Sports Column

Hawks in need of better owners

On Sports

By dwight jaynes

The Portland Tribune, Mar 18, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (13 Reader comments)

The final Winter Hawk home game of the season was Sunday night, and just before the opening faceoff, they cranked the music up. Out came the same old song teams often play prior to games – “Start Me Up,” by the Rolling Stones.

And on cue, the oft-repeated lyrical bridge in the song boomed loud and clear:

“You make a grown man cry. You make a grown man cry.”

How appropriate.

It was that kind of season – again – for the Winter Hawks. More losses, in terms of games and money, and fewer fans. More mistakes, on the ice and off. More broken dreams for their hearty band of fans, however dwindling they may be. More broken promises.

This is the team owned by Jim Goldsmith, the big-talking New Yorker who told Portland he simply wouldn’t allow losing. That’s probably true – his team hasn’t lost every game. Only 61 of 72.

He also promised a new replay screen – and installed an ugly old video board with a picture that looks a lot like the 1957 Admiral television set my dad owned that used a rabbit-ears antenna.

Goldsmith paid his bills late, and things got so bad that his players had trouble obtaining hockey sticks. The team’s popular radio announcer, who also was the local face of the franchise in the business community, quit before the season – tired, I think, from fighting the good fight.

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