Hari's Place

With his usual shameless mealy-mouthedness, commissioner Gary Bettman announced yesterday that Todd Bertuzzi has been reinstated to play in the National Hockey League. As all hockey fans know, Bertuzzi was suspended indefinitely late in the 2003-04 season for an act of shocking barbarism and stupidity even by NHL standards: the sucker-punching from behind and subsequent pummeling and symbolic sodomization at centre ice of the semi-conscious body of Steve Moore, Colorado Rockies forward and Ivy League graduate.

After missing a playoff season in which the Canucks had little chance of victory, and missing out on an extended European vacation playing mediocre hockey during the season-long NHL lockout, Bertuzzi has been deemed to have endured "appropriate discipline" and is now free to start earning his US $5.3 million annual salary. The lockout was actually a bit of good luck for Bertuzzi and the Canucks, owing to a condition in the plea-bargain his lawyers struck with the courts concerning the charges precipitated by his attack: upon pleading guilty to assault causing bodily harm he was sentenced to a year's probation and 80 hours of community service, and enjoined "not engage in any sporting activity involving Mr. Moore as a participant." Imagine what would have happened if the Canucks and Rockies had met in the playoffs (a far from improbable eventuality), and a reinstated Bertuzzi was obliged to sit in the pressbox while Colorado cunningly sat Moore at the end of the bench - which is about all they would have been able to do since Moore, now an unrestricted free agent, has injuries arising from the "Bertuzzi Bushwhack" that will likely prevent him from ever playing in the NHL again.

There is, of course, a law suit going forward concerning this matter in the Colorado courts - but we all know these things tend to drag on, especially in the USA (Moore's camp seems to have made some rather bizarre choices of defendants, including a player, Brad May, who now plays for Rockies). For a true hockey fan, however, no amount of legal bullshit can compensate for the fact that what Bertuzzi did was gutless, wacko and totally out of keeping with the code of honour that has ruled the game from time immemorial. As might have been expected from someone with a decent education on and off the ice, Moore obeyed that code during his first return to Vancouver following his dramatic but entirely legitimate collision with Canuck captain Marcus Naslund on Feb. 16, 2004, when he fought Vancouver journeyman Matt Cooke in the first period. This was, however, not enough for Bertuzzi, who driven by his own warped sense of responsibility - and no doubt goaded by the fact his team was being waxed by Colorado 8 to 2 - launched his infamous attack midway through the third period. The rest, as theysay, is history.

But is the hockey fans' sense of honour history? Do we have to put up with the travesty of this brainless goon being turned loose on the ice while his victim languishes in a medical-legal hell? Are we going to cheer when this troglodyte is invited to once again suit up in the hallowed red and white of the greatest national team the sport has ever seen? For shame, I say! For shame! But what to do? The events of the last year have proven conclusively that the NHL has totally been given over to rogues and scallywags, but a year of watching non-hockey has also been enough to prove to most fans that no other sport comes close to capturing the flow, beauty, drama and urgency of that ballet on ice with wooden (or aluminum, or graphite) sticks. Hockey needs its fans back, but it has misguidedly decided that it also needs uncouth defilers like Bertuzzi, so what is a conscientious observer to do?

For the answer we can go back to another incident from the dim mists of Canadian sports history. During the 1963 Grey Cup, Hamilton Tiger-Cats lineman Angelo Mosca collided with the fleet legs of B.C. Lions star running back Willie Fleming in what many watching thought to be a late and deliberate out-of-bounds hit, although the replay showed that Mosca was completely committed to making the tackle before Fleming was bumped out of bounds by another player. Fleming was forced to leave the game, and for the rest of Mosca's career he was hounded by fans in Vancouver and other cities who would chant "Mosca Eats Bananas," hold up banners reiterating their chants, and hurl the aforementioned yellow-crescent fruits in his general direction.

Granted, the parallels between this incident and the Bertuzzi Bushwhack are rather superficial. Most notably, while both Willie Fleming and Angelo Mosca ended up in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, barring the extensive distribution of Whistler Hydroponic weed to the voters the only way Moore and/or Bertuzzi will get ever into the NHL equivalent will be by buying a ticket. There is, nevertheless, a certain Gandhian simplicity to the treatment "Big Ange" received from irate football fans, and the fact that Vancouver fans were especially aggrieved makes it ironically apropos that the same mob justice be meted out to the Goon of Orca Bay. And so, without further ado, we announce the "Bananas for Bertuzzi" campaign.

You know what to do.

P.S. Plastic bananas show much better on TV than the real thing.