LOS ANGELES (July 19) – From scorching-hot southern Ontario to searing-hot southern California. That’s the trek I made on Saturday with my family for our annual summer vacation here in the San Fernando Valley. There are few prettier places on earth, but you can fry an egg on the sidewalk outside my in-laws’ house today, so it’s infinitely more comfortable to either stay inside, or go someplace a bit cooler. The weatherman insists the temperature is going to moderate early in the week – “dipping into the high-90s”. I can hardly wait. They often say it’s a “dry heat” here in the west; you don’t feel it as much as the humidity back home. Sure. Not until you step outside.
On our first afternoon of the trip, Sunday, we did something unusual… for us. It was the final day of the summer thoroughbred meeting at Hollywood Park, the famous race-track in suburban Inglewood – adjacent to the former home of the Los Angeles Kings and Los Angeles Lakers. The Forum still sits across from Hollywood Park at the intersection of Manchester Blvd. and Prarie Ave., looking exactly as it did in the spring of 1999, when hockey and basketball were last played there. The vertical white columns that made the arena so unique when Toronto communications mogul Jack Kent Cooke financed it in 1967 remain a striking feature 43 years later.
I went to the track with my wife, Susan, and son, Shane. Hollywood Park also has a strong Canadian connection. Famed jockey Sandy Hawley won numerous races there in the 1970s and ‘80s [he moonlighted as penalty timekeeper for the Kings], while Edmonton native Harry Ornest, who owned the Toronto Argonauts from 1988 to 1991, was vice-chairman of the race-track for many years. Though it’s located on the fringe of crime-ridden south-central L.A., the Park remains a beautiful setting; it hosted the annual Breeders’ Cup races in 1984, 1987 and 1997. For only $8, we rented a viewing box close to the finish line and had a wonderful afternoon [it’s also a great spot if you enjoy watching planes, as jetliners pass close overhead on final approach to Los Angeles International Airport, two miles west].
After leaving the track, Shane asked if we could turn into the Forum parking lot and circle the old arena. I was happy to oblige, as the Forum is the source of numerous hockey memories – from struggling, as a grade-schooler in the late-‘60s, to stay awake during Leafs-Kings radio broadcasts that began at 11 p.m., to covering many important games there in my first decade at THE FAN-590. As we drove past the old “Forum Club” gate on the west side of the building, Shane noticed a door that was propped open. I pulled over and we jumped out of the car. We walked down a short flight of stairs and right into the building, past a room on our left that used to be the press lounge for hockey games. Twenty feet further ahead was an entrance to the seating area – a location directly at center-ice, on the press-box side, for Kings games between 1967 and 1999 [I had walked through that opening, as a reporter, countless times].
This was an eerie setting… a surreal time-warp. Most of the building lights were off, except for some flood-lamps above the second level of stands, but there was enough illumination to clearly make out the entire arena bowl – all 16,005 seats – still resplendent in the peculiar color pattern of gold sections on one side, orange on the other. It was deathly quiet in the Forum, save for the distant whir of a ceiling fan across the way. About 15 rows down was the old ice surface for the Kings… now a plain concrete floor. Up behind me was the center-section of orange seats that comprised the hockey press-box in the Forum years; reporters and broadcasters sat among the paying public, as the arena did not have a suspended upper span.
Though Shane had yet to be born, he is well-versed on the famous incident in the 1993 Stanley Cup semifinals that involved Wayne Gretzky and Doug Gilmour. I pointed to the right of where we were standing… to the spot on the bare floor where Gretzky and Gilmour faced off to the left of goalie Kelly Hrudey late in Game 6 of that Toronto-Los Angeles series at the Forum [still the most compelling Leafs game I’ve covered]. The score was tied, 4-4, and the visitors were one goal shy of advancing to the Cup final for the first time since 1967. As any current Leaf fan knows, Gretzky accidentally sliced open Gilmour’s chin with a high-stick in that face-off circle, somehow avoiding detection. That referee Kerry Fraser chose not to banish Gretzky from the game has long made him the mortal enemy of Leafs nation. As per the apparent script, Gretzky wound up scoring the winning goal in overtime, setting up a deciding seventh match at Maple Leaf Gardens two nights later. Three more tallies by No. 99 sent the Leafs packing for the summer.
The Forum was the site of my first-ever assignment as a full-time Leafs reporter – opening night of the lockout-shortened, 48-game schedule in the third week of January 1995 [it was Mats Sundin’s first game as a Leaf; he would score his initial goal in a blue-and-white jersey the following night, in San Jose]. On Dec. 1, 1990 – a Saturday – I was here in L.A. courting my future wife. The Leafs were in town to play the Kings and we still had the broadcast rights on CJCL AM-1430 [two years before we adopted Canada’s first all-sports radio format]. Joe Bowen and Bill Watters called the games back then and Bill couldn’t make that trip for some reason. As a result, I did color commentary alongside Bowen – one of three such assignments in my early radio years [I also worked a Leafs road game in Hartford and a home game against Detroit]. It was the Gretzky era here in SoCal and the Forum was jammed to capacity each and every night.
As I stood in the dark, empty arena on Sunday, my mind wandered to the night in August 1978, when my pal, Jeff, and I bought tickets to see Lionel Richie and The Commodores in concert. It was my first visit to Los Angeles and we desperately wanted to get into the Forum. Jeff and I may have been the only white people in the building that night; The Commodores were all the rage and we had a great time at the rock show. I returned to L.A. in March 1981 to visit my cousin, David, who was working out here at the time. It was a strategic trek, as I made sure the Kings were in town. I saw three hockey games in five nights at the Forum – Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Buffalo providing the opposition. At the time, the Kings were wearing their original colors… gold home uniforms with purple trim. I remember that former Leafs’ winger Errol Thompson was playing for the Penguins; I went down to the side-glass during the warm-up and called him over to say I was from Toronto. “Give my regards to ‘Sit’,” he winked, referring to his old Leafs line-mate, Darryl Sittler.
In December 1998, Susan, Shane and I were here in L.A. for my father-in-law’s retirement party. Susan and I went to see the Kings play the New York Islanders in the final season of hockey at the Forum. Islanders’ defenseman Bryan Berard scored the game-winning goal in overtime, roughly a month before he was traded to the Maple Leafs for Felix Potvin.
All of these memories flashed through my mind during the four or five minutes I stood with Shane in the stillness of the Forum on Sunday. If the arena walls – long-ago stripped of banners commemorating NBA championships and Kings/Lakers legends – could only talk.
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