Backyard Hockey and Ball Sports

Tapiola was teeming with kids of the junior league age. The soccer league between residential areas had started even before we moved to Tapiola in the summer of 1960. I played soccer too, but love for the game – as today’s marketing men tend to say – never ignited fully. Football was just a fun way to hang out with our neighborhood guys. Nothing more. Watching it on TV was boring. Pekka lived full-heartedly with the ball on the lawn and at home watching matches on TV. That was the difference. As our team’s striker, Pekka was a junior league hero. I sometimes went to watch games, played on the dusty sand field, always seeming to end with a nil-nil draw. The only visible result was Pekka covered in sand dust, with fresh scratches and bruises. I leant against the edge of the field fence, humming The Beatles’ ”From Me to You” in my head.

On the grass fields of Silkkiniitty, we played soccer almost every day on the three-month long summer holiday from school. However, it was just one pastime among others. Of course, the excitement of the game was infectious and if the team division was successful, the games were exhilarating. Piles of shirts served as goalposts and we had no real boundary lines on the grassy field. We did practice sideline throws, but otherwise, the game ebbed and flowed freely on the lawn. You were not allowed to use firm-knobbed Nokia soccer shoes, even if someone owned a pair. Tennis sneakers were the norm. Our legs were bruised up anyway. Pekka actually played barefoot on the grass. That supposedly built up the pain threshold for real soccer games on a proper field. The penalty shootouts on B-house’s backyard ended due to too many broken windows. Pekka’s family’s apartment happened to be located just above the backyard field, so his parents were very permissive about soccer, but when for the second time a ball decorated the living room table with shards of glass around it, playing on the backyard was banned. Silkkiniitty called.

Pekka and Hassan moved up from the junior league to the youth series. The venue remained the same sandy central field. The moving dust cloud from one end of the field to the other told the sparse crowd about the game’s progress. A foul had the referee’s whistle screaming. The dust cloud settled briefly. An unsuccessful penalty kick sent the ball soaring several meters above the locker room behind the goal structure. Then the game ball was searched for a while before the dust cloud resumed its journey around the field. I understood quickly that the chess-like tactics and ingenious game intelligence of soccer weren’t revealed to me. Of course, friends were cheered on and the league table was rigorously studied, even though our team seemed to be permanently stuck at the halfway point.

Baseball could have been a good alternative to soccer. The problem was the number of players required for a decent game. Batting and fielding practice quickly became tedious. The few times we managed to get the Poutapolku gang to join us, and thus gather enough players, the action was riotous. We played baseball with tennis balls. Not everyone had a mitt. I had a yellow-green child’s mitt. I wouldn’t have dared to catch a real baseball with it. A good hit on a tennis ball from a hard-hitting guy would hurt too. Hassan had a real junior game glove ”borrowed” from the school, unfortunately it was a left-handed mitt. He still managed to catch the balls well, even though his hand didn’t entirely fit in.

Veli-Matti’s parents organized the Backyard Olympics once each summer. The events included long jump, triple jump, high jump, shot put, and running. The top three participants in each event earned points. Naturally, the person with the most points was declared the winner, and was awarded a bottle of then rare Del Monte pineapple juice. The second and third place winners received an ice cream. All participants got a bottle of cold Jaffa soda.

I did well in the jumping events, as I was a head taller than the others. Pekka would always protest against the basic scissor technique I employed in the high jump, and the primitive leaping style I used in the triple jump. His protests didn’t get anywhere. Veli-Matti’s father was fair, and allowed all styles of play. Pekka was consistently close behind me, always winning the final event – a grueling run around the Central Pool and back – every time. The winner of the run inexplicably received double points. Pekka would speed past me right before the pool, ultimately overtaking me in the points tally. I would always end up in second or third place.

I managed to beat Pekka on the ”marathon” only once, thereby winning the whole Olympic event. The next day, I was down with a stomach bug and a fever. Overexertion was the apparent diagnosis.

In summer, the ice hockey rink was replaced with basketball hoops. A semblance of a game could be had with just three guys, but four was enough for a real match. We also played basketball during gym classes at school, usually on the court’s sides with hoops set at junior height across the gym. My growth in height made useful leaps for this sport and the more civilized rules of basketball allowed me time to think about the best direction to pass the ball.

We must have been on the outdoor court quite often, as at some point in summer, I realized I was on YMCA’s team at a basketball tournament. I wasn’t an offensive scoring machine. As a defender, I did fill my role. The final placement of our team remained unclear to me. Fortunately, no trophies were handed out at the tournament. An annual edition of the Superman comic magazine was a much more suitable reward.

The winters of the 60s were all heavily snowy and conveniently cold, they say. Perhaps the budding success of the Finnish ice hockey team had bewildered our elementary school woodworking teacher because we were allowed to make mini-sized hockey sticks in our lessons. We little boys were excited, even though we always had to suffer bitter disappointments in front of the TV set. Mölli Keinonen’s twists and turns, and Lalli Partinen’s booming body checks didn’t help. The Soviet Red Machine dashed clap-clap-clap across the ice, and Harlamov flicked the puck in via the crossbar: 7 – 1.

The hockey sticks made during woodwork lessons didn’t last long in the rough and tumble of street hockey. We quickly switched to real sticks. Instead of the puck we used a tennis ball. We once shattered the stairwell window with a stray shot from a bandy ball. But the glass could withstand tennis ball hits quite well. We managed to slog through game after game of backyard hockey, evening after evening. The courtyard of the B-house was flat and large enough. The noise grew along with the growing players. Yelling came from us and from an increasing number of parents appearing on balconies. We moved to the skating rink.

I was apparently some kind of natural talent on skates, so the gymnastics teacher in high school practically forced me into the school’s ice hockey team. I was fast and technically superior to other boys in the class – without a stick. The ice hockey stick greatly hampered my movement and poking around with the puck was dangerous without any kind of protection. I would have had the potential mainly for figure or speed skating.

We practiced in a street hockey style, but proper gear had to be acquired for the actual match – right down to the groin guard. My family couldn’t afford to buy expensive things like that. By borrowing, I managed to scrape together complete protection. The shoulder pads were too small, while the groin guard was clearly men’s size. The shin guards were of a different pair. I at least owned padded hockey gloves. Everything else was borrowed. Based on the pungent smell of sweat, I was able to tell where each part came from. Moving in a full combat dress was clumsy. The guards slipped, rubbed, and smelled.

I sit in the substitution box and wait for my turn to play. The gate is opened and I jump into the rink. I forget that I have several extra pounds of stuff taped to my body. I tumble onto the ice on my buttocks, but jump quickly up and circle to my defensive position. Helmet slips over my eyes. I swipe my Jofa helmet upward with the glove. The snap opens and the helmet flies into the rink corner. I skate after it. With the stick under my arm, I try to fit the Jofa back onto my sweaty head. Something bumbs on the blade of the stick. The puck! I give it a wrist shot with all my might. Icing! The whistle blows. The start is at our end. The opponent wins the dropped puck. I trip over a groove in the ice. The slap shot hits directly on the groin guard. There is a loud thump. I block a sure goal. A teammate gets the puck, passes, and our striker shoots the puck into the opponent’s net. We win one to zero. I get pats on my back. Good job, Rob! You dove in courageously! I’m sweating profusely. I didn’t understand anything about the flow of the game. At home, I undress my wet, foul-smelling game gear. The groin guard is split. I might have missed my voice breaking…

My career as a hockey player was limited to that one match, even though the teacher praised my brave defending work. I managed to pay off the broken groin guard with the annual volume of the Superman comic. Sports leaders were right. Various types of sport support each other.

Lasse Viren’s Olympic golds triggered an unprecedented jogging boom in Finland. I also caught the same bug. I ran my first rounds in tennis shoes. After a few laps of running at Silkkiniitty, I realized that I needed proper running shoes. Blisters and sore toenails gave a clear message.

Hassan owned part of a sports equipment store for which I even designed the logo. In return, I received a discount on the products sold in the shop. I even purchased a Stiga exercise bike. I pedaled the Stiga when the weather was so bad, there was no reason to be outside. The whine of the belt-driven bike was horrible to hear even with headphones on.

Karhu brand had just launched a new running shoe series. The colors were dazzling orange, electric blue and screaming green. I had the screaming shoes. The shoes didn’t have much shock absorption, but they were lightweight and suited my foot. That’s what I used to run around Silkkiniitty and Otsolahti bay.

Foot pain came first. No one told anything about warming up and stretching. I rubbed my feet and used liniment. And I ran. In October 76, my left Achilles tendon couldn’t keep up. That ended my runs for a long time. It wasn’t until the next spring that my foot recovered after having limped several times to the doctor Nyström’s reception at the student health center. He finally agreed to inject cortisone into my heel. During summer, the problem was forgotten, and the foot finally fully healed. However, the desire to run was lost for almost a decade. I kept cycling around Tapiola admiring the beautiful scenery on summer weekends. In winter, I walked to the record store and back.

However, I missed regular exercise and team play. So, I did not resist much when my friend Sakari, while sitting in Vesimies disco one weekend night, lured me back to ice hockey. We had a regular team that mainly consisted of former school friends. We played towards the spring in the badly lit evenings with a tennis ball. This hobby ended in a collision with someone who apparently didn’t get hurt at all. My lip split, and I permanently lost the desire to play. On the Ancient History course at the university, acquaintances were asking where I had jumped the snack bar queue.