Ron Maclean, the CBC commentator for Hockey Night in Canada, is probably a nice family man, I don’t know him personally. I do know he is very opinionated and thinks that anything that happens west of Ontario is a nuisance and not worth mentioning so I don’t hold him in high regard.
This past weekend, he was on the air prior to the NHL All-Star game, discussing the procedure the players used to choose sides for their pretend hockey game. The process was designed to make it look like a group of kids were picking up players for a game of back yard shinny, and Ron was very concerned that poor Phil Kessel of the Toronto Maple Leafs had to sit there by himself and be the last one chosen.
Now Ron, these guys are all millionaires. They don’t care when they get chosen. For being chosen last, poor Phil got a new car and $20,000 to donate to a charity of his choice. I’m sure this took a bit of the sting out of his degradation.
No doubt Ron has a room full of ‘Participation’ ribbons from his formative years. Somewhere along the way we decided that all children should receive rewards whether they won or not, and that a child’s psyche could be severely damaged by rejection or being branded a loser.
One year we ran a colouring contest for elementary schools during Fire Prevention Week. When we contacted the mother of the winner and told her that her son had won a T-shirt and cap, she asked if she could buy another cap and shirt because her sons were twins and the other one would need one too. I asked if he had entered the contest and she replied no, but it would create problems if he didn’t get a prize as well. I often wonder how those two turned out.
I played soccer, basketball and baseball as a boy and none of them very well. My most serious sports injuries were large slivers received from sliding up and down the benches. I was usually inserted into a game when the team was well ahead or way behind.
In soccer, I was too small to play left defence and too slow to play right forward so I was usually left right out. During a high school basketball game, one of the top forwards hobbled to the bench. The coach yelled, “McGregor, get over here!” I ran the plays through my head eager to fly into the fray. The coach looked me in the eye and said, “He broke his shoe lace, take the lace out of your shoe and give it to him.”
Later in the locker room, we joked about my contribution to the win, and I don’t recall having to go to counselling over the incident.
Then there is the story about the boy who trained hard to make the football team and the coach said, “You will be end, guard and tackle; sit on the end of the bench, guard the water and tackle anyone who comes near it.”
Poor millionaire Phil; I’m sure the thousands of unemployed Canadians getting turned down for jobs every day can empathize with him. If you come last once in awhile, you just learn to try harder.
After all, Phil is a Toronto Maple Leaf, how much farther down the scale can he go?
At least, that’s what McGregor says.