Other sportswriting

“I like to reminisce with people I don’t know. Granted, it takes longer.”

 ---Steven Wright

In mid-September, I went home for five days. Or rather, I went back to Atlanta, where I grew up from the age of four until I went to college. “Home” is a squidgy concept to an expat living abroad.

I’ve lived in the UK for more than 20 years. My wife is Scottish. She and our two children all have red hair. (I do not.) Driving to my nearest beach takes five minutes; from Atlanta, it took five hours. For various reasons, I have struggled to form close friendships with people in Britain. But I love being here.

I travelled to Atlanta for the wedding of one of my dearest friends. Grant and I went to high school together: we were on the academic team together, went on an exchange trip to Germany together. He visited me for several weeks when I lived in Campbeltown, in remotest Argyll, in the summer of 2002. Strangely, and entirely coincidentally, he became a Tottenham fan around the same time I started supporting Arsenal. But if we’re rivals in soccer, we’re allies regarding the Atlanta Braves, the Atlanta Hawks, and – especially – the Atlanta Falcons.

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Here are four things I learned while commentating on the CHL final last night in Oulu:

1) Finnish spectators at sporting events are really well behaved – almost too well behaved. The silence which descended on the Oulun Energia Areena at numerous points during the game was almost spooky; for whole seconds at a time there was no chanting, no drumming, no random fans yelling toward the ice, no anything. This was when the score was still 0-0 in a European final, by the way – this wasn’t silence borne of depression, but rather politeness. It was quite endearing, even if the crazy singing of the Davos fans in Gothenburg while trailing by five goals on aggregate with five minutes remaining is more to my personal taste.

Oulu is unseasonably warm and, as I’ve discovered, unreasonably slippery. With the temperature hovering around freezing, the snow thaws during the day and refreezes at night, and all the grit in northwestern Finland can’t stop me slipping and sliding across town as though I’m on a curling rink in my socks. I wish I’d brought spiked shoes with me, or possibly crampons.

But that’s OK – I didn’t come to Oulu to sightsee. And luckily for me, I’m not at significant risk of breaking my neck, as a fleet of cars decked out in Champions Hockey League livery are on call to ferry everyone between my hotel and Kärpät’s arena. The CHL is a maturing competition, and as the clock ticks down to tonight’s final, touches like this make it feel like a bigger deal now than at any point in its history so far. The players and coaches love it; tickets for the final sold out barely two hours after being made available to the public; and extensive work is going on both in public and private to make tonight feel like a real event. Everything from a large sign welcoming CHL players and fans to Oulu Airport to the carving of an ice sculpture of the CHL trophy outside the arena adds extra grandeur to the occasion.

I’m beginning to think car rental and the Champions Hockey League don’t mix. Two Monday nights in a row, I’ve now found myself driving – mostly skidding – through a blizzard in an unfamiliar car toward a hotel in an unfamiliar city. Next time, I think taxis might be the way to go.

I’m in snow-drenched Gothenburg today to commentate upon a surreal situation: a hockey game in which one team gets a five-goal head start. The CHL’s two-game, aggregate score format is unusual to begin with, but Frölunda’s big first-leg lead over Davos is unprecedented in the competition’s two-year history. After speaking with Frölunda coach Roger Rönnberg this morning, I sensed he wasn’t quite sure how to approach the match. Hockey isn’t soccer – you can’t just get every man behind the puck and hope not to concede too many goals, and as Red Bull Salzburg discovered last year against Luleå, huge deficits aren’t insurmountable in the CHL.

Tuesday morning in Davos: subfreezing temperatures, heavy snow and a biting westerly wind.  

I was beyond excited. This felt like hockey weather.

We normally commentate on our Champions Hockey League games from a studio in Vienna, watching games on television monitors in small, self-contained booths – “off-tube” commentary, we call it. I don’t mind being away from the action, in a comfortable routine among familiar colleagues I like and respect. But for the CHL semifinals and final, I’m travelling to each arena: Switzerland this week, Gothenburg in Sweden next week, possibly Oulu or Rauma in Finland (or Switzerland or Sweden again) for the final on 9 February. Attending the morning skate, talking with coaches and players, soaking in the live atmosphere of a big game…this is what I live for as a commentator.

(This column was written for the Harvard Crimson's special "The Game" supplement prior to the 1994 Harvard-Yale football game.)

I went to the game my freshman year.

the game

the game

the game

There. That should get me over my capitalization fixation with "The" Harvard-Yale "Game"...at least until "They" trot out the pregame hype for the 112th edition of this clunker. Then, no doubt, e.e. cummings will be compelled to flow forth from my poisoned pen yet again, but in the intervening 12 months, it's something you live through, get used to.