YOUTH, PETER FINCH, AND THE PEAKO POWER PLAY

      Few things set fire to the heart and buoy the anima like professional sports.  For CP, this means the Flyers of Philadelphia, the ragtag group of never-do-wells who built their reputation and menace in the Seventies by beating people to death on the ice and sacrificing their victims to their orange and black wargods and riding this blitzkrieg to two Stanley Cup victories.  Since then the team has been marred with constant playoff underachievement, the specter of Lindros, and goaltending that almost defines the meaning of pedestrian (in hockey goaltending terms at least).  Carmen is a gargantuan opponent of sports fans using the first-person plural when referring to their team of choice (e.g. I can't believe we managed to sign Cory Lidle.  We might be able to salvage this season, if Joey Cora ever gets off the D.L.), but he can understand it.

     The single greatest sports moment of CP's short life came during Game 6 of the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals.  Facing elimination, down 4-2 with two and one half minutes remaining, hope was waning.  Uncle Frankie was destitute.  Then came a penalty, an inconsequential tripping call.  Unfortunately for the Lightning of Tampa Bay, then Flyer Captain Kieth Primeau was about to unleash a soul-shredding maelstrom of pads and wrist shots.  This happens in sports, when one player dials in, enters the metaphorical zone, where every little contact sends the contactee flying off in wild vectors, where every tennis ball smacked rockets to consequential corners laced with top spin, where one can launch three-pointers from the Dolphin and watch the ball wisp through the netting silently and gorgeously, where through the smells of freshly cut outfield grass and rawhide you can make out the seams of the ball coming off the bat and sprint towards the green expanse and snowcone the fly in a full run and rolling the ball back to the pitchers mound feels like you don't even know.  

       On that night, Kieth Primeau, for once, played with mythological furor, working off the stadium's stentorian roar, Peter Finch's mad extortions of window screaming frustration, scoring twice in that two minute span to knot the game as the third came to an end.  Then he scored the game winner in a scant OT, and the entire stadium exploded into hysterics, and father's and son's and men and women and time and space and right and wrong came together in brilliant, gleaming radiance of a moment that belonged to everyone in that stadium and no one at all.

The Flyers flew down to Tampa Bay the next day and lost 2-1 in an uneventful Game 7.  The Lightning then went on to handily defeat a tired Calgary team.  CP did not care.  By that time, he had seen the Flyers lose more times than he cares to enumerate, most times simply imploding before his eyes, right there on the ice, much to the infuriation of Big Gun and all the slurring people that call up the AM station after the games to bemoan God and fate.  Sadly, sports have subtly sank under the mire of statistics, categorical knowledge, and an unflinching obsession with the past.  Moments like the Flyers and Game 6 get lost in the fold.  In ten years time, especially with the disintegrating popularity of the NHL, no one will remember that game, or Keith Primeau's heroics, or the car-top celebrations afterwards, or the rippling, impossibly pleasant sleep CP had on the car-ride home as his Dad and Uncle laughed and joked at the lunatics calling in to rave at AM 610.  And after seeing six out of seven "experts" predict the Flyers to lose handily in the first round this season, Carmen can't help but grasp to the slim rungs of hope's ladder, provided kindly in this manifestation by the King of the Hockey Haircut Barry Melrose, because when Keith Primeau netted that goal and pure victory broke over the city of Philadelphia, every fan knew why they sit through the blowouts and scream like banshees at the television screen and hate the trap defense and they knew being dialed into whatever Keith Primeau was dialed into and completely surrendering yourself to the ferocious, Godly power of it as it takes you away and why you can still love people that refer to their team as we (us).

Unrelated Side-Note: While on the topic of sports, CP feels it important to state that Kobe would wipe the lacquered court with Michael Jordan, even Prime MJ.  Nothing distorts the mind like nostalgia.  Remember that, realistically.