For me personally, the newspaper ends before the last section. I don’t often read it. I don’t care about any of those Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh, my. (as in Nittany, Detroit or Chicago as if anyone but me needed the explanation).

I am amazed, though, at the change in our sports sections over time. This fall, I had the opportunity to work on a project that took me to Wilkes-Barre’s Osterhout library to research newspapers on microfilm from the early 1980’s. It doesn’t seem like 1982 should be that long ago, but it is. A new car (Ford Pinto) was $10,000 and a two-bedroom apartment on River Street rented for $250 per month. As I scrolled though, I noticed that the sports section included high school coverage, but not much. It was all national sports.

Then it hit me. There was no Lackawanna County Stadium - Phillies or Yankee affilliate. There was no arena - First Union or Wachovia. No Pioneers. Having a mother who is a Penguin widow, I can’t imagine what my dad did with his time.

These Penguins people though are an absolute cult. When my family gets together for a birthday or holiday, eventually performance at the last game comes up as a discussion point, and the critique begins. Or Bonvie’s performance comes up as a discussion point and my nieces, blush over. Girls? What do they know about hockey? Uh, lots. I guess. These chicks are season ticket holders! They sit up in, like, row ZZ, or something like that. They’ve had chances to upgrade, but they don’t change their seats. You wanna know why? Because they don’t want to be split up from the other cult members who have season ticketholder seats around theirs. These people actually socialize outside of the games now.

They used to ask me to go. They used to. Some year, the Penguins were in a playoff and one of the cult was sick (dying, probably) and couldn’t go. They said they had an extra ticket for me. As I was dressing to go, I didn’t know if it’d be warm or cool inside the arena, but I had this nice pink sweater. It’s warm without being too heavy and these cute little buttons on the arms and well, I thought it’d be just the perfect thing. So I get there and see that the entire crowd is wearing white. They are either in all white or sporting their white jerseys (that cost over $100, I am not kidding). They have white pom-poms. The men have white pom-poms, too! Looking around at the crowd, I really don’t even think anyone came there that night to see the other them (not that I even remember who the other team was). Unless they wore white, too. I don’t know. Needless to say, nobody told me they liked my pink sweater.

I don’t go to to the Penguins game to see hockey. I like to watch Tux and the games they play at halftime and the blimp thing and the kiss camera and the dip-n-dots.

But alright, alright. It’s practically May and they’re still playing hockey for the Eastern Division semi-finals. Our Penguins won the last two games. Maybe I’ll sign up to be a cult member!

http://www.wbspenguins.com/default.asp