118 Days to Opening Day 2008

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 118 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

Today’s excerpt is from and…HOWE! An authorized autobiography by Gordie and Colleen Howe with Tom DeLisle. This is the story of a hockey legend and his family.

This is how hockey players found out they were traded.

In those days the way you knew you were traded was, if you came in for practice and both pair of your skates had been put under the bench, you were gone. Simple as that. They would phone down and tell Lefty Wilson, our trainer, what players were moving. I remember coming in one day, and seeing that five guys had two pair of skates under the bench. I also saw that one of them was Murray Oliver. It really bothered me because he was a friend, so much so that we had named our youngest son after him.

When the players would come into the dressing room they wouldn’t always notice their skates right away. They weren’t looking. Then Lefty called out five names and said “Jack Adams wants to see you.” I remember Murray broke down and cried. It really devastated him. I tried to console him, and said “Murray, as much as you’re gonna be missed here, you’re going to find new friends in Boston. There are just as many nice guys on every other team, and you’ll be okay.” In a sense I always felt that when a player had a real problem was when he couldn’t be traded. Murray ended up loving Boston and then he got traded from there to Minnesota! It took the heart out of him again, but he ended up enjoying Minnesota, too. In fact he still lives there.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.