Seeing Through Public Spectacles

Recently, Philadelphians dèjà-viewed an event which had far greater dramatic impact on them than would the renomination of their mayor, Frank Rizzo, or the re-enactment of any historic episode that might be commemorated in these Bicentennial environs. Against odds, the Flyers took the Stanley Cup in six, for the second dazzling year in a row. It did not seem to matter to local fans that hockey had been prolonged beyond athletic protocol and (some people’s) patience into the baseball season; that the Stanley Cup is as incongruous in May as a mink coat in Miami and every bit as flashy; or that the torpid Buffalo rink, site of decisive game six, smoked like a great swamp with all the melting ice. The convergence of winter hockey and summer heat created something like an electric storm front—and value inversion—of its own in America’s puck-struck cities, and Philadelphia is probably the most crazed of them right now. (The importance of athletics in a region is inversely proportional to its self-esteem.)

That night, residents poured out of their homes like MGM extras for block bacchanals, and there was all the streaking and foaming and merrymaking you’d expect when people witness the second coming of an athletic cup. Next day, the Flyers’ retinue was paraded through the city streets, while a euphoric crowd of something like two million screamed, littered, and vented all the hyped-up athletic jingoism that is, today, the only spirit capable of mobilizing an American mass. McDonald’s handed out team glossies with their Big Macs, the city was speckled with reverential signs and stickers (“Praise the Lord and Pass the Puck,” “Only the Lord Saves More than Bernie Parent”), and everywhere teenagers caroused in the T-shirts that promoters have peddled tirelessly all year to a public that never seemed sated. Classrooms were naturally vacant through all this, but city officials, themselves mesmerized by the event, let the puck stop here, and gladly. I am told that in some spots, the earth literally trembled with thunderous cheers.

SM

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Susan Schwartz McDonald

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Recently, Philadelphians dèjà-viewed an event which had far greater dramatic impact on them than would the renomination of their mayor, Frank Rizzo, or the re-enactment of any historic episode that might be commemorated in these Bicentennial environs. Against odds, the Flyers took the Stanley Cup in six, for the second dazzling year in a row. It did not seem to matter to local fans that hockey had been prolonged beyond athletic protocol and (some people’s) patience into the baseball season; that the Stanley Cup is as incongruous in May as a mink coat in Miami and every bit as flashy; or that the torpid Buffalo rink, site of decisive game six, smoked like a great swamp with all the melting ice. The convergence of winter hockey and summer heat created something like an electric storm front—and value inversion—of its own in America’s puck-struck cities, and Philadelphia is probably the most crazed of them right now. (The importance of athletics in a region is inversely proportional to its self-esteem.)

That night, residents poured out of their homes like MGM extras for block bacchanals, and there was all the streaking and foaming and merrymaking you’d expect when people witness the second coming of an athletic cup. Next day, the Flyers’ retinue was paraded through the city streets, while a euphoric crowd of something like two million screamed, littered, and vented all the hyped-up athletic jingoism that is, today, the only spirit capable of mobilizing an American mass. McDonald’s handed out team glossies with their Big Macs, the city was speckled with reverential signs and stickers (“Praise the Lord and Pass the Puck,” “Only the Lord Saves More than Bernie Parent”), and everywhere teenagers caroused in the T-shirts that promoters have peddled tirelessly all year to a public that never seemed sated. Classrooms were naturally vacant through all this, but city officials, themselves mesmerized by the event, let the puck stop here, and gladly. I am told that in some spots, the earth literally trembled with thunderous cheers.