from 42nd Street on the left there was an array of information on the missing. These flyers and photos remained up for quite some time before I guess they were moved to the 9/11 museum.

"And all these voice keep on askin' me to take them Grand Central Station..."

"And now Hercules is starin' down at me...Next to him's Minerva and Mercury..."

These of course are the three figures depicted outside over the center of Grand Central. There's a clock there as well, which I forget about. The names of the three figures would make a great trivia question for Jeopardy. Minerva is depicted writing something.

In the 60s I worked  with a woman who claimed she knew the model for the Minerva statue. It's possible. She wasn't prone to telling tales. The statuary was installed in 1914.

The sculptor of the statues was a Frenchman who designed the trio but never came the States to see it made. He sent the plans over and the statues were made in Long Island City by William Bradley and Son.

You can't look up Park Avenue at Grand Central Terminal and not see the building behind it. Originally it was the Pan Am building (now MetLife) and boasted a helipad for shuttle helicopters to land for New York Airways, ferrying those that could afford it to and from LaGuardia and Kennedy airports. I always thought of the building as having a garage door look to it when you looked uptown from say 34th Street.

The helicopters annoyed a lot of people who lived nearby and the service lasted until one of them landed on the roof and suffered metal fatigue in its landing gear. The result wasn't pretty when the spinning rotors bounced on the landing pad. Four people were killed. No more rooftop helicopters coming over Midtown Manhattan.

It was a long time ago when the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with the New York Central to form Penn Central. The two Manhattan railroad stations became prime assets for Penn Central when it declared bankruptcy.

Penn Station was razed in 1964, taking two years to demolish it. It didn't take long for the suddenly awake cognoscenti of New York society to realize that an architectural gem had now been destroyed.

The fate of Grand Central Terminal was pulled into the bankruptcy proceedings. Famously, Jackie Onassis Kennedy spearheaded a drive to save Grand Central Terminal from the same fate as Penn Station.

I remember her son, John Kennedy Jr., joking that he knew his mother wasn't one for using mass transit, but that didn't prevent her from trying to save an architectural gem.

Thus..."the pull of home an' the stars upon that painted dome sill shine..." 

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote about the Old Penn Station that it, "held the sound of time." The same can be said for Grand Central when, "...an' all those voices keep askin' me to take them to Grand Central Station..." 

Grand Central Station

©Words and music by Mary Chapin Carpenter

Got my work clothes on for love, sweat and dirt
All this holy dust upon my face an' shirt
Headin' uptown now, just as the shifts are changin'
To Grand Central Station

I've got my lunch box, got my hard hat in my hand
I ain't no hero, mister, just a workin' man
An' all these voices keep on askin' me to take them
To Grand Central Station, Grand Central Station

Wanna stand beneath the clock just one more time
Wanna wait upon the platform for the Hudson line
I guess you're never really all alone or too far from
The pull of home an' the stars upon that painted dome still shine

I paid my way out on the 42nd Street
I lit a cigarette and stared down at my feet
Imagined all the ones that ever stood here waitin'
At Grand Central Station, Grand Central Station

And now Hercules is starin' down at me
Next to him's Minerva and Mercury
Well, I nod to them and start my crawl
Flyers coverin' every wall, faces of the missing are all I see

Tomorrow, I'll be back there, workin' on the pile
Going in, comin' out, single file
Before my job is done there's one more trip I'm makin'
To Grand Central Station, Grand Central Station

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The Melbourne Cup 2024

See something for the first time, then see it again a day later. We are connected.

Due to the rebuilding of Belmont racetrack, they are racing at Saratoga for 4 days in June, surrounding the Belmont Stakes on Saturday June 8. The Belmont Stakes race will be run this year and next year at Saratoga at 1¼ miles rather than 1½ due to the configuration of the Saratoga track. To run a 1½ mile race at Saratoga they'd have to start on a sharp turn, something no one is willing to schedule. A 1¼ race can start in front of the stands at the top of the top of the stretch, like the Alabama and the Travers.

Thee is however no problem starting a 2 mile turf race at Saratoga. It's a rarely distance in the States, but the conditions of the $250,000 Belmont Gold Cup call for it. The field usually consists of many Europeans horses who relish that distance. Thursday's race was no exception.

Graham Motion is as classy a trainer as you can get, specializing in racing European horses here in the States. Christophe Clement is a French-bred trainer who races here, winning with many turf horses.

The Fox Sports broadcasters on FS1/FS2 showed this fairly large gold trophy cup—The Melbourne Cup—as emblematic of the race the winner of the upcoming Belmont Gold Cup winner will be invited to November Down Under.

The Melbourne Cup is Australia's Kentucky Derby. It's a big affair, and the cup is put on tour in various cities all over the Northern Hemisphere and Asia to create interest in the race and promote the win-and-you're-in invitation, much like our Breeders' Cup win-and-you're-in races.

The Melbourne Cup race is a Group 1 for 3-year-olds and up thoroughbreds, run on the turf at 3200 meters, which translates to 1 mile and 740 yards, or simply put, just under 2 miles, on the first Tuesday on November at the Flemington Race Course. Most people are off from work and school that day. The total purse is A$8.4 million, with the winner getting easily over A$4 million.

The cup itself goes on tour in Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, New York, logging over 1 million km. in its appearances. Saratoga was host to the cup on Thursday, June 6, for the Golden Ticket to the winner of the Belmont Gold Cup. 

The Belmont Gold Cup race was as exciting a turf race as they come, that even after two miles it was a photo finish, won by the Graham Motion trained The Grey Wizard, beating my selection, Champagne Juan, trained by Christophe Clement by a nose. A flared nostril really.

Graham Motion was surprised and ecstatic at the win, paying $14.40 to win. Asked if he'll now go to Melbourne he gave it a qualified yes.

So much for my first introduction to the Cup. On Friday I was in Manhattan getting a haircut with my long-time barber at a shop he's now in called Déjà vu on 34th Street, just south of Park Avenue on the Northeast side.

It's a street level shop with a clear view of 34th Street, when at some point I look to my left and see a scrum of people kneeling and taking pictures with their phones. Since the Empire State building is visible from that location I fully thought that it was the building they were taking  pictures of. Nope.

Different people kept coming and going into the scrum, so I really wondered what was up. One of the barbers went out to see, but being Russian he gave no clue as to what the fuss was about. 

When I exited the building I could see  what the commotion was. A very stately 6' model dressed in a very 1940s look with a cartwheel hat with a dangling feather was being vigorously photographed by a pair of kneeling professional photographers. Her gloved hands were holding what looked like a gold trophy. She was smiling and preening for the cameras.

I was headed in her direction anyway and couldn't resist asking her if she won the Belmont Stakes. I knew it wasn't the Belmont trophy, put I also didn't know it was the Melbourne Cup, the object of so much attention just the day before at Saratoga.

She paused just long enough while still preening and smiling to answer me that it was, "The Melbourne Cup." "Ah," I said, and kept walking.

At that point, she, myself and the photographers were probably the only people who knew what she was holding and what it meant.

I kicked myself later for not doubling back to take her picture, since it didn't seem she was in a hurry to go anywhere. I'm just not a cell phone guy. Thus, I have no photo of her to offer for this posting.

The link given above at the word Saratoga takes you to a 4 minute YouTube video on the Melbourne Cup at Saratoga, as well as a replay of the Belmont Gold Cup. An Australian guest race caller Matt Hill called the Saratoga race.

And when the results of The Belmont Stakes were official on Saturday, I had something in common with the model. I didn't win the Belmont either, finishing second with Mindframe.

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One of Many New York Ranger Games I Remember

Long-time New York Times sports reporter and New York Ranger beat reporter, Gerald Eskenazi wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day intended to make disconsolate Ranger fans feel better about themselves, Ranger Fans, Don't Cry Because It's Over. The gist: Remember the games you enjoyed; the Stanley Cup isn't everything. (It is nice to win, however.)

It is good advice, since there is no real dominance in winning the Stanley Cup. It's a long season. Concentrate on a momentous moment short of hoisting the Cup.

It was interesting to read that Mr. Eskenazi chose to remember a season-ending Ranger home game that the Rangers needed the oddest way of winning in order to qualify for that season's Cup playoffs: Win and score lots of goals. Lots and lots of goals. Huh?

You have to be at least as old as I am to remember the game. I was at the game, and until Mr. Eskenzai wrote about it, had pretty much forgotten about it.

It was the last game of the 1969-1970 season, and the Rangers needed a win to tie in points in the standings for the 4th playoff spot, plus, they needed to score a basket number of goals so that if the Montreal Canadians lost their final game and left the standings tied in points, then the tie-breaker in the rules of the NHL at the time was the number of goals scored in the season. Yes, that's right. Those were the days.

The Rangers won their final game of the season against the Detroit Red Wings in a nationally televised, Sunday afternoon game. That gave them 92 points in the standings, which was a tie with the Montreal Canadians.

At that time, there were 12 teams in the league, freshly expanded from the original six. The Islanders weren't even a franchise yet.

That evening, the Canadians only had to win or tie their game against the Black Hawks, or finish with more goals scored in the season than the Rangers. The Rangers went into their afternoon game with 237 goals. At the start of the day, the Canadians had 241.

The Rangers needed the win, and score enough goals that would keep them ahead of Montreal's season ending total. Got that? Take your time.

The Rangers lost to Detroit the night before in Detroit. As was the custom at the time, the league would schedule a lot of back-to-back, home-away games with opponents. Detroit's win on Saturday night gave them a guaranteed playoff berth. They partied, and likely made their entrance into Madison Square Garden that Sunday afternoon feeling the effects.

Emile Francis, the Ranger coach and General Manager, (common at the time for one person to hold both positions), told his players before Sunday's game, "I told you this game is slippery. It's played on ice." They needed a win, and they needed goals.  They got both.

After two periods the Rangers were ahead of the Red Wings 9-3, blasting the Detroit goalie Roger Crozier with 65 shots on goal in the game. The expected win was going to guarantee a tie with Montreal if they didn't win or tie that evening. Tied in the standings?. What's the tie-breaker? Season total of goals scored.

Francis, as smart a coach as baseball's Tony LaRussa, (who famously figured out that losing in the split post-strike season might be good) knew goals scored was going to mean something, and 9-3 might not be enough. Most hockey teams will pull the goalie when they need one goal to tie in the waning minutes of a game, creating an artificial  power play of 6 skaters in an attempt to score the tying goal. Sometimes it works. Sometimes an empty net goal is scored and the game is basically over.

But pull the goalie ahead 9-3? That's what Emile did, delighting the fans who knew season ending goals scored can be a tie-breaker. And who better to stick it to the Canadians, a league team favorite who always made the playoffs?

The NHL league office then was in Montreal. Montreal got the rights to the No.1 Junior hockey player in the system every year, regardless of how they finished the year before. If the ice is slippery, it was also always tilted toward Montreal.  

Did the Rangers score with their goalie Ed Giacomin pulled? No. Detroit managed two empty-netters, one by Gordie Howe for his 31st goal for the season. The fans were still delirious.

A Sunday afternoon game at the Garden might end at 4:00. Thus, the Rangers had to wait to see how Montreal did that night.

The Canadians lost 10-2 to Chicago. a score inflated by the fact that Montreal seeing the win and two points in the standings becoming out of reach, pulled their goal Rogie Vachon in the hopes of pumping in goals. For Montreal's coach Claude Ruel it didn't work. Chicago scored 5 empty netters! and Montreal was out of the playoffs! for the first time in 22 years. Oh joy, oh rapture! The next day I was on Cloud 9. The whole day. First round playoffs against the Bruins would start on Wednesday.

I remember the Monday at work when I chattered away with anyone who could stand me about the Rangers making the playoffs. I remember where I sat at work, and whose ear I chewed off sitting in front of me. I was a motor mouth.

Until I called up the NYT archive account of that April 5, 1970, bylined by Gerald Eskenzai, I had forgotten the detail that a newspaper like the NYT once gave to reporting on a sporting event in its 8 column format. Not only was there a hockey box score, but the players in the lineup for each team were listed. Note the number of games in the season: 76.

Archive photos of long ago games are great to look at. Look at goalie Crozier's mask. It looks like a Halloween mask and not the Formula 1 headgear helmets goalie's now wear. The skaters? No helmets.

The archive account has a sequence of three! photos of Roger Crozier flopping on the ice in various positions trying to keep the Rangers from scoring. The last photo in the stacked photos has the caption: "ZAM! Roger Crozier sprawling after Rod Stewart scored sixth goal. And there was a zap! zing! and sock! after that. (You gotta miss that type of reporting too.)

The sequence and the timing of the scoring is given, along with scorer and the assists and the number of goals for the season for the scorer were given! 

In that historic 9-5 victory 5 different Rangers scored: Rod Gilbert 2 goals; Rod Stewart 2 goals; rookie Jack Egers 1 goal; Pete Stemkowski 1 goal, and Dave Balon 3 for the hat trick, ending his season with 33 goals.  

Balon was the epitome of the journeyman player, No. 17. I would guess that was his career high in goals. He was noticeably bowlegged from growing up in Western Canada riding horses. From behind, you couldn't miss him.

So, how did that marvelous season end for the Rangers in the standings? Points: 92; Canadians 92 Rangers goals scored 246; Canadians 244. Eat ice chips.

Mr. Eskenazi ends his short piece in the WSJ: "My degree isn't in psychology, but I know what I've seen. Rangers fans were never as happy as on that afternoon at Madison Square Garden." 

I'll agree I was happy. Delirious even. But if this year's Rangers got their power play to fire against the Florida Panthers and didn't lose three straight...

There's a great line in Friday's NYT on the Edmonton Oilers being in the finals starting on Saturday against the favored Panthers.  Canadians might be happy that there is a Canadian based team in the finals, but unless you're from Edmonton, it's like living next to a neighbor who hit Lotto. Watching Connor McDavid score goals is not watching Mika Zibanejad score goals. (Which he, like others didn't do enough of.)

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Who Knew?

Who knew Blondie was a 1930s partying vamp who hooked up with rich playboy Dagwood Bumstead and was his fiancé? Certainly not me.

She was a flapper, prone to jive talk who expressed her happiness at meeting Dagwood's rich "pop" as feeling "boo-boop-a-doop." Dagwood's over the moon over her. They announce their engagement to "pops" as he is busy putting the final touches on a merger wearing the formal attire of the fabulously wealthy in the 1930s, even after the market crash.

No one gets older in the comics. The Peanuts gang never reached high school, and Snoopy never faces the prospect of being put down. Blondie has the same tiny waist she had 93 years ago when Chic Young introduced her and Dagwood to the public.

Blondie might have been the most popular comic strip of its era. They made 28! Blondie movies, low budget, pretty much under 90 minute films staring Arthur Lake as Dagwood and Penny Singleton as Blondie, starting in 1938 through 1950. 

Arthur Lake was born in 1905 and passed away in 1987. His parents were circus acrobats and Lake gives a preview of his stutter-step, shoe slipping, flapping Dagwood moves when he appears as an elevator operator in 1937's Topper starring Carey Grant and Constance Bennett.

Penny Singleton was born in 1908 and passed away in 2003. She appeared in all 28 Blondie movies and was in movies as late as 1990 in a Jetson's movie.

Leonard Maltin has an essay in his movie guide on the Blondie franchise. The movies were wildly popular and gave the studio a chance to introduce their up and coming actors, notably Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, and Lloyd Bridges. 

I'm not sure I've ever seen a Blondie movie. For some reason, Turner Movie Classics doesn't seem to feature them. Maybe there is something legally holding up their viewing. I do remember Arthur Lake in Topper, which is a favorite movie.

The comic strip Blondie enters the news in a story in the NYT on April 24, 2024 as it is announced that there is a contest to name the latest character to join the cast and help Blondie with her catering business.

Blondie is looking for a pastry chef in a strip now still in the Chic Young family, now written by Dean Young, Chic's son, There are other family contributors to the strip which is introducing a fresh approach to keep the strip interesting. Dagwood is ceding panels to his wife and her catering business. King Features Syndicate is ran a contest to have the public choose a name for the yet to be installed pastry chef.

There was a website (of course) that you could go to vote for one of the five names that have been proposed for the pastry chef, a woman of Indian descent. The contest is over and the name Maya has been chosen. The black and white drawing of Maya however, to me at least, doesn't look like someone of Indian descent. The color image does, however.

Dagwood I'm sure will still be the star of the strip. I don't get newspapers that carry comic strips. I always delight when I'm out of town and get the local paper, which all seem to carry a roster of comics.

The NYT story by George Gene Gustines explains that Dagwood was disinherited by his rich father because he married Blondie. Dagwood's hair is classic slick down 1930s with a part in the center. He loves to nap, eat and complain about work. The sandwiches he makes for himself have put the word Dagwood in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), defined as towering layers of meat and cheese between two pieces of bread that are unimaginable to get your jaws around. But Dagwood of course does. I love to make my own Dagwoods when there are enough cold cuts and cheeses to work with.

I miss a daily paper with the comics. I still miss The Herald Tribune and Our Miss Peach. (Not Our Ms. Peach.)

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