The Milwaukee Admirals team has just announced its First Annual Milwaukee Admirals Pride Night. It takes place Wednesday, Feb. 5, at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena. With that, our local professional hockey team joins the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks in welcoming the LGBTQ community for an all-American sports experience.
Admittedly, I don’t have a clue about hockey. It’s all rather foreign to me. My first exposure to the sport was back in the day when I was home in Connecticut for the holidays. A friend took me to a Hartford Whalers game against the Montréal Canadiens. He tried to explain the rules to me but promptly gave up. I still have (somewhere) a hockey puck from that game, unremarkable as it is.
Fast forward decades, when, over the course of a season, an acquaintance invited me to join him for a number of Admirals games. What followed were evenings I’ll never forget.
For my inaugural game, I arrived early at the Bradley Center and, as I waited, observed fans carrying cow bells. Well, it’s Wisconsin, after all, I thought. Then my acquaintance appeared. Coming directly from the office in his suit and duffle coat, I jokingly asked him, “Where’s your cow bell?” Of course, he pulled one out of his pocket.
We settled into our seats just a row or two away from the ice, “against the glass,” as they say. Unlike other sports, there’s a lot of entertainment beyond the game. That first night, like the Brewers’ racing sausages, the Admirals’ entr’acte activities included racing cheese tubs on skates (Port Wine won, as I recall). Then, in another nod to local culture, a contrived giant slingshot fired a lucky fan, seated on a flying saucer snow disk thing, across the ice as a human bowling ball into a set of oversized pins. At some point, a zeppelin passed overhead dropping pizza gift certificates. “Oh, the humanity!” I screamed to myself. At some point, there was a pie eating contest.
I do recall some actual play, interrupted by flailing melees as it often was, clarifying to the uninitiated why the game is played with sticks. Unlike football, where smashing an opponent’s head with a helmet is considered unsportsmanlike, apparently, to accommodate the sensitive and short-tempered nature of the average hockey player, violent outbursts are encouraged, albeit with a brief penalty box time-out to chastise recalcitrant rumblers. But it is during these frenetic moments when the cow bells come in… and the chants. There are number of fan chants, but the easiest to remember is “You suck!” It can be directed disapprovingly towards referees or opposing team members.
Mercifully, in the midst of all this come calming moments of mesmerizing meditation as the Zamboni periodically resurfaces the ice.
Anyway, the Admirals Pride Night offers both reluctant and avid fans a midwinter night’s respite from the doldrums of the season. Also, the special Pride Night ticket price includes a winter cap emblazoned with a rainbow Admirals logo. Maybe there’ll be racing (or better yet, brawling) drag queens on skates, as well. And don’t forget to bring a cow bell!
