From now until late next week, if you see someone from St. Louis, I think it only fitting that you immediately lower your shoulder and slam him into the nearest wall. In the interest of team spirit, of course.
We are talking hockey. We are talking playoffs. We are talking the key to the Detroit Red Wings-St. Louis Blues series, which begins tonight.
“Checking,” the players predict.
“Checking,” the coaches predict.
He will be hitting and hitting and he will never stop. It will be September and Mr. Chet Lemon will have hit in every game.
“Are you worried about today?” a reporter from Sports Illustrated will ask him, pushing to the front of the media mob. “What if today is the day your streak finally ends?”
“Gosh, I don’t know,” Lemon will say, banging the dirt off his spikes.
“Yesterday you asked me that, and I got two hits, and the day before you asked me that and I got three hits.”
TORONTO — The starting goalie, Sam St. Laurent, was lying flat on his back inside the net, his twisted right knee causing horrible pain. The backup goalie, Greg Stefan, who last game was so ill he could barely move, was now tugging on his mask, preparing to come in. The backup to him was . . . was . .
.
There was no backup to him.
“How serious do you think Sam’s injury is?” someone asked Red Wings general manager Jimmy Devellano, who was pacing nervously inside the Maple Leaf Gardens press box.
Mike Henneman put the can of Foot Guard in one corner and lined his shoes neatly along the bottom rack. This was the first game of the year in Tiger Stadium. He had a new locker. Dan Petry’s old locker.
“He passed it on to me,” said Henneman, a good friend of Petry’s before Petry’s trade to California in December. “He wanted me to sit here. We came to work out once during the off- season, and he said, ‘You know, Mike, someday you’re gonna have to get out of the corner where you’re sitting now.’ “
Every now and then, a terrible problem arises which I must help solve. Usually it involves my dog and the carpet. But today, I am called upon for an even nobler cause. I am here to prevent embarrassment. I am here to prevent grown men from walking into Joe Louis Arena carrying baseball gloves. I am here to prevent grown women from entering Tiger Stadium with octopus in their bags. The problem, of course, is baseball and hockey. Same day. Same town. How confusing! The Tigers open their home season this afternoon; the Red Wings continue their playoffs this evening.
We pulled away from the Windsor hotel, and the mustached man in the passenger seat began fishing in his pockets for the toll fare.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly. “Do I turn here? I can’t remember. Is it here or there?”
“Gee. I’m not sure.”
“I think it’s here.”
“Yes, I . . . no . . . wait . . . is it?”
Back in the car.
With Jacques Demers.
BOSTON — Suddenly, summer. With one swing of Alan Trammell’s bat, sending a long fly ball over the Fenway Park wall, everything old was new again: the hot dogs, the scorecards, the razzing from the bleachers. Baseball, ladies and gentlemen. The kind that counts.
Opening Day.
What’s the difference,” someone asks Jack Morris, who is relaxing by his locker, “between a veteran clubhouse and a young clubhouse?”
He runs a hand through his hair, leans forward, then says it can best be summed up with a joke.
“You might not be able to use it,” he warns. “It’s a little dirty.”
No problem. We’ll clean it up.
THE LIVE ALBOM:
* It’s Final Four time again. Just four schools, playing on network TV, prime time, every living soul in the free world betting on it. Your basic little college tournament, in other words.
* Duke and Arizona.
* Uh, that’s a prediction, I reckon. FINAL FOUR QUIZ I: HOW DOES THIS MAN PRONOUNCE HIS NAME? 1. Krzyzewski 2. Shushefski 3. Shuflyshoo 4. Hey bud 5. Mike
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