By Larry McMullen, Philadelphia Daily News: August 22nd, 1974
John Grant came loping down the floor of the Spectrum. Grant is 6-feet-6’i inches tall and weighs 200 pounds. He was a frightened crane dodging the sticks that were being swung at him by the members of the Rochester Griffins. They chopped at Grant as though they were using axes.
Grant darted through the sticks and pivoted and suddenly he was 20 feet in front of the Rochester goal. He held his arms high over his head. The white, hard rubber ball nestled in the net at the end of his stick. And still they chopped at him, the Griffins’ sticks crashing into his side.
The crowd was standing and screaming now, peaking on a jag that continued without interruption for the entire game.
GRANT SWUNG HIS ARMS to the left and the Griffins followed his motion. Grant’s stick kept coming around until it was behind his neck. The ball was released then and it was caught by Larry Lloyd, who was standing off to Grant’s right side. The Griffins were caught going the other way by Grant’s behind-the-neck pass and Lloyd simply bounced the ball into the goal for a score for the Philadelphia Wings.
All through Grant’s long charge down floor, the crowd of 8,000 had been screeching and oohing and aahing, which is normal behavior at a game of box lacrosse. With Grant’s pass and the gcal by Lloyd, they went delirious.
A few minutes later, Lloyd became tangled with the Griffins’ Tom Phair against the boards. They were punching at each other but they were too close to be effective so Lloyd began leaping into the air and coming down with his fists on the top of Phair’s head.
“TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH,’’ the Wings’ Carm Collins was to say later, “tonight’s game wasn’t that exciting.’’
Collins might have given a small clue to the secret of the success of the first-year Wings, who are playing an Indian game far from the reservations. Jack Bionda, the Wings’ general manager, was less subtle.
“Lacrosse is an action game,’’ he said. “We live in a fast, violent world.’’
Jack Bionda is 40 and retired from playing the game but the people who know say he might have been the best of all time. His face is marked with the fury of box lacrosse.
“I was never injured playing,” said Bionda. “Oh, I busted my hand once and my nose was broken 12 times but I was never hurt.”
Everybody talks about the game’s violence. Fouls are called just before the police riot squad is brought in. But there is an amazing grace to lacrosse as it is played in the arenas.
Bionda told of the time an Indian tribe played lacrosse outside a fort in upper New York State. The soldiers and civilians inside the fort became so interested in the game, they forgot themselves and opened the gates so they could go out and watch. What followed, of course, was a massacre. There was nobody left to call a foul.
