Playing Hurt

by John Saunders

  CHAPTER 13

  Getting Married

  THE FOLLOWING SUMMER, 1976, I RETURNED TO TORONTO, leaving Bernie at Western. I got a summer job working for the Government of Ontario’s Public Transportation’s GO trains. Our duties included painting the shelters and cutting the grass at each station. On the devilishly steep hills we dragged the mower with two long ropes from the bottom of the hill to the top. We had a four-man crew consisting of two skilled lifers and a fellow college student, Jim MacLeese.

  Jim and I hit it off. Purely out of boredom, after work we created a television show on cable public access which was every bit as professional as Wayne’s World. I was just screwing around, but Jim wanted to break into show business. A local AM country music station soon hired him, but he kept his day job mowing train station lawns.

  It might seem surprising that I was having a good time mowing lawns after returning to Canada feeling like a failure. But my depression has never been solely based on my life circumstances; sometimes things could be going along very well on the surface, and I’d feel horrible. Other times my life could look like it was falling apart, as it was that summer, and I’d feel okay, even good.

  But I couldn’t ignore that my options were narrowing. Having flunked out of Western, I couldn’t go back. But I still had a few possibilities: I could transfer to a school in Toronto or find some kind of job, or try to make one of the local semi-pro hockey teams that paid players by the game. One option Delia and I didn’t consider was moving back in with my family, which was already on its fourth home in two years in Ajax, or hers, because they weren’t very excited about their daughter dating me.

  I decided to transfer to Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, now called Ryerson University, in downtown Toronto, and take out a loan. I hoped to play hockey for their school team too, with Delia generously agreeing to support me financially for a year. With the various credits I had somehow managed to pick up along the way I could graduate in just one year if I stayed focused.

  After my lawn-mowing colleague, Jim MacLeese, got off to a good start on CHOO-1400 AM, the country music station in Ajax, he got me a regular six-hour shift on Sunday mornings. It sounded like fun, good for a few bucks.

  My future, almost despite my efforts, once again looked bright.

  With Delia my early introduction to sex came back to haunt me, preventing me from building the kind of intimacy and trust couples should have. Delia and I might be alone, simply cuddling in the bedroom, but when we became amorous, I’d start asking her pointed questions. “Did you enjoy having sex with your first husband? How often did you have sex?” She naturally became upset, and my paranoia became self-fulfilling, as if I was denigrating myself, her, and our relationship all at the same time.

  Thanks to my early sex education, relationships for me were not simple things, where an emotional bond turns physical. These were unconnected for me, which created problems years later. Delia was everything I thought I wanted, but because on some level I thought sex was dirty, it bothered me that she’d had sex before we met. That, coupled with my own feelings of worthlessness—which made me wonder how anyone could really love me—prompted me to sabotage our relationship.

  Ignoring these signs, Delia and I set our wedding date for July 17, 1976. Delia did all the planning, but as usual my father was the wild card. Four days before our wedding he resurfaced to talk me out of it.

  “What would you know about marriage?” I asked.

  “You go through with this wedding, and you can forget about me being in your life. I won’t bail you out of any more of your messes.”

  I probably should have let it go. But I couldn’t resist pointing out how often his promised checks hadn’t come through. That got him. He grabbed me by the throat and shoved my head into the wall.

  “Why are you so stupid?” he yelled. He tightened his grip on my throat. “In a year you’ll be selling pencils on a street corner! That girl is going to ruin your life!”

  This confrontation drew a circle of people around us, urging him to let me go. But instead of sparking an outburst in me, his charade had the opposite effect. Suddenly the rage I had bottled up for years started leaking away. One thought took over: This man will never be my father. I will never be his son. It gave me a surprising measure of peace to know that his power over me was dwindling. I looked him dead in the eye and slowly pried his hand from my throat.

  “I don’t know where you’ve been my whole life or what you’ve been doing,” I said, “but you haven’t been around enough to involve yourself in any decision I make. As far as I’m concerned, don’t come to my wedding, and don’t show your face to me ever again.”

  My father showed up for our wedding, a humbled man—or at least a quiet one. He did not perform the usual fatherly duties and he did not interact with the guests, but there were no incidents, which is all I cared about. Delia’s family was there, as were my beloved grandparents and my mother, Bernie, Gail, my aunt Yve, and my cousin Loretta. Our wedding went off without a hitch.

  I wasn’t sure where my life was headed, but in Delia I had found a woman who loved me enough to call me her husband, and this infused me with a welcome shot of self-worth.

  CHAPTER 14

  Country John Saunders

  I THOUGHT RADIO WOULD BE A FUN, EASY WAY TO MAKE a few bucks, but it came with a catch: I had to start the morning after our wedding, working on about two hours of sleep.

  I spun a Baptist sermon at eight o’clock, followed by a little Tammy Wynette, then I played the Episcopal service at nine, followed by some Conway Twitty, then I popped in the Anglicans at ten, followed by Willie Nelson and Charlie Pride—all for $46 a week. A good gig, but not the kind of work that makes you think, Yes, this is my future!

  They called me “Country John Saunders,” if you can believe it, but I liked it immediately. I have no problem finding great music in just about any genre, and country was no exception. On my first day I learned that Tanya Tucker had a little rock-and-roll in her country, for example, and Charlie Pride knew how to tell a story. Because he was a black guy trying to make it in a white industry, I gave him a little extra play.

  As soon as I finished my first shift we put a “JUST MARRIED” sign in the back window of Delia’s little Rambler and took off for Niagara Falls for our honeymoon. We stayed only one night because that’s all we could afford.

  For the first year of our marriage we lived in a one-bedroom basement apartment. After Delia left for work I often slipped back down the rabbit hole of depression. Some days it took all I had to get out of bed in our dark, dank apartment. Once I did, I had to drag myself to class and face the fact that I seemed more likely to vindicate my parents’ predictions of failure than fulfill my vague vision of becoming somebody. But two endeavors proved very helpful in keeping me going: radio and hockey.

  A year into my Sunday shift on the radio, mixing sermons and country songs, CHOO posted an opening for a morning newscaster’s job. Perhaps to everyone’s surprise, including mine, I landed it—but I’m not sure how many people actually wanted it. My shift began every weekday morning at six, with newscasts continuing every half-hour until nine, followed by hourly newscasts until noon. It paid $9,000 a year, the most I’d ever made, and rattling off newsreels certainly beat toiling in an electronics factory, mowing lawns, or digging for worms.

  So I woke up at five and drove ten minutes to CHOO, delivered the news until noon, then drove a half-hour to Ryerson for a full day of classes, which I liked, followed by hockey practice. Afterward some of us would go to a bar near campus for a few beers. Being on a team again felt like reuniting with family, and those hours joking around together were gold.

  I liked our coach, Brian Jones, who was just six years my senior. Ryerson had been a perennial loser, but Coach Jones brought in eight good players our first year, and we jumped from worst to first in a single season. My shoulders felt fine, for once, and I finally proved I could play at a decent level.

  After years of fail
ing to play more than a few games each season—if that—it felt good to play a regular role, and the exercise helped keep my depression at bay. As long as I didn’t get hurt, there wasn’t much harm in it, as it required just a few more hours away from home each day.

  My finesse game was long gone, and with it my dreams of playing in the NHL. But I had transformed myself into a steady defenseman and an occasional enforcer—and I was pretty good at it. Maybe, I thought, I might still make a few bucks playing this game in the minors.

  I paid just enough attention to my schoolwork to pass my classes. If I stuck it out, by the end of my second year at Ryerson, 1977–1978, I’d have only three courses remaining to graduate with a degree in psychology.

  That year Delia and I rented a new apartment on the second floor of a clean new building with fresh white paint and large windows that let the sunshine in, a big improvement over our basement bungalow. I was working a full-time job, going to school full time, and playing varsity hockey full time. I was usually too busy to be depressed.

  It was becoming clear early in our marriage, however, that I was no one’s idea of a model husband. Because I wasn’t ready to give up on hockey or college, we both had to keep working, which naturally put more stress on our marriage.

  My physical desire for Delia had cooled shortly after we were married, too—another aftereffect of my too-early introduction to sex. Given my low self-worth, subconsciously I concluded that if a woman would have me, there must be something wrong with her. Even though I knew better, when that’s hardwired into your mindset from an early age, it’s hard to shake.

  Not surprisingly, as my touches and kisses faded, Delia grew insecure and jealous. She couldn’t stand it if I so much as glanced at a good-looking woman. When we watched TV together and an attractive woman appeared onscreen, I would leave the room just to avoid an argument—and there are a lot of attractive women on TV.

  Our team had slipped a bit my second season while the rest of the league had gotten tougher. The exception was the Royal Military College, a school that rolled Canada’s army, navy, and air force cadets into one campus. The team was the worst in the league, and they played the dirtiest.

  In our first meeting that season we were already ahead by a dozen goals when they started going after us. Before a face-off late in the game I told our center to hold the stick of the other center, one of their dirtiest players. He did as I’d instructed, allowing me to jam the shaft of my stick under the opposing center’s chin, splitting it wide open. Amazingly, the referee didn’t call it. Either he didn’t see it—which seemed impossible, as he was about two feet away—or he thought the guy deserved it.

  After the game, in the handshaking line one of their guys mumbled “nigger” as he passed me, then took off. I chased him into his own locker room—generally not the smartest move, where you’re certain to be badly outnumbered by his teammates—while shouting at his buddies that this was none of their business, so they should stay out of it. I proceeded to beat the crap out of this guy and finished by jamming a trash can in his ribs.

  When I was done I looked around and saw the stunned expressions on his teammates’ faces: This fool’s crazy. I turned my back and walked out, confident that no one would dare jump me. I can’t say I regret my response, but I can say I was showing no signs of shaking my violent streak.

  My defense partner, Frank Sheffield, was also a black guy, making us the only all-black blue line pair in the league—and probably in the world. Our coach grew accustomed to seeing us scrap over someone using the “n-word”—not that he liked it. Once, after Frank and I were both ejected for fighting because our opponents had used the “n-word,” our coach all but begged us, “C’mon, guys! Can’t you ignore them just once?”

  I had gotten into the habit of playing close to the edge, getting away with as much dirty play and bullying as I could, which earned me a reputation among opponents and officials. But because the NHL had entered its nastiest era of hockey, with Philadelphia’s Broad Street Bullies leading the way, I thought that might work in my favor.

  Our parents rarely came to our games, but Bernie and Gail always believed my parents loved me. Years later Gail told me Dad had hung a picture of me in my Ryerson uniform. He was a hard man to understand.

  My mother and Delia forged a solid friendship, which made life easier for Delia when I wasn’t around. I even believed their friendship might help me improve my relationship with my mother.

  But my biggest fan, by far, was Bernie, even though he’d long since surpassed me as a player and was tearing up his new league at Western Michigan. On those rare weekend nights when we didn’t both have a game, Bernie would make the six-hour drive from Kalamazoo to Toronto just to see me play. When Bernie was in the stands, which were otherwise occupied only by a few friends, girlfriends, and winos trying to warm up, I always played my heart out. After one game Bernie attended, my coach asked if Bernie could come to every game because I played so much better when he was there.

  One night Bernie braved a merciless blizzard that turned into a dangerous twelve-hour haul across icy roads to see Ryerson play Guelph University. Bernie managed to slip inside our rink just in time for the opening face-off. He was standing behind the glass at center ice, shaking the snow off his Western Michigan letter jacket and giving me a big smile right before the opening drop. I loved it and felt pumped up.

  Right off the draw a Guelph player dumped the puck into my corner. I turned to get it, with a Guelph forward on my tail. As we approached the boards he hit me hard from behind, slamming me into the glass—a dangerous play that is now illegal. But it wasn’t then, so I turned to elbow him in the face, then dropped my gloves and started a fight—definitely against the rules, then and now. I managed to land a couple of rights before he tied up my arms with my jersey and the refs pinned us both down.

  Unlike the NHL at the time, in college hockey fighting meant an automatic ejection from the game. When we got up from the ice the referee motioned for both of us to leave, with one ref escorting each of us off the ice to make sure we didn’t start fighting again. A few folks in the stands cheered for me, but Bernie was not among them. He had just risked his life driving through a snowstorm to watch me play, and I’d remained on the ice for a grand total of twenty-two seconds. When I skated off I could see him mouth the words, “YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

  He had a point.

  A couple of months later we were playing Brock University on their home ice in St. Catherines, Ontario, near Niagara Falls. Early in the game one of their players told me they were plotting to take me out because a month earlier I had jammed my stick into their star player’s ribs. When I heard our opponent’s warning, I just laughed.

  In the third period we were ahead by a couple goals when I picked up the puck in the corner. An opposing player chased me in hot pursuit. I glanced back at him for a second, and when I turned back to see where I was going, I met my fate.

  To understand a cross-check, imagine gripping a broomstick with your hands about three feet apart, then using the middle portion to smash someone’s face while he’s skating toward you. It’s a brutal and effective means to take out an opponent—and also illegal. That’s what this guy did, and he did it well. His cross-check knocked me on my back, out cold. When I came to, I tried to stand, but my left leg gave way.

  An hour later, lying in yet another hospital bed, I took inventory of my injuries. I’d suffered a broken ankle, probably when we all collapsed in a heap, a broken nose, a busted orbital bone, and more missing teeth. I watched the doctor stitching me back together, a familiar experience. She told me my ankle was shattered, and if she placed it in a cast right away it would swell and not heal properly. So we left that for another day.

  On the hour-and-a-half bus ride back to Toronto I sat in the front seat, my leg raised. My teammates didn’t utter a word to me. Either they didn’t know what to say, they figured I had it coming, or both.

  By the time I reached the hospital in Toronto
my ankle was the size of a prize-winning grapefruit. The doctors said I’d have to remain in traction until the swelling subsided, and then they could reset the broken bones. It turned out they would have to break it again, twice, to get it to set properly.

  My season was over, and so was any chance at a professional hockey career. What would replace my dream?

  Unable to get to my job at the radio station or to my classes, I slumped deeper into our couch, my leg raised in a huge cast. I would spend each day watching TV, wallowing in self-pity, and worrying about my future. With no degree, no skills, and no goals, what the hell am I going to do with the rest of my life? When I finished pondering those problems, I would dwell on the growing distance between Delia and me.

  Even good news seemed to carry an edge. That spring Ryerson faced the University of Toronto in the first round of the playoffs. My teammate Rick Darling picked me up so I could watch the big game.

  “Congratulations,” he said as he helped me get into his car.

  “About what?”

  Rick opened the sports section of the Toronto Sun to reveal that I had been named an Ontario Universities Athletic Association All-Star. This was quite a surprise, especially as I’d missed a big chunk of the season. The award came with an invitation to play on the Canadian College All-Star Team against the top-tier junior players—the very players the NHL most coveted, making it the perfect chance to show the scouts what I could do. Or it would have been, if I wasn’t still recovering from my ankle injury.

  Before that night’s game the University of Toronto’s players skated over to the bench to congratulate me right before the most storied college hockey team in Canada blew us out. Ryerson’s season was over too.

  The flood of bad news overwhelmed me. With no hockey, no degree, no career goals, and a marriage that was losing steam by the day, I didn’t have much to look forward to. I fell into a vortex, with no means of stopping it.