I love ice hockey. I care not for football, I can take or leave basketball, I have but a casual interest in baseball, but I love ice hockey. Until I was ten years old, I could not tell a goal line from a conga line. But then I moved to a different neighborhood and found that all the boys in the new area were hockey fans. Instantly I took a liking to the sport, and instantly I became a fan of the New York Rangers. I am loyal to the team to this day.
As a teenager, I played roller hockey in the streets of Brooklyn, New York. I was a defenseman and wore jersey number 2 for Brad Park, then a player for the Rangers whose "offensive defenseman" style was very much like my own. On our local roller hockey team, I was alternate captain. Our captain was Barry Meisel, who, after a stint as a hockey writer, now runs a sports memorabilia company. He and I built our team's nets from a pile of found lumber, a can of red spray paint and a roll of used chicken wire. Our goaltender, affectionately known as "Red Light" Rudofsky, wore, for goalie pads, ragged throw pillows covered by plastic car mats and fastened with old leather belts. We were resourceful, if not talented. I never played ice hockey, as I was not a particularly good ice skater and besides, one didn't have to rent a rink and travel to it by bus and subway to "shoot around" on roller skates in the street.
Traditionally, to be a Ranger fan is to suffer, and until 1994, suffer I did. All Ranger fans know of "The Curse," a evil spell cast upon the Rangers in 1940 that had not only kept the team from winning a championship, but had also caused them to torture their fans with second-place, last minute injury, overtime loss, bad bounce, heartbreaking finish, we came oh so close, wait 'til next year seasons for 54 agonizing years. I personally experienced 25 of those years. All the sweeter when, on June 14, 1994, the Rangers won the Stanley Cup and then-Captain Mark Messier (pictured above) caressed the blessed grail, hoisted it above his head and carried it triumphantly around an electrified Madison Square Garden. A sign held up by a fan and captured by a television camera spoke for millions of Ranger fans: "Now we can die in peace."
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