INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTER

SOME TEAMS HAVE IT AND SOME TEAMS DON'T

When the Montreal Canadiens overcame a 3 games to 1 deficit in their series to the Washington Capitals in the first round of the NHL playoffs recently, it set my mind to thinking. In the major pro spectator sports only a handful of times has a team come from such a deficit to win the series. But when you look at the legacy of the two teams, to me, the rally by the Canadiens is not all that surprising.

The Capitals don't have a storied history. Other than one prior Cup appearance they have had some woeful teams and ownership. Things have begun to improve in the last few years, beginning with the emergence of Alex Ovechkin as a premier player. At the end of this regular season they were the 'best team in hockey' and one of the favorites to play for the cup.

One the other hand, it has been a down time for Montreal. I don't think that the storied 'Les Habitants' have been relevant since the Patrick Roy era as a hockey power. But as a legendary 'Original Six' team, they do have a great history. The name has the same kind of recognition in hockey circles as the Yankees do in baseball and they have a bunch of cats in the Hall Of Fame.

Sometimes legacy doesn't count for anything. The players who wore the jerseys in the rafters aren't the ones taking the ice. But it counts for something. While the Capitals aren't the hard luck losers of years ago, the stink of ineptness that fetid is hard to wash completely away.

With game 5 at the Verizon Center, Washington's home ice, the crowd was primed for a celebration. This series was but the first step as they advanced to the Cup. They had beaten the Canadiens cleanly and only needed to play their game to advance.

But the goalie for Montreal 'stood on his head' and stole game 5... and game six... and when game 7 came, I am thinking that the Capitals were walking around with an imaginary noose tightening around their necks...

Now I am going to skip how a hot goaltender can steal a series in hockey talk... because I also saw it as a case of 'institutional character' on display. Having to wear the timeless sweaters that heroes have worn through the years and playing in an arena that could serve as a hockey Hall of Fame annex, with so many awards for players and most importantly, Stanley Cups that representing franchise achievement, the inspiration to come back and win the series was there to be found.

If any team was up to the challenge of rallying from such a deficit, it had to be the Canadiens. Annoucers talk of athletes having their particular sport in their 'DNA'. Same goes for teams, I think. It is in a franchises DNA to find a way to perform at their best under extreme circumstances. And the Canadiens found a way to win the series.

No, they aren't going to win the Cup. I thought that by winning the series and advancing that alone burnished the myths and the legends about the team. As if the handing down of the legacy that had been created by so many people were on the line. And this season's team, no matter how disappointing a regular season they had, was able to live up to insignia on their sweater.

FAMILIES ARE...

Some of the things that Beth spoke of when she shared what she was feeling as she laid her Father to rest, was to me, a positive example of familial institutional character. Traits that are pass on from generation to generation, unspoken expectations and acceptance that this is the path to be followed.

It isn't as smooth in some families. Broken, ill-prepared and lacking in drive, headed by adults who are in as much need of guidance as the children they conceive, they instead create a legacy of impoverishment, and that serves as the inheritance that they bequeath to those children.

Couching the subject of family legacy with a comparison of sport franchises, I want to show how sometimes a destiny can be predetermined. I also don't see family legacy as being that much different from how parasites can cause havoc with animals that they infect, causing them to behave so erratic and against their own inner will to live. Substance deficient families can be said to be infested with parasitic thoughts and will that drive them to do implode.

When I hear talk about a 'generational effect', often it is in a negative way. Generations of poverty and the like. When Tom Brokaw came up with the idea of doing a book about 'The Greatest Generation', I thought he was dead on. The people who would grow up in the depression and fight what was the only war where you could say that evil was defeated, would also overcome all kinds of social issues, go to the moon and build the modern world as we now know it.

My affinity for the 'American Graffiti' era notwithstanding, I don't think that I am biased when I wonder what happened in the 70's and the 80's. Whenever my Mother would talk about how little young black kids appreciated the efforts made on their behalf in the civil rights fight, I would often tell her that the immediate legacy wasn't 'mine' but 'hers'. I'd argue that it was the PARENTS of the children and not the children themselves, who let 'Martin & Malcom' down.

I'd tell her that I didn't know what all the fuss was really about. The mama leopard hunts and brings back prey for her cubs to kill, to teach them what they need to know. I really think that the preceding generations dropped that ball.

She'd get real hot when I said that. I also would go on about how even with 'white privilege' providing a legacy for many, that they still had to perform to hold their positions. My argument was that if I had to pick between some sort of 'favor' and being qualified, I'd put my chips on being qualified. After all, how else could their be an explination for all the blacks of historical note?

It was part of an attitude that many of her group had... and that sense of entitlement as a result of the Civil Rights movement would erode the foundation of courage that the 'Greatest' displayed in their struggles. I don't want to get too tangential, but it explains the arrogance in the entitlement blacks around here felt during the Mayoral governance of Coleman Young.

Conversations like these I would sigh and fold my tent. I didn't know 'anything' (I don't believe in telling young people that... make them explain themselves and show them the weakness of their position) and I didn't think there was enough to gain from continuing the discussion.

Not only should I have pressed her on topics like this but I should have pressed her on other character related-issues. Issues that pertain to how life treated her and how she coped with it. I didn't, and there are some questions that I wished to have asked her. Because there were footprints in some of the sticky messes I would find myself in... and maybe they were hers.

Eh... oh well. Were it not for those semi-annoying 'moments of clairity' perhaps I'd be singing a different tune.