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 At Game's End, All Deserve A Fair ShakeBy EDWARD Z. MENKIN January 15, 1986 HOCKEY is not my game. Maybe it's because I grew up in New York City, where stickball was a form of juvenile religion, or maybe it's because I am somewhat leery of a sport that when played on the professional level seems to count its best players by the number of teeth they are missing. Whatever the reasons for my relative indifference to hockey, I became very interested very fast recently when I read that at a recent meeting of Eastern College Athletic Conference hockey coaches there was a discussion and vote (later rescinded) to eliminate the traditional team ritual of shaking hands at the conclusion of the game. The coaches said there was too much post-game fighting. "Game" is the key word. Hockey is a game. Football is a game. Checkers is a game. There are even people, me included, who tend to feel that in most aspects life itself is a game. That doesn't mean that you don't take the game seriously or that it doesn't mean anything. But the essence of competition is fighting the good fight, trying as hard as you can, playing by the rules and recognizing that when it is all over there will be another day, another sunrise, and that the final score is not necessarily the one tallied but the one which the Great Hockey Coach, in the Sky totes up when you reach overtime (the sudden death that ends the game for real). If coaching young athletes is to mean anything in our society, if it is going to contribute to the individual growth and development of young men and women who are going to inherit that which we sometimes try to pass off as a contemporary civilization, we ought to pay serious attention to any suggestion that when a game is over you give your opponent one final sneer and turn your back to either wallow in victory or retreat in the humility of defeat. Shaking hands means something. It is human contact, a salute, a non-verbal gesture between two gladiators who recognize that after the struggle there is learning, growth, maturity, responsibility for your conduct. It doesn't seem to me that there is much of that kind of thinking and behavior in younger people today. Come to think of it, I wouldn't say that that kind of thinking is rampant in our adult population, either. Besides recognition of the experience of the struggle, shaking hands is also a form of forgiveness. The recent disgraceful display of immaturity and unsportsmanlike conduct witnessed by a national audience at the end of the Raiders-Patriots AFC playoff game, when linebacker Matt Millen punched out Patriots general manager Billy Sullivan (who had been engaging in his own immature and inappropriate harassment of several Raiders players during the game), is a good example of confusing understandable defeat with unforgivable disgrace. Football players, like trial lawyers, ought to know that things are said and done in the heat of battle that are forgivable tactics of the war game; when it's over, it's over; the choice you have is to walk away with dignity and understanding or battle it out in a whining or demeaning fashion that does nothing but diminish the dignity of the struggle (which is why you are playing the game in the first place). I would like to think that young people are learning these values. When you see a young man like Syracuse University lineman Tim Green, you are inspired about the future; it has nothing to do with his size and little to do with his athletic abilities. He is admirable because he has character, because he fights the fight with dignity and courage and, at least for me, because he translates the values he learns on the playing field to the game of real life. Next time you see Green, ask him what he thinks about coaches who promote the idea that you don't shake hands with your opponent after the game is over. It seems to me that the guys over in the ECAC hockey league ought to pay more attention not to what is, but what ought to be. After all, coaches are supposed to be teachers, aren't they? (Menkin lives in Syracuse.) Syracuse Post Standard |
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