Well, I NEVER!

It’s funny how some things can occur to you out of the clear blue.

I was watching the Red Wings on the tube the other night and the puck went along the boards. Naturally, several players arrived forthwith, trying to slap it away from the dasher and move it along to a teammate. Three or four skaters slapped, kicked, and whacked at the hard rubber disc. I can’t even remember what happened after that: a face-off, Red Wings’ puck, opponent’s puck – whatever. Doesn’t matter.

Suddenly I found myself thinking about the strongest Red Wings player that ever was, post-Gordie Howe: Joey Kocur.

Don’t EVEN argue with me about this. Kocur, a Red Wing from 1985 to 1999 (with some stops elsewhere along the way), was simply inseparable from the puck during one of those scrums by the boards. Joey always, and I mean ALWAYS, ended up with the puck once the snow cleared. It was amazing.

So this is where the thing occurred to me out of the clear blue.

We tend to get wrapped up in the things that we’ve seen in our experiences watching sports. But what about those that we haven’t seen? Those are pretty amazing, too.

I’ll start with Kocur. I never saw Joey Kocur lose a battle for the puck along the boards. Never did. Uh-uh. Never happened, on my watch. And it shouldn’t, if you’re the strongest player in the National Hockey League – which is what I contend Kocur was when he roamed NHL ice surfaces.

I never saw Aurelio Rodriguez make a bad throw. Rodriguez, the smiling third baseman for the 1970’s Tigers, possessed a howitzer of an arm. I can see the image now, as I type this: Rodriguez snaring a hard groundball, to his left, then righting himself, and with enough time to pump once before firing the ball to first base, seemingly using only his wrist. Perfect strike into the first baseman’s glove, every time. Never saw him make a bad throw. Sorry – he played a perfect 1.000 third base when it came to throwing the ball.

I never saw Barry Sanders get tackled by the first person who touched him. Barry got hit plenty of times behind the line of scrimmage – we all can agree on that. But I’ll be darned if the first person who hit him, ever actually tackled him. He had that pinball thing going on in those instances. Sure, he may have been swarmed over eventually for a loss of yards, but that first person against Barry was the football equivalent of the Washington Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters. And that would be Barry in the role of the Globetrotters, thank you very much.

I never saw Steve Yzerman lose his cool on the ice. I didn’t see all of his games as a 22-year Red Wings player, but I saw a bunch of them. And I can tell you that not once did he lose control of himself – swinging a stick wildly or sucker punching an opponent, or bumping an official. Lord knows there were times ….

I never saw Isiah Thomas miss a clutch shot. Though I sure as heck saw him make his share of them. But this column is about what I never saw, and I will go to my grave believing that I never saw Isiah miss a shot that absolutely had to be made. He was the kind of player who could dribble the ball off his foot and handle it as if it was coated with WD 40, just like all of them, for 47 minutes. But in that 48th and final minute, Isiah would return to being Isiah again, and pity the other team if they were foolish enough to let him take a crucial shot.

I never saw Johnny Grubb take a bad swing. Grubber, a Tiger from 1983 to 1988, had the smoothest swing of any lefthanded hitting player the Tigers ever had during my ongoing tour of duty. And when he was ahead in the count, 2-0 or 3-1? Katie bar the door, school’s out, batten down the hatches, and all that. He didn’t always hit safely, but he had a wonderful, slightly uppercut approach that looked like it was the product of well-oiled gears and could have been a stand-in for Ted Williams’ swing.

I never saw Scotty Bowman show any emotion behind the Red Wings bench. This is kind of like the aforementioned Yzerman, but even more so. All of the TV shots taken of Bowman during games may as well have been the same one reused over and over again, because they all had the common look: hands crossed in front of him, the Rock of Gibraltar jaw set, the head slightly raised as he looked over his players’ helmets toward the action on the ice. You literally couldn’t tell if the Red Wings were losing 5-1 or about to win another Stanley Cup, if you had to depend on Bowman to clue you in.

I never saw Bob Lanier smile as a Piston. And it’s a damn shame. Lanier was only the best big man to ever play in Detroit, yet his time was tumultuous here. He ended up being the perpetually brooding player. A dour giant. He played in Detroit nearly ten seasons, but always with that look of consternation on his bearded face.

I never saw a pitcher say a cross word to Sparky Anderson on the mound when said pitcher was about to be removed from the game. Sparky made sure of it, I know, but nobody was an exception. The rule was simple: you lay the baseball gently in his palm (“like an egg,” Sparky would say), and walk away, toward the dugout. No words, not even any eye contact. Just … go. Seventeen seasons in Detroit, and not one of them did it wrong. Not even Jack Morris. Sparky made sure of it.

I never saw a Lions coach not end up with that defeated, resigned, baffled look on his puss. I’ve seen plenty of smiles at the time of their hire, of course. But always they end up the same. It’s already happening to current coach Rod Marinelli. Maybe he’ll end his career in Detroit with smiles, like it always begins for the Lions coach.

Never saw that, either.