"Hot Winter Nights" - Epilogue

Time to conclude my tribute to the original Kansas City Comets indoor soccer franchise.  First off, a few more misc. reminiscences, then a final overview of my devotion to this team...

ODDS & ENDS

How much did I love the Kansas City Comets?  Well, this blog is partially-named in their honor, and I took my radio name, “Captain Comet”, from them as well.  The latter was probably not the best choice in the world, but I enjoyed the anonymity of not having to use my real name on the air, so it kinda stuck.  Besides, "Captain Fantastic" was already spoken for by E. John.  Anyway, I was also probably the only fan in the building at Comets matches who kept score during the games.  I figured baseball fans keep scorecards, why not soccer?  The idea came to me by accident on the night of February 26, 1986 (easy to remember—that’s the day of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster) during pre-game warm-ups at Kemper Arena.  I attended alone that night, and had come straight from school (I was attending UMKC at the time) and tried to do a little studying before the game, and since I had my spiral notebook with me, just for hoots and grins, I decided to keep track of that evening’s goals.  Unfortunately, most of the goals were scored by the evil San Diego Sockers, as they drubbed K.C. 13-3 in easily the worst game in Comets history.  Before the next home game, I designed my own homemade scorecard on graph paper (see photo) and a couple years later when scanner technology came about, my friend Tom put together a more professional-looking model, although I’m still more partial to my original.  I continued to use my scorecards even after the Comets’ demise when the Kansas City Attack replaced them, and even adapted them for hockey, as well.  There are times when I wish I’d become a sports statistician instead of a DJ…

On two separate occasions when a Comets game was played on snowy nights that impeded many folks from reaching the Kemper Corral, the team was good enough to allow us fearless fans who did manage to make it to those games to exchange our ticket stubs for a free ticket to a future home game.  Let’s see the NBA do that!  One such night was a freak early April, 1990 weeknight snowfall that dumped about 7” on the city.  I was working downtown by that time, and the Comets game worked out perfectly for me, because if I had tried to navigate my way home in the snow after work, it would’ve taken me two hours or more.  By attending the game, it allowed enough time for the rush hour traffic to dissipate and for the crews to plow the roads, and I was able to cruise home rather easily following the game.  And the Comets won that night, too.  Timing is everything.

After that thrilling 1985 playoff victory against the St. Louis Steamers (see Chapter 3), I couldn’t get enough of the Comets and started attending each and every home game, and several road games in Wichita, St. Louis and Cleveland as well.  From April 19, 1985 until the bitter end on May 4, 1991, I only missed two Comets home games, both because I had to work at the radio station, but even for one of those I still got to run game broadcast on the radio anyway, as KKJC was an affiliate on the Comets Radio Network.  About midway through the ’85-’86 season, I got tired of having to do the box office thing every night, so I came up with the bright idea of getting season tickets.  My friend Tom and I went down to Kemper Arena one fine afternoon bought a half-season ticket package.  We decided to go the Bob Uecker route and sit right down in the front rowwww behind the Plexiglas in Section 119, seats 5 and 6.  There were actually better seats available throughout the building—from these seats, the view to our left was obstructed by the player benches and we basically couldn’t see the corner at the other end of the field on our side.  But, I had ulterior motives for choosing this pair—besides the obvious perk of being right on top of the action, I figured we could see ourselves on TV a lot during game broadcasts, being’s as we were on the side of the arena opposite the press box, plus we would be able to participate in the Comets victory laps where the players would run along the glass and high-five the fans after every win.  It worked out great, and we kept those seats for the ’86-’87 season as well before we got burned-out on sitting in the same place for every game, not to mention getting annoyed with the family of four that sat to our left and their squirmy little ADHD kids.  Working in the radio biz at the time also netted me more than a few free Comets tickets for the next couple seasons anyway.

THE AFTERMATH
I must now confess that I’m a little embarrassed by how overboard I went with my enthusiasm for the Comets those last six years or so, to the point where it sometimes came at the expense/exclusion of family, friends and even career obligations as my priorities got a little out of whack at times.  Example:  when I was given my first shot at a live air-shift on KKJC, filling in for our afternoon drive guy on a Wednesday, I was initially peeved because it conflicted with a Comets home game scheduled that evening.  It all worked out and I got to the game on time, but you’d think I’d have cared more about my future livelihood than a sporting event.  Another time, my mom had an important grand poohbah wing-ding with her Eastern Star organization that I probably should’ve attended with the rest of the family, but I chose a Comets game instead, and I’ve always felt bad about that.  I was also inconsolable immediately following the Comets demise in 1991.  Not to be melodramatic or anything, but it felt a little bit like having your heart ripped out—hell, I took it harder when the Comets folded than I did when two of my three (count ‘em, three) serious relationships with women ended and I felt very empty, angry and sad.  Given the precarious state of the MISL/MSL during those last years, I had prepared myself for the possibility that there would be no more Comets, but I never dreamed it would be the team pulling its own plug—I always figured if the team ever did fold, it would be because the entire league went under, considering what a successful and model franchise the Comets had been.

Hell, my devotion to the team was such that I even passed up a Saturday night Kiss/Ted Nugent concert over at Municipal Auditorium in early ’88!  I chose the Comets game because I’d already seen Kiss two months earlier in Topeka (with up-and-comers White Lion) on the Crazy Nights tour, which is considered by most Kiss fans (me included) as one of their worst, and Nugent’s career was in irreversible free-fall by that time.  In retrospect, I almost wish I’d done the concert now anyway—the Comets lost that night, and it was one of those rare times when the team seemed really listless with no sense of urgency.  I also faced a dilemma during my 1991 vacation regarding the Comets, who were in the midst of that final playoff series with the Cleveland Crunch at the time.  Games 6 and 7 (if necessary) were slated for Cleveland, but I was also trying to hit some Major League Baseball stadiums on this road trip, including Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, which was in its final season.  I could’ve skipped Game 6 and gone onto Baltimore, hoping the Comets could extend the series to Game 7 (which they did), but I didn’t want to chance it, thus I never saw an Orioles game at Memorial Stadium.  With all apologies to Cal Ripken and Co., I still stand by my decision, as seeing the last two games in Comets history was a privilege and I had a great time that weekend at Richfield Coliseum.  Sorry, Baltimore…

I’ve been reluctant to fully embrace any other teams that have emerged since the Comets (including the Kansas City Blades hockey club, whom I also miss greatly), and I’ve kinda kept them all at arms-length because it hurt so much when the Comets folded.  The Blades did manage to take some of that sting away by having a magical 1991-92 campaign in which they literally went from worst to first after their dismal inaugural 1990-91 season, and had the best record in the International Hockey League, culminating in a Turner Cup championship.  The Comets’ replacements, the National Professional Soccer League’s Kansas City Attack, also filled the void, but only so much.  The team spent its first season playing at Municipal Auditorium (where the rent was cheaper) instead of Kemper Arena, but the sightlines in our venerable basketball venue were terrible for indoor soccer, and it was like being in the Twilight Zone.  Even though Gino Schiraldi returned for one more year and former Comets Zoran Savic, Iain Fraser, Chad Ashton, Chris Duke and Kim Roentved were members of the Attack at one time or another, it just wasn’t the same anymore.  The team wisely moved back to Kemper Arena in 1992-93 and even though the Attack franchise was even more successful that the Comets on the field, winning NPSL championships in 1993 and 1997, the fire just wasn’t there anymore for me.  It was like having to watch black-and-white TV after your color set was stolen from your living room—or for you youngsters out there who can’t relate to B&W, it was like having to watch analog TV after your 52” HD digital flat screen got nabbed.

And I don’t mean to slam the Attack here:  their players worked just as hard as the Comets did (both on and off the field), but the NPSL had such a small-time attitude and I hated their rinky-dink scoring system—two points for a regular goal, 1 point for a power play or shootout goal, 3 points for a goal from beyond the arc, 5 points for goals scored on Ground Hog Day, 10 for goals scored on Thursday nights by Eskimos, etc.—to me, a goal is a goal, period!  Another example of the low-rent nature of the NPSL:  to save on travel expenses in the postseason, the league would settle a 3-game series that was tied 1-1 with a 15-minute “mini-game” immediately following the second game—in effect, a 15-minute overtime to decide the whole series—which I thought was totally crass.  The whole thing just seemed so cheesy and inferior compared with the MISL and I never fully recognized the NPSL as a “major” sports league.  It also didn’t help that the NPSL seemed devoid of the characters and charismatic players the MISL had, like Tino Lettieri, Tatu, Karl-Heinz Granitza, Preki, and the late Stan Stamenkovic and Slobo Ilijevski, et al.

Not surprisingly, the Attack (and the Blades, too, for that matter) suffered from the same indifference the Comets received from our local media.  When their move from Atlanta was announced in September of ‘91, the K.C. Star relegated this news to the back seat behind the Chiefs, Royals, U.S. Open tennis and Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield, only managing a small blurb about the new team on the front page.  Radio coverage for the Attack was spotty at best, too, and even when the Attack honored several former Comets during a halftime ceremony in 1992, the Comet players still had to take a back seat to something else.  Comet greats like Alan Mayer, Tim Clark, Elson Seale, Enzo DiPede, Kevin Handlan and Ben Popoola were forced to wait for some local aerobics group to finish performing their little demonstration before they were finally honored.  So typical of the way this team never got any respect…

While the Attack drew respectable crowds at Kemper, their numbers never came close to approaching the attendance figures of the Comets, and never once did the Attack sell out a home game in their entire history.  The team even changed its name back to Comets in 2001 (while the NPSL cleverly renamed itself the Major Indoor Soccer League—confused yet?), but it made little difference.  I like to call this period the “Faux Comets” era, as they were Comets in name only, with a much lamer logo and bland uniforms compared with the originals.  Even sillier, the team’s mascot, Fuzzy The Attack Cat, was forced to morph into Fuzzy The Cosmic Cat!  During the early ‘00s, owner Donald Kincaid was hopeful of moving the team to a proposed 8,000-seat arena (i.e., lower overhead) in Johnson County, KS that would’ve been similar to the Independence Events Center where the new Missouri Comets now play (minus Fuzzy).  But, the mythical Johnson County venue never materialized, and the team ceased operations after the 2004-05 season and hardly anyone even noticed.

I’m still a fan of our current “niche” teams like Major League Soccer’s Kansas City Wiz(ards) and the Missouri Mavericks CHL hockey team, and I’m cautiously excited about the new Comets franchise, but I don’t care to put myself through the agony again of being a “SuperFan”.  Having said all that, however, I loved the original Kansas City Comets for a reason—they made us fans truly feel like we were part of the team!  I actually felt like I’d be letting them down if I didn’t attend the home games and show my support.  As I wrote at the time of their demise, “It was refreshing to see a group of athletes playing their asses off, not worried about who was making more money than who, or how many Ferraris they owned.  I’d take one wounded Jan Goossens over a hundred Bo Jacksons any day.  When I see people forking out $12 for Yogi Berra’s autograph, it makes me wonder what’s wrong with our society.  Comet autographs have always been free, plus you could probably get a handshake and a nice chat, to boot.”  There was a purity to this franchise (and league) that just doesn’t exist in sports anymore—it was all about winning and the love of the sport, without all the trappings of ego, exorbitant salaries, steroids, et al.

Just an aside, Comets defender Tom Kain, an up-and-coming young star at the time, abruptly retired from the team during the 1990-91 season.  He saw the writing on the wall that the league was in trouble and had a job offer to go to work for Adidas back home in New Jersey.  It’s a rather warped commentary about the league that a good young healthy player was forced to take a real job to support his family instead of playing the game he loved.  Yet, these guys in the old MISL probably worked as hard—if not harder—than their overpaid NFL, NBA and MLB brethren and easily spent more time out in the community with their own fans than the big-league sports guys did/do.  On the day the Comets folded in 1991, it spoke volumes that Kevin Hundelt and Jim Gorsek carried on conducting their Comets-sponsored youth soccer camps—in 100º heat, no less—even though they had both just lost their jobs.  Many MISL/MSL players were barely making more money than I did as a working stiff at Boatmen’s Bank—and I was woefully out-of-shape!  True, no one forced these guys to take up soccer as a vocation, but somehow, this just didn’t seem right.

Despite their popularity, the Comets certainly had plenty of detractors in this town as well.  I often chafed when I read the numerous letters-to-the-editor in the Star criticizing/mocking the team and the sport, and I often wrote rebuttals in defense.  There were also short-sighted bozos like the guy who called in on the radio one time who deemed the Comets and MISL, “Just a bunch of foreigners with funny names running around in shorts.”  Oh, like funny names are a just reason not to like something.  Based on that line of thinking, the NFL (Marty Schottenheimer, anyone?), Major League Baseball (Dale Sveum?), NBA (Detlef Schrempf?) and college basketball (Mike Kryzyzewski?) must have sucked back then too, eh?

Another example of simple-minded thinking is the charming Mongoloid who anonymously commented on my previous post about the Comets and the media:  “but indoor soccer sucks. it's not interesting and no one cares...you know...so that's why it always got the short shrift.  it sucks.  You can almost hear the conversation repeated in every newsroom:  'we're not going to devote much resources to indoor soccer.'  'why not?'  'you know...'cause it sucks and no one is interested.  we cover football and baseball because they have leagues with big television contracts.  who watches indoor soccer?  nobody.  little manboys.  weirdos.'  'oh.'"  Wow, this is Rhodes Scholar material here!  And such great sentence structure, too.  Must be a University of Hee-Haw grad.  Seriously, I never understood all the vitriol heaved at the Comets back in the day, much less now.  I never gave a rip about professional boxing or golf or team tennis, but you didn’t see me trying to run Tommy “The Great White Dope” Morrison or Tom Watson or the K.C. Explorers out of town on a rail back in the day.  Lighten up, folks—to each his/her own…

[And as I’ve stated before on the blog, I don’t mind dissenting opinions or any reasonable challenge to what I write on here, BUT…if you’re going to criticize what I write, at least have the balls to sign your fucking name to it—I do NOT suffer cowards gladly!  Try writing in complete sentences, too, if you want me to take you seriously...]

Curiously, I’ve never been able to get into Arena Football in the same way I embraced indoor soccer.  Football needs to be played in a big open (preferably outdoor) space, and Arena Football is too claustrophobic for me—it looks to me like they’re playing in a phone booth!  On the other hand, Indoor soccer on a hockey rink makes a lot more sense and is a much better fit.  And while it’s true that outdoor soccer is played in a big open space, it’s a freakin’ bore!  Like most Americans, I have great difficulty getting into watching 22 guys just trotting around kicking the ball back-and-forth for 90 minutes, with only a scant few scoring opportunities sprinkled in.  And what’s up with this tie business?!?  Some soccer teams are delirious if they can just finish in a tie!  Americans like scoring and they want to see someone win the bloody game—a 0-0 tie just don’t cut the cheese over here.  That’s what made/makes indoor soccer so much more appealing to me—it’s fast-paced end-to-end action that keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the game, unlike football and baseball with their inherent lulls and stoppages.  True, indoor soccer loses a little something on TV (as does hockey), so it’s better viewed in-person, and when the music cranks up, the Rock concert mentality just adds to the intensity of the game.

Another perk about the original MISL was how the league was virtually devoid of prima donnas like Brett Favre, showboaters like Terrell Owens (apart from Tatu, anyway, and even HE was pretty benign) and insatiable egos like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James.  The rivalries the Comets had with St. Louis, Wichita, San Diego, et al, were both fun and intense, which just added fuel to the fire.  I tend to root for the underdog/little guy anyway, and I really thought indoor soccer had a chance to become the fifth major league sport in the U.S. along with the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, so it was quite disappointing when it all fell apart.  Several indoor leagues have come and gone since the original MISL died (the CISL, the WISL, the NISL, the PASL, etc.), and for whatever reason, indoor soccer just can’t seem to capitalize on the current rising popularity of World Cup soccer in America, either, so it’s always going to be considered a “niche” sport, unfortunately.  Damn shame, because it’s a fun game and far more entertaining (to me, anyway), than the outdoor game, no matter what my “soccer hooligan” friends in England might say.  I’ve gradually learned to appreciate the subtle nuances of outdoor soccer, but it’ll never come close to matching the excitement and intensity of the indoor game for me.  And it’s the ONLY sport (besides mini-golf, anyway) where I approve of the use of Astroturf!

I hope y’all don’t mind me indulging myself in this little series here, but it’s one I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while now.  I also hope you’ve enjoyed reading this series as much as I’ve enjoyed reliving so many great memories while researching this material, many of which I hadn’t thought of in years and some which I’d blotted out altogether, for some strange reason.  Thanks to the magic of YouTube, there are numerous MISL video clips out there for your entertainment pleasure.  The history of the Wichita Wings series is especially good—hell, I like their highlight reel better than the Comets’!  In closing, to the original Kansas City Comets players, coaches, owners and front office folks out there who might be reading this, I send out a hearty salute to you.  You were a fine body of men (and women) and I hope I’ve paid proper tribute to this wonderful sports entity.  Those “Hot Winter Nights” somehow even managed to make an awkward and star-crossed venue like Kemper Arena feel like home and THE place to be, and they were some of the best times of my life.

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 6--Top 10 Games in Comets History

Pretty self-explanatory...

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Wings 10, Comets 9  (December 19, 1986 @ Kansas Coliseum in Wichita)
The only Comets loss that appears on this list, but this was such a good game I feel compelled to include it.  It was our first road trip to Wichita, as well, and my friend Tom and I got to experience the cacophony that was Kansas Coliseum for the first time.  Comets radio man Kevin Wall wasn't BS-ing when he talked about how loud this place got with 10,000 crazies screaming in it.  As the score indicates, it was a crazy game, too.  The Comets led 3-0 after one quarter, 4-2 at halftime and 8-6 early in the 4th.  Then the Wings took the lead on three unanswered goals before K.C.'s Damir Haramina tied it again with a buck-05 to go.  This game set the Comets all-time mark for the shortest OT in team history, as Wings sniper Erik "The Wizard" Rasmussen drilled the game-winner just 30 seconds in—his third goal of the contest to go along with 2 assists.  Disappointing finish, but we had a great time that night.

Comets 6, Wings 0 (April 12, 1991 @ Kemper Arena—Game 1, 1991 MSL Eastern Division
Semi-Finals)
Shutouts in the MISL/MSL were even more rare than perfect games in baseball, and the Comets only had two in their entire 10-year history.  Enzo DiPede recorded the first in a regular season game on January 4, 1984 against the Memphis Americans, and Jim Gorsek threw a no-hitter at the Wichita Wings in this playoff opener.  The Wings couldn't buy a goal that night, even though they had numerous close calls, and Big Jim stopped everything they threw at him, including a two-man advantage, a shootout attempt and over seven minutes of 6th-attacker pressure by Wichita.  The greatest single-game goalkeeping performance by a Comet ever...

THE TOP 10
10) Comets 10, Steamers 5 (March 21, 1986 @ The Arena in St. Louis)
I rank this one highly more for personal reasons as this was my first road game with the Comets, and I was lucky enough to snag a seat directly behind the Comets' bench at the "Old Barn" on Oakland Avenue.  1985-86 was a down year for K.C., so the Comets vented a little frustration that night by exploding for double-digits on the scoreboard and in doing so, tied the team record for most goals in a road game, including a hat trick by Charlie Fajkus, along with two goals and two assists by my boy Damir Haramina.  Things got a little ugly in this one too, as there were fights galore and Steamers defender Carl Rose was ejected for instigating one of them.

9) Comets 5, Wings 3 (March 16, 1991 @ Kansas Coliseum in Wichita)
My friend Tom and I had made four previous trips to Itchitraw for Comets-Wings contests, and the Wings won all four (three of them by one goal), but we finally got a winner in our final try, which also turned out to be the Comets' final regular season appearance in Wichita and final regular season road win team history.  We took great delight in giving a little guff to the Orange Army (Wings fans) or as I dubbed them, the "Wing-A-Lings", in particular this one old fart who kept accusing the Comets of playing dirty.  Never mind that Omar Gomez of the Wings was ejected for being a douche that night.  "Y'all go home and we'll shut out the lights fer ya!" I quipped.  I truly miss them damn Wing-A-Lings...

8) Comets 5, Sockers 4 [2OT] (March 28, 1990 @ Kemper Arena)
Third-longest game in Comets history (86 minutes, 10 seconds), and a stirring comeback against the Sockers as K.C. knocked in two 6th-attacker goals in a 31-second span late in the 4th quarter to tie it at 4.  Dale Mitchell gave head coach Dave Clements his 200th MISL/MSL coaching win @ 11:10 of the second OT in a game that was televised nationally on ESPN, which Clemo later deemed "a great advert for the sport".  Very true, but sadly, it was too little, too late to save the then-floundering Major Indoor Soccer League.

7) Comets 6, Sidekicks 5 [2OT] (February 27, 1987 @ Kemper Arena)
The 1986-87 season got off to a poor start for the Comets, in which they endured an 8-game losing streak that included an embarrassing 8-4 loss to the hapless expansion New York Express (who folded a month later).  Head coach Rick Benben was dismissed and eventually replaced by Dave Clements, and things started to turn around for the team.  This game was another typical Comets-Sidekicks nail-biter, as Dale Mitchell sent it into OT on a 6th-attacker goal with 42 seconds left in regulation.  The game was also filled with lots of chippy play, but very few penalties were called, and both teams were getting pretty frustrated.  Just :35 into the 2nd OT, Jan Goossens knocked home the game-winner, and in what he later deemed "a moment of mental illness", he ripped off his game jersey in a little dig at the Sidekicks' Tatu and his goal-celebration shtick and ran around the field flailing his arms (@ 2:37 of this video), leading play-by-play man Kevin Wall to proclaim on the air, "The MAGIC IS BACK at Kemper Arena!"  And it was, too!

6) Comets 8, Crunch 6 (May 1, 1991 @ Richfield Coliseum outside of Cleveland—Game 6, MSL Eastern Division Final best-of-seven series)
The Comets staved off elimination in Game 5 of this tough series with a 5-4 OT win at Kemper in what turned out to be the final Comets home game ever, and kept the momentum going in Game 6 in what turned out to be the last game the Comets ever won, period—and best of all, I was there!  The Comets' 1991 playoff run dovetailed nicely into my vacation plans that spring, as I did a baseball/indoor soccer road trip that also took me to Cincinnati, Detroit and Pittsburgh and the ballparks therein, and to Cleveland's Richfield Coliseum for the final two games in Comets history, though we didn't know that for sure at the time.  Game 6 and Game 7 were both exciting contests, but since 6 was the winner, I'll go with it on my list here.  David Doyle had a hat trick on this night, and Carl Valentine added three assists as the Comets held off high-scoring Cleveland for one more night, even though Hector Marinaro had four goals for the Crunch.

5) Comets 9, Wings 8 (April 14, 1991 @ Kansas Coliseum in Wichita—Game 2, MSL Eastern Division best-of-three Semi-Final series)
The Comets' final visit ever to Wichita was a crazy day all the way 'round for the team, but a happy one all the same.  The game was a see-saw affair in which the Wings took an early lead, then the Comets roared back with five goals in the 2nd quarter, only to relinquish the lead again to Wichita in the 2nd half.  Then David Doyle tied it all up at 8 early in the 4th quarter and with just 20 seconds left in the game, Carl Valentine rammed home the game winner and series clincher in the last contest ever staged between the two I-35 rivals.

A funny thing happened to the Comets after the game when their team bus broke down on the Kansas Turnpike en route back to Kansas City.  Head coach Dave Clements, assistant coach Tony Glavin and trainer Doug Wiesner stood guard with the bus until help arrived, but the players all hitched rides with various Comets fans who’d made the trip down I-35 for the game.  My friend Tom and I weren’t among them, unfortunately—we decided not to attend since we'd just gone down there a month before (see #9 above) and besides, the game was aired on local TV here—d'oh!  That would’ve been fun, too—there was plenty of room for a couple players in my ’87 T-Bird.

4) Comets 4, Sockers 3 [OT] (December 5, 1986 @ Kemper Arena)
There were times when the San Diego Sockers seemed like the Ivan Drago of the MISL, and after losing 15 in a row to the Suckers, er uh, Sockers (including more than a few drubbings like disastrous 13-3 shellacking at the hands of San Diego the previous February), we fans were all frothing at the mouth on this night when S.D. came to town early in the '86-'87 season.  And just like Rocky Balboa before them with Comrade Drago, the Comets discovered that the Sockers weren't machines—they were human after all!  K.C. was totally focused this time, taking advantage of two Sockers penalties with power play goals, and Jan Goossens took a feed from Damir Haramina about 4.5 minutes into OT and jammed it home.  From that point onward, the Comets-Sockers rivalry was much more evenly-matched.  Vengeance was ours...for the moment, anyway.

3) Comets 7, Sidekicks 6 [3OT] (December 6, 1987 @ Reunion Arena in Dallas)
At 94 minutes and 23 seconds, this was the longest game in Comets history, a see-saw affair that saw several lead changes throughout, after Kansas City fell behind 4-0 late in the 2nd quarter.  The Comets were on the verge of winning when Dallas' Mark Karpun tied it at 6 on a 6th-attacker goal with 18 seconds left in regulation to send it into extra innings.  As luck would have it, I was working that Sunday afternoon at my radio gig at "The Mighty 1030", KKJC in Blue Springs, and we just happened to be a Comets radio network affiliate, so I got to run the board for the game broadcast during the 4th quarter and all three OTs, during which I was on pins and needles throughout.  When the late Barry Wallace drove home the game-winner @ 4:23 of the 3rd OT, I let out a loud "GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!" in the studio, and the other guy in the building at the time thought the fire alarm had gone off!

2) Comets 7, Sockers 6 [OT] (May 13, 1988 @ Kemper Arena—Game 3, MISL Western Division Final best-of-seven playoff series)
It was Friday the 13th, no less, and it was shaping up like a cursed night for the Comets, as they fell behind 5-1 and 6-2, before roaring back with five goals in the 4th quarter, including Barry Wallace's game-tying goal with less than five minutes left in regulation.  Dale Mitchell capped off the greatest single-game comeback in Comets history with his second goal of the night with a buck-03 left in OT.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to witness the finish because I was due at my new radio gig at KKJO in St. Joseph—an hour's drive from Kemper Arena—and I reluctantly had to leave before the game ended.  However, you can see the goal 2:49 into this video.

1) Comets 4, Steamers 3 [OT] (April 19, 1985 @ Kemper Arena--Game 2, MISL Wildcard best-of-three playoff series)
As I detailed in Chapter 3, this was the sweetest victory of all for me.  This wasn't just a game—THIS WAS WAR!  I look back more fondly on this game/victory more than the Royals winning the '85 World Series five months later.  It was easily the most intense sporting event I've ever attended, bar none...

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 5--The Comets And The Media

In this installment, I will examine (and rant about) the media coverage (or lack thereof) given to my favorite pro sports entity of all-time...

Local media coverage of the Kansas City Comets indoor soccer franchise sucked like a Hoover vacuum cleaner throughout their existence.  While the Chiefs, Royals and KU basketball received the lion’s share of attention on the front pages of The Kansas City Star Sports section, the Comets barely rated a mention on Page 12 next to the tire ads most of the time.  When the team folded in July, 1991, the Star devoted the better part of three whole pages to the Comets, which was more than they’d cumulatively written about the team in the three years prior to that!

Then there was KCMO/KCTV-5’s “special coverage” (as they called it) of Comets game telecasts, featuring sports anchors Don Fortune (nee Forunato) and the ever-pompous Jack Harry, neither of whom knew a damn thing about the sport they were covering.  Between the two of them, Comets fans were subjected to such insightful commentary as “Both teams really want to win this game,” and about the only soccer term Harry ever bothered to learn was “one-timer”.  Fortune was particularly annoying with bon mots like “Both of these two teams” and he often redundantly reinforced his points with “He really does,” or “They really did,” or “It really is,” and you could usually tell by the tone of their voices that neither Fortune nor Harry really wanted to be there doing the games—they really didn’t!  DF also had this irritating habit of calling defender Kim Roentved “Kimmy”, even though no one else ever dared to call the man by that name.  Once at a game in Wichita in the early days, both of these two guys (pun intended) openly complained about the loud music playing overhead on the Kansas Coliseum P.A. system, calling it “bush league” of the Wings to do this while the game was going on.  Never mind that this was standard operating procedure in the Major Indoor Soccer League, and the Comets were every bit as guilty of it at Kemper Arena as Wichita was in their place.  Someone in the Comets front office finally got wise in the later years and convinced Channel 5 to at least pull Harry from the broadcast booth and replace him with former and/or current players like Enzo DiPede and Mike Dowler to provide color commentary, which helped some.  Don Fortune retired and moved off to Florida years ago, but Jack Harry remains on the air as sports anchor at Channel 41 here, and he’s an even more arrogant grandstanding blowhard jerk than he was 20 years ago.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, then there was the half-assed way Comets TV games were handled on KCTV.  The team was treated like a red-headed stepchild by Channel 5 throughout their entire existence, as the station would only air their games when it was convenient for them.  Many Comets telecasts originated from San Diego, Tacoma and L.A. and usually started at 9:30PM, K.C. time, but quite often, Channel 5 would join these West Coast matches in-progress at 10:30 following their “Eyewitless News”.  This usually meant the game broadcast began with two minutes or less remaining in the 2nd quarter, so in effect, they were sending their people all the way across two time zones just to cover half a soccer game!  In early 1991, a Sunday afternoon game from Baltimore was joined with ten whole seconds left in the 1st quarter following a CBS college basketball telecast of UNLV and Arkansas that no one here in KC gave a rip about.  In 1989, a Sunday afternoon broadcast from Wichita was tape-delayed--until 10:45 that night, more than eight hours after the game started!  Yet another time, during a game from Wichita, Channel 5 lost its broadcast feed about 9:45PM.  They went with live radio play-by-play in the interim and abandoned the broadcast altogether when the news came on at 10:00, even though the game wasn’t over yet!  I have no doubt they did this on purpose.  It’s funny how Channel 5 was loathe to pre-empt weeknight prime-time CBS programming in favor of Comets games, yet it was perfectly okey-dokey to do so whenever Billy Graham did one of his weeklong “crusades” every other month or when Channel 5 would air their self-serving "For Kids' Sake" and "The Best of Call For Action" programs.  And heaven forbid that Channel 5 viewers would’ve ever had to go without “Wheel Of Fortune” for an evening now and then—a 1990 Comets game from Cleveland that started at 6:30, Central time, didn’t hit the air until 7:00 after most of the 1st quarter expired just so all the Rain Men around town wouldn’t miss their Pat and Vanna fix for the night.

Ironically, the very LAST Comets telecast was SportsChannel America's broadcast of Game 2 of the 1991 playoffs from Wichita carried on local TV by Channel 62, which is Channel 5’s sister station today.  Channel 62 succeeded at something Channel 5 had failed to do throughout the 1990-91 season—televise a Comets game live in its entirety!  In a nutshell, KCTV-5’s “special coverage” of the Comets was an absolute joke.  Unfortunately back then, the team didn’t have many choices when it came to TV outlets, unlike today with cable stations like Metro Sports and even Channel 29, who carried most of the Kansas City Wizards games on TV this season.  However, a select few Comets games in the late ‘80s aired locally on American Cablevision (now Time-Warner) with KKJC-AM Sports Director Chuck Heinz (my radio co-hort at the time, #57 in your program, naturally) and retired Comets defender Clive Griffiths at the mics.  Chuck and Clive’s on-air performances far outclassed anything Channel 5 ever did for the Comets.  Chuck even sought my help on learning the pronunciation of some of the players names, which I was only to happy to coach him on, like "Margetic—sounds kinda like 'my headache'; Boncek = BON-check", etc.  Here's a little sample of Chuck and Clive's work, courtesy of a fellow MISL junkie who amassed a nice library of games on VHS back in the day.  Just as an aside, I think I remember Chuck telling me about how he (or it might've been Clive) once spilled a full cup of soda and ice out of the press box perched on high at the mighty St. Louis Arena onto some poor unsuspecting soul below him in the stands during a broadcast.  Oops…

On radio, things were far more professional for the Comets, thanks to the enthusiasm of announcer Kevin Wall, the only radio play-by-play man the team ever had.  That's him about 20 seconds into this video, and you can hear some of his radio calls scattered throughout, as well.  Kevin joined midway through the first season in 1981-82 (Comets games didn't even air on radio initially) and remained until the bitter end, and he did an excellent job of describing the on-field action and keeping even the casual fan glued to their radio, all the while promoting the Comets as much as humanly possible.  On the air, Kevin was the indoor soccer equivalent of the Seattle Mariners' legendary Hall of Fame screamer Dave Niehaus, and I loved his trademark “GOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLL!!!!!” calls.  He was sometimes accused of being a “homer”, but I thought he was pretty objective most of the time, and if the Comets sucked on a given night, he would say so.  Wall (not to be confused with the media entreprenuer or the conservative talk show host of the same names) was new to indoor soccer when he began his gig with the Comets, but he at least took the time to familiarize himself with the nuances of the indoor game, unlike his TV counterparts on Channel 5.  KW remained on KC airwaves briefly after the Comets demise, then relocated to Tacoma to do sports talk radio there, and last I heard, he was in Detroit doing the same.

In spite of Wall’s brilliance at the mic, Comets radio broadcasts were still often subjected to the same shabby treatment they got on TV.  Example:  A Comets home game broadcast in early ’91 was interrupted midway through as 980 KMBZ broke away at 9:10PM to carry a West Coast K.U. Jayhawks men’s basketball game in its entirety—including the endless pre- and post-game shows—before resuming the Comets broadcast on tape-delay around Midnight.  In the last season or two, head coach Dave Clements’ weekly call-in show originated practically everywhere but the KMBZ studios themselves, as they constantly did remotes from various locations around the city and poor Clemo was expected to traipse all over town just to do his own show.  You think the Chiefs’ station woulda made Marty Schottenheimer do this?  I think not.  One “Clemo Show” was truncated just so KMBZ host John Doolittle could interview Nebraska head basketball coach Danny Nee before their “big” game with my alma mater UMKC—they had all friggin’ afternoon to do that!  KMBZ also rubbed a little salt in the wound for us Comets fans by continuing to run station promos well into 1992 that said, “Your home for the Royals, Jayhawks, Comets and Kangaroos--Sports Radio 980-KMBZ…” for several months after the Comets folded in the summer of '91.  I actually called the station and pointed out the error of their ways, and the boob I spoke to didn’t even believe me at first.

What, me bitter?  Nahhhh....

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 4--An Abridged History

In this installment, I will explore the history of the original Kansas City Comets indoor soccer franchise (mostly off-the-field) in order to provide a little background on why it was so successful—and why it all fell apart too...

Dr. David Schoenstadt brought his struggling San Francisco Fog franchise to K.C. in the summer of 1981 and re-christened it "Comets".  While we do get fog here on occasion, somehow "Kansas City Fog" just wouldn’t have cut the cheese.  Steve Merz, who was known as "Mr. Soccer" around K.C.—he laid much of the groundwork for youth soccer in the area and was once equipment manager for the Kansas City Spurs of the old North American Soccer League.  Merz died in 1993 at age 90.

Unlike "Dr." Bill Cosby, Schoenstadt really was a doctor (a retired anesthesiologist, to be exact--i.e., a gas passer!) and he had lots of money, although you couldn’t tell he was a millionaire by his appearance—he wasn’t exactly GQ material with his sloppy attire and unkempt hair, making him almost resemble late entertainer Tiny Tim at times.  This photo of him appeared in one of the Comets annual team yearbooks—note the pack of cigarettes sticking out of his shirt pocket—real classy!  But Schoenstadt was still a decent enough duck as he was also co-founder of the Discovery Zone children's indoor playground facilities.  DS wisely chose the Kansas City market for the Fog's new home, noting its close proximity to MISL franchises in Wichita and St. Louis and the built-in geographic rivalries they provided.  And in a rather daring—yet very astute—move, he hired two young pups, brothers Tim and Tracey Leiweke, to run his soccer club, and in spite of only being in their 20s, these two had the smarts not only about how to market the team, but how to put on a show for the fans in the process.  Using catchphrases and slogans like "Too Hot To Handle" and “Hot Winter Nights” (hence the name of this series), it didn’t take the Leiwekes long to generate a buzz about the Comets.  About the only real blunder they made in the early going was hiring control-freak head coach Luis Dabo, who lasted all of 11 games that first year.  The Leiweke Bros. would both eventually climb the sports executive ladder after their Comets days, and Tim is currently president of the powerful AEG sports and entertainment group that manages numerous stadiums and arenas nationwide, including the Sprint Center here in K.C., which, by the way, I would love to see house an indoor soccer team someday.

The first regular season game in Comets history on earth in this hemisphere took place on November 13, 1981 (a Friday, oddly enough) at McNichols Arena in Denver, a 5-3 loss to the Avalanche (not the hockey team of the same name).  Ivair Ferreira notched the first goal in Comets history 2:28 into that game.  Two weeks later, the first home game in Comets history also resulted in the first win in Comets history, a 5-4 overtime victory vs. Wichita in front of a near-sellout crowd of 15,925.  Marco Antonio Abascal scored only one—count it—ONE goal in his illustrious MISL career, but it was the game-winner in OT on a feed from Clive Griffiths (@ 1:03 of this video), thus Comet-Mania was born.  Apart from a brief cup of coffee in the NASL with the K.C. Spurs in the late ‘60s, this town had precious little outdoor soccer history, and absolutely none with the indoor variety to that point, so it was astonishing how quickly the Comets caught on like wildfire here.  The fans took to the team immediately, and the Comets drew huge crowds at Kemper Arena right out of the chute that first season, even though the team pretty much sucked on the field in 1981-82, finishing 14-30 and enduring an MISL-record 14-game losing streak therein.  The Leiweke brothers were brilliant at marketing both the game and the players, and they made sure to get those players out into the community to really sell the sport.  It also helped that ticket prices in 1981-82 were quite reasonable, ranging from $4.00 to $8.50.  Hell, $8.50 won’t even cover the price of a nosebleed seat at any sporting event today!  You also have to factor in the impact of the legendary pre-game lazer shows and player introductions complete with flashing lights, disco mirror balls, fireworks and pulsating music to add a little sizzle to the mix.  By the way, you can’t tell me that my favorite band of all-time, Kiss, wasn’t a MAJOR influence on how sporting event pre-games and halftime shows are staged, both then and today.  The game itself was a strong enough draw on its own for me, but the league was smart to add a little pizzazz to get the attention of the casual fan, and people were flocking to the stockyards in droves to see this mini-spectacle/sporting event.  I remember one night my friends and I decided to go to a Comets game on the spur of the moment during those early days, only to be turned away at the Kemper box office because all that remained were scattered single tickets.

By the Comets’ second and third seasons here, the turnstiles at Kemper were spinning like Joe Pesci’s tires in that Alabama mud in My Cousin Vinny, as they were just packing the place every night.  By way of comparison, for five straight seasons, the St. Louis Steamers averaged bigger crowds than the NHL’s Blues during the early ‘80s, and likewise, the Comets were smoking the NBA’s Kansas City Kings at the gate—like a great big marijuana joint!  Hell, the Comets even gave the then-woeful Chiefs a run for their money too—the Comets actually drew 4,000 more fans to their game on a Friday night at Kemper Arena in December, 1983 than El Chiefos had the same weekend at Arrowhead Stadium.  Keep in mind also that this all occurred during the NBA's Larry Bird/Magic Johnson era when most NBA teams enjoyed a healthy resurgence in popularity, but the Kansas City (and/or Omaha) Kings were totally clueless about how to capitalize on that.  True, the Kings drew well when Bird’s Celtics and Magic’s Lakers (as well as Dr. J’s 76ers) came to town, but crowds for other league opponents were mediocre-to-pathetic.  The Celtics or Lakers would bring in a crowd of 16,000 one night, but only 4,800 might show up for the next home game vs. Utah or Cleveland.  It also didn’t help matters that the Kings farmed out some of their home dates each season to St. Louis (including one with the Lakers that drew over 19,000 to The Arena there in 1983), and the Comets just trounced the Kings at the box office during the four years they shared Kemper before the Kings bolted for Sacramento in 1985, just prior to the Michael Jordan-era where interest in the NBA vaulted into the stratosphere.  The average home attendance numbers Kings v. Comets are fascinating…

1981-82:  Kings—6,644; Comets—11,508 (2nd-highest in the MISL)
1982-83:  Kings—8,076; Comets—14,962 (2nd-highest in the MISL)
1983-84:  Kings—9,030; Comets—15,786 (Highest in the MISL)
1984-85:  Kings—6,411; Comets—12,917 (2nd-highest in the MISL)

[NOTE:  These numbers are from team media guides and in the Kings’ case, aren’t official because I did not count the Kings “home” games played in St. Louis as part of their average.]

That 15,786 average for the Comets in ’83-’84 was only about 500 short of Kemper Arena’s full capacity, to wit, they practically sold out every game that season!  15 out of their 24 home dates that season were indeed sellouts, and the team was a hot commodity, with many players doing endorsements for local retailers.  The attendance spike for the Kings in 1982-83 was a residual effect from their unexpected 1981 playoff run during which they just missed advancing to the NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics, but they failed to fully take advantage of the bounce they got from it, even though the early-‘80s Kings were a fairly competitive squad with the likes of Phil Ford, Joe C. Meriwether, Eddie Johnson, Larry Drew and Reggie King, et al.  You can easily make the case that the Comets’ success at the gate was as responsible as anything for running the Kings right out of this town.  That, and bonehead general manager "Clueless Joe" Axelson, who capriciously traded away star players/fan favorites like Ford, Otis Birdsong and Scott Wedman and got bupkis in return for them.  Also, from what I remember, the Kings and Comets had a fairly acrimonious coexistence in their respective offices in the bowels of Kemper Arena during that four-year stretch, clearly a case of sour grapes coming from the bassit-ball side.  Not too many Kansas Citians were crying in their beer over the departure of the Kings, and they really haven’t been terribly missed in the quarter century since they left here, as the University of Kansas men’s team virtually supplanted them as K.C.’s local "pro" basketball franchise anyway.  The Comets were only too glad to see the Kings leave too—their departure made the soccer team the primary sports tenant at Kemper and freed up those coveted prime Friday and Saturday night slots on the schedule.

The Comets continued to draw well until the late ‘80s when the MISL fell on hard times after the novelty of indoor soccer wore off.  It’s tough to pinpoint exactly when the wheels started coming off, but unfortunately, the league got a little too ambitious and tried to expand too rapidly without first making sure its existing franchises were healthy.  Salaries spiraled out of control as the MISL fought to keep big-name players from jumping to rival leagues and/or lure star players from outdoor leagues to play indoors, thus flagship teams that were once stalwarts of the league like the St. Louis Steamers and Cleveland Force were suddenly hemorrhaging money and both folded in the summer of ’88, replaced (to much lesser impact) by the Storm and Crunch, respectively, in 1989-90.  By that time, the league’s coast-to-coast presence had morphed back into a more regional footprint as those 3:00AM tape-delayed game telecasts on ESPN somehow failed to generate national interest, for some reason.  I wonder why...

The MISL’s original commissioner from 1978-85 was a man named Earl Foreman, who once presided over the infamous American Basketball Association in the early ‘70s, and he was brought back to try to rescue the league in 1989.  The MISL experienced tremendous growth for during his first tenure, with none of the shenanigans that took place in the ABA (secret drafts, ambush player signings, hand-me-down team uniforms, sub-standard venues, rinky-dink game promotions, et al), but in his second stint, the damage was already done and Foreman was unable to stabilize the situation, thus the Major Indoor Soccer League—or Major Soccer League, as it was known toward the end—was doomed.  Merger attempts failed with the rival (and somewhat small-time) American Indoor Soccer Association, which later changed its name to the National Professional Soccer League (are youse all confused yet?), and the MISL/MSL limped along on life support with seven teams in its final season and folded for good in the summer of ’92.  Ironically, three franchises wound up joining the NPSL anyway—the Wichita Wings, Cleveland Crunch and Baltimore Blast.  The latter was renamed the Baltimore Spirit, but the name eventually reverted back to Blast again, and they are the only franchise from the original MISL still in existence today in the modern-day MISL, Mach III.  In 1992, the Dallas Sidekicks and San Diego Sockers joined the new Continental Indoor Soccer League, which was partially subsidized by some NBA owners.  Ironically, the erstwhile-dominant Sockers failed to win a championship in that league, for some reason.  Meantime, the St. Louis Storm and Tacoma Stars simply ceased to be when the “Missle” disbanded, with St. Louis joining the NSPL in 1992-93 as the Ambush (transferred from Tulsa) and the Stars were in effect replaced later by the Seattle franchise in the CISL.

The bitter end for the Comets took place one season before the rest of the league folded.  In spite of finishing either first or second in the MISL in average yearly attendance in every year of their existence, and in spite of fielding a consistent winning team toward the end, the Comets were losing money hand over fist as the team’s average attendance dwindled from 10,474 fans in 1989-90 to 7,103 in 1990-91, a drop of 35%.  The league was down to eight teams by this time (the Comets, Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, St. Louis, San Diego, Tacoma and Wichita) and interest in the MISL was fading like Mel Gibson’s film career across the board, not just in Kansas City.  On top of that, during that final season in 1990-91, the Comets had to compete with a new “enemy” of sorts, their new co-tenant at Kemper Arena, the International Hockey League’s Kansas City Blades.  Although the Blades didn’t make the same spectacular initial splash the Comets made a decade earlier, long-suffering K.C. hockey fans (me included) who’d been starving for over 11 years without pucks in this town embraced the new team right away, and there just weren’t enough sports dollars in this city to support both franchises simultaneously, thus trouble was brewing for the Comets.

Uncertainty reigned about the team’s future during the 1990-91 postseason as both the Comets and the Major Soccer League were teetering on the brink.  Schoenstadt sold the club in the summer of ‘87 to a group of local investors headed by Chris Clouser, but as the league struggled to keep teams afloat, the Comets’ ship was taking on water, and by March of ’91, Clouser publicly asked for three more investors for the ownership group or the team would fold after the season, plus there was no guarantee the league would survive anyway, as Dallas, San Diego and Tacoma were threatening to fly the coup too.  No one knew it for sure at the time, but the last game in Comets history took place on May 4, 1991 in Game 7 of the Eastern Division Finals against the Cleveland Crunch at Richfield Coliseum, and I was there to witness it in person.  The final goal in Comets history was scored by Kevin Hundelt, a sixth-attacker goal at 11:55 of the 4th quarter to bring the Comets within one point, but Cleveland held on to win the game 7-6 and the series four games to three.  In spite of the loss, the players and we fans were buoyed by some hopeful news from the day before the last game that the team’s future had been secured after all, as local business entrepreneur Delbert Dunmire had stepped forward to pursue those three ownership units in the team.  It proved to be false hope, however…

I liken the Comets situation to what I/we went through during my radio daze at the “Mighty 1030”, KKJC-AM in Blue Springs in late ‘87/early ’88 when we didn’t know from day-to-day whether the station would be sold to new owners or go out of business (or in broadcasting parlance, “go dark”).  One of my co-horts there had a brilliant analogy for the situation—he stood by a light switch and said, “This is KKJC,” then flipped the lights off (pregnant pause).  “Oh, wait—there’s still a glimmer of hope after all!” and he flipped the lights back on, repeating the scenario several times.  This is pretty much what went on for the Comets in the ensuing weeks after the season ended.  The team reduced ticket prices and tried to sell 4,000 season tickets for 1991-92, so my friend Tom and I did our part by putting a deposit down on a pair, but they never came close to reaching their goal, and just like The Mighty 1030 before it, the Kansas City Comets went dark two months after the ’91 playoffs.  The ownership group sounded (on paper at least) like a very doable deal, but it started to unravel when two investors got cold feet and backed out at the last minute—namely Clouser and Schoenstadt themselves, of all people.  This was eerily similar to what happened with the radio station, oddly enough, as it looked like we had a done deal in place at one point, until one horse's ass decided he wanted a bigger piece of the pie for himself and the whole thing fell apart.  It also didn’t help matters that Clouser had already taken an executive gig with Northwest Airlines during the team’s dying days.  It’s also just as well Schoenstadt got out—he died of cancer five months later on December 15, 1991.

At 11:00AM CDT on July 16, 1991, the original Kansas City Comets officially ceased to be, as the ownership group gave up the fight.  Team VP Robert Hagens said, “Our heads won’t let us proceed, no matter how much our hearts want us to.”  The real shame about it is they were only about $200,000 away from having the necessary working capital to move forward.  Even after the team was euthanized, there were numerous attempts to revive it over the next few weeks, but all proved to be futile.  The league had granted an expansion franchise to Pittsburgh, but their ownership group balked when the league started wobbling, and withdrew their interest.  The MSL players union also agreed to lower the salary cap and such, but it was too little, too late to save the Comets, and the league carried on for that one last season.  Oddly enough in 1991-92, MSL attendance actually rose by 15-20% league-wide over the previous season (depending on who you believed), with St. Louis experiencing an increase of 31% more fans, and there was talk of expansion teams in Phoenix, Buffalo and San Antonio for 1992-93 and possible franchises in San Jose and Anaheim in 1993-94, plus an eventual return to K.C. somewhere down the road, as well.  I attended games in St. Louis and Wichita during that final season after the Comets folded, and the atmosphere at both arenas was certainly still electric.  The St. Louis-Tacoma game I went to was particularly fun because it was played in front of a huge crowd—almost 13,000—and it featured nine former Comets playing between the Storm and Stars, including a match-up of the Comets’ former goalie tandem of Jim Gorsek (St. Louis) and Mike Dowler (Tacoma).  The old barn on Oakland Avenue was still rockin’, and the fans’ enthusiasm there as well as in Wichita a few weeks later gave me hope that K.C. could have a new MSL team soon and that the league might thrive again.  I truly believe if the Comets had fielded a team in that final 1991-92 MSL season, they would’ve survived and joined the lower-budget/lower-overhead NPSL along with Wichita, Cleveland and Baltimore in 1992-93 and the original franchise/organization might even still exist today in the current MISL.  But sadly, it was not to be.

On the hot Sunday afternoon of August 25, 1991, a public auction of the remaining Comets property was held in the north parking lot at Kemper Arena.  It was a surreal event at which my friends and I and approximately 300 other fans came to pick at the carcass of the team and take a piece or two of it home with us.  Everything from player uniforms to unsold souvenir merchandise to office furniture and supplies (right down to the rubber stamps!) was up for bids, even the 5’-high neon Comets logo sign (in this photo) used in pre-game introductions.  I think I heard that some guy in Overland Park snagged that rascal for four-figures, and I’m hoping the new Missouri Comets team might be able to track it down and buy it back from him so they can resurrect it this year, since they are reviving the old Comets logo and colors as well.  Some people were paying ridiculous sums for stuff like office chairs that they could’ve easily gotten cheaper at Office Depot.  Anyway, for a professional auction, this was a very disorganized affair, in which people were able to sift through a lot of the merchandise beforehand as if they were shopping at a flea market.  One woman actually had the effrontery to just grab up the box full of Comets/MISL media guide books (that yours truly just happened to have his eye on to bid for) and try to cart them off to her mini-van.  I pointed this miscreant out to one of K.C.’s finest who was on duty there and he made her put the stuff back, and I was able to bring it all home legitimately after successfully bidding on it.  Those very same media guides have been most helpful in my research for this here blog series, by the way.  I also tried to nab some old North American Soccer League media guides (even rarer than the MISL books) but was outbid by this “Anybody got extra tickets?” scalper schmuck whom we often encountered in the parking lot on the way to the games—douche!  Anyway, the whole thing was a sordid end to a great sports franchise.  How the mighty had fallen…

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 3--The Other Guys

This time in my not-so-little tribute to the Kansas City Comets of the original Major Indoor Soccer League, I'll discuss (and sometimes decry) a few old foes they faced back in the '80s and my memories thereof...

St. Louis Steamers  The Comets’ most heated rivalry was with their Missouri counterparts in St. Louis.  The Steamers—whose logo was eerily similar to that of Boatmen’s Bank, a former employer of mine—were a dominant MISL franchise the early ‘80s and pretty much owned the Comets through the first four seasons they played each other.  Many Comet-Steamer contests were ugly affairs, fraught with lots of chippy play, rough stuff and out-and-out fist fights that even drew blood sometimes.  This rivalry made Yankees-Red Sox, Ohio St.-Michigan and Chiefs-Raiders seem like pillow fights in comparison.  Kansas City met with much frustration in both the regular season and playoffs against Team Steam, especially when St. Lou won a best-of-five series 3-2 in 1984 that the Comets could’ve/should’ve won, had it not been for some poor officiating that turned a blind eye to some major Steamer transgressions.

The following year, the teams met again in the postseason, and the Comets won Game 1 of a best-of-three in St. Louis on an overtime goal by my boy Damir Haramina (@ 2:16 of this video).  Game 2 took place here at Kemper Arena on Friday, April 19, 1985—a date I’ll take to the grave with me.  All 10,241 of us in attendance were in full-goose Twisted Sister We’re-Not-Gonna-Take-It-Anymore mode and this turned out to be the most intense sporting event I’ve ever witnessed in person—THIS WAS WAR!  The crowd was into every little thing that happened in this game, and it was like we were going to will this team to victory even if it was the last thing we did.  I remember there was a lot of pushing and shoving on the field, but surprisingly few penalties considering the bad vibes between the two squads.  Things were looking dire late in the 4th quarter as St. Louis maintained their 3-2 halftime lead until Angelo DiBernardo tied things up with 2:13 left in regulation.  Then a buck-22 into overtime, midfielder Tasso Koutsoukos rammed home a feed from Laurie Abrahams past goalie Slobo Ilijevski to clinch the Comets’ first playoff series win, thus sending me and 10,240 other souls into a frenzy.  I remember raising my hands and looking at the Kemper ceiling and half-yelling/half-screaming an orgasmic “YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!”  It felt like demons were being exorcised that night, and in a way, they were, because the Comets dominated the St. Louis from that point onward, and the Steamers began a rapid decline and were out of the league altogether a mere three years later.

The Kansas City Royals won the World Series six months later against that other St. Louis team, which was awesome, but I look back even more fondly on this victory.  I had no real quarrel with the Cardinals, and it just seemed so much sweeter that the Comets finally took out those freakin' Steamers!  It didn’t even matter that San Diego swept the Comets in the subsequent playoff series that spring—we’d FINALLY gotten over the Steamer hump, and anything else would’ve been anti-climactic.  That game was also so exciting that I couldn’t get enough Comets soccer, thus afterward I only missed attending two Comets home games throughout the remainder of their existence until 1991.  And both of those absences were because I had to work, yet during even one of those, I still got to run the game broadcast thereof on the board during my KKJC radio gig in Blue Springs, MO for the home opener of the 1987-88 season—against the Steamers, naturally. 

The Steamers had four players I truly despised in those early years:  defenders Carl Rose and Steve Pecher, forward Don Ebert and goalkeeper Slobo Ilijevski.  Rose, Pecher and Ebert were agitators, always instigating skirmishes and then complaining to the officials that someone else started them.  Pecher later played for the Comets, so we had to learn to tolerate him, but I saw Rose and Ebert (elbowing Val Tuksa in this pic) as pure evil. I do remember one of the Comets getting the best of Rose one night, leaving his nose and face bloodied.  What made Ebert even more infuriating was that he was a good scorer in addition to being a goon.  You can also watch Pecher totally lose it against the Wichita Wings in a legendary 1982 playoff game at the very beginning of this video.



And then there was Slobo.  We just loved to hurl invective at Mr. Ilijevski (pronounced illy-EV-ski) the most because he was one of the great whiners of all-time.  I also seem to remember an on-field spitting incident at Kemper Arena that inspired many Comets fans to call him “Slobbo”.  Having said all that, this man was also one of the greatest goalies in MISL history.  The “ageless wonder” was the Dominik Hasek of indoor soccer, seemingly getting better the older he got, and Slobo played well into his ‘40s.  As good as Slobo was, he did have a penchant for wandering too far from his goal (wanting to be part of the offense, usually) and he'd get burned by allowing a cheap goal, like the one at the tail end of this video.  He was usually good for one of these at least once per game.  From everything I’ve read, he was a very nice man off the field, and Slobo Ilijevski was to the St. Louis soccer community what Gino Schiraldi is to the K.C. soccer landscape, making his unexpected death in 2008 all the more shocking and saddening.  Slobo was a great warrior and a worthy (albeit whiny!) opponent indeed.  Rest in peace…

In spite of the numerous nasty things I write about the Steamers, I do respect them as people and as competitors. St. Louis was/is a fertile breeding ground for soccer talent, especially amongst the numerous Catholic schools in the area, and the team preferred to employ homegrown players as opposed to stocking their roster with foreign-born players like most MISL teams did.  Thus, native St. Louisans like Jeff Cacciatore, Steve Pecher, Don Ebert, Ty Keough, Greg Makowski, Sam Bick, Tony Bellinger, Ed Gettemeier, Mark Frederickson and Daryl Doran, as well as other U.S.-born players like Ricky “Captain America” Davis, were all mainstays on the Steamer roster for years.  This is not to say the Streamers were totally devoid of foreigners—stalwarts like wee Scots Tony Glavin and Duncan MacEwan, London’s Carl Rose, Irishman Redmond Lane, and Yugoslavians Nebo Bandovic, Njego Pesa and the late Slobo rounded out the squad, and they were a formidable force for several years beginning in 1979.  Over time, though, it seemed like the St. Louis and Kansas City rosters were interchangeable, as players like Pecher, Frederickson, MacEwen, Gettemeier, Makowski, Bandovic, Keough and Glavin all shuffled back and forth across I-70 and played for both teams over the years.

Team Steam (which was partially owned by baseball's Stan Musial and Joe Garagiola at one time) was quite a phenomenon in the early ‘80s at the venerable St. Louis Arena on Oakland Avenue, then known shamefully as “The Checkerdome” when Ralston-Purina owned the NHL’s St. Louis Blues.  Amazingly, the Steamers outdrew the Blues in average attendance five years in a row, thanks in large part to having so many local boys on the squad.  At one point in the winter of 1981-82, the Steamers were the 2nd-best drawing indoor pro sports team in North America, just behind the NHL's Edmonton Oilers, and it's hard to fathom now how names like Slobo, Glavin, Bellinger and Ebert were just as prominent in the St. Louis sports scene as Whitey Herzog, Vince Coleman, Willie McGee and Ozzie Smith were back then.  However, the “St. Louis vs. The World” mentality that initially won over the Gateway City faithful would ultimately be the franchise’s downfall—that, and a revolving-door ownership situation.  St. Louis was always a bridesmaid but never the bride when it came to championships in the MISL, and while the homegrown talent on the team was good, it wasn’t quite good enough to get them over the hump.  Sadly, the novelty of the team wore off by 1985 or so, and Steamer crowds dwindled as the Blues began to reassert themselves during their 1986 “Monday Night Miracle” playoff run and puck fans in St. Louis rediscovered their team.  The Steamers suddenly started hemorrhaging money and folded after the 1987-88 season.  It figured—as soon as the Comets had finally mastered them, they crapped out!  The Steamers were replaced by the St. Louis Storm in 1989-90, and featured several familiar players (Doran, Slobo, et al) and a cool logo, but it just wasn’t the same.  Oh, how the mighty had fallen…

Wichita Wings  Apart from the Kansas City Wizards, the Wichita Wings were the only Major League professional sports franchise that ever called the state of Kansas home, and they were the “Little Engine That Could” of indoor soccer, if you will.  Although they competed with Wichita State Shockers basketball for sports $$, the Wings were pretty much the only game in town, and the city supported them avidly during the ‘80s.  The success and longevity of the Wings in small-market Wichita was remarkable, and we Comets fans had a fun and almost-friendly rivalry with their rabid following, the “Orange Army” (or “Wing-A-Lings”, as I preferred to call them).  The Wings played their home games at Kansas Coliseum out in the boonies north of town off I-135.  The Coliseum, also known as Britt Brown Arena, seated just a skosh under 10,000 and had outstanding sightlines for indoor soccer and a flat, low-slung roof that created a cacophony of noise when the crowds got loud, not to mention wide, comfortable seats.  My friends and I made several trips down the Turnpike when the Comets played there, and the Wing-A-Lings certainly traveled well, as we’d often encounter several hundred Wichita crazies at Kemper Arena—many with orange hair—clanking cowbells and popping balloons every time the Wings scored a goal.  The rivalry between Wichita and the Comets wasn’t quite as nasty as Comets-Steamers, I think because the Wings (and their fans) had just as many issues with St. Louis as we did (as this video attests), but it was fun all the same, and very evenly-matched.  So much so, in fact, that the Comets trailed their head-to-head regular season series with Wichita pretty much throughout their entire existence until the Comets’ very last regular season home game ever, when they defeated the Wings to win the all-time series 32-31.

The Wings debuted two years before the Comets in 1979, and were competitive right away, finishing either first or second in their division in each of their first five seasons.  Instead of loading their roster with local talent like the Steamers did, Wichita imported many of their players form Denmark and fielded a squad built around the “Danish Connection” of Kim Roentved, Erik Rasmussen, Keld Bordinggaard, Jan Oleson, Frank Rasmussen (no relation to Erik) and Jorgen Kristensen, along with stalwart goaltender Mike Dowler, defender Kevin Kewley and forwards Chico Borja. Norman Piper and Andy Chapman, among others. Roentved, Kristensen, Dowler and Frank Rasmussen all later played for the Comets, as well.  Erik Rasmussen (aka, "The Wizard") was an asbolute sniper of a goal scorer, and I firmly believe that if he'd had a longer tenure in the league, he would be the "Lord Of All Indoors" instead of all-time MISL leading scorer Steve Zungul--the Wizard was THAT good.  Borja was also a fan favorite in Wichita, a very likeable guy off the field, and he won my eternal respect when he and fellow Wing Dale Ervine assisted in the rescue efforts immediately after the tragic tornado that struck the Wichita/Andover area barely a week after the Wings were eliminated by the Comets in the 1991 playoffs.  However, on the field, Chico was every bit as volatile as Carlos Zambrano of the Chicago Cubs is today.  Once when Borja played for the L.A. Lazers, the ref called a questionable foul on him right in front of me and Tom in our front row seats (3:43 of this video), and I swear, I thought Borja’s eyes were going to explode when he reacted!  I can’t help but wonder if the dudes who created “Ren And Stimpy” were in the crowd that night, because Borja resembled Ren in “YOU EEEEDIOT!!” mode when he went ballistic.  I can't resist this:  "Chico, don't be discouraged..."

For the 1988-89 season, the Wings sported the goofiest sports uniforms I’ve ever seen.  They came out for pre-game warm-ups one night wearing these vertically-striped blue-and-orange shirts (modeled by Pedro DeBrito here) and Tom and I started laughing. At first we thought these were just for warm-ups, but when they came out again for the game we were like, “Those are their actual uniforms?!?”  They looked like something clowns would wear.  Anyway, after several trips to Wichita to see the Comets play some close-but-no-cigar matches with the Wings over the years, Tom and I finally got a winner in our final visit there in 1991.  We were being smart-asses with the Wing-A-Lings near the end, and I said, “Y’all can go home—we’ll turn out the lights for you!”  The Comets players, to their credit, made sure to make their way in our direction and acknowledge us and the rest of the K.C. contingent who had assembled, and they waved to us and applauded in thanks for our support.  Total class.

The Wings survived the demise of the MISL in 1992 and landed (get it? wings/plane landed!) in the NPSL and the rivalry continued (tepidly, anyway) with the Kansas City Attack for a few more years in the ‘90s before being grounded for good in 2001 when the NPSL morphed into the MISL Mach II and the Wings finally folded.  The Kansas Coliseum (at left) is now closed as well and awaits the wrecking ball, having given way to the fancy new downtown Wichita arena last year.  I’m cautiously optimistic that the current MISL may well place a new Wings franchise in the fancy new downtown arena someday soon so we can “Go back, Jack—do it again” and resurrect the rivalry with the Wing-A-Lings and the new Comets.  If you want a very succinct synopsis of Wings history, I highly recommend all five parts of this YouseTube video.  I think I actually like it better than the Comets video that's out there...

San Diego Sockers  Those natural geographical rivalries with St. Louis and Wichita were certainly intense and exciting, but the MISL opponent I loathed and despised the most was the San Diego Sockers—much moreso than the Steamers and Wings.  To me, the Suckers (as I preferred to call them) were like the Oakland Raiders of the MISL—pure evil!  I almost dreaded watching those late-night game telecasts from San Diego because the Comets rarely ever won out there (especially in the early years), and struggled mightily to defeat SD here at home.  The playoffs were particularly frustrating, as San Diego knocked the Comets out no less than four times in five years, the most painful loss being in 1988 when the Comets had San Diego by the throat with a 3-1 series lead, then proceeded to get hammered in the final three games by scores of 7-1, 6-1 and 8-5.  The ’87 playoffs were similar, as the Comets led SD 2-1 in a best-of-five series and couldn’t finish them off then either.

Other incidents over the years gave me cause to revile the San Di-EGO Suckers from time to time, as well.  The most egregious to me was the time in 1985 when Sockers head coach Ron Newman pulled his goalkeeper in favor of a sixth attacker with three seconds left in the match when they had the lead!  Newman justified this Bush League maneuver by claiming that he wanted his offense to practice a particular set piece, to which Comets head coach Rick Benben responded with something to the effect of, “If he wants to practice, next time we’ll move off the field so they can have more room.”  Ironically, I was later forced to accept Mr. Newman when he was named the first head coach of our mighty Kansas City Wiz(ards) of Major League Soccer in 1996.  I still don’t like the horse's patoot, tho!

Speaking of horse's patoots, San Diego forward Juli Veee didn’t endear himself to K.C. fans in the aftermath of the worst beating the Comets ever took, a 13-3 drubbing by the Sockers in early 1986, during which SD poured it on with six goals in the 4th quarter, four of which came after they already led 9-3.  Veee proceeded to call our players “tired old war horses...the worst team I've ever played" and accused them of quitting.  Not to make excuses, but undoubtedly not everyone’s minds were into the game that night because of what happened earlier that day—the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.  Oh what sweet revenge it was a mere ten months later when the Comets made Veeeeeeeeee eat his words as Jan Goossens (assisted by Damir Haramina) jammed in the game-winner in OT at Kemper 4-3 to snap the Comets’ 15-game losing streak against SD.  From that point onward, the SD-KC rivalry was much more competitive and evenly-contested.  In Game 3 of the 1988 playoffs, the Comets staged the greatest single-game comeback in team history, as they trailed SD 5-1 and 6-2, and roared back to tie the game on a goal by Barry Wallace with about 5:00 left in regulation, followed by Dale Mitchell’s OT goal to win it, 7-6 (2:48 of this video).  By the way, I thought Juli was a girl's name...

Aside from Veee and Newman, the San Diego Evil Empire was also comprised of cretins like Paul Dougherty, Cha Cha Namdar, Brian Schmetzer, Zoltan Toth, Waad Hirmez, Ade Coker, Kaz Deyna, Kevin Crow, Brian Quinn, Jean Willrich, Jacques Ladouceur, Hugo Perez, Branko Segota, Fernando Clavijo and Steve Zungul, as well as future Comets Gary Collier and Jim Gorsek, and numerous others.  I remember during a late-night TV broadcast from SD, an open microphone picked up someone on the Comets bench shouting, “Crow, you c---sucker!”  Thereinafter I always referred to Kevin Crow as “Crow the C---sucker”.  It seemed to fit, anyway...

Twenty years ago, I would’ve gladly pissed in any of the San Diego players' Cheerios, but the passage of time has given me cause to step back and see what a truly fine body of men that team was back in the day.  The Sockers won ten championships between the NASL and MISL from 1981-92, thus making them the New York Yankees/Montreal Canadiens/Boston Celtics of indoor soccer, and like them or not, you at least have to respect their accomplishments.  You would think the most successful sports entity in San Diego history would rate a nice exhibit in the San Diego Sports Hall of Fame museum, wouldn’t you?  Guess again.  I was quite taken aback when I visited the museum in 2008 and the only mention of the Sockers’ existence in the whole place was Juli Veee and Ron Newman being members of the SD Ring of Honor.  Made me almost feel sorry for the team in general.  Almost, that is…

For you movie buffs out there, the late Kazimir "Kaz" Deyna of the San Diego Sockers appeared in the 1980 Sylvester Stallone film Escape to Victory as one of Sly’s teammates on the soccer field.  Sadly, Deyna was a knucklehead on the night of September 1, 1989 when he got drunk off his arse (blood alcohol level .20) and was killed instantly at age 41 when he drove his a car into the back of a parked truck on Interstate 15 in San Diego. 

Los Angeles Lazers  The MISL team I actually DID feel sorry for was the Los Angeles Lazers, an expansion franchise owned by Lakers president Jerry Buss, who joined the year after the Comets.  You’d think in a metro area as big as L.A., you could get a few folks to come out to see your games, no matter what sport, but for some reason, the Lazers never caught on out there.  It was almost comical to watch Comets games on TV from a three-fourths-empty Fabulous Forum, as the Lazers would routinely have crowds in the 3,000-4,000 range.  It didn’t help that they went 8-40 in their inaugural season, but the Lazers improved to .500 and actually finished ahead of the Comets the next two seasons, then plummeted back to last place for two more seasons, in spite of having some star-quality players like Poli Garcia, Willie Molano, Gus Mokalis, Greg Ion, Doug Neely, Lee Cornwell (shown below, playing in front of a typical Lazer home crowd), David Brcic and the single-named killer B’s, Batata (aka, Nilton DaSilva) and Beto (aka, Roberto Dos Santos).  The Lazers were involved in a rather infamous incident in 1986 in St. Louis when head coach Keith Tozer was so incensed at the officiating that he instructed his players to just stand still and let the Steamers score at will, for which the league fined and reprimanded him later.  By the time they finally put a really competitive team together, Buss pulled the plug on the Lazers in 1989.  The Comets were beneficiaries of the Lazers’ demise, nabbing Ion, Neely and goalie Jim Gorsek in the dispersal draft.  Tozer later was head coach of the Kansas City Attack before moving on to the Milwaukee Wave, winning several NPSL titles there in the ‘90s, and Batata’s son, Nino DaSilva, was a star and fan favorite with the Attack for a time.

It’s a shame the Lazer thing didn’t work out, because I think success in the L.A. market would’ve been a boon to the MISL in terms of media exposure, especially if some Hollywood-types like Jack Nicholson would’ve made attending Lazer games fashionable.  Similarly, the league could never get a foothold in the New York City area, as four different franchises—the New York Arrows, Cosmos and Express on Long Island as well as the New Jersey Rockets at the Meadowlands—all came and went between 1978 and 1987 without any New Yorkers noticing, even when the Arrows dominated the league in the early years.  Even worse, neither the Cosmos or Express were able to complete a full year in the MISL, each folding ignominiously midway their respective inaugural seasons.

Best Of The Rest  There were a few oddities in Comets history. In the seven years the Comets faced the Cleveland Force, each team only won one game in the other’s home arena.  However, the Comets were a bit more successful at Cleveland’s Richfield Coliseum against the Force’s replacement, the Cleveland Crunch…Similarly, the Comets only won once against the Minnesota Strikers at the Met Center in Bloomington, and the Strikers had one lone victory at Kemper against the Comets…Games with the Dallas Sidekicks always seemed to be decided by 1-goal for the longest time, and during a stretch in 1987 four straight Comets-Sidekicks games were decided in overtime, including two of the longest games in Comets history—a triple-OT marathon in Dallas and a double-OT thriller in K.C. (the Jan Goossens shirt game @ 2:36 of this video), both won by K.C.

Other individual player memories:
Cleveland’s high-scoring midfeidler Kai Haaskivi was a perennial all-star for both the Force and Crunch, serving as head coach for the latter as well, but my friend Tom and I always made fun of the man because of his startling resemblance to this nerdy guy we went to junior high school with!  A classic judging-book-by-cover scenario, you might say…The late Stan Stamenkovic of Memphis and Baltimore was nicknamed “The Magician” for his remarkable footwork and ball-control skills, and you’d swear that damn ball had a string attached to it, the way he was able to draw it back to himself at will.  Because of his stocky and pudgy build, we also called him “The Weeble”—he wobbled a lot, but never fell down on the field!  Sadly and ironically, Stamenkovic died of a head injury in 1996 after falling on an icy sidewalk.  Check The Magician out in the 1983 MISL All-Star Game, right here at Kemper…In those last couple seasons, the Comets had to deal with the Dastardly Duo of Hector Marinaro and Zoran Karic with the Cleveland Crunch.  These two seemingly scored at will against us, no matter how well we defended them. Karic was especially annoying because he was a career dive-taker and whiner, pissing and moaning that he’d been fouled after nearly every play, which made it really hard to root for him when he joined the Kansas City Attack in the late ‘90s…My favorite MISL player nickname belonged to Tacoma’s Neil Megson, who as known as the “Elegant Assassin”.  I’m sure he preferred that over “Meggy”…Speaking of nicknames, South Africa’s David Byrne (not to be confused with the head Talking Head) was known as “The Man With The Red Shoes” in honor of his crimson footwear.  That worked out fine in Baltimore, since red was one of the Blast’s colors, but looked kinda funny when he was traded to Wichita and their orange and blue ensembles.  He also sported one of the mightier mullets in the MISL…Perhaps the MISL’s biggest star was Tatu of the Dallas Sidekicks.  His real name was Antonio Carlos Pecorari, and facially, he reminded me of a cross between actor Tony Danza and the late Freddie Mercury of Queen (w/o the dreaded moustache).  Tatu’s trademark was removing his game uniform after every goal he scored (home or away) and tossing the sweaty garment into the crowd.  A bit of a showboat, yes, but not nearly as arrogant as say, Terrell Owens or Chad Ocho-Stinko, and thankfully, Tatu never took his shorts off and threw them into the crowd!...One of my favorite opponents was goalkeeper Tino Lettieri of the Minnesota Strikers.  Tino was a colorful dude who was known for his equally-colorful stuffed parrot/good-luck charm, Ozzie, whom he always kept in the back of the goal he was tending.  What I liked about Lettieri was his reckless, scrappy playing style, although it sometimes got out of hand, like at the 6:30 mark of this video, where clearly the Bird was NOT the word!  Like Slobo before him, Tino was known to go astray and get toasted on a "gimme" goal now and then.  And just like our man, Gino Schiraldi, Tino went into the pizza bidness up in Minnesota after he retired as a player.

I guess I better say something about the “Lord of All Indoors”, Steve Zungul, the MISL’s all-time leading scorer.  While I respect his accomplishments, I was never particularly enamored with him, as Zungul came across as an arrogant Reggie Jackson/Barry Bonds-type—i.e., he was good and he knew it.  The guy scored 108 goals in a 40-game season in 1980-81 and 103 in 40 games in 1981-82—that’s damn near a hat trick every game!  Some players are lucky to get one hat trick in their entire lives.  The S.O.B. was good, no question, but I just can’t shake the horse’s ass image I have of Zungul…

One last person of note is Willy Roy. Little Willy was the fiery head coach of the Chicago Sting, and he was fit to be tied following a 1986 game at Kemper when Comets midfielder John Bain scored four goals, including the game-winner (at 2:27 of this video) with precisely one second left in regulation in a 6-5 victory.  Roy claimed that the winning goal shouldn’t have counted because the clock expired before the ball crossed the goal line (even though the above TV replay clearly indicates otherwise) and he called the Comets a “Mickey Mouse organization”, among other things.  This was obviously a mere case of sour grapes that I think had more to do with his team giving up four goals to the same guy than issues with the game clock operator.  Comets fans didn’t forget things like that, so next time the Stink, er uh, Sting came to town about a month later, the entire crowd proceeded to serenade Willy with, “M-I-C…K-E-Y…M-O-U-S-E…Willy Roy…Willy Roy!”  Ironically, Chicago won that game in OT by the score of—you guessed it, 6-5!

The Refs  And finally, no discussion of the Comets/MISL would be complete without mentioning the abysmal officiating that plagued the league throughout its existence.  Picture this year’s putrid World Cup officiating (on steroids) and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how piss-poor it truly was.  It seemed like Comets games were always officiated by the usual suspects, Bill Maxwell, Esse Baharmast, Ermanno Ritschl, Herb Silva, Kelly Mock, Brian Hall and the worst of the bunch, Gino D'Ipollito.  “Dippo” was a roly-poly man who bore a slight resemblance to Mr. DeFazio on “Laverne & Shirley”, and he lived up to his nickname with some of most blatantly horrid calls (both for and against the Comets) that I’ve ever seen in any sport.  Some of Dippo’s gems made Don Denkinger’s 1985 World Series gaffe seem accurate.  According to one of the league media guides, D'Ipollito worked as a carpenter during the off-season.  If he carpentered anything like the way he reffed, one can only surmise that his houses resembled Early Cuyler’s place on “Squidbillies”.  In addition to their general ineptitude, these guys always seemed to molly-coddle superstar players like Zungul, Tatu, Vee, Haaskivi and Karl-Heinz Granitza, et al, especially when they took dives, which was more than a little bit.  I swear, there were some nights when I really wondered if MISL games were fixed, given the appallingly bad refereeing that was taking place.

Just to give an idea how poor the officiating was in the MISL, a 1987 incident that went in favor of the Comets gives a good illustration.  During the off-season, the league made a rule change that eliminated the three-line violation when a team has a two-man advantage.  Similar to how icing becomes legal in hockey during a power play, the goalkeeper was now allowed to throw the ball over the three lines on the field (think the red line and two blue lines in hockey) without infraction while down two men on a penalty-kill, but on this particular night in St. Louis, one of the refs nailed Steamers ‘keeper Pat Baker for a three-line violation anyway while the Comets had the two-man advantage.  The Steamers got hosed because the Comets subsequently scored on that power play.  And who was one of the refs on the field that night?  None other than Herb Silva, former MISL Director of Officials!  How could the league maintain any credibility when one of the senior referees didn’t even know the freakin’ rules?  Yes, I realize these guys were/are human and make mistakes, but geez Louise, it was soooo frustrating, especially during important playoff games.  There was a brief time when the MISL's headquarters were housed in the same New York City office building as the World Wrestling Federation, and I couldn't help but wonder sometimes if their "refs" were on the same payroll...