SECOND PERIOD
RINK RAT IN CHIEF?
Issue of 2004-03-15
Posted 2004-03-08
John Kerry’s prep-school alma mater, St. Paul’s, is sometimes known as “the cradle of American hockey.” There, in Concord, New Hampshire, on the black ice of the Lower School Pond, boys from the school’s three intramural clubs—Old Hundred, Delphian, and Isthmian—gathered to play shinny as far back as Reconstruction. One legend holds that the first-ever organized hockey game—south of the border, that is—took place at St. Paul’s, in 1883. Well into the twentieth century, the school continued to groom the ice on the pond—eight, maybe ten rinks’ worth—using a sort of horse-drawn Zamboni.
Senator Kerry, for those not paying close attention, has been lugging his bag of sweaty gear—skates, garter belt, mouth guard—around the country, making pit stops at ice rinks along the way; he is the first hockey-playing Presidential candidate since Eugene McCarthy. As a senior at St. Paul’s, in the winter of 1961-62, Kerry played on the varsity team. The captain and best player was a guy named Bobby Mueller, who is now better known as Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I. Another senior on the team was John (Scuffy) Whitman (“Scuffy because he had the world’s most highly polished shoes,” a teammate says). Whitman married Christie Todd, who became the governor of New Jersey.
“That was the worst team in the history of St. Paul’s hockey—ever,” Dr. Stan Resor said last week. “We tied tiny Hebron Academy, and that was it. We lost all the rest.” Resor, whose father was Stanley Resor, the Vietnam-era Secretary of the Army, and who is now a neurology professor at Columbia, played defense. A glance at the old yearbook—the player names (Chubb, Pierpont, Whitney) suggest a rather rarefied squad—confirms Resor’s recollection: shut out by Exeter and Andover; smoked 10-1 by the Harvard J.V. team, and 8-0 by Yale’s freshmen; beat 10-0 by the Swiss Junior National Team. (“It became quickly obvious that the scheduler had made a mistake,” Resor remembers of the Swiss game. “I think they thought we were a college.”)
Forty-two years is a long time, and there is some confusion over the specifics. More than one person has recalled, if wishfully, that Kerry was a right wing while Mueller flanked the left. But in recent conversations and e-mails with several of Kerry’s teammates a more or less consistent portrait of the nominee as a young hockey player has emerged.
“I was a goalie, so I got to watch the guys skate around a lot,” John Rousmaniere, who is now an author of nautical books, said. “Kerry had very long strides. He was not a digger.”
“Kerry was one of the best stickhandlers on the team and welcomed the opportunity to exhibit his skills,” John Cocroft, a machine operator at a soapworks, recalled. “Impatient cries of ‘shoot’ or ‘pass it’ followed him whenever he got the puck, at which point he would execute one more rink turn and a heads-up dribble, looking for a better opportunity to make his play.”
“He was tall, rangy, like some sort of big eagle—kind of swoopy,” Haven Pell, a financial adviser in Washington, said.
As Kerry has aged, so has his style of play. The comedian Denis Leary has skated with Kerry about ten times over the past few years. Leary describes Kerry as “kind of a Phil Esposito type of player,” referring to the old Boston Bruins star, who was famous for scoring so-called garbage goals. “Kerry’s kind of tough to move out of the front of the net, and he’s king of the rebounds,” Leary said. “He’s not big on back-checking.”
Leary played in a game organized by the Kerry campaign shortly before the New Hampshire primary, in which Kerry scored two soft goals but failed, in numerous attempts, to complete the hat trick. “He took a lot of crap in the locker room,” Leary said. “He must have had six opportunities where he was wide open and he couldn’t put it away.”
Regardless, Kerry’s hobby raises the possibility of a new voting bloc—rink rats—to complement soccer moms and nascar dads. “My core issue now is: you could have a hockey fan in the White House,” Leary said. “How great would it be to turn on the television and see some people skating on an outdoor rink on the South Lawn? I’d be there. I’d help shovel, too.” The bad news for Democrats?
Hockey is not a red-state sport. And Canadians can’t vote.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/? ... lk_mcgrath
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Too bad otherwise he might win.
I found this funny. Kind of suprised he didn't choose some other sport since he played lacrosse and soccer I beleieve and Hockey isn't really that popular in the states. There is a Federal Election coming up in Canada as well, but the current prime minister has said he likes Football over hockey. Maybe they should switch countries.
A reason to vote Kerry...or not vote Kerry
A reason to vote Kerry...or not vote Kerry -
05-31-2004, 07:33 PM
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