Like a lot of you probably do, I subscribe to
Don Cherry's highly enjoyable "Grapeline" podcast from Fan 590. Coach Cherry is always entertaining, has a rich repertoire of great hockey war stories from his long career as a player and coach, and a generally winning personality. Some days it's fun just to hear his broadcast partner, the polished and professional Brian Williams, struggle to get Grapes to shut up in time for the perfunctory commercial breaks.
I don't always agree with Coach Cherry, which is to be expected. He probably doesn't always agree with himself. His continuing bias against European players, for example, is rightfully long out of fashion. But in March 27th's episode, one of a series of broadcasts about fighting in the game, he posited a political angle to the fighting debate that was just plain dumb.
"Most of the media," he said, explaining why so many people criticize fighting in hockey, "is left-wing." And "the one thing I wonder, though, with these wusses is, you know, their kids. And most kids really, you know, like fights. And they hear their dads being wusses, 'we don't like fighting, we don't like violence.' I'm thinking: holy smokes, if anybody ever breaks in the house, who's gonna protect his house? This wuss gonna protect us? Unbelievable!"
I feel uniquely qualified to answer this question. I'm as far to the left as they come down here in the U.S., but I think the effort to eliminate fighting from hockey is woefully misguided. Coach Cherry can't seem to imagine such an ideology — and he'd probably be even more perplexed by my very-conservative father-in-law (gun owner, FOX News watcher, the whole deal) who doesn't care for Don's and my favorite sport: too violent.
If I were Coach Cherry's next-door neighbor, he and I would probably never touch a single common lever in the neighborhood voting booth, but we agree perfectly about this: hockey fights aren't just an exciting part of the game that gets the fans and players fired up; they also keep the game safer for the skilled players everyone goes to the rink to watch.
One argument for banning fights from the NHL is that players who tussle expose themselves to the risk of serious head injury. And — while combatants in hockey fights are on skates, making their scuffles much less dangerous than fights in parking lots, bars or high schools — that's true, to a point. But what seems much more dangerous to me and, apparently, to Coach Cherry, is the risky style of dirty play that can proliferate when teams' tough guys are prohibited from enforcing justice against an player who hits from behind, or gets his stick up on his opponents. That kind of thing carries a
real risk of injury, and it's exactly what the occasional bout of righteous fisticuffs can prevent.
Plus, fights are fun to watch. But here's where Coach Cherry's argument breaks down: where he pretends to understand the "liberal's" attitude toward violence generally. Violence in the real world between criminals and crime victims is entirely different from violence in sport between willing participants. If it weren't, I don't think I'd enjoy sports very much, and neither, I daresay, would Don Cherry.
Don: liberal though I may be, I would try to tear an intruder's throat out with my bare hands and teeth if it meant protecting my family. That doesn't begin to imply that I think throat-ripping would be fun, or make for good entertainment during stoppages in play. I don't, and neither (I hope) do you. The argument about fighting in hockey is between people who care for the sport and people who do not. Not between Right and Left.
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