A Search For Blueshirt Fans Who Played Roller Hockey

Christmas Day is a day for thought as well as celebration. A couple of pictures in my room got me thinking hockey; what else?

A 1948 photo, taken in front of the Brooklyn Ice Palace – the only hockey rink in the borough at that time – includes your's truly and my Woodside Whippet roller hockey partner, Jim Hernon. Alas, Jimmy died more than a dozen years ago. Yet, I wonder if any of his descendants are around.

In 1950, I was playing for the Brooklyn Wizards, a roller hockey team based on Van Buren Street in Bed-Stuy; except that our home rink was a schoolyard on Fort Hamilton Parkway in Flatbush.

Since the only big-league hockey team in town was the Rangers, just about every roller hockey guy rooted for the Blueshirts and that was that. One of them was roller hockey ace Carl Glickman. He's in a couple of the wall pix.

The good news is that Carl, my defense partner on the Wizards, is still around, living in Connecticut, almost-religiously reading my Hockey News/Rangers stories – and we're still very much in touch.

"Send me some of the photos," Carl requested the other day. 

I found a team photo taken on our home turf and sent a note back to Carl and requested that he identify the guys apart from goalie Don (Duck) Furman and Glickman himself and a few of the other guys I could make out.

And that got me thinking, if Carl and The Maven are still around, who's to say Jack Ferrara, Stuey Glasser, Artie Katz, Jerry Berger, Mintz, Red and Heshy – with the gorgeous girlfriend –  aren't alive and well and somewhere out there in our universe.

Christmas Greetings With A Neat Story About A RangerNobody tells a better hockey story than my buddy Joltin' Joe Dinonisio. 

Same with the Woodside Whippets – Artie Kane and  Mel The Goalie. I'm pals with Freddy Meier's son Andy and was in touch with pepperpot Joe Giaimo before he died quite a while ago. Maybe somebody knows about big Bobby Schanz and Harry, his goalie kid brother.

The Mave would appreciate any contacts with descendants of those roller hockey giants of my youth. I loved playing our favorite game with every one of them!

Merry Christmas!