Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Hats Off To Sammy



$80,000 for this card...No idea how much in Canadian money.

If you were not totally stimulated by the vast hockey knowledge on display here yesterday, go read somebody else's blog because this time, I will exhaust all knowledge I have about hockey traditions (unless I find out why teams still wear sweaters) with as full an explanation of the hat trick as anyone could wish for. Admittedly, many of you probably don't want to know...but then, those of that ilk are already back on Facebook, having dismissed this as tripe. So...here's the deal with the hat trick (probably more appropriately called the "cap trick" these days).
All of us have heard that Abner Doubleday probably stole baseball from those English guys playing cricket. There are, in fact, some similarities, like the ball bouncing to the plate and having only two bases, and...well, there ARE some, I think. Fact is, the term "hat trick" can be reasonably traced similarly to the game of cricket. Seriously.
In the game of cricket at some time in the past (hey, I know as little about it as you do), when a player scored three consecutive wickets, it was considered quite a feat, and he was given a new hat, called a "bowler." If I am not mistaken, the person bouncing the ball toward the wicket is called the bowler at this point...if he is successful at knocking the tile off the wicket without the batter hitting it, an out is recorded...I think. Look at it this way: a called third strike, except it happens with one tossed ball, for three consecutive batters. Hence, getting a 3-wicket trifecta earns the thrower a new hat, and "hat trick" was coined, though not really called that until Sammy Tetef came along.
Sammy Tetef, who went by the name Sammy Taft (it's a mystery to me, too...maybe those folks at Ellis Island again) owned a, you guessed it, hat shop in Toronto,Canada, provided Maple Leaf players with a new hat every time they scored three goals in a game. Well, that's one theory. Here's another one which also involves Sammy:
Alex Kaleta who played for the Chicago Blackhawks wandered into Sammy's store (maybe in Toronto as well)and admired a chapeau which he found there...but didn't have the money to buy it. Sammy offered the hat por nada if young Kaleta would score three goals that night in a game. Kaleta scored four and got the free hat.
Of course, this was back in the day when a gentleman always wore a hat...now, not so much.
And, finally, to cap off my hockey knowledge about the hat trick, the NHL record for hat tricks in a career is held by...come on, you can guess this one...Wayne Gretzky who accomplished the feat 50 times in his career.
Yes, it has been stimulating to share this information with the hockey illiterates of the world. If you knew it already, I'm dropping the gloves and jerking on your sweater!

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