this seems appropriate to re post on the day the top 10 are announced.
it came to me as a 1994 posting to hockey-l in 1994 by sarah foster


Hello All,
  
I posted this article back when I joined the list in October.  I received
a few messages asking me to post it again when the Final Four was near,
so I guess it is that time.  I enjoy the article very much and have it
tacked up in my room (well, usually, not right now :-) )   It sort of
gives you something to think about while you cheering on your favorite
team at the game this weekend or any other.   The article was written by
Greg Reid and all credit goes to him.  It was published in the Daily
Maine Campus, the student newspaper at the University of Maine.  I am not
fully sure of the date, sometime in early April of 1989 though.
  The title is "Conversation with as special 'fan'".
For all you heading out to the Final Four  I'm looking forward to meeting
you.  I'll be the one in the Maine Hockey sweatshirt.  (I don't think
there will be to many of them there this year. :-(
  
  
  
         The NCAA final four is more of a fan all star weekend than a
  championship tournament.  While Seattle melted under the lights of
network television and felt the weight of basketball's million dollar
profits, the Twin Cities welcomed 15,000 fans with the hospitality born
of 4 a.m. rides to practice and the excitement of your first pair of
double runners.
         Michigan State, Minnesota, Maine, and Harvard were the only teams
in the tournament, but hockey fans from all over the country came to
St.Paul:  Bee Gees from Bowling Green were cheering for the Spartans,
No-Daks from North Dakota were singing drinking songs with the Gophers,
and Badgers were dancing with Bannanas the Bear.
         This was the weekend Harvard claimed its first national
championship in any sport and Lane McDonald was name the Hobey Baker
Award winner as this year's top player in the game.
         The Hobey Baker is a strange award.  It recognizes the best
individual player in a game that can't be played individually.  Baker was
Princeton's two sport legend who supposedly epitomized the ideals of
college sports: scholarship, athletic excellence, class in victory, and
class in defeat.
         Hobart Amory Hare Baker set university records in football and
hockey, flew as a fighter in the Great War, and died testing aircraft in
1918.  His legend was his character, not his records.  But this award
typically goes to the player with the best statistics and the most
effective public relations campaign.
         I stood next to a rather odd-looking guy amid 200 or so people at
the Bear's pregame send-off at the Holiday Inn-Town Square.
         He looked strangely out of place, this pale, thin man in his
black sweater with a burned orange "P" on his chest.  He nodded to me and
smiled, turning his eyes to the center of the room.  Six red and white
costumed Badger fans were led the Maine fans in anti-Minnesota cheers.
The guy laughed to himself.
         "This is what it is all about," he said, running his hand through
his short blond hair.
         "Are you a Maine Alum?" I asked trying to place the guy's face.
He couldn't have been much more than 26 or 27 but his gray eyes has the
look of having seen a lot in so few years.
         "No," he said shaking his head, slowly.  "Princeton."
         To most of the people in the room, Princeton meant nothing more
than an 8-2 Maine victory in December and a non-scholarship basketball
team coming within a point of sending Georgetown to the biggest upset in
its history.
         But this was St.Paul.  Princeton was Baker's school, St. Paul was
the home of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the university's most famous dropout,
and the capital of The Land of 10,000 Outdoor Hockey Rinks come October.
Somehow, this guy fit in.
         For a moment, the guy looked a 100 years old.  Then he smiled.
"Do you think Maine will win it all?" I asked.
         "That doesn't really matter, does it?" he said.  "As long as these
people are here, that's the point."
         He sounded like he went to academic-before-athletics Princeton.
Ivy-on-the-walls Princeton.
         "They made the semis last year," I said.  "They say they want to
go a step further this year."
         He laughed at Bananas, who swiveled his hips at an older couple.
"Only the champion remembers the champion, the game winning play," he said.
         Was this guy a graduate philosophy major?  "The final four is
like any other holiday, really.  Do you remember what you got for
Christmas last year or do you just remember Christmas?"
         I raised an eyebrow.  Scores told the story.  Goals and assists
and championships and trophies were what hockey meant.  Isn't that what
everybody came to Minnesota for this weekend?
         Not exactly.
         An iron miner named Goofus from upper-Michigan has cheered for
his State Spartans faithfully since he dropped out in 1968.  Wisconsin
graduate and Hartford Whaler's scout Dave McNab plans his calendar - work
and social - around these games.  And every April Boston University's
Elliot Dribben takes time off from his job at John Handcock in Boston and
brings his battle with Cerebal Palsy to the festivities, whether they're
in St.Paul, Providence, R.I., or Detriot
         Scores? Stats? Who cares if that helmet was a little to big or a
little to small.  It was the last thing Santa ever left under the tree.
         "This is a holiday by itself," the guy said.  "A lot of emotion.
A lot of memories."
         I looked around the room as people started to cheer.  The Bears
were doming out of the elevators.  The guy wished me well and I felt his
hand clap on my shoulder. Or I thought I did.
         "I missed your name," I said as he faded into the crowd.  His
mouth moved.
         "Hobey," I thought he said. "Hobey Baker."





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