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Articles
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Oh, yeah, stay loyal to the
cause.
I grew up in the Great depression when many people were threadbare, destitute and hungry. Where have you heard that one before? Okay, so your grandpa did too -- big deal, you say? Slithering off the Huskies' bandwagon, you wonk? Hear me out, for Don James is my age. I remember once-proud men carrying bindle stiffs. Down on their luck, they came to our front door begging for food. I remember my mother making sandwiches for them while they stood outside looking gaunt and weathered -- those colorless eyes, staring, their bleak message lost on me. When I was eight years old my dad took me to Husky Stadium to see my cousin play for the Dawgs, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Visits to Sick’s Seattle Stadium cemented my affinity for Rainier baseball, like, say, when the Twinks played the Suds. * In those days, the late forties, real men smoked cigars at sporting events, intermittently taking pulls from flasks of fiery warmth. But sometimes they drank too much. I remember this racial epithet at the boxing matches and this big, black man lecturing the stupid racist and then Harry "Kid" Mathews knocking his opponent out. Jack Hurley taught Mathews to punch. And the three matches pitting Johnny Wells and Mike Stankovich, circa the late forties. Wells, a popular black boxer, turned professional after winning the Seattle Golden Gloves in the welterweight division. After winning his first few pro bouts, he was matched with Stankovich, a dirty fighter from the East. In trouble the whole way, Stankovich deliberately head-butted Wells to win their first two matches by TKO, opening deep cuts over Wells' eyes in the late rounds. Talk about revenge and crowd appeal. The promoters moved the third match from the Ice Arena to the larger Civic Auditorium, where Wells, with blood streaming down his face from cuts over his eyes, knocked Stankovich out; the fans' response almost blew the roof off the building. I got to shake hands with Wells before that last fight. I can still smell the cologne he was wearing as he immersed my small hand in his large taped-wrapped hand. Later, Wells was was seriously hurt in Tacoma near the railroad tracks. ** Reminiscing about local heroes? Parents, take your kids to Picture Day, where Husky heroes abound. During winter days spent in a Seattle classroom, I’d stare out the window and dream about the Huskies and Rainiers, the biggest sports attractions in town. While the teacher rambled endlessly -- the schoolroom lights contrasting sharply with darkness -- occasionally the sun worked its magic, turning gray to green, and the mountain glistened white, the water sparkled blue, and the teacher’s jibe became crystal clear. Learning math taught me to compute baseball averages, while Leo Lassen taught me to articulate non-nasally. Royal Brougham sold me on sports writing, and Emmett Watson taught me to laugh at myself. Husky radio taught me annotative skills. I’d column off a sheet of notebook paper and then chart each play, making them fit on both sides, subconsciously paying homage to the depression and its years of penury. Despite rationing and hard times, the Second World War never dampened my enthusiasm for being a Husky fan. The Dawgs went to the Rose Bowl in 1944, and the legendary Bill Stern, who announced the game, more than made up for the loss to USC by giving our Dawgs national exposure. I charted that game in ink. Thanks to my education at the UW, I’ve lived a life of acronyms, console lights and hexadecimal dumps. We’re just a bunch of numbers anyway until we’re noticed, according to the guys at Copenhagen. When I can’t attend a Husky game in person or see it on live TV, I listen to it on Internet radio. Instead of logging each play of the game on paper, I use the Internet game tracker, which isn’t nearly as much fun since its printed output won’t fit on one sheet of paper. Following Husky football through the years has been as capricious and whimsical as rolling dice in this quantum world. It’s a different Husky football team for me now, one that uses skill and cunning to augment brute strength. Plays are called in using semaphores. Defenses run nickels, dimes, cover-twos, four-threes, three-fours, man-to-man, zones and other encrypted-like formations. You have to take Bob Davie’s course over at ESPN.com to figure it all out. The NCAA, the big brother, is trying to change college football. It’s installing a complicated APR formula which, in effect, changes the way college football teams will recruit their student athletes. APR is so confusing that schools on the quarter system think they’re being punished by the formula, while the NCAA thinks the formula favors those schools on that system. How about its edict that limits the media guides to just 208 pages? You can’t cram much Husky history into just 208 pages. Throughout my Husky years, I’ve remained loyal to the cause through muddy fields, 14 losing seasons and various shades of purple -- not to mention Torchy, Billy Joe, the Red Onion, and the dynamic duos of Danny and Elliott and Gerby and Babs. *** Is there life after death? Life goes on for all of us geeks, even after the BSOD (The Blue Screen of Death). So, can you be a Husky fan for life? Scrounge up an antique radio and one sheet of paper; I’ll show you how. --------- Editor's Notes: * Hollywood Stars versus the Seattle Rainiers. Leo Lassen? "Hmm, back, back, back -- and it's over!" Thanks, Alan, for reminding us. ** The Civic Auditorium, built in 1927, was replaced by Marion Oliver McCaw Hall in 2003. From a fan: "You may have already heard, but although Johnny Wells was seriously hurt in Tacoma somewhere near the railroad tracks; he was not killed. He lived to fight again with some local success, especially in Boston and Houston. He even returned to fight again in Seatlle near the end of his career in 1954-5." *** An incident at the Red Onion Restaurant in Orange County, California sparked a 1992 investigation by Danny Robbins and Elliott Almond, both of the Los Angeles Times, into Husky football. Richard Linde (a.k.a., Malamute) can be reached at malamute@4malamute.com |
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Husky fans,
you think you’ve got it bad after suffering through your first losing
season of Husky football. Don’t cry on my shoulder. You guessed it; I’m pulling rank.