All Aboard The Crazy Train

There's a rumour going around that next week Luke is going to return from wandering in the wilderness - until then however, TH continues to shoulder the load...



I went to a charity hockey game this past weekend, and I must say that it was… well, a little dull. Aside from seeing old guys who are past their prime try to relive their glory days, there was one thing lacking. Can you guess what it was? Hitting, fighting, you know... a little passion. Which got me to thinking – ok you can all stop laughing now – there is acceptable violence in sport and then there is crossing the ‘line’. But is there a clear cut ‘line’ not to cross? So I racked my brains for a few good examples of people going crazy, above and beyond the call of crazy duty. I hope you enjoy these I know I had a good chuckle while watching them.

Now I know not everyone knows who Eric Cantona is, so here is a little introduction to him. But you know when something just goes snap? When that little voice of reason is out for a coffee break? Well check this out. To paraphrase Keanu Reeves “He knows kung-fu”, I wonder what that guy said to make him want to kick him in the face… not just punch him in the face, but take a running/flying kick at this head.

Which leads into our next crazy contestant quite nicely. Now Zinedine Zidane was arguably the greatest player of his time, if you don’t quite know what he was capable of then take a look-see here. (Ed Note: After watching that video, this post was edited while wearing my Zidane jersey). Now that is why they call it the beautiful game, that sh*t gives me goose-bumps (some people say goose pimples, but I am not sure why… but I digress). I hope you took the time to watch it, because people will only remember him for this. Seriously, people say bad things to about my sister all the time, I don’t go around head-butting them (I guess it helps that I don’t have a sister).

At this point you may be saying to yourself "those silly Europeans, always going crazy and what not. It’s a good thing we saved their ass in WWII”, but don’t worry your little dullard heads, North Americans can go just as crazy as anyone. Heck we do it bigger and better than anyone. I know you all like basketball, I know I find it really boring but you may not… but I do recall watching this beauty of craziness on the news channels for about 4 months. I am sorry about the stupid music, I would have thought that I could find a clip of just the game commentary but alas, I am lazy and just linked the first clip I could find. But seriously, who is more crazy, the fans for trying to fight pro athletes, or the athletes for going after fans who may sue them? Ponder that if you will.

Ah so you are saying it’s just those young pups that like to get into the crazy juice and be hooligans. But I would argue that even those who are hundreds of years old and held together with tape and glue get a little crazy now and again… a certain Mr. Zimmer comes to mind. When you are 70+ are you going to run at a man 1/3 of your age and try and fight him? I think not. But thanks to Don Zimmer, we all now know what will be the result of such an action. Hilarity at its finest. Thank you insane Zimmer, you made me smile.

But all of the previous examples are just ‘haha-type’ crazy, then there are those who are just fu*kin’ crazy. Do you remember Mike Tyson? You ever wonder where he is now? Probably picking fights with gorillas at his local zoo. But his fight with Evander ‘the real deal’ Holyfield and the infamous ear bit will go down in infamy as just one of those ‘did he really just do that’ moments in sport history. I forgot that he had taken a practice bite before the main coarse, and did one of the commentators just compare him to Dracula? How does somebody justify an ear bite you may ask? Well here is the answer. Now go lock your doors and always walk the streets with a buddy, Mike Tyson’s current location is not known.

I know you all were waiting for me to bash hockey, but I thought that that might be way too easy (plus hockey has its own dedicated writer here at Sports As Life… but I think that he is busy with real work so I will throw in the obligatory weekly hockey clip). And who is the lucky winner this week? Why it’s crazy Chris Simon just back from his stint on Broadway in the smash hit Stomp. Stomping on someone is bad enough, but with a blade tied to your foot? Freakin’ crazy.

I feel like I am picking on the players of the games a little too much right now. You know that the testosterone is running high, the adrenalin is kicking in, so I think that we can forgive (somewhat) a few incidences of players boarding the train to Crazytown… but what of the fans?

Haven’t you ever been sitting there at a game and some guy/girl is just going nuts – they could be a fairly normal person outside of this sporting event, or not – and they are saying things that would make a person with tourettes blush. But what happens when they cross the line? Well they do stupid things like this. Seriously, what can you say? I thought that I was helping the team out by getting in the penalty box and trying to fight their tough-guy? Maybe the drunker you get the better your team plays?

I think that there should be some kind of experiment done to that effect… I am willing to go out on a limb and volunteer the whole Sports As Life staff (dependant on the ok from Mr. Editor) for the drunkness-to-success-in-sport experiment. You may not hear from us in a couple of months.
There are so many clips out there, and these are just a few that came to my mind when I thought about this when I was supposes to be watching old dudes play hockey – man, is it me or is hockey really boring 90% of the time?

There are a lot of crazy people getting paid a lot of money to play a game. These people are very lucky, they get to do what most of us just dream of doing for a career – now I know that they have, mostly, sacrificed a great deal to be where they are, but that does not excuse them from being decent human beings and acting in a way that is acceptable to our societal norms (or at least within the rules of their respective sports). Too often do we just shrug our shoulders and excuse their actions because they are ‘professional’ athletes.

People are allowed to make mistakes, but when people like Simon, Artest, Tyson, (Vick?) and their lot are continually doing what they do/did, when do we as a society say enough is enough? I am not saying jail (although in many instances that may be a good place for them), but do we withdraw the right – for it is a right – to play their respective sport?

If you went into work and had a bad day and go and bite off your bosses ear do you think that you can go into work the next day? If your sales department gets into a brawl with your financial branch do you think that all you will get is a few fines? If actions aren’t deemed acceptable in everyday life, then how come we give so much slack – I realize that they are playing sport and physicality is part of the game, but as this article has demonstrated, or at least I hope that it did – to these so called professionals? If you are a professional then act like it.

Oh, I don’t want to end on such a harsh note, so here is a mascot fight… seriously, mascots are so silly. I hope that this is the first in a long line of crazy train articles, feel free to write one, I think that the theme is pretty self explanatory – have fun with it, I know that I did.