Flashback: March 1, 2007

Robert Vaughan used orange duct tape to spell out “Trade Lowe” on the back of his jersey when he attended the Oilers-Phoenix Coyotes game Tuesday night at Rexall Place.

He says he was stopped and taken to a small room in the bowels of the arena where two men, identifying themselves as representatives of the Oilers, told him the sign was offensive to management. “They want all the fans to be like rabbits and sheep,” said Vaughan, who’s owned season tickets for six years and is considering whether to renew them. “I feel violated.”

Moments after he and his nephew walked into the main concourse, he says he was tapped on the shoulder by two men in suits. They identified themselves as representatives of the Oilers and asked Vaughan and his nephew to accompany them.

Vaughan says they were taken to a room where the men told him to rip off the duct tape. He said he refused and tried walking to the door, when one of the broad-shouldered men blocked it. “He bluntly said I was not going to leave with that written on my back,” said Vaughan. “I said, ‘Are you threatening me?’ ”

[...]“I’m choked,” Vaughan said. “I’m extremely disappointed and I want a letter of apology from the Oilers. I bleed copper and blue. They took away my freedom of speech.” [...] “I was venting,” he said.

The Oilers did not return repeated phone calls yesterday.

This is what came to mind when I read Dave's account of being turfed from the Rexall pressbox for having the gall to update Covered in Oil while officially being there on other business.

Not to say I don't care about it, but the issues of New Media, This is the 21st Century, etc. are drums for others to beat, and if you scroll down to Links To This Post at the bottom of Dave's piece, you'll see that they're being beaten. Although it's worth underlining that, while Dave was reluctant to be categorical about it, it's as clear as Kevin Lowe's rapidly receding hairline that the problem was what Dave was writing, i.e. the exact same irreverent and unvarnished takes for which he is known and beloved, not that he was live-blogging. If he just was live-blogging scoring chances and who "looks sharp out there", he wouldn't have been touched -- no more than someone with EBERLE4EVER duck-taped to the back of his sweater would be called down into the bowels.

More than anything else, I just feel lousy for Dave. Apart from the fact that this was a pain in the ass professionally, there is no worse thing as a fan of a pro sports team than to be unavoidably confronted with the fact that, at root, it's extremely stupid. You're rooting for a private business who in the end will do whatever they damn well please for their own reasons, and occasionally exhibit, to use an old Cosh phrase, "the priggish imperiousness of a cop or civil servant".

And as much as I'd love to make this into a BoA-style "your poo stinks and mine doesn't" thing... no. There's a reason I've never attempted to contact the Flames organization, get a press pass, an interview, or the like. Actually, there's two reasons, the first of which is that I like this blog the way it is: it's personal, I don't owe anyone any favours, and I don't have to abide by anyone's rules and guidelines but my own.

But the other reason is that I really don't want to know what the response would be; I have no interest in them assessing the value (or not) of my contributions to Flames fandom, and I don't wish to be eyeballed skeptically like some kind of saboteur and/or troublemaking teenager. Like Dave was. He'll be missed and CiO won't be the same without him.