By Clark DeLeon
Nine days ago in this space I made a promise: “By hook or by crook, but probably by bus, I’ll be in Buffalo next Saturday for the Major Indoor Lacrosse League championship game between the Buffalo Bandits and the Philadelphia Wings.”
I’m afraid I broke that promise.
I took an airplane.
“Awwww, Clark, we had a seat for you and everything,” said Lou Orr, transportation superintendent of the Official Philadelphia Wings Fan Club, who called last week to offer a ride on one of two chartered buses that made the 16-hour round trip from Philadelphia to Buffalo followed by several private cars.
All told there were about 200 Wings fans crammed into a pie-shaped section in the upper crust of Buffalo’s Spectrum equivalent, the Aud, where they out- lunged the Bandits fans, who held a 16,175-throat advantage.
You’ve gotta be a little crazy to be a serious Wings fan, which is fine, because crazy is a fairly common mental condition in the franchise from the general manager on down. “You know why we’re going to win the game?” a pumped up Wings general manager Mike French said in the press box before the game. “Because we have better athletes than they do. And because I can kick the crap out of that little general manager of theirs.”
In the weeks building up to the championship showdown between the two best teams in the league, French had fueled the rivalry between the two teams by announcing that there was no way the Wings could lose to the Bandits, who were ”the ugliest team in the league.”
“I mean, have you seen those guys with their helmets off?” French said last week. “I walked into their locker room after one game and I looked around the room. I’m talking mirror-breaking ugly!”
I thought French was only kidding until I saw some of the Bandits with their helmets off. I’m no expert in such matters, but if championships were decided in a team-to-team face-to-face off, the Bandits wouldn’t make the playoffs. Maybe ugly is too strong a word. The Bandits faces I saw had recognizable character. And the characters I recognized were Yosemite Sam and Cheech of Cheech and Chong.
In fact it was Cheech, 37-year-old Bandits forward Kevin Alexander, who stuck it to the Wings both early and late during the championship game. Not only did he score the goal that tied the game at 12-12 with 1:58 remaining, but he made a Cheech move early in the first period that may have cost the Wings the championship.
The AP wire photo that accompanies today’s column shows Wings No. 19 Paul Gait congratulating No. 3 Paul Deniken after the Wings’ first goal Saturday night, which cut the Bandits’ lead to 2-1. Actually, it was Gait who scored the Wings’ first goal just 1 minute and 30 seconds into the game. But that goal was disallowed after Alexander protested to the referees that Gait was using an illegal lacrosse stick, the same stick he had been using all season.
Instead of being awarded a goal, Gait was awarded two minutes in the penalty box and his stick was confiscated. One minute later the Bandits scored. So Alexander’s protest resulted in a two-goal turnaround in a game the Wings would lose by one.
The illegal-stick violation, by the way, was not of the corked-bat variety in baseball. It was on a technicality more like the famous George Brett pine- tar bat incident a few years back. But the significance was of a critical difference. Imagine if Brett’s home run had been disallowed first in the first inning of the seventh game of the World Series.
In the locker room after the Wings’ last-minute 13-12 loss, Gait deadpanned his reaction to Alexander’s protest. “It was no big deal,” he said. “Just a goal and a penalty and a goal.”
“That’s the cheapest call I’ve seen in seven years,” French said.
“I’d never call something like that in a million years,” said coach Dave Evans, who retired Saturday night after six years and four championship game appearances as the Wings’ coach. “I wouldn’t want to win a championship that way.”
I’ve been around Evans long enough to know he means that.
And how’s this for irony? During the postgame party, Alexander made another Cheech move. He approached the Wings’ GM about filling the coaching position Evans was vacating.
“Aren’t you the one who made that illegal-stick protest?” French replied. ”I don’t think I could work with someone who’d make a call like that.”
(Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 1993)