From Where I Sit WHERE HAVE ALL THE HEROES GONE?
	MAY 2005

by Richard Koscher, Publisher

Throughout all the years of my childhood, I would spend school breaks every winter playing hockey on a frozen lake in a small town called Viktring in the southern part of Austria. I loved playing hockey and would bring two sandwiches and a thermos of hot tea every morning to join a number of kids on the lake. We would from dawn to dusk. I followed that schedule every day during my winter breaks, as well as any other school holiday time. The happy hours I spent on that frozen lake remain among the most cherished of my childhood memories. 

As a teen I played for seven year in a municipal hockey league myself while loyally rooting for my home team in the talented Austrian national league. My boyhood heroes were all hockey players. I especially loved to watch a guy named Thomas Cijan play. I wanted to be able to play hockey with the grace and passion that marked Cijan’s life on the ice. Tommie played every game as though his life depended upon it! He wouldn’t give up even when his team was hopelessly behind. He fought with his whole heart until the final buzzer. He was a great player and an even better role model!  

To a kid growing up in Europe, actually being able to see an NHL game was beyond even dreams and fancies. However, our local newspaper occasionally printed news about the NHL and always printed the box scores. I became an NHL fan before I had any hope of getting within 5,000 miles of an actual game.

I eventually moved to Brentwood and became an immediate fan of the San Jose Sharks. I attended a number of games and even sponsored a 110° Magazine company trip to one of the games. Our plans to make this an annual tradition were dashed by the most tragic event — or series of events — in the history of the NHL. Even the attempts of the greatest player who ever lived, Wayne Gretzky, to stop the lockout were futile against a set of players who would rather destroy the game than to give in on their demands. One young fan expressed the sentiments of a lot of us when he wrote to Gary Bettman, the NHL Commissioner, “Mr. Bettman, I play for free.” Right! Some of us just love hockey; we just love the game.

None of us fans can understand why executives and players couldn’t work out a solution to save the game. Greed is one explanation that springs immediately to our mind. Some of these players get paid more every week than the president of the United States earns in a year. Surely the players could have settled the strike and found some way to make do with their lousy $100,000+ salary every week if they had been motivated by anything other than greed. The hockey players, themselves, often are defective role models. Mike Danton, forward with the St. Louis Blues, is going to prison for hiring a hit man to knock off his old coach. Danton says he’s still planning to resume his hockey career when he finishes his 7 1/2 year prison term.

Of course, hockey players aren’t the only professional athletes who can be accused of participating in sports in a context seemingly free of positive values. We were all subjected over and over again to the scene of brawling basketball players, all of whom were millionaires many times over, leaping into stands to wreak vengeance on fans who had provoked them. Did Kobe Bryant rape that young woman? Did Bonds take steroids?

I grew up with better heroes than kids have today. Real men taught me by example to play the game of hockey and, by extension, the game of life — with style and with passion. Even today when I face some challenge I remember that Thomas Sijan played his game clean and hard. He never gave up. Where would I be today, I wonder, if Tommy had given me messages like the ones kids get today? “Take advantage of every chance, whether ethical or not; whether right or wrong.” “Nice guys finish last.” “Take care of Number One no matter what!” Or “It’s all about the money, Stupid!”

I don’t know what would have happened to me if I had taken as role-models people with these kinds of attitudes. I’m glad I never had to find out.