Say It Ten Times, Fast
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I was in Costco the other day and saw a sign for salmon something or other and thought that might be good for a quick lunch. Well, I did until until I saw the picture of a cat on the package.
At the end of June I was reading an on-line article covering the NHL draft and realized why play by play announcers are often committed to homes for the criminally insane within hours of the new guys stepping on the ice. It also helps to explain why Harold Ballard didn’t want any Russians on his team. He couldn’t even write their names on paycheques let alone pronounce them. I never talked to Kenny ‘Jiggs’ McDonald about his mental health after his 50 years of announcing in the NHL. To be honest, I was afraid to bring the subject up. He might have been like Red Skelton’s Cauliflower McPugg, hearing bells and birds all the time and you don’t want to cross a guy like that.
I will name just a few of the dozens of players picked up this year in the draft, there’s roughly 200 of them, Henry Brzustcwicz, Vojtech Cihar, Radim Mrtka, Jakob Ihs-Wozniak, Franceso Dell’Elce, Ilyas Magomedsultanov, Ivan Tkach-Takchenko, (I think Ivan stutters) Mads Kongsbak Klyvo, Elijah Neuenschwander, Bryce Pickford ( I believe he’s Mary’s great-great-grandson) Shamar Moses (if the team ever has to cross a desert he’s the guy I’d pick to lead) Kirill Yemelyanov, and Matous Kucharcik.
There was also an Aiden Foster, Aiden is a cinch to make it to the top and will quite likely be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame after his first year.
Imagine being an announcer with dentures if Brzustcwicz got a breakaway, his lowers would be in his lap and his uppers would be up there with the guys on the roof manning the TV cameras by the time Henry crossed the blue line.
I always thought Foster Hewitt was good and all he ever did was shout “He shoots! he scores!” Danny Gallivan was a great announcer too, maybe better than Foster since Danny had to do the Montreal games with all the French Canadian names, plus he used big words like ‘cannonading’. Getting hit with a puck must hurt but what if it was ‘cannonaded? That sounds like an ambulance ride to the ER to me.
But how would the two of them do today, when every second player has a name with no vowels and is so long it runs up both arms on his jersey and across the back? And we thought Mahovlich was bad. (Incidentally, I spelled Frank’s name wrong and had to look it up. What would I do with Jakob Ihs-Wozniak? Jakob is Swedish, why doesn’t he have a nice easy name like Salming?)
You have to admit, hockey announcing has to be one of the toughest if not the toughest job ever. Brain surgeons have it easy compared to them, sure the docs have to pronounce big words like cerebellum and hypothalamus (whatever they are) but they aren’t skating around someone’s head at 35 miles an hour or 56.32704 Kilometers per hour for you young folks. I doubt even Albert Einstein could do it and he was pretty smart, although he could never find a half-decent barber so maybe he wasn’t quite as brilliant as we thought he was. Personally, I’ve always thought his E=MC² was at best E=MC¹ and maybe not even that much.
I honestly don’t know how play by play announcers do it. Granted I am an old fart and my memory isn’t quite as sharp as it was when I was a lad of 50, but if I was calling an NHL game I would still be working on the first period when the players were boarding the plane for Miami or wherever they were playing the next night.
On the other hand, do we really know they are right? I’ve often suspected TV announcers really don’t know one player from another out there and just toss out a few names hoping no one will notice.
I started to wonder about that after Bill Barilko’s name was mentioned in the Edmonton – Toronto series and Bill died in 1951
(Image Supplied)
