Pee Wees

by Rich Cohen

  The game was an obvious mismatch from the start. Every player on the Berkshire Rattlers was better than every player on the Bears. I later learned that Coach Hendrix expected us to lose badly. He’d scheduled the game as a “wake-up call.” He wanted to cut “the hotshots down to size.” The Rattlers were not only more skilled but also better coached. They knew their positions and ran set plays. They knew how to break out of their zone, trap our puck carriers, run a power play, and kill a penalty. Here were fifteen kids working in concert, beating us individually and also beating us as a group. Coach Hendrix scheduled the game to reveal the flaws in our players, but he had also revealed the flaws in our coaches. Late in the first period, the Rattlers executed something like the backyard-football hook-and-ladder play. Their center passed to their left wing, who’d positioned himself along the boards at the red line. Instead of controlling the puck, the left wing deflected it to the right wing, who was sprinting up ice. Duffy, having chased the puck, was left behind. It made him look slow and foolish, like a dog chasing a toy that’s yanked away. Embarrassed and frustrated, Duffy lashed out. He knocked down the biggest Berkshire kid and became a human pincushion as a result, checked and tripped by every Rattler. They chirped at him. He called them “F-tards,” a construction I’ve heard nowhere else.

  Leo’s father, Albert, was disgusted.

  “Why don’t we use a time-out?” he asked.

  “Because these idiots don’t know what they’re doing,” said Sue Campi.

  Coach Pete did call a time-out, but it didn’t help. We simply could not score. Tommy made a good move late in the second and actually got a hard shot on net. The goalie made the save, then said something to Micah, who’d come in for a rebound. Micah responded. (He’d never tell me what he said, but it must have been bad.) Another kid shoved Micah from behind. His legs went out and he fell straight back, hitting his head on the ice. He lay motionless. Coach Rizzo went out to check, then waved over Coach Hendrix, who waved over Coach Pete.

  “A three-coach injury!” said Jerry Sherman, shaking his head.

  “Get up,” I yelled, channeling my father. “You’re not hurt!”

  “But what if he is hurt?” I asked myself. “What if he’s badly hurt?”

  Such moments are clarifying. They make you know that all your previous obsessions and worries were pointless, stupid. Micah’s health is the only thing that matters. Spending time together—drives to and from the games, late-night talks—that’s what it’s all about. The rest is meaningless.

  How did I forget?

  But Micah looked OK when he got up and skated to the bench. I expected him to be on for his next shift. I wanted him to finish strong. Play the last minute with the same intensity as you played the first. Play when you’re getting crushed the same as when the game is tied. That’s the key. But he took off his helmet and sat down. Even from a distance, he looked dazed. Here’s what I was thinking as I made my descent from the bleachers: that part of my life, the part when Micah and I drive and talk and stop for dinner, was over, and now began the part in which I lifted him into and out of his special chair.

  Micah was talking to Coach Hendrix when I got to the bench but not looking at him. He was gazing deeply into nothing. He did not appear to be hurt or even unhappy. He simply seemed adrift.

  Coach Hendrix pulled me aside and said, “He failed the concussion test.”

  “What’s the concussion test?”

  “We ask questions, things they should know. Micah couldn’t answer any of them.”

  “What’d you ask him?”

  “I asked him your wife’s mother’s maiden name. He couldn’t tell me.”

  “I couldn’t tell you. What else?”

  “I asked him where you and your wife had your first date.”

  “We didn’t have a first date,” I said. “We met at a Super Bowl party.”

  I sat next to Micah and checked him out myself. I asked how he felt. He said he felt fine. I then gave him my own concussion test, cobbled together from movies. I asked if he knew where he was. He did. I asked if he could tell me the day of the week and the time of day. He was close enough. I asked him his name, the names of his brothers, his birthday. He got them all.

  I asked him if he wanted to go back into the game—I mean, we’d driven all this way! He said he wasn’t sure, so I knew he was done for the day. I carried his helmet and stick and water bottle to the locker room, and he shambled after. A woman in a white pantsuit came in as Micah changed. She asked if we could talk. Berkshire has a nurse-practitioner on call. She apparently responds to serious on-ice incidents. What she’d seen on the close-circuit television—Micah’s head hitting the ice—concerned her enough to make a visit. She asked Micah some questions, then reached into her bag. She tapped his knee with a hammer, felt his skull, looked into his eyes with a flashlight, clicking the beam on and off. If he has a concussion, she said, it’s mild, but she suggested we take him to his doctor at home anyway, “just to be safe.”

  We were in the car before the game was over. Micah looked out the window as I drove. He said he felt “weird,” like he was floating. It was the first time his soul had been separated from his body and he was enjoying it. I made him drink a lot of water and had him sit in a dark room when we got home, adding, “No video games, no screens.” He was playing a game called Clash Royale on his computer when I checked, which infuriated me. He missed Sunday’s game. On Monday, my wife took him to the doctor, who agreed that he’d probably not been concussed and said that it was OK for him to play.

  I still didn’t know what to do. I wanted to be safe, but I didn’t want to be a ninny. I called my brother Steven. He’s five years older than me, played hockey before me, peaked and declined before me, got married and became a hockey parent before me. Whatever I was living, he’d lived it before. I told him what had happened. He asked a few questions, then said, “Tell me this: Does Micah seem like himself? If he seems like himself, he’s fine. Think of all the shit we went through.”

  When he said this, a montage of youthful injuries flashed through my memory. I saw myself flying over the handlebars of my bike, being thrown into the dashboard of a station wagon, a paramedic lifting me from the wreckage. I saw wipeouts and collisions, fights and fails that turned stars around my head. I saw myself caught looking down on the ice, getting laid out by a kid who skated away laughing. What was done in the aftermath of these concussions or near concussions? Nothing. At most, my mom would wake me in the night and ask if I remembered my name.

  I sent Micah to play the next weekend, but Coach Hendrix called me over five minutes into the game. “He doesn’t look right,” said the coach. “I don’t feel comfortable having him out there.” Micah sat the rest of the week, missing three practices and two more games. Then, as I looked at the calendar, figuring out when he’d come back, my heart sank. Micah’s return would be on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest night on the Jewish calendar, a time of atonement, when the Book of Life stands open and God decides who will live and who will die. Micah’s second game back would be on Yom Kippur itself. You are supposed to be in synagogue on that day or at home fasting—not playing hockey.

  I think religion is important for kids, even if they reject it. It sets the rules, establishes the ground beneath their feet. They might be lost with God, but at least they’ll know they’re lost. But keeping the holiday would mean Micah missing two more games. Once again, I turned to my brother, who, without hesitation, said, “Micah can’t play on Yom Kippur.”

  “But he’s already missed over a week,” I whined.

  “This was settled by Sandy Koufax in 1965,” my brother said. “If Koufax skipped a World Series start to observe the holiday, Micah can sit out a few Pee Wee hockey games.”

  Micah ended up missing two weeks. When he did return, it was as if he was starting over. If I’d assumed he’d reclaim his former position—left wing on the top line, a spot he’d earned—I was wrong. He was back on the third line. Here’s the thing:
you stop playing, but the train rolls on. Of course I was angry. I mean, What the fuck? You’re not supposed to lose your spot because of an injury, especially a head injury. If that were the case, no kid who wants to play would give an honest account of his symptoms. By playing on the third line, Micah would get less ice time. He’d sit out the power plays and penalty kills. All this matters: you do not play, you can’t improve; you don’t improve, you do not play. It’s a negative feedback loop.

  I tried to see it from the coach’s point of view. Micah had to work his way back into game shape. He had to find his groove. What’s more, other kids had performed in his absence. If Micah wanted his shift back, he’d have to take it away from them. And yet, no matter how much I tried to make the case, it still seemed wrong. It violated a philosophical tenet of every team from Mites to pros: you don’t lose your position because of an injury.

  I waited outside the rink for Coach Pete. I could see him, then could see him see me. He looked left, looked right, gave up, walked over, shook my hand, and said, “We’re glad to have Micah back, but remember the twenty-four-hour rule.” He seemed nervous about what I might say. I think he knew why I was angry and knew I was right to be angry but had Coach Hendrix to deal with, which was a bigger problem. This made me feel a little sad for Coach Pete, who, with his dark hair slicked down and face flushed, looked about fifteen years old. His father was in trouble. He didn’t need me giving him a hard time. Why did he coach? It didn’t seem like he was having fun. And he wasn’t especially good at it. Maybe it made him feel important to have all these parents, who were twenty or thirty years older than him, doctors, contractors, finance guys, lining up to schmooze their kids three or four extra minutes of ice time. Maybe he did it because his brother and father had done it. Maybe he wanted to relive high school. Maybe he was bored. Maybe it was just something to do.

  “It bugs me that Micah lost his spot,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t say he lost his spot,” said Coach Pete.

  “Then what would you say?”

  “I don’t like to talk about this sort of thing, but I’m going to make an exception,” Coach Pete said, leaning in. “With Micah off the ice, I noticed certain holes in our roster. The big one is that third line. Roman Holian should never have made this team. He can shoot, but he can’t skate. And he can’t see. We’re exposed every time he’s out there. Micah is one of the few kids quick enough to cover for Roman. We need his help on that third line.”

  I stood there, thinking. He’d complimented Micah, which is usually enough to defuse me. He must have known that. But he was also giving him a crap detail, which seemed unfair.

  “Don’t tell anyone what I said,” Coach Pete continued. “I don’t want it getting back to Roman and his parents.”

  “I’m still not sure it’s right,” I said.

  “What’s not right?”

  “That Micah has to sacrifice his season because you guys got the tryouts wrong. Micah wanted to be on this team so he could skate with better players.”

  “Let me ask you this,” said Coach Pete, trying a different strategy. “Is Micah happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Micah having fun?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what do you care? Try to remember what this is about—them, not us. It’s about learning the sport but also learning to be part of a team. Sometimes you have to do something you don’t want to do for the good of the team, like in a family.”

  This made me think of Coach Pete’s father. I did not want to add to the coach’s troubles, so I nodded and went into the rink to wait for Micah. Though I chatted amicably with other parents, I was troubled. On the one hand, I got it. On the other hand, I wanted to know why—assuming that Coach Pete was telling the truth—my kid had to take the bullet. Why not ask one of the parent-coaches’ kids to cover for Roman? It made me think of the movie North Dallas Forty, in which an NFL receiver confronts his coach, who is asking him to sacrifice for the team. Pointing to the club owner, the player says, “Don’t you get it? We’re not the team. These guys right here, they’re the team. We’re the equipment.”

  I expected Micah to be angry about being moved back to the third line, but he talked only about Mike and Ikes as we drove home. (He wants candy after a game the way a pirate wants rum.) He did not even seem to know that he’d been shafted. He just seemed happy to be back. I was irritated by this lack of concern. I’d been steeling myself to console him, to explain the nature of life, but he didn’t care.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you notice that you’re off the first line?”

  His eyes fell, the air went out of him.

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked. “Why aren’t you pissed off?”

  It was a recurring gripe of mine: Micah never seemed to get angry. I was the opposite when I played. I was mad the entire time. It’s what motivated me, anger and a desire for revenge. I was always being screwed, undervalued, put on the wrong line, disrespected, treated like trash. It gave me an edge. I loved hockey, but did not enjoy it. I was too angry. My only goal was to prove that my coaches, teammates, opponents, parents, and siblings had been wrong.

  Micah plays happy. He loves being part of a team—wearing the jacket, walking with a gaggle of teammates through town. He smiles when he skates, which is weird. Maybe it’s because they took checking out of the pre-Bantam game. He lives in a world without predators. Or maybe he just has a sunny disposition. I’ve tried to impart my sense of urgency. Before a big game, I once said, “The kids on the other team are not just trying to win. They’re trying to humiliate you. That’s how you should look at it.” But it didn’t take. Whereas I played hot, he played cool. I eventually came to see this as a gift. It’s not his skating, nor puck control, nor hockey sense that makes him a good player. It’s his joy.

  “Does it bother you at all?” I finally asked.

  “Not much,” he admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because, no matter where they put me, it’s still hockey.”

  * * *

  Our next game was at the Darien Ice House. Every car in the parking lot told you that these people were richer, more fulfilled, and flat-out better than us.

  Ridgefield occupies the cozy middle on the local socioeconomic scale—not a great spot for athletes. Blue-collar towns like Winchester and Bridgeport beat us because their kids are tougher. Wealthy towns like New Canaan and Greenwich beat us because they pay for better instructors. Most of our coaches never played past high school. For a time, the Connecticut Junior Rangers Pee Wee team in Greenwich were coached by NHL Hall of Famer Martin St. Louis. (One parent, having not been briefed on St. Louis’s career, cursed him, saying, “You don’t know the first thing about this game!”) The Bears were playing the North Darien Lady Wings, an elite all-girls team. They were more skilled than us, as clearly stated in Coach Hendrix’s scouting report. (He’d seen them twice in person, once on LiveBarn.) In my day, you’d have neutralized their speed with violence. Stand ’em up at the blue line, pancake ’em in the corner. But checking is verboten. Besides, we’d all raised our boys with the same admonition: “Never hit a girl.”

  I knew we were in trouble before the game started. In most cases, when a team has finished getting dressed, the players stand along the Plexiglas, watching the Zamboni. No one is allowed on the ice till the machine is parked and the refs have skated out. The Lady Wings had choreographed a more dramatic entrance. As our players were going through their warm-ups, “Crazy Train” blared from a loudspeaker, the locker room door flew open, and out came the Lady Wings, one at a time, as if shot from a canon. They sprinted to the rink door, hopped onto the ice, skated a fast lap, then cohered into an intricate Blue Angels–like figure eight, fifteen girls in pink jerseys whirling into a void. Our players stopped and stared. Jerry Sherman yelled from the bleachers, “Don’t look! They’re sirens!”<
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  Coach Pete had scrambled the lines. Tommy McDermott would center the first with Broadway Jenny Hendrix at right wing and Leo Moriarty at left. Coach Pete told the centers to play aggressive. “I don’t care if they’re girls,” he said, “use your body. Get the puck!”

  Tommy stood eye-to-eye with the Lady Wings’ top skater, a girl named Gallagher. A blond ponytail hung from the back of her helmet. He hesitated when the puck was dropped. She swung her shoulder into his chest, knocking him back. Gallagher played the puck back to a defenseman, who, in one smooth motion, gathered and skated it around Patrick Campi, then sent a long pass up ice to the right wing. What happened next is called “tic-tac-toe.” The Lady Wings zipped the puck back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until our defense was mesmerized. Gallagher finished the play by putting the puck through Dan Arcus’s legs—called the “five-hole.” The horn blew, the North Darien parents cheered. And just like that, we felt like patsies, less like the parents of hockey players and more like the parents of props. Bing. Bang. Boom. It had happened so fast. Our section of the bleachers was quiet. The silence was broken by a single voice. It was Parky Taylor saying, “Jesus H. Christ.”

  There’s a debate in the world of youth hockey: What should a coach do after his team has been scored on? Traditionalists tell you to change lines immediately, even if the kids have only been on for ten seconds. You don’t reward failure with more ice time. Statisticians do not only record goals and assists, after all, but also how many goals a team scores when a certain player is on the ice versus how many goals are scored against the team when that player is on. The sum of these numbers is called the plus-minus. It’s probably the most important statistic in the game. Plus 5 is good. Minus 8 is bad. Pull the line that picked up the minus, let them sit and think about why they failed—that’s the old way. To a hockey progressive, this seems counterproductive, mean. If the line has been out less than a minute—the Lady Wings scored fifteen seconds into the first period—let them finish their shift. Who will be more motivated to get back that goal than the kids who let it in?