For your political edification this week, let’s try and make a connection between that recent byelection in Topsail-Paradise and exhibition sporting events.
Now, if you’re not a sports fan, if an inordinate amount of your day-to-day contentment is not tied to what happens on a rink or a baseball or football field, chances are you’ve never heard of an exhibition game.
But for those of us who follow professional sports with the same sort of dedication religious zealots bring to their proselytizing, the exhibition games — those preseason events that have no implications, except to dictate whether a given player will eventually ride a bus in the minors or fly on a charter jet in the majors — are a colossal bore.
The final result of such games is nearly always relegated to the “who cares?” category, or, in locker room vernacular, is given “who gives a you know what?” status.
Now, I have to confess I have attended the odd exhibition game, sports addict that I am…
Usually, when someone offers you a couple of freebies to an exhibition sporting event, you just know it’s because he or she can’t find a sucker willing to pay a small fortune in gas and parking fees to see a game that, just to reiterate, means sweet shag-all.
Now, I have to confess I have attended the odd exhibition game, sports addict that I am (although it’s like being forced to drink Haig Ale when you actually crave a real beer). And one such event was memorable, not because of the game itself, but because of an incident in the stands, involving my father and an unwanted beer bath.
It was in the mid-’70s, a preseason tilt (to coin a typical sports writing cliché) between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Vancouver Canucks at the Spectrum, a stadium where the Broad Street Bullies of that era would regularly brawl their way to victories (and two Stanley Cups).
I was visiting my parents in South Jersey for a few days. Dad had gotten free tickets to the game, and we decided an evening of hockey — even exhibition hockey, which we both usually found unappealing — might not be a bad way to spend a few bonding hours. It was a typical exhibition match, neither team creating much excitement, until a bench clearing donnybrook occurred in the third period, with 40 players duking it out. And Dad, trying to draw my attention to one of a dozen fights taking place, motioned his arm vigorously in the direction of Bob (Hound Dog) Kelly pounding a Vancouver player, forgetting in all his excitement that he was holding a 16-ounce container of Budweiser (Dad, that is, not Kelly). The beer flew in almost a slow-motion arc into the air and descended on the head of a fan directly in front of us. He was not pleased. For a few nervous seconds, I thought I’d be doing my own Hound Dog Bob impression and have to roll around the aisles protecting the old man (a lover, not a fighter). Fortunately, the beer-soaked fan was content to merely curse a blue streak in his thick Philly accent.
But it was, indeed, the normally dull and negligible exhibition games that came to mind last week as I paid perfunctory attention to that byelection in Topsail-Paradise, both the campaign itself and the results.
And I was not alone in my apathy; only a few thousand people in a district of 10,000-plus voters cast ballots.
Who could blame them?
I watched a painful panel discussion on “Here and Now” a few days before the byelection as the three participants were force-fed issues by moderator Anthony Germain just to bring even an ounce of enthusiasm to the “debate.” The panellists, and the constituents of Topsail-Paradise, knew that whoever won the seat would be merely keeping it warm until the regular season begins next fall, when the provincial election takes place (or earlier, as Dwight Ball has hinted lately.)
That’s when Coaches Ball, Ches Crosbie and Gerry Rogers will bring out their A-team; insert jokes here, if you wish, about members of an “A” squad.
(I don’t know which position Christopher Mitchelmore might play, given his recent, embarrassing decision to insert himself into a tourism ad. I didn’t actually see his cameo before it was pulled, but social media critics weren’t kind, and it was evaluation enough to read Russell Wangersky’s description of Mitchelmore’s performance as being a cross between Mr. Bean and Mr. Rogers; if I was Coach Ball, I’d have television star Mitchelmore collecting splinters on the bench — the back benches, that is).
In any case, the game later this year has the makings of a decent regular season match, if a poll released this past Wednesday by Mainstreet Research is an indication — numbers that show the Tories and the Liberals in a dead-heat (the NDP, as you’d expect, is bringing up the rear, sadly enough if you’re longing to see, for the sake of the democratic process, some vigorous and consequential third party participation.)
So, to hell with last week’s byelection and, to keep this metaphor alive for one more paragraph, to hell with the NFL Pro Bowl exhibition game last weekend: bring on the Super Bowl, and bring on the provincial election.
Let the real games begin.
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Bob Wakeham has spent more than 40 years as a journalist in Newfoundland and Labrador. He can be reached by email at [email protected]
