A Hockey Fan's Confession
Jon Ritz
July 1, 2001
On Ash Wednesday of this year I attended an evening service at my church. Sitting quietly alone, I struggled to enter an appropriate frame of mind. All around me silent congregants were immersed in the beautifully somber liturgy, preparing themselves for the spiritual gravity of the upcoming days. Try as I might, though, my mind was elsewhere: this year, a coincidence of the calendar meant that the National Hockey League (NHL) playoffs began during Holy Week. The first games, in fact, were underway that very evening. Head bowed during a moment of prayer, I glanced at my wristwatch, calculating how much I'd already missed. It pains me to admit that, somehow, I have become that kind of sports fan: one who lets his enthusiasm for the game distract him from overwhelmingly more important matters. I'm not sure when it started. There was a long stretch of time, from the end of my years playing Little League until college, when I didn't have any interest in sports. This reached its nadir the year I discovered Jack Kerouac and the other Beats; my disdain for sports seemed an essential part of my renunciation of the crasser aspects of American mass culture. But now, about a decade or so later, I find myself having to explain to friends and colleagues the deep, and let me assure you, very genuine dedication I have somehow come to have for a pro team, the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. This has not come about as some act of personal reinvention-my life has followed a fairly predictable arc, from English major to English professor-but through a series of seemingly innocuous episodes. There is at least one superficial explanation: I grew up in Pittsburgh, still have family and friends there, and return often, so some sort of loyalty to the ...
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