Saturday’s Gwinnett Gladiators game included their annual Teddy Bear Toss. The previous four years I have been in the penalty box which allows me the ability to get close to the glass behind me to avoid the onslaught of teddy bears being tossed onto the ice after the Gladiators first goal. This year we were shorthanded for staff for that game so I was the Penalty Timekeeper (this will make sense in a minute, I swear). The penalty timekeeper sits directly at center ice (between the two penalty boxes) and is the one who talks to the referee on the ice through the hole in the glass. The penalty timekeeper also writes down the penalty information to give to the announcer who sits to his right. Time is of the essence in writing down the info for the announcer and the upstairs stats crew (who must enter it immediately into the online software) once the referee gives it.
In addition, the referee will normally tell the penalty timekeeper who scored the goal if he witnessed it. This last task is what caused me to get bonked on the head with a rather large teddy bear Saturday night. The purpose of the Teddy Bear Toss clashes with the instinct to duck for cover since I need to get that info from the ref ASAP.
So picture this scenario. About five minutes into the second period, Gladiators finally score their first goal. The arena air is suddenly filled with stuffed animals all hurtling at breakneck speed to the ice. Obviously not everyone is gifted with a pitcher’s arm and some seats are simply too far to chuck a fluffy animal to the ice. As I lean towards the hole in the glass for the ref to tell me who scored, I get pegged with a stuffed lion. I’m sure some wanker aimed it for my head and I can’t say I wouldn’t try to do the same thing given the chance. Since that stuffed lion was already a Dead Man Walking, I used his carcass to cover my head as I used my left arm to hold him above me while I listed to the ref with my left ear and wrote everything down with my right hand. That lion protected me from another 5 or 6 animals that hit him. It’s kind of like those scenes in the movies where a dead body is used as a human shield and that corpse is riddles with bullets, thus protecting the hero/villain (depending on the plotline).
It’s not the first time things have flown into the penalty box area. We leave our area between each period and since they do a Chuck A Puck promotion between the second and third period of every game, it’s in our best interest to not get pelted with hundreds of foam pucks that people are throwing. That promotion lets people toss orange foam pucks they bought at a banner placed on center ice and whoever gets closest to the center gets a shopping spree at Kroger. It’s kind of like a 50/50 raffle except you actually earn your win when playing this promotion. When we get back for the start of the 3rd period, there’s always a 5-20 pucks strewn about from wayward throws. The announcer has a giant umbrella he uses to protect himself from friendly fire since he has to be down there when the promotion is being run. In case you’re wondering, his umbrella, while large, doesn’t extend far enough for the penalty timekeeper to be covered during a barrage of flying animals.
Other things have been tossed into the box during the 5 years the Gladiators have been in existence. The visiting penalty box guy once got pelted in the back with a beer as he was letting a player out who had been boisterous with the surrounding crowd. Unfortunately the beer was meant to soak the player but the drunk fan’s aim was obviously a tad off.
Probably the oddest thing I’ve seen enter the box was a sombrero. A player had just scored a hat trick (three goals in one game) and as is custom the ice was flooded with hats. All of a sudden I see this sombrero float like an alien saucer into the penalty box. At first I was confused as to why someone was voluntarily wearing a sombrero, as the people behind them would have quite the obstructed view. But then it hit me that it was Cinco de Mayo and that fan was simply celebrating the holiday.
Below is a view just inside the penalty box as the cleanup crew is finishing up picking up the remaining animals. You can see the mascot Maximus out there, who pissed off our supervisor a few months ago by squirting his posterior with a water bottle as he exited the box between periods. His pants were soaked the rest of the game and he was cursing Maximus out the rest of the evening.
