Eddie Giacomin

My brain must have been stuck in neutral. With the passing of Ken Dryden and Bernie Parent, Hall of Fame hockey goaltenders who I've written about, I've just realized I haven't written about the passing of New York Ranger Eddie Giacomin.

Eddie was the second of the three goaltenders who've recently passed away. I think I was so stuck on the delicious, but very remote possibility the New York Times would put Robert Redford and Eddie Giacomin together on the front page, below the fold, that I forgot about Eddie when I read about Redford, who of course made it to the front page, and Eddie didn't.

The fold is the 49th Parallel. It is the Rubicon. Only the obits for the exalted get to appear above the print front page fold. (Of course online, there is no fold.)

But there are some subtle placings of front page obits that put a portion of the top of the obit above the fold. Such was the case for Robert Redford. His obit wasn't completely below the fold. If he was going to ascend to heaven, he also ascended a bit above the fold on his way.

Giacomin's career was an example of how hard it was to ascend to being an N.H.L. player. Before the league expanded in the late 1960s, there were only six teams. The Rangers were one of them. With 20 players on each team, that meant that there were only 120 N.H.L. hockey players, basically all from Canada. That is some restricted gene pool.

Giacomin played professional hockey first for the Providence Reds in the American Hockey League. (A.H.L.) I didn't realize the Reds were not affiliated with the Rangers, so it took a four-player trade with the Reds and the Rangers to bring Giacomin to the Rangers and the N.H.L.

Playing for the Reds, Giacomin was known as a "wandering goalie." one who would leave the net and try and get the puck back (or force a face off) from the opposing team behind the net. It was risky, and sometimes Giacomin got burned for being way out of position.

One terrible play resulted in the Rangers being eliminated in overtime from an opening round of Stanley Cup playoffs with the New York Islanders in 1975. (I think I once read that Babe Ruth ended a decisive World Series game and caused the Yankees to lose the Series by getting thrown out trying to steal second. You can look it up.)

It was at the Garden, and it was a deciding game of the best of three, or five in the first playoff round as it was played then. I'm not going to bother to look the game up. I can still see the play unfolding in front of me along the near boards.

The overtime period had just started, and Giacomin did a bit of wandering, coming out of the net trying to gain control of the puck. His efforts backfired, and someone on the New York Islanders got control of the puck and passed it to J.P. Parise standing in front of what is now an empty net. Goal. End of the game. End of continued playoff hopes. Start of a bitter Ranger-Islander rivalry.

The play was so early into the overtime (11 seconds) that many fans hadn't yet gotten back in their seats from the bathroom or buying beer. (Or both.) By the time they took to their seats, it was over. "What happened?" Time to go home, that's what happened.

Never mind. Giacomin was a fan favorite. I remember when Dennis Hull on the Chicago Black Hawks skated in almost alone on the left side and uncorked one of his wicked slap shots. Giacomin came of the net as he should to cut down the angle. 

The shot caught Eddie in the mask and he went down in a heap. Not moving. You had to think he was dead. Moments passed and the worst fears were gaining. But no, Giacomin got up, and I'm guessing shook it off and finished the game. Hull hadn't scored.

In 1971 Giacomin and Gilles Villemure shared in wining the 1971 Vezina Trophy awarded to the league's best goaltender(s). As much as they earned it with their lowest goals-against average, a large part of the award was made possible by the Rangers acquiring veteran defenseman Tim Horton from the Toronto Maple Leafs at the start of the season 

Tim Horton was an old school defenseman, seldom skating inside the offensive blue line. He was not particularly large, but he was enormously strong. He could bear hug a sequoia tree and probably uproot it.

Even after the 1975 baffling trade that sent Giacomin to the Detroit Red Wings Giacomin, was always a Ranger. The night he appeared in a Detroit uniform at the Garden was unforgettable. The fans wouldn't stop chanting his name. They booed every time the Rangers touched the puck; every time they scored. They cheered for the Red Wings, who would win the emotional game 6-4.

I have the photo from the Daily News blown up and framed of Giacomin standing in front of the Detroit Goal, in his Detroit uniform wiping away tears when the fans would not stop chanting "Eddie! Eddie" during the national anthem.

At one point in the game, I distinctly remember Giacomin forgetting who was playing for when he almost shoveled the puck to Ranger defenseman Arnie Brown, but quickly realized what he was doing and smothered the puck.

Compare the size of the pads to what goaltenders these days can use, and the lack of a catcher's headgear.  It is amazing goalie's weren't carried off the ice on stretchers.

Phil Esposito, the Ranger general manager on the night when the Rangers retired Eddie's No. 1 remarked that, "Eddie was an incredible competitor, and he simply may have been the most popular player ever for the Rangers." 

When Giacomin was traded to Detroit I remember reading that Phil Esposito—who himself was traded from Boston to New York soon after Eddie was traded to Detroit—shook his head at the Giacomin trade and said, "Eddie should die a Ranger."

For us, he did.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Bernie Parent

A long, long time ago,
I can still remember,
When a Ranger crowd went nuts!

It was so long ago it escaped being mentioned by Richard Sandomir, the NYT obituary writer who recently wrote the obit for Bernie Parent, a Hall of Fame hockey goaltender for the Philadelphia Flyers, winning back-to-back Stanley Cups for the team that was called the Broad Street Bullies for their overly pugnacious style of hockey: lots of penalties.

But before gaining his fame with the Philadelphia Flyers, Parent played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it was in a playoff game with the New York Rangers that for me he will forever be remembered.

Jim Croce sang...

"...you don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger,
And you don't mess around with Jim.

Don't pull Bernie's mask off and expect to get away with it. At least until you do.

It was the second game of the first playoff round between the New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The game was at Madison Square Garden, and I was there in my season seat, probably alongside my friend Andy, who sat in my other season seat.

The Rangers won the first game in the seven game series, but were not doing well in the second game. They were behind 4-1 late in the game, and were likely looking at a certain loss.

Hockey in the 70s had a lot of fights. The penalties then for fighting existed, but were not as stringent as they are now.  Bench clearing brawls were not uncommon, and the ice could be littered with gloves and sticks when the punches and sweater pullings finally stopped. It was a very raucous atmosphere, and it spilled over into the fans in the stands.

Reading the account of the game in the NYT edition of April 9, 1971 reminds me of how great it was reading about sports in the paper. Reporters were actually assigned to attend the games and report. New York teams had so-called beat reporters assigned to follow them, and the beat reporter for the Rangers for years was Gerald Eskenazi.

Through the joys and magic of accessing the paper digitally, I was able to bring up the account of the game as reported in the edition of April 9, 1971. 

The events of the game in the closing minutes of what would be a Ranger 4-1 loss, required Mr. Eskenazi to rip out whatever lede he was going with, and substitute it with: "In what became the zaniest show on earth, with 17,250 fans cheering the loss of a mask in lieu of Toronto blood..."

With four minutes to go in the game the Ranger's Vic Hadfield, a sometimes belligerent left wing, clashed with Toronto's Jim Harrison along the far boards. Nothing new there. Those two were going at each other all night.

What was new was the Toronto goaltender, Bernie Parent, leaving the crease and joining into the fray. This lead to the Ranger goalie Eddie Giacomin to leave his crease, skate the length of the ice, and also join the scrum.

Very quickly both benches emptied and everyone was part of the action. Bench clearings were not uncommon, and sometimes it took quite a while to get the game resumed. This was no different.

With Hadfield, Henderson and Parent in the nucleus of the scrum, Hadfield reached for Bernie's mask and flung it into the stands. Not just over the glass, but deep into the stands. Many rows back. Raw meat was now in the lion's den—where the fans sat.

Someone of course caught he mask and Parent started pleading with whomever to throw it back. It turned out he had no replacement mask with him, so without the mask he wouldn't be able to play. 

The fans of course didn't know this, and didn't care. They started to chant, "Don't give it back" over and over. And no one did give it back.

Parent had to be replaced by Jacques Plants, the 42-year-old Toronto goalie who ironically was the first goalie to wear a mask when he played for the Montreal Canadians. It was in a game against the Rangers in the 1950s when Plante needed stitches in his face. There were no backup goalies dressed in that era, so the game was held up until Plante could return to the ice. And when he did, he wore the mask he had been experimenting with in practice. The coach and general manager for the Canadians, Toe Blake,  wasn't happy with the need for a mask, but Plante insisted. History was made that night.

And history of another kind was made the night Hadfield threw Parent's mask into the stands and a fan kept it. Garden security tried to find it, but to no avail. The whereabouts of the missing mask remained a mystery until it resurfaced in 2006 and was authenticated by Parent and the collector who purchased it.

Those were the days. This was hockey in the 70s. You could lose a game but still make the fans happy if you kept the opposing team's goaltender's mask.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Septembers 11 & 16

The following memorializes the terrorist events of 9/11/2001 at New York's World Trade Center and those of the executions at Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield on the morning of 9/16/2002 at 1440 Broadway, our temporary office space after losing our offices on 9/11.

The dates on the stones let you measure the time
Of the lives that lived in between.
The bracketed years reveal to the current
The joys and the troubles they've seen.

On any given day a person is born
You can record the date of their birth.
And on any given day a person can die
And you can record that they've left this earth.

And the morning we made our dusty descent,
An accomplishment undiminished,
We learned of the others and their bracketed date,
And our own, that remained unfinished.

So it is incredible to believe the end can be met
At the hands of someone we knew.
He put an end to life, he put an end to himself,
But he didn't put an end to you.
______________________________________________

September 16, 2002

Twenty-three years is not a so-called milestone anniversary, but no less memorable.

No one ever dies
Who lives in hearts
Left behind.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Ken Dryden

I don't like how this  is going. I'm reading about contemporaries who have passed away. There's nothing I can do about it, but be assured that if I'm reading about them, no one has written about me yet. As if they would.

Ken Dryden, All-Star goalie for the Montreal Canadians and Cornell University has passed away at 78. It's funny, as much as I was a hockey fan and a suffering New Yorker Ranger fan during Dryden's career, I would have said he was one of the few American players in the league.

That's because I first became aware of Dryden when he was playing for Cornell, Big Red, a powerhouse college team that seldom lost. In 1966 I was a freshman at Clarkson College (now University) in Potsdam, New York, near the Canadian border. Clarkson was a top-rated college team then, but Cornell was better—they had Dryden.

I didn't stay a student long enough into the schedule to try and attend a Clarkson/Cornell game at Clarkson's ice arena. Cornell was a top draw then, lead by their coach Ned Harkness. Even before Dryden, a Cornell/Clarkson game was another chapter in their rivalry. 

Clarkson's team was coached by Lennie Ceglarski, who went onto become the winningest coach in college hockey, finishing his coaching career at his alma mater, Boston College. In 1966, I saw him as a young man holding a baby while wearing a leather sleeve varsity jacket. 

Both Clarkson and Cornell heavily recruited Canadian student-players. I was friends with one of the Clarkson players at the time, and I don't think the roster had a single American born player. I knew of  American born guys who tried out for the team, but never made it onto the team.

Dryden was tall. 6' 4", of course even taller wearing skates, even if all the players wear skates. In net, he looked like there would be no way you were going to score against him. And scoring against him didn't happen often. He won five Vezina Trophies, a league trophy awarded annually to the goalie with the best record. He won that trophy in four consecutive years.

I was holding my breath reading the obit to see if the story about Phil Esposito's frustration with trying to score against him would make it into the obit. It did. An understandably sanitized version.

Phil Esposito was a center for the Boston Bruins, later the New York Rangers. He scored goals by the bushel with his favorite tactic of keeping himself in front of the net, hopefully blocking the goaltender's view, and then tipping a shot from another Bruin shooting from the point, or at the top of the face-off circle. into the net.

As a kid growing up, he practiced this way of scoring with his brother Tony who played the part of being the goalie, and who later grew up to be an All-Star goalie for the Chicago Black Hawks.

Phil was a big center, and he was tough to push out of the way without drawing an interference penalty. The obit writer, Richard Sandomir, writes about the event between Dryden and Esposito thus:

"...Dryden, an imposing presence round the net—at 6 feet 4 inches—stopped a shot at point-blank range by Phil Esposito, who would score a record 76 goals that season, Esposito shouted at Dryden, 'you thieving giraffe!' and smashed his stick against the arena glass."

Wherever I read about that thwarted goal-scoring chance, it was that Esposito said, "you fucking giraffe." A much more likely choice of words.

NYT journalistic standards keep Sandomir from of course spelling out "fucking," even implying it with "f---ing." No matter. Dryden was an annoying, acrobatic giraffe in net. It's funny, because in a recent blog I wrote again about Phil's competitive temperament frustration when he started jawboning with the New York Ranger organist for playing "Talk to the Animals" as the Bruins came out for a pre-game skate at Madison Square Garden. Poor Phil.

I wasn't really aware of Dryden's post-Canadians career. It was surely multi-faceted enough that the obit headline tells us: Ken Dryden, Star Goalie With Cups and Careers Galore..." Galore indeed. TV analyst, writer, lawyer, president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Member of Canadian Parliament.

It was nice to see Dryden's photo with the Vezina trophy with Gump Worsley in the background. The "Gumper" played for the Canadians, the Rangers, and eventually the Minnesota North Stars. I remember him as a Ranger goalie on some bad teams. He was a plumb, little guy, who didn't wear a mask, like most goalies of his era. He had a bit of a bulbous nose with broken blood vessels, which made you think he wasn't kidding when he would tell you he trained on Canadian Club whiskey.

I don't pay much attention to hockey these days. I haven't been to a Ranger game in quite some time. I was a two-seat season holder for 11 years I think, thin years with only one appearance in a Stanley Cup final, despite some really solid winning seasons and advancements in the playoffs.

I had bever heard about Dryden's 1983 book, The Game, despite it being updated in 2013 on the 30th anniversary of publication. It's said to be a great book on hockey. 

These days I start to pay real attention to the New York Rangers around February, keeping track of the standings and watching parts of televised games

NHL hockey has the longest season in all of professional sports, and the 4-round playoffs are a second season in themselves. It's very hard for a team to be a dynasty these days. Even the Florida Panthers, with wins in the last two finals for the cup, have a ways to go to becoming a dynasty like the Montreal Canadians.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Pat Moore and P.J. Clarke's

It is not often a tribute obit in the New York Times  leads another paper in town to do a feature story, but it's now happened for Pat Moore, a legendary server (waitress) at P.J. Clarke's who has passed away at 89, while still on the job, waiting to be 90 before shedding the work apron. And it's not often I write about the same person twice in a row.

In Thursday's New York Post they devote a full page to her story, basically gleaned from the NYT obit. There's is nothing in the story that it not in the Times obit. 

There are however some added photos, and the story when viewed online has more photos, especially recent ones of her on the job.

The Times obit appeared in the print edition on September 2nd telling us Ms. Moore passed away on August 15. A tribute obit sometimes is a little after the subject's demise. The person didn't have an advance obit in the paper's morgue, and the obit desk didn't hear of her passing until probably a reporter popped into P.J. Clarke's and asked where was Pat. The rest followed.

As such, there were no useful funeral and mass details available for paying respects. I like to think she was waked at Frank Campbell's, and had a funeral mas at St. Ignatius Loyola. Ms. Moore, being an Eastside resident and an Irish Catholic, would have easily fit into those arrangements.

I love the photo the Post printed of her role as a cigarette girl getting bussed by Gene Hackman, playing Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, one of my all-time favorite movies.

Most of the A-list people Pat was associated with have passed away. Being a favorite of Tony Bennett's is no surprise. Tony was a man about town whose last wife, Susan—who he was married to for decades,—was dated by Tony when she was 19.

It's easy to see Ms Moore had charms. A co-worker, Linda McInerney, thinks she knows why so many men were drawn to her. "She was the one thing not on the menu. They loved her beauty. But they could never get her —and they tried. Maybe her reluctance to commit to any of them made them chase her harder."

It sounds like she committed to some, at least for a while. Frank Sinatra is mentioned; George Steinbrenner, Tim Mara, Warren Beatty, Johnny Depp, and William Shatner.

When I ate there with my family and she waited on us many years ago—not writing the order down for 5 people, and not getting anything wrong—I didn't know then that she would be someone who would get the equivalent of a New York City 21-gun salute on her passing. Rest in peace.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

P.J. Clarke's

It has been over 40 years since I stepped up to a bar and ordered a bottle of Budweiser. It was $1.85 then. And most of the places I ordered one in, Blarney Stones, are gone. Not just the bars themselves but the buildings—gone.

One bar that was a favorite of myself and the two Piermont brothers was the Spotlight bar next to what was the Ed Sullivan theater on Broadway, but is some other name now, but still a Broadway theater.

The Spotlight was half a block from where were played pool at Broadway Billiards, a large, multi-table, lower level emporium underneath the arcade games, run by Mr. Monaco. The Spotlight is long gone, the outside appearing briefly in an early Al Pacino movie Needle Park. If you look quickly, you can see it in the background. Look really quick.

The Spotlight was run by Joe Harbor and his wife Sara. It was a narrow place, with some booths in the back. They no longer served food, despite there being a huge kitchen. The bartender was Gene Williams, whose claim to fame was that he once appeared in a 1943 Abbot and Costello Movie, "Hit the Ice," singing with others on the back of a sleigh. A singing career was over, so now he tended bar. But he at least was on Broadway.

The above photo is what P.J.'s looked like in 1964, looking out the window onto Third Avenue, without the Third Avenue El in the background.. You have to be my age to remember the Third Avenue El, which came down around 1956. There was a stop at 18th Street where the family flower shop was. Another story.

P.J. Clarke's is on the northeast corner of 55th Street and Third Avenue in a two-story, red brick building that looks as old as it is, and is generally what all the buildings along Third Avenue looked like before the El came down. Bars and rooming houses. Brothels as well. I once met an old-timer who disparaging referred to something unsavory as "Third Avenue Trash." Lower Third Avenue becomes the Bowery, which was even worse at the time. Back in the day. P.J. Clarke's has been open at this spot since 1884.

For those who may not know it, P.J. doesn't stand for pajamas, but is a common pairing of names used by the Irish: Patrick Joseph. If you were named Patrick Joseph you were a P.J. for life.

In the 60s when I delivered flowers to the new apartment houses that were springing up on Third Avenue like weeds. I also noticed that in the elevators there was an inspection card. I don't think I ever rode in an elevator on Third Avenue that didn't list that P.J. O'Connor last inspected the elevator. The inspection cards are no longer in the elevators, but are kept in a building manager's office somewhere.

I never met P.J. O'Connor, and no one ever did a newspaper article about the ubiquitous elevator inspector, but I bet he was an engineering graduate of Manhattan College in the Bronx where most of the engineers for the city went to school. And these engineers were usually from Irish families.

Aside from Pete's Tavern on 18th Street and Irving Place, and Old Town Bar on 18th Street just west of Park Avenue South, there aren't many bars in NYC that evoke the era of beer for a 5¢ and stacks of free sandwiches. There is no more free lunch in NYC. Probably nowhere but a shelter.

P.J. Clarke's is not owned by an Irish family that stayed in the bar and restaurant business. It has investors, one of whom I read was the actor Timothy Hutton. There are a few P.J.'s sprinkled around the city and the country, but the one on Third Avenue is the original.

I also once read that the maitre d' was a bit annoyed that a prospective party wanted a reservation right away. There were a group of gentlemen with John Gotti, the crime boss, and the maitre d' knew that only a table situated so that John could have his back to the wall would be an acceptable table. So he had to do some quick rearranging of who sat where before they arrived. He wished they gave him more time. But it worked out, and no one got shot. Always a plus.

You may not believe this, but this is a long-winded intro touched off by the obituary of Pat Moore, 89, Model who Became Landmark in a Landmark P.J. Clarke's. Something always reminds me of something else. 

The New York Times obit is by Pete Wells, not a usual obit writer, but the food and drink reviewer. One has to suspect that Mr. Wells has made his way to P.J.'s fairly often to have been given the nod for the obit.

Hard to know, but Ms. Moore may have been the oldest server in NYC. It was several years ago that after a concert at Carnegie Hall I went with my daughter, her husband, and my two granddaughters to P.J.'s for dinner.

I only now remembered the server (waitress) because of the obituary. She was decidedly older and didn't write anything down as she listened to our orders. She seemed to fit in more with a waitress (server) at a Greek diner off the New York State Thruway. Little did I know then that she was a fixture at P.J.'s that when she passed away she rated a 19-gun salute, six column obit in the NYT.

Ms. Moore served the rich and famous and the not so famous—people like us—at P.J.'s for at least 45 years. vowing to quit when she was 90. She was said to have dated Frank Sinatra, who is alleged to have proposed marriage, Tony Bennett, and Warren Beatty. Tony Bennett, an accomplished painter, painted her portrait which she had hanging in her apartment.

The modeling part which is no surprise when you see her ad for Ambassador Scotch, started when Eileen Ford and her husband spotted her in a Miss Fordham beauty pageant. The ad for Ambassador is vintage Madison Avenue for a product pitched in glossy magazines, few of which exist today. 

There is considerable "copy" in the ad, which if it were to appear today no one would read, and no one would expect anyone to read in this kinetic, video world.

Pete Wells writes glowingly of the type of person Ms. Moore was, part of "the best waiters and bartenders who were a major part of a restaurant's attraction when they stayed around as long as Ms. Moore did, their longevity inseparable from the restaurant's."

Tony Bennett, who only recently passed away at 96 and still frequented P.J.'s and had Ms Moore wait on him, was once declared by a NYC mayor as being a "living landmark."

Sounds like NYC lost another one.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com