By Clark DeLeon
That was some nail-biter of a game down at Broad and Pattison over the weekend, wasn’t it?
Whew!
All the Philadelphia fans thought we had this one wrapped up but then – boom! – on came the bad guys in the final minutes and then . . . well, do we have to have our hearts in our throats every time we watch these guys play?
Then again, I guess it goes with the territory. Especially in a game like this with everything on the line. After all, only one team can emerge victorious, and this time it was Philadelphia thanks to that all-pro move by Gary Gait in the final seconds.
Gary Gait?
You know, he’s half of the Gait brothers (Paul’s the other half) and they’re members of the Philadelphia Wings of the Major Indoor Lacrosse League, which happens to be the last professional sports team in this city to have actually won a league championship.
That was in 1990 when the Wings whacked the New England Blazers at the Centrum in Worcester, Mass., to repeat as MILL champs during a season in which upward of 16,000 fans packed the Spectrum every time the Wings played at home.
On Saturday night a more modest crowd of 7,000 showed up to watch the Wings play the Pittsburgh Bulls in an exhibition game that was meaningless except for the fact that it mattered a lot. That is, it mattered if bragging rights in the state of Pennsylvania mean anything.
The Wings emerged as the rightful owners of the Governor’s Cup in the first annual competition between the two pro lacrosse teams representing the two metropolises in the commonwealth. The Wings led comfortably until the third period, when the Bulls mounted a six-goal comeback that tied the score at 12 with a minute-thirty-nine remaining. It took another 36 seconds for Gary Gait to score what would be the winning Wings goal, but Spectrum fans were sweating the outcome until the final seconds as much as Eagles fans did the next day.
One difference between the two sporting events was that the professional athletes competing on the north side of Pattison Avenue were being paid tens of thousands of dollars for that day’s performance, while the Wings were being paid tens of tens. MILL players pull in three, maybe four hundred dollars per game.
Another difference was that the first annual Governor’s Cup game was played without the governor or any other Pennsylvania state official in attendance. (Imagine who’d be there if the Eagles and Steelers were playing a pre- season game for the state title.)
No matter, Wings general manager Mike French gamely took the Spectrum floor after the national anthem to read the Official Proclamation from Gov. Casey. ”I knew it was going to involve me getting booed,” said French of his official reading of the official proclamation. “It didn’t take long. First of all, as soon as you mention a political figure, that’s good for a boo. Then, I’m part of management: that’s good for a boo. And finally, I was the guy holding up the action.”
In Philadelphia, that’s like hitting the boobird trifecta.
Just imagine if the Wings had lost.
(Philadelphia Inquirer, December 22, 1992)