Beyond the Margin

By Joe Spear

Sports without fans; fans without sports

The neighborhood hockey rink at Dotson Park in West Mankato had a big year. By the time you read this, it might be finished, melted like so many memories in the COVID era.

But on a warmish January evening, it lit up the neighborhood, giving the homes on Baker Street and Oak Knoll Boulevard their own version of northern lights.

Unofficial rink superintendent Jed Falgren set up the ice-making operation with a nearby home’s warm water spigot. Warm water heals the cracks of a seared rink through a melting process creating a smooth layer of ice for the day’s next melee of hockey mites.

When we read about the flu pandemic of 1918, we weren’t thinking about how pandemics might affect hockey rinks, football fields or baseball diamonds.

And now, we know all too well.

But March can be redeeming. As of this writing, the Minnesota State High School League was still planning the premier state basketball and hockey tournaments.

The players will wear masks and breathing will be difficult. Limits will be in place on the number of fans, most likely limited to parents and family. But that won’t stop kids, parents and community from feeding their need to be part of the cultural phenomena of athletic competition.

Sports builds community. Kids play together, set goals, achieve and gain a sense of accomplishment. Sports also fosters inclusion. It’s easier to break down race barriers when you’re on the same team.

Sports offer memories that may fade with time but come back as we age.

I can go back some 40-plus years and recall a moment in time of my own sports history: the B-squad high school baseball championship between my team, the Washington Prexies, and the Highland Park Scotsmen. Yes, the cheerleaders wore kilts.

Fans lined the fence that surrounded the field where home plate was fewer than a couple of hundred feet from the din of Rice Street with cars and trucks hauling the hope of a championship.

We won the game on the last play. By one run.

The camaraderie of a team eventually produces nicknames and begets completely different people in the process. And the nicknames last forever, some flattering, some not.

We had “Dean the Machine” and the politically incorrect “Chief.” Anyone named Edward was automatically called “Eddie.” One guy was named Thomas and we called him “Herbie” — who was fast and jerky as a chipmunk — because he was the spitting image of his father, Herbert Sr.

Kevin was “Kev.” And another Tom was “Scooter.” And, of course, the skinny guy was “Bones,’’ and the wiry guy who was all arms and legs was “Spider.” Sports offered a cast of characters a day in the spotlight.

The 1991 Minnesota Twins stand as a team that took that spotlight to a new level. They went from worst to first, improving by 21 games over 1990, were never out of a game where they were down by double digits, and had a cast of characters second to none in Minnesota sports history.

Hall of Fame ace pitcher Jack Morris, a St. Paul native, threw an incredible Game 7, a 10-inning shutout where “Mount Morris” threw 126 pitches. Pitchers don’t do that anymore. Not even close.

The poor kid from the South Side of Chicago, Kirby Puckett won Game 6 on a homer that brought the Atlanta Braves back to the Metrodome, named after the great Minnesota statesmen Hubert H. Humphrey, who never got to watch a game in it. The Twins won Game 7 in multi-decibel fashion.

Another legendary team, the 2019-2020 Minnesota State University Mavericks men’s hockey team was the one predicted by experts to have the best chance ever of winning a Division I national championship — until its first playoff series was canceled by COVID. No fans, no beer, no fun.

Today they’re tested for COVID three times a week but, with so many game cancellations, have had little time to be tested on the rink.

The team had “hockey cards” made last year, like baseball cards, with players’ stats and background. It seemed fitting a team that could have won it all keeps the memories alive for fans in player cards.

So we’re left with playing cards and the larger question of the role of sports in society.

Do sports help with the climate crisis, racism and inequality? Maybe not.

But the whole world seemed better when “Herbie” laid down the suicide squeeze bunt play to win the B-squad championship game for the Prexies in the last inning. By one run.

We missed playing Morris that day, as he was about five years ahead of us, playing for Highland Park. But who cares about years when a good story is involved or evolves into one where a humble B-squader once homered off the Hall of Famer?

The critics will say we spend too much money on sports when our universities should be inspiring people to solve the problems of climate, racism and inequality.

Those are the critical challenges that face us. I say we spend more on sports.

Joe Spear is editor of Mankato Magazine. Contact him at 344-6382 or jspear@mankatofreepress.com. Follow on Twitter @jfspear.