Say it Ain't So...

Say it Ain't So...
By Steve Gallichio, Hartford Correspondent

Editor's Note: This heartfelt tribute to the Whale originally appeared in issue 42, published March 16, 1996. It's very interesting reading under the current sad circumstances.

I'm going to step out of my usual 3rd-person reporting in this week's column because of the uncertainty following the immediate future of the Hartford Whalers. I intended to do a witty, season-ending piece, but I don't much feel like it today with the news and rumours swirling. Indulge me for a moment, as I share some of the thoughts that spun through my mind on Saturday afternoon as the Whalers closed out their 1995-96 home schedule. I wish I could say that the entire game was a flood of memories, but it really wasn't. I actually sat there most of the game taking my usual scribbled notes on the action and churning the wheels in my head to plan out the chess moves to make in order to take that next step. But I looked around and I couldn't help but think of a few things.
I'm not an old guy; I'm only 28. But I'm at that perhaps perfect age that I can't remember anything about my life before the Whalers, and there was nothing of the Whalers that existed before my life. It's all been there, growing up with me. From the days when my dad used to take me to games in that old 10,507 seat barn, to that terrible, terrible day in 1978 when it seemed like the lights would go out forever, and every day since then. The too-few highs, and the too-many lows. From those days of sitting in my room tuned to Bob Neumeier on the radio to today, sitting in my usual seat looking out over the ice.
I looked over at a friend a few rows to my right. He often brings his young son to the game with him, wearing his little Whaler jersey. I thought about the days when I used to wear my little Whaler jersey to the games with my dad.
And now I'm grown up. The obsession stuck; now I'm a loyal season ticket holder of my own, with a job in the sports industry. I doubt that any of that would have happened had the Whalers never come to Hartford. So I thought about what my friend's son would grow up like if there were no more Whalers. And if there were.
Less than an hour after the game, I was standing on a muddy patch of ground in my old home town, the town where I grew up with the Whalers. I was standing with my wife of one year, with the cold mist of a rain slapping me in the face, looking at a piece of land where we are considering building a home of our own. And I thought how ironic it was that in a single day, I could possibly simultaneously regain and lose such large parts of my life.
I think every single person in the arena on Saturday recognized the possibility that this was going to be the last game ever at home for the Hartford Whalers. But that wasn't the attitude in the building...at every turn, with every nod, it was always, "See you in October!"
I want to believe that. And in my heart, I mostly do. But only a fool could ignore the possibility. So I decided to be a fool for a day; in fact, I can't remember ever thinking during the game that I should freeze some image in my mind because it might have to stay there forever, with no new memories to push it out of the way.
I read in the paper the next day that one of the Whalers stood up in the locker room before the third period and begged the team to give the fans, to give us, one last great memory. One last shot at holding our heads up high at the Bruins fans as they left the building.
I can guess who it might have been. Most of us probably could. But I don't know for sure. And I wasn't even thinking of that last period as the last period. I completely forgot about it until the buzzer sounded, and the Whalers had, in fact, beaten the hated Bruins...finally. I so completely forgot that I started to walk away, forgetting that this might be the last time. So I stopped and sat and looked around the emptying building that seemed, for the moment, like a warehouse for my memories.
And then I cried. Cupped my hands on my face and cried. I thought about how I had no idea what I would do without them. How lonely I would be on those September afternoons when I would would sneak away from work for a few hours to go watch the team in training camp. How much I would miss just being in the arena and hearing the words "your Hartford Whalers!"
Yup, *my* Whalers. We all have some of our own. Mine were Ricky Ley (as a player only), and the Abrahamsson brothers, Christer and Tommy. And Joel Quenneville. And Robert Petrovicky and Jeff O'Neill. And always, Kevin and Ronnie. For some of you, it may be Norm Barnes. Or Dallas Gaume. Or Sami Kapanen. We all have our own Whalers.
And I thought about the last time I got overwhelmed like that in the Civic Center. It was way back in 1980 when the Whalers finally came "Home at Last" back to the new Civic Center. And I thought about the one thing that, as a child, could always make me cry on cue. It was near the end of the "Snoopy, Come Home" movie, when Charlie Brown hung his head against his beloved Snoopy's vacated dog house, with the "For Sale or Let" sign hung on it.
Why, he wondered, can't we gather all the things we love and keep them together forever? But someone always leaves; someone always says "goodbye", he thought. We already have too many goodbyes in the world, he cried. What we need is more hellos. So I can only hope tonight that on every empty hockey arena from here to Nashville, and on through Cleveland, San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Portland, that on every front door of every one of those buildings there hangs a sign that says "No Whales Allowed."
Because we already have too many goodbyes.
I need another hello in September