“I knew this was going to happen,” he cried.
It still confuses me on why no one did anything even though it seems like everyone knew something was wrong or something bad was happening to him. It’s doesnt matter that you knew this was going to happen. You didn’t do anything about it
On a stainless-steel table in the basement morgue, Dr. Ann McKee cleaved it in half, front to back, with a large knife. Much of one half was sliced into sheets about the width of sandwich bread.
It’s interesting how the author is writing this like he is talking about a animal butcher. It gives Boogaard this animal appearance kind of like the animal appearance that the NFL gave Boogaard. Shows how he had been changed from the innocent young boy he was when he was little to the animal the NFL has made him out to be now.
There was little discussion.
This immediately makes me think of the book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. It’s also raises the question of was it ethical to have scientists use his body for experimentation after death even though Boogaard didn’t consent to it and only his family did for him? This kind of connects and relates to the robotic life style he had in the NHL when he was just a pawn or weapon of his team.
It’s not that hard to see.”
This just proves how the hockey industry values the success of the industry itself over the healthiness of the players. This shows that although the industry saw the damage of what they were doing to Boogard, they allowed it to happen to make the industry more entertaining, at the cost of his life. This also shows how the industry transformed hockey from play to work and how this affects the people who peruse this sport.
“If you’re playing pond hockey, 6 or 7 years old, and somebody said, ‘Hey Brantt, the only way you’re going to make it to the N.H.L. is fighting your way there,’ you think I would have done it?” the former N.H.L. enforcer Brantt Myhres said. “No way. I would have done something else.”
This shows how misleading professional hockey is as a career. They make you think the industry is just getting really good at the sport or play but once you realize that your play is no longer about play and more about work, you're already to deep into it. This form of work in hockey is encouraged and brings up the question is it ethically okay for the hockey industry to destroy the playful connotation of hockey to make better business?
The N.H.L., formed in 1917, considered a ban on fighting. It ultimately mandated that fighters be assessed a five-minute penalty. That interpretation of justice, now Rule 46.14, still stands. It has never been much of a deterrent.
Its funny how they said they wanted to put a "ban" on fighting but instead they just made it a little penalty in one game of hockey. It shows how much the hockey industry relies on the fighting to make a game entertaining. This also shows how the hockey industry easily turned something that was meant to be for play into something that more so went along with the connotation of work.
Whenever he opened his right hand, the fingers were bent and the knuckles were fat and bloody with scar tissue, as if rescued a moment too late from a meat grinder. That hand was, until the end, what the family worried about most with Boogaard. How would he write when he got old?When Boogaard closed his right hand, though, it was a weapon, the most feared in the N.H.L. The thought of Boogaard’s right fist kept rival enforcers awake at night. It made them alter their strategy and doubt their fighting acumen.
I think the author is using his fist symbolically to represent the bigger picture. The author states how when he opens his hand, it is all bloodied and bruised and damaged. This shows his internal hurt and damage that has been caused by his play being turned into work. However, then the author proceeds to say how when he closes off the fist and hides the hurt and pain inside his hand, his fist turns into a weapon. This shows how the hockey industry had objectified him as a "weapon" and how they used him and turned his play into work.
It meant stopping after school for gas and a Slurpee as the winter dusk settled early on the prairie. It meant a postgame meal of rink burgers, the snack-stand staple that warmed the belly against the bitter cold. It meant a radio usually tuned to hockey — maybe the Toronto Maple Leafs, Derek’s favorite team, or the hometown junior league team, the Melfort Mustangs. And it meant falling asleep in the dark of a winter’s night, awakened by the warm light of the family garage.
This shows perfect contrast to how hockey was being described as work earlier. Now the author gives us an example of when Boogaard was little, before hockey became his job, and how it was considered play and the fond memories he had with his dad. The author does this to give the reader an example of what hockey should be like even when it becomes work. The connotation that comes with play should also carry into hockey as work.
Coaches and scouts laughed as they congratulated Boogaard.
I think this part is interesting because it presents the ethical question of how the coaches and hockey in general is creating famous players. Play or a sport generally has a positive connotation, as one would play a sport for the fun of it. However, the way hockey is treating its players in this dogfight/brutalistic way is so much play anymore but its work, as his sport no longer has the positive connotaion it used to have. Now hockey has more of the connotation that goes along with work, struggle, hardship, tiresome, etc.
But those who believe Boogaard loved to fight have it wrong. He loved what it brought: a continuation of an unlikely hockey career. And he loved what it meant: vengeance against a lifetime of perceived doubters and the gratitude of teammates glad that he would do a job they could not imagine.
This is the purest form of irony I have seen so far in this article. What he had wanted most, fame and fortune, is what killed him.
Over six seasons in the N.H.L., Boogaard accrued three goals and 589 minutes in penalties and a contract paying him $1.6 million a year.
This is an example of the author using casual sports terms like they were talking on ESPN to ironically bring attention to something very serious and crazy about this hockey players career. As the author states his stats, the tone disregards the craziness of being paid 1.6 mil to sit the bench in penalties for 589 minutes, which the reader can infer is from fighting. The author does this to help further point out the flaw in the play or hockey, as its more about fighting to fame than anything.
He was 16.
The way the author is writing the first section it doesn't even sound like hockey. If you took out the few hockey terms in the first couple paragraphs it could easily be interpreted as even like a dog/street fight. I think Branch is purposely framing his this point out the major and brutal flaw in hockey that they fight for entertainment but when does it go to far.
They trailed14-0, but he led them to a 28-21 win. He was good at that kindof thing. He was with Squad 252, along with cornerback TarelColeman, and his friends believe those two rescued a lot ofpeople that day before the steel-and-concrete sky collapsed onthem.
I was thinking about how work and play might fit into this article and it's interesting to see the crossover in this paragraph. Here the author was talking about although the team was down, Paddy Lyons brought the team back. This would be the play part. But then the author talks about how these men did the same thing in his work on 9/11 and how they rescued multiple people before the tower collapsed. Its interesting to see the similarity between work and play here and how these men represented themselves the same way in both play and work.
hours a day, and inhaling dust, smoke, glass particles, asbestosand, indeed, microscopic remains of their fallen comrades. Butthe guys are playing. "Damn right," says fullback Tom Narducci."It's tradition."
Its interesting how even after something so emotional and personal as loosing best friends in 9/11, they continue to play. It makes me wonder though what else is keeping them going. Trying to put myself in their shoes, there would have to be something more behind it to keep me playing. Maybe there is more to it than just playing for tradition.
John was among theBravest who died in the collapse of the World Trade Centertowers, "Somebody said to me, 'Probably not going to be a teamthis season, huh, Mike?' I told him, 'We'll have a team if weonly have 10 guys. We're playing.'"
In contrast to the more playful, positive tone in the first paragraph, the second paragraph the author uses to start getting to what the article is really about, 9/11. Although this paragraph still has somewhat of the same voice the first paragraph had, the author uses it to hit the reader with emotion