Well, with the Broncos having now endured their first loss of the season and the Avalanche off to their best start ever, a conversation I had not long ago got me to thinking about the one and only time I heckled a professional athlete (it was pretty mild, I’m not the mean type) — and I thought you folks might enjoy the tale. It does require a bit of set-up, though:
2000 Western Conference Finals, Dallas Stars v. Colorado Avalanche, Game 3 or 4 (I forget; we went to a lot of playoff games in those days). A few months before, early in the season, hockey fans may remember that then-Stars goalie Ed Belfour had a slight but very well publicized drunken run-in with the law in Dallas. After being cuffed for a disturbance beef in a local hotel and barfing in the back of their cruiser, Belfour was flirting with a law enforcement bribery charge for telling the cops involved, “I’ll give you a billion dollars to let me go.” (He was in some serious soup, until — as I recall — the district attorney decided that it had to be a joke due to the amount. Imagine if he had said “million” instead! Lucky for Eddie, he got off with only “drunk and disorderly”.) (I think.)
Anyway, fast forward back to May 2000. Lester had made her second-best ever playoff ticket score (thank every God ever dreamed up that I married a hot Italian sports fan who loves to cook) and as a result we had seats just above the corner glass, not more than maybe 10 rows up, in the Avs’ attack-twice zone. Pretty sweet, no? No, because Belfour was standing on his head and pitching a shutout while Patrick Roy had given up four goals on twelve shots in the first period. Nothing good happened in the second, either.
Well, I’ve never shied away from a chance to make an audience laugh, even if it isn’t mine, and I got lucky. During the usual mini-skate-around just before the third period as Belfour was doing that goalie thing back and forth across the crease, one of those rare moments when there was no sound booming out of the PA and the crowd was sufficiently quiet happened, and I bellowed out, “Hey, Eddie! I’ll give you a billion dollars to let one by!”
I busted up at least two sections with that, two guys came over to high five me (I was on the aisle), and there’s no possible doubt Belfour heard me — during the first stop in play, a woman from a few rows down came to tell me she’d seen him grinning through his mask. So credit Eddie with having a sense of humor. Oh, and the win — Dallas 4, Colorado 1.
Like I said, I’m not the mean type, even though I did not pay up for that late goal. And we only had to wait one more season for the Avalanche to reward us with their second win of Lord Stanley’s Cup. (That was when Lester made her best ever playoff ticket score. Another story for another night…)
