Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League

by Cleo Birdwell

  AMAZONS

  AMAZONS

  An intimate memoir by

  the first woman ever to play

  in the National Hockey League

  By Cleo Birdwell

  Holt, Rinehart and Winston

  New York

  Copyright © 1980 by

  Holt, Rinehart and Winston

  All rights reserved, including the right

  to reproduce this book or portions

  thereof in any form.

  Published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

  383 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10017.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by

  Lester & Orpen Dennys Limited (and

  elsewhere by Tlön, Editorial Procrusto).

  LC 80-80241

  ISBN 0-03-055426-8

  First Edition

  Designer: Joy Taylor

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Contents

  Start

  Introduction

  About The Author

  Part One — I Am A Jumper

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two — Fifteen Days in the Land of the Lost

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter Three — The Kramer Is Now

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Only childhood is ours. The rest belongs to strangers.

  Wadi Assad

  AMAZONS

  If a man’s name sounds right whether you say it forward or backward, it means he went to Yale.

  Sanders Meade, class of ’67, was the Rangers’ general manager when I made my first appearance under the smoky lights. Sanders’s job was to wear plaid double-knit pants and a leisure-type jacket with his shirt open at the top and the shirt collar worn outside the jacket. That’s all you have to know about him, excepting his surprising prowess the time we hopped into bed during the snows in southern Ontario. I couldn’t tell you why I wanted Sanders. He was the absolute antithesis.

  That’s the kind of year it was. Everyone said I made a blazing entry into the NHL. They wrote about my honey blonde hair flying in the breeze, my silver skate blades flashing, my plucky work in the corners, my style, my stamina, my milky blue eyes, my taut ass and firm breasts, the nightmarish bruises on my downy white thighs.

  If you read sports at all, you know I’m not exaggerating. They have tried to make it grown-up. Most of the writers have beards and they dream about secret book projects in the real world. They are trying to make the leap. I heard the whole story one incredible night in Dallas-Fort Worth from Murray Jay Siskind, watching him chop garlic with a four-inch Wüsthof that he carries coast to coast for that purpose.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  In a memoir, which comes from the Latin for memory, no big surprise, I don’t think you can capture all the minute-by-minute excitement. Hockey is so fast it’s practically nonlinear. What I have in mind is a book that’s slow and sunlit and kind of meadowy. Reflections and meditations. I think my experience in the National Hockey League lends itself to some major thematic material.

  Not that I intend to slink away from the physical issues. Murray Jay says athletes are people with bodies. Whatever that means, I don’t want to overlook it. It is probably safe to say that except for homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals, no athlete has discussed the intimate details of his or her life with the kind of refreshing candor I plan to use in the pages ahead.

  Athletes are searchers for meaning. Behind the easygoing facades and the put-down humor, we are all a little restless with our lot. The games we play are sometimes beautiful. But there is more to life, and also less, as I think this book will demonstrate.

  ONE

  I Am a Jumper

  1

  It was Wadi Assad who wrote: “What must the child wonder about his elders when he sees they are so big—yet the size of betel nuts compared to the elephant?”

  I know this kind of stuff aggravates some people. But Wadi Assad’s books were pretty comforting, and not just for me. Most of the guys on the team were reading either The Mystic Prince I, The Barefoot Rose, or The Romance of Being. It was my agent, Floss Penrose, who first got me interested in Wadi Assad.

  I thought Floss, being a players’ agent, would be a whippy little woman who chain-smokes and says fuck, fuck, fuck over the phone all day. What I found was a shy, frightened person. She was about forty-five years old and tremendously petite. Her office was in a midtown Manhattan skyscraper that had a curving, swooping glass facade, like an incredibly high, steep, sliding pond. It was my second time ever in New York.

  “The Rangers are ready to sign,” she said. “God, you must be terrified. I confess the worst moment was when they acquired your rights. That sealed it right there. When a team Like the Rangers, with their resources, makes that kind of move, you know they mean business. I literally woke up choking last night. Tension makes me choke.”

  She put her hand to her throat. Then she went over to the small table range in a corner of the room and began making soup. Outside the rain was lashing down.

  “The numbers are acceptable,” she said. “They’ve made an offer commensurate with your box office appeal.”

  “What about commensurate with my abilities?”

  “That was figured in as well. I don’t miss much.”

  “Do they want to bring me up to the big club?”

  “Immediately,” she said.

  “I think I’m ready.”

  “If it were me, I’d change my name and go live in some little flat on the teeming Lower East Side.”

  “I think I can skate with them. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

  “Cleo, you sweet, dimply, doe-eyed baby.”

  “Huh?”

  “Skating is the least of it. You’ll be in the smoky lights day and night. People will press against you. And watching. They’ll always be watching. How I despise visual scrutiny.”

  She gave me soup and crackers and went to sit on a large, black sectional sofa, wrapping herself in a lambskin coat.

  “I would die a thousand times rather than face that horde of newspeople tomorrow.”

  “What happens tomorrow?”

  “The signing. The news conference in the Ranger offices at Madison Square Garden. I’d rather be force-fed day-old bread.” Pause. “Anxiety makes it hard for me to swallow.”

  “Floss, I’ve done all this. It’s not hard.”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “It’s not easy, but it’s not hard.”

  “You’ve done it in Kitchener,” she said. “We’re talking about New York, New York. It’s so awesome we say it twice. It’s like the tail end of a prayer. The priest turns to the congregation and he spreads his arms out wide and he says, ‘New York.’ And the congregation answers, ‘New York.’ And then everybody gets up and goes home because there’s obviously nothing left to say.”

  “I’ve done it about six times in six cities. I’m always the first woman, and there’s always a news conference.”

  “You’ve done it in Grand Rapids, Michigan, i
n someplace-or-other, Manitoba. It’s one thing to do it in the Land of the Midnight Sun. It’s one thing to do it north of the Arctic Circle in continuous daylight or continuous dark. The Rangers play the Black Hawks on Tuesday, in New York, New York, under the smoky lights, and they want you in uniform. Eighteen thousand glandular people and countless other thousands in front of TV sets and they’ll all be looking, looking.”

  She sat there trembling. I was beginning to think I was supposed to go out there naked to the waist with a slain calf slung over my shoulder. We talked about the contract and speaking engagements and endorsements. Then she went to the desk and took a small, thin volume out of the bottom drawer.

  “You’ll need this, Cleo. It is a book by Wadi Assad. It will give you spiritual comfort, especially during those long, empty, terrifying road trips when you spend endless hours in hotel rooms, motel rooms, airport terminals, or walking the streets of our frightening inner cities, or trying to figure out where you are in one of those strange, trackless areas where satellite cities and bedroom communities and suburbs all overlap and where the developers tend to build sports arenas these days, my God, you’ll need this book. Wadi Assad writes the kind of books that, when you meet someone who’s read them, you know you’ve found a friend for life. How many writers can you say that about?”

  When it comes to contact sports, the male argument always ends the same way: “What about her poor, floppy, delicate breasts?”

  They think breasts are the ultimate burden. Breasts are the visible sign of our pathos. Well, you saw and heard what happened if you were watching the late news on TV that night, how this reporter from the print media asked me, with a kind of lemon-sucking look on his face, the way they look when they know they are being obnoxious and stupid, what about my highly vulnerable upper body, because after all this is a contact sport and it gets awfully rough out there, and how I answered, “You wear a jock for your lower plumbing, I wear pads for my upper.”

  Everybody was at the conference, including anchor people, I’m told, who don’t usually cover sports, as well as the commissioner down from Montreal; all the Garden brass; all of Hughes Tool’s top people; many, many network executives; nine people from Time Inc. alone; tastemakers from the Sunday supplements; hockey people from Russia, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia; executives from other sports including boxing, basketball, and baseball (it is only a matter of time); plus a lot of famous women athletes; some males of the same stripe; and a huge, raging, swelling mass of print reporters, TV reporters, radio commentators, cameramen, soundmen, lighting technicians, and various bespectacled creatures on the supervisory level. UPI sent a lesbian.

  The Garden president, James Kinross, asked me into his office after the news conference. With him was the Rangers’ general manager, Sanders Meade. I felt a little foolish because I was still wearing the mostly blue road jersey—the photographers wanted me to pose in it—over a pair of dark green pants, with my black and tan silk scarf visible at the neck.

  “We’re nearly to midseason,” Sanders said, looking at his watch, “but we didn’t think there was any point in waiting. The team needs new blood, I don’t mean that the way it sounds, and we think you can do the job centering for Fergie and Gord. They’re rink-wise vets who will help you adjust.”

  Kinross wasn’t interested in details. He was a big-ticket item—a large, jowly, slumping, pouchlike man with shaky hands and a voice with enough rasp in it to fell trees. Naked in his hot bath, he must have looked like an envelope of corn coming to a boil.

  “That was the media,” he told me. “I felt like blasting away with a burp gun. Welcome to the Garden, Birdwell.”

  “Why do they call it the Garden?”

  “What do I look like, the fuggin Answer Man?”

  “Well, it certainly doesn’t resemble any garden I’ve ever seen.”

  “A lady from Saginaw, Michigan, writes: ‘Dear Mr. Answer Man, why do stars twinkle?’ Hell, I don’t know why they call it the Garden. Sanders, why do they call it the Garden?”

  “I don’t know, but I can tell you why stars twinkle. I’ve known that since my first summer camp.”

  “God bless the simpleminded elite of the world,” Kinross said. “Sanders, you’re so fuggin refreshing I may stop shaving with menthol.”

  He hit the desk, laughing violently at his own joke.

  “Well, will I take a regular shift?” I said.

  “At this juncture,” Sanders said, “we’re projecting a regular shift for the first two periods.”

  As Sanders and I chatted about my playing time, Kinross shifted massively in his chair.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked me.

  “A small Scotch.”

  “Sanders, get me and the lady a brace of Johnnie Reds, why don’t you? A’boy. God bless.”

  We drank and talked. Kinross suggested I remove the team jersey, and when my head emerged I saw him watching me with a look so openly, sadly, forlornly lustful that I wanted to capture it on film and blow it up to poster size.

  “Hell shit, the chief exec ought to drink with his men once in a while. Sanders, what are you doing?”

  “Making notes on the press conference.”

  “You’re not drinking,” Kinross said in his mouth-twisting rasp. “Where’s your glass? Get yourself a drink. We’re here to drink, Sanders. We don’t want any kibitzers. Either you drink with the rest of us or you go over to Orange Julius and drink over there.”

  “I will drink, Jim. I was about to get myself a drink. I just wanted to make these notes while the salient points were still fresh in my mind.”

  “I respect you for what you are, Sanders, you fuggin miserable Ivy League hard-on. Let me know when your testicles descend, I want to have a coming-out party.”

  When Kinross finished coughing, laughing, hitting the desk, and turning dangerously red, he asked me about my views on life in general.

  “All I want to do is play hockey,” I told him.

  “Tell you the truth, Birdwell, I hate hockey. It’s a fuggin shit-ass game for my money. You don’t have a black or Hispanic element. It doesn’t reflect the urban reality. Who wants to see two white guys hit each other? The violence has no bite to it. It’s not relevant. It doesn’t reflect the streets, and I come from the streets.”

  “It reflects the Canadian streets. It’s a Canadian game. It reflects ice and snow, that’s what it reflects.”

  “Well and good. I understand that. But this is New York, New York. Where’s the fuggin criminal element? Who do we root for? Escapist violence is all right in the movies. But this is live. Real people swinging sticks. Without any relevance, it’s kind of disgusting. If it doesn’t reflect the streets, you wonder what these guys are doing it for. What’s the point? Sanders, are you drinking or what?”

  “I will drink, Jim. I definitely plan to drink.”

  “You’re okay, Sanders, God love you, we’ve been through some tough campaigns together, battling the media and so forth, and you do more than your share of work, and what’s more you do it without complaint, and I respect you as a human being, Sanders, God bless, all kidding aside, you’re a sweet-natured man. But I understand you’re still single, which either means you not only look half-faggy but you perform the foul acts—or you’re getting so much pussy you’re gonna upset the office staff with your musky aroma. We’re part of a giant corporation here. Hughes fuggin Tool wants normal outlets for their employees’ animal urges and the animal urges of dependents. They’re not ready for fags in the front office and they don’t want guys who get more pussy than the national median. They’re already fuggin aghast at what goes on around here.”

  Sanders said, “As far as the gay business, Jim, be assured I’m not in that ballpark, barring a few prep school episodes that were, at most, ambiguous. Marriage is definitely in my plans, although I haven’t done any specific targeting to date.”

  A look my way. What’s the Latin for insipid?

  “Well
, I happen to fuggin hate it if somebody’s not drinking when I’m drinking. It’s like having a midget in the room.”

  Sanders and I glanced at each other, wondering what he meant by that.

  “I will drink, Jim. I want to drink.”

  “When people get together to drink, they don’t like any kibitzing going on. Either you drink or you fuggin depart. We don’t want onlookers to our drinking, Birdwell and me.”

  Sanders Meade shrugged and left, taking the Ranger jersey with him.

  “What number you wearing?” Kinross asked me.

  “I’ve had ten for the last three years, but Bruce McLeod has ten, so they’re giving me fourteen, which is the nearest unoccupied number. Sort of a nothing number, isn’t it?”

  “Hell, you want ten, I’ll get you ten.”

  “That would not be a good idea, Mr. Kinross.”

  “Favoritism to the fairer sex, I get it. The troops mutiny, we’re off to a fuggin shit-ass start.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You happy with the money? That agent of yours is a little fuggin crazy, you know. We don’t know what to make of that agent of yours around here.”

  “She’s used to tennis players and people in tennis. I think all her other clients are tennis.”

  “That must be a rough game, that tennis. Even in those pitty-pat dresses.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She fuggin wept is what she did. She sat right in that chair trembling and weeping.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nobody fuggin knows. She was incoherent. I had Hughes Tool in here. They were sitting right in that chair and that chair and that chair, and this little bitty thing is crying into her fingers. You think these guys don’t start shooting hooded looks at each other? Of course they shoot looks. These people are multidiversified only three months. They don’t know about this whole tremendous realm of sports artistry and sports temperment and so forth. It is like outer space to these guys. These are guys who have sex fantasies about oil drilling equipment. She’s sitting there with her fingers in her mouth, bawling and shaking.”