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Monday February 12, 2007

Journalist slinks out of the rink with health and dignity intact

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

I bounce the ball off the wall, elbow past the defender, and I’m clear. There’s nothing between me and the goalie but 20 yards of open space — 20 unimpeded, obstacle-free, downright terrifying yards.

I pull the ball forward with my stick and pick up speed like an ungainly boulder rolling down a hill. But here’s the funny thing about trying to manage a breakaway 40 minutes into a hockey game when your only exercise is occasionally chasing down the No. 71 bus — your feverish brain doesn’t have the slightest idea what to tell your body to do, and your body is all too willing to comply.

Attempting to run, handle a five-foot-long stick and then slap a shot by goalie Yossi Offenberg — a Canadian, no less — is far too much to process. Instead I stumble, mishandle the ball and push it meekly toward Offenberg, who pounces on it like a man capturing fireflies in a jar.

And then I plow into his prone body with all the grace of a minivan undergoing a crash test.

On the ride home, Yossi mentions that someone kicked him in the head. I decide not to mention how much my foot hurts.

When I was 17, I bought a Canadien-brand hockey stick emblazoned with the superfluous text “Street Hockey — Hockey de Rue.” I played one game of floor hockey on an indoor gym, ran myself ragged and then blocked an opponent’s slapshot in the most unpleasant manner imaginable. The night before I had conceived the brilliant idea of mixing flat beer with frozen concentrated cranberry juice, and the well-placed slapshot induced me to regret this gem of teenaged wisdom all the more.

That hockey stick was never again put to a more challenging test than flicking balls to our dog, Steve, an honest mutt who positioned himself only 10 or 15 feet away if my shot was weak that day.

So when Offenberg personally invited me to play a Sunday night game with the Kochavim (“Stars”), my cranberry-tinged hockey memories were not entirely positive. Yet I quickly found myself agreeing to join in with experienced players in an exhausting and physical game I last played more than a dozen years ago, prior to developing a chronically painful lower back and undergoing major knee surgery.

As if I’d say no.

I curse the fact that over-the-counter decongestants no longer contain pseudoephedrine, and gulp down a few Ibuprofen in anticipation of the aches and pains to come. It’s time to play some hockey.

The players’ varying skill levels are easy to spot: Some hold the sticks gingerly as if, at any moment, a powerful electric jolt could run through it while others run and shoot with the fluidity that only a lifetime on the ice can produce. Still, the well-balanced squads execute crisp, tic-tac-toe passes and play a spirited back-and-forth game, testing goalies Offenberg and Antony Homenock (a strapping, non-Jewish native of London, Ontario, whom Offenberg discovered at the JCC of San Francisco).

During warm-ups, I launch no fewer than 17 shots on Homenock. He blocks them all. Steve the dog would have been standing only eight feet away.

And yet, just moments into the game, it happens.

While posting up directly in front of Offenberg and the opposing goal, an errant pass from the defenseman floats directly to my stick, a mere 12 feet from the net. I take a quick step forward, lower my right shoulder and flick my left wrist upwards as the stick meets the ball in an attempt to jerk the sphere up off of the ground. And, wonder of wonders, it works.

The ball takes off, soars over Offenberg’s outstretched glove and into the back of the net. I’m so stunned that my shot found its mark I don’t think to yelp or leap or even raise my arms. Instead I put my head down and jog back to my side of the field resembling Napoleon Dynamite loping off the stage at the end of his dance sequence. It’s my most athletic moment since running down a No. 21 bus all the way from Market and Ninth to Van Ness.

But that didn’t get me the high-fives from seven enthusiastic teammates I got tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be a 30-year-old journalist grabbing his lower back and feeling old. But tonight — tonight I’m 17 again and there aren’t any cranberry beers or ill-placed slapshots in sight.

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