Issue #49 – Green, Black and Blue
“When (the Canucks) used to play a Saturday night game – say we were playing the Calgary Flames, we’d have 18,000 people in the building, and we’d average 60 ejections, eight guys tossed in the paddy wagons to sober up, two arrests. So, 60, 8 and 2 (…) We’d play the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it was 200, 60 and 20. Because the Maple Leaf fans would go out in the afternoon, have a few beers, wear their beautiful blue sweaters in, and taunt our fans.” -Brian Burke on the Vancouver/Toronto rivalry said to Cam Cole
In the interest of blogist integrity I decided to get myself arrested this weekend in order to see if Burke’s theory held any weight.
After an entire day of drinking and three-plus hour yelling at the TV screen it was time to fight.
Turns out I’m much better as a peripheral Internet commentator then as a drunken brawler.
That is not to say that my fisticuffs, and subsequent incarceration, wasn’t the indirect result of the Big Bad Terrible Bud’s arrival in town.
Quite the contrary.
Now if anyone could explain this to my girlfriends (and my friends) I might not be sitting alone with my foot in a cast and nursing a bruised jaw and fat lip all by myself.
The reason pro-sports exist in modern western developed countries is to replace the warrior-class that once dominated the interaction between tribes.
If we couldn’t trade for shit you had and we wanted, we would beat you for it, and sometimes we would just beat your for fun.
Civilized western democracy put a justified end to this ethos of barbary, however, Darwinian mechanics just haven’t managed to catch up to modern jurisprudence (not to mention good manners).
So we still want to destroy things, anything sometimes — for shits and giggles as we say back in Chilliwack.
We dawn our colors (for Vancouver fans these colors number those of the entire rainbow), tie our skates, grab our sticks and hit the ice in order to test our mettle.
We sport because our modern drive for competition still thrives despite politics and science’s best efforts to propel our civility beyond the paleolithic era. Perhaps there will always be a Babylonian quality in all humans or perhaps technology has just evolved quicker then our monkey minds can keep up. Regardless, there seems to be a god-like tribal mentality in all of us and we use sport as the great arbiter between disputes.
Vancouver is better then Toronto, at least as far as hockey is concerned (and natural beauty. As far as seeing the Canucks beat the Leafs every year, there is no greater feeling.
Much better then seeing your face in the rear-view of a VPD cruiser, blood pouring down your face, pride (civic or otherwise) completely evaporated.
Let’s leave that shit for Leaf fans.
Next Up – Detroit