By Mark Bowden, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
“. . . And, starting for the New York Saints, number three, Mark Millon.”
“SUCKS!” – a roar that rattles even the din-seasoned walls of the Spectrum.
“Number five, Tim McIntee.”
“SUCKS!” – a roar that buzzes the silver in 20-year-old Dan Haley’s molars. (He’s just one row behind the Philadelphia Wings bench, knickerbocker cap screwed on backward.)
“Number nine, Gordon Purdie.”
“SUCKS!” –
And so on, right down the roster last night, as Philadelphia, this city known for rough love from the cheap seats, greets each and every member of the Saints in the opening round of the 1994 Major Indoor Lacrosse League playoffs against – you probably didn’t know this – the most way cool, totally awesome sports franchise in the city (and the only one right now with a winning record).
“Lord, man, it’s brutal,” said Haley, approvingly, shortly before his team, the guys in silver and black, threw home 17 goals (and allowed just seven) to advance to Buffalo next weekend for the MILL championship.
They used to call this box lacrosse, which is like calling Pearl Jam folk singers. The roughly 13,000 highly motivated Wings fans who started lining up in the pouring rain outside the Spectrum doors an hour before game time last night came here for something else.
Call it the world’s first interactive sporting event, Rocky Horror Picture Show meets big-league tag-team brawl ball – with sticks!
It’s part rock concert, part competition, and while it may be inappropriate to call a well-kept secret a team that routinely crowds the Spectrum and reaches . . . well, at least hundreds of thousands on ESPN2, the city’s 6- year-old pro lacrosse team may just offer the most fun any Philadelphia fan has had indoors since the Flyers were last considered a threat seven years ago.
“It’s like the Flyers used to be,” said Beth Quay, 36, who drove in yesterday from Phoenixville with her sister, Amy, and took up seats just two rows behind the Wings’ bench.
“It’s crazy. The game moves so fast, especially since they dropped the shot clock down from 45 seconds to 30 seconds. It never lets up. I like hockey, but the Flyers games get quiet by comparison.”
“I like it because it’s really rough,” said Brian Smith, 12, who has season tickets and has played a role in introducing the game to the streets of the Northeast.
“Bone-crushing hitting,” said his friend, 13-year-old Justin Colantonio. ”God, they’re fun. Totally cool.”
Drawn by the violence, most fans get hooked by the truly amazing artistry of the players, masters of a game that originated with American Indians and, until cable TV stumbled on to it a few years ago, was all but unknown outside of Maryland, Long Island and parts of Canada.
Paul and Gary Gait, for instance, the Wings’ husky, identical buck-toothed 27-year-old Canadian stars, were considered the greatest stickmen ever to play the game when they starred at the University of Syracuse in the late ’80s.
Gary Gait invented lacrosse’s version of the slam dunk. It happened in one brilliant moment in a 1988 NCAA semifinal playoff game against the University of Pennsylvania.
Moving behind the four-foot steel-frame box-lacrosse goal, from where it had been considered impossible to score, Gait leaped, swooped his stick in a roundhouse chop over the upper rim of the goal, and jammed the little hard rubber ball into the net.
“We came up with it just fooling around in practice,” he said, “and then I tried it in the game and it worked.”
With their dazzling stick work, flicking passes, and goals behind their backs and over their shoulders, the Gait brothers are now pioneering their sport at the pro level.
Last night, Gary Gait scored six goals, four shy of the league record of 10 in a single game, set by (who else?) Paul Gait. Last night, Paul Gait had four.
They are both still making a few hundred dollars a game, although by working full time for STX Lacrosse Equipment, in design and promotions, they are pioneering the sport at the pro level.
“Lacrosse has grown a lot, and it’s happening fast,” said Paul Gait, pulling on a flak jacket and helmet and other assorted protective gear before last night’s game. “We’re just hoping it comes fast enough for us to capitalize on it before we’re too old to play.”
“The league has been great for us just because it’s given us somewhere to take our skills when we leave college,” said team captain Scott Gabrielsen, 28, who played college lacrosse at the University of Vermont and now works as a real estate broker for The Binswanger Co. – not in the off-season, mind you, full time. “I make $300 to $400 a game now, but mostly I play, we all do, because we love it.”
It is the only pro sport, for instance, where action is stopped to allow Gabrielsen’s father, Bill, a.k.a. “Big Gabe,” a broad-bellied, white-haired man in a blue oxford shirt, tie and wide red suspenders, to descend the steps, lead the crowd in a “W!-I!-N!-G!-S!” cheer.
Crowd noise rarely stops, from the sound effects that accompany Katie Toner, clad in a tight black miniskirt, as she sings the national anthem – ”Psssssh,” go the rockets, then, “BAM!” – to the wailing guitar music that plays throughout the action.
With the soundtrack blaring, the crowd emoting, the giant video screens replaying big plays and past highlights (the most popular of which are, of course, vicious hits and player brawls), it’s a multimedia, MTV-style sporting event that looks tantalizingly like . . . the future.
Or, as 18-year-old Joe Epright of Upper Darby put it last night, “Man, it’s rapid.”
(Philadelphia Inquirer, April 11, 1994)