Brass Bonanza Plays Again: How Hockey's Strangest Goon Brought Back Mark Twain and a Dead Team--And Made a City Believe

By Robert Muldoon

What happens when a major league pro sports team leaves a city? The Hartford Whalers left on April 13, 1997leaving behind devastated fans. The players left, tooexcept one who stayed and suffered like the fans.

Tiger Burns is an unlikely heroeven for a hobbit-sized, smash-faced, hockey goon with 600 fights. Standing 53, with one-eye, cauliflower ears, and a full-rigged ship tattoo on his chest, his most unusual feature is this: he loves Hartford and its team, the Whalers. In a league where players date super models, ice princesses and Miss Americas, he is a misfit. But in a league of Los Angeles, New York and Boston so is Hartford.

Brass Bonanza Plays Again tells the riches-to-rags story of Mark Twains hometown, once the nations richest, now the butt of jokes. It relates the true saga of a small citys beloved team moved away, like Brooklyns Dodgers. And it weaves the tragicomic tale of the muscle-bound gnome who blows the jump-the-shark game against arch-rival Boston on April 11, 1990, lives homeless under a bridge, only to rise up and lead a dead team, out of the stands onto the ice.

Tiger rallies not only a dead hockey team, but awakens the ghosts of Hartfords past. He brings to life a ragtag band of 19th century legends and is saved by a guardian angel Rube Waddell, one of sports goats from the 1905 World Series. Can a one-eyed, homeless underdog make a faded city believe and rescue a star-crossed spirit? In Brass Bonanza Plays Again, we have Rocky (on Skates!) meets Field of Dreams.

Rocky came out of a Philly row house, Rudy out of an Indiana steel mill, and now Tiger Burns comes out from under a Hartford bridge to bring a dead team to life. A book of provincial aspirations and condescension, Brass Bonanza Plays Again tells the story of this small city, midway between New York and Boston, long considered just a urine-stop or ass-wipe between Wall Street and Cape Cod.

The New York Times recently printed an essay In Search of the Great American Hockey Novel lamenting that hockey, unlike other sports, has yet to be celebrated in a notable work. Where is the Chekhov of the Chicago Blackhawks? the Times asks. Who is the Stendahl of the stick to the groin? To that, we humbly say: read on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450281065

Robert Muldoon

For 10 years, Bob Muldoon worked for the Whalers, driving a new car on-ice between periods, squiring models vying for the title “Miss Cadillac” (the best part-time job in Hartford). A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Columbia Journalism School, he has been published in Newsweek, the Hartford Courant, Ring Magazine (“the Bible of Boxing”), and Birdwatcher’s Digest.

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Prologue

1. A Lilliput (sic) among Gullivers

2. Tiger’s Walk

3. Bear Le Batard

4. The Scrimgeours

5. The Moose Jaw Man-Child

6. A Ship Sets Sail

7. Pride in the Jersey

8. The Beantown Basher

9. The Schmidleys

10. The Public Eye

11. The 37th Stone

12. SWM, 5’3", 200, 1-Eye, Cauliflower Ears

13. The Cat

14. Broadway

15. Chuck’s

16. A Date with Destiny

17. Suzy

18. The Battle of New England

19. Hockey Hobo

20. Northern Lights

21. The Erstwhile Actuary

22. Tiger’s Proposal

23. The Teacher

24. Death Spiral

25. The Death of Kings

26. The Bulkeley Bridge

27. Rube and the Straw Hat

28. Park Street

29. Mr. O’Reilly’s Night

30. A Pox on Your City

31. Gotham and Gomorrah

32. The Stanley Cup

33. Fire Bells

34. The Public Watch Dogs

35. Lights in the Sky

36. Destination City

37. The Drop of the Puck

38. The Dead Shall Rise

39. Brass Bonanza Plays Again

40. The Dodo Sings

41. Tiger’s Speech

42. Overtime

43. The Last Shot

44. Release

Endnotes

Preface

This book began 9 years ago on a walk with my father when reminiscing about the past I unexpectedly choked up. I realized then how much I missed Hartford and the Whalers. I needed to find someone who loved them as much. Tiger Burns was revealed to me.

From 1984 to 1994 I worked for the Whalers—driving a new car on-ice between periods (moonlighting in the Actuarial Department at Travelers Insurance). Some would say I saw a lot of bad hockey. I couldn’t disagree more. It was the most privileged association of my life.

It was a magical time, just out of college, with scores of like-aged actuaries to hang out with. And, of course, there was the Whale. My roommate Brad Peters was a press gofer for the team. One night out of the blue he called, tone urgent, Get down here! We need someone to work the penalty box. That night, I opened and closed the gate for Hall-of-Famer Gilbert Perrault.

Two weeks later, Brad called again. This time the need was different. When I arrived, his supervisor Mr. Henderson tossed me a pair of keys. Drive the promotional Honda Accord on ice between the first and second period. On ice? I gasped. What if the car skidded, rammed the boards and flew into the crowd? I could already see the headlines: DRIVER GOES BERSERK AT CIVIC CENTER. 10,000 LOOK ON IN HORROR. ‘MAD DOG’ MULDOON UNDER HEAVY GUARD.

It went fine. Next season, incredibly, the regular driver left. These jobs were plums, passed on from father to son. Get your friend, Mr. Henderson told Brad. For the next 10 seasons I drove the car on-ice (first a Honda, then a Buick and last a Cadillac). No headlines.

I wrote a story View from the Penalty Box in the Sunday Hartford Courant describing the experience. Phil Langan, the Whalers PR Director, invited me to write for Goal Magazine, the game program. I cut my teeth with features on the Zamboni Driver, Team Photographer, Team Dentist, Security Guards, Assistant General Manager, and Sky Boxes. Mercifully, at last, he entrusted me with a player.

His name was Shane Churla. A tough guy! Wear a helmet and mouthpiece to the interview, my father teased. Others followed: Sylvain Cote, Paul MacDermid, Randy LaDouceur, Scott Young. No more Zamboni Drivers. Some of the players I profiled became NHL Coaches: Joel Quenneville, Dave Tippett, John Anderson.

I went to grad school in New York City and moved back home to Boston, where for 2 seasons I drove 120 miles round-trip to keep the car-driving gig. In Boston I experienced first-hand how all things Hartford were sneered at: Hartford sucks! Whalers suck! My affections deepened. Who doesn’t love an underdog?

On April 13, 1997 I headed down for the last game. PA Announcer Greg Gilmartin snuck me down in to the penalty box where it all started for me 14 years earlier. I watched teary-eyed along with 15,000 others. Oooooooooooone minute left in Hartford, Gilmartin said.

After the game, we went to Chuck’s for the Irish wake. Beat writers Jeff Jacobs and Alan Greenberg, of The Courant, Randy Smith, of the Journal-Inquirer held court, as always, but the mood was funereal.

Kevin Dineen scored the last goal—and the players left for Carolina. Hartford was left with bittersweet memories. Five years later, I took that walk with my father—and the memories all flooded back.

###

Writing this has been a monomaniacal pursuit for 9 years. I’ve learned one thing: I don’t have a glass jaw. Again and again I’ve been knocked down, dusted off the ice shavings and skated back into the fray.

For a time I had a New York agent (who represented The English Patient novel), and she pitched it to a New York publisher, and the pointed response was Hockey books don’t sell! I tried telling her it was a Rocky book, not a hockey book. An underdog story. A love story. She said in these troubled times publishing houses are closing. I said in these troubled times America needs Tiger Burns and his story of loss and perseverance.

Hockey books don’t sell. The epitaph.

So now I take inspiration from fellow Bates alum Lisa Genova who published with iUniverse when she was told Alzheimer books don’t sell. Still Alice went viral, was picked up and debuted on the New York Times best-seller list at #5. Alzheimer books don’t sell, indeed.

###

I’d like to thank Brad Peters for being a friend and making that call in 1984; Bill Henderson for tossing me the keys despite quaking knees; Phil Langan for the magazine assignments and faith. Linda Thornton, Rich Chmura, Rick Francis, Diane Sobolewski, all with the Whalers, were supportive. The ice crew—Charley Tucker, John Weir, Wayne Knight—all rallied around a nervous driver.

Howard Baldwin, Whaler founder, made it all happen. Ron Francis, Kevin Dineen, Ulf Samuelsson and others made the team special. Terry O’Reilly, of the Boston Bruins, was the perfect opponent. Thanks to them all.

Randy Smith, Jeff Jacobs, Alan Greenberg and Jack Lautier chronicled the exploits—and held court at Chuck’s Steak House. I learned much pricking my ears and craning my neck. I deeply regret that Randy, Alan and Jack are gone.

Greg Gilmartin, Grace Lim, Mike Onyon, Sheila Callahan, Robert Muldoon Sr., Cindy Bates, Vipada Kasemsri, Lisa Bobak, Marcy Thibodeau, Vince Juaristi, Ted Roupas, Grace Aylesbury, Kit Hoffman and (he claims) Richard Crocker read the book and gave comments. Richard Marek added professional polish. Brian Cipro and Russ Busa lent their talents. John Merola did not scoff. Addie Kim helped me conceive this as something larger than I first imagined.

Warren Muldoon has always been a believer (in the face of all evidence). My mother Joanne has always been steadfast and loving (if not patient). My father Robert was the smartest and funniest man I ever knew. His spirit lives on every page.

Bob Muldoon

November 2010

[e-mail]

Prologue

The gnome-sized man pulled his hockey stick back. The hopes of a down-in-the-mouth city, a down-on-its-luck team, and 15,535 beaten-down fans rested on his thick back and the thin blade of his stick.

The rising crowd roared. The small stick rushed forward in a blur and slammed the puck—Thwack-Clang-Noooooooooooooooooooooooo... The echoes of that doleful harmony still ring out decades later.

Single-handedly losing the Stanley Cup, and sending a small city’s beloved team into oblivion, is enough to drive a man to rum, ruin—or madness. For Tiger Burns it drove him to pick up trash for untold years in Hartford’s Frog Hollow barrio.

But let us begin on a note of false hope.

The three greatest trophies in sports—a major league ball club, an NFL team and the Stanley Cup—were once in Hartford’s grasp. Yes, unheralded Hartford, in the shadows of New York and Boston, eclipsed now even by Providence, nearly claimed the three greatest jewels in the diadem of sport.

The baseball team, alas, is 19th century history; the football faux-pas has been chronicled; but few know of the last—until now.

It is a tale of betrayal and death played out in the grimy alleys and bridge bottoms of a city scorned—and in the recesses of a tormented mind. For shame, regret and guilt can kill a man as surely as arsenic—only slower and with far more pain.

###

What causes a man to snap? The chess player Bobby Fischer did, and wandered the squalid streets of Los Angeles in castaway clothes, occasionally sighted late at night in the public library studying games. Unhinged by demons, it was whispered.

The mathematician John Nash did, and for decades shuffled the halls of Princeton in untied sneakers, a phantom-genius scrawling arcane symbols on blackboards. Broken by an unsolved equation, it was murmured.

And the hockey fighter Tiger Burns did, too. Undone by an ill-fated game, it will now be told.

But Fischer came back to play, Nash to receive the Nobel Prize, and Tiger Burns to claim a piece of the Stanley Cup. For in the end, this is a story of redemption: a man’s, a team’s, a city’s—and a star-crossed spirit’s.

It is also a love story.

1. A Lilliput (sic) among Gullivers

Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale

In his ocean home will be

A giant in might, where might is right

And King of the boundless sea

—Whale Song

He was perhaps the oddest-looking player ever to lace on skates. Standing five foot—three inches, he weighed 200 pounds, with a barrel chest, wrecking ball biceps, a 21" neck that seemed small under the head, and thick thighs on bowed legs that made skating difficult.

The left eye was lost to the butt-end of a stick. The two toes were gone in a botched attempt to plant a green pennant on Everest. The 500-stitch belly scar came from running (but not fast enough) with the bulls of Pamplona. The cauliflower ears, cartilage-free nose, and toothless grin were the grim memorials of a decade of on-ice tussles.

Sherlock Holmes could deduce a man’s profession at a glance, distinguishing bookkeeper from beekeeper, violinist from ventriloquist, by the subtle markings each left. But even the great sleuth, in obeisance to the name, and the remnants of a face, might have mistaken our hockey player for a wild animal trainer unskilled with the whip and chair. Elementary!

To old-timers, his battle-scarred appearance called to mind Two Ton Tony Galento, the 5’8 dock brawler who went four rounds with Joe Louis, or Hack Wilson, the 5’6 steelworker whose 191 major league RBIs is a record—but they dwarfed him.

Out-of-towners saw him differently. GHASTLY! The Phantom of the Opera unmasked, harrumphed the New York broadsheets. A beer barrel on skates, guffawed the Boston tabs. In Montreal, he was (in 2 tongues) a muscle-bound hobbit in need of face reconstruction.

But on one point, there was agreement: he was not a pretty sight.

In a league where players dated Miss Americas, Olympic ice princesses and super models, he was a misfit. But in a league of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago so too was Hartford. To many he personified town and team. With all his defects he was the perfect Hartford Whaler!

When his left eye—the glass one—once popped out, he slapped it past the bewildered goaltender, lighting the red lamp and turning skate-over-helmet cartwheels. It took five minutes of replays, a bench-clearing brawl, and a call to the Commissioner’s Office, before the goal was disallowed. It would have been his only one that season. Throughout, the organist serenaded him with Eye of the Tiger.

But it was with his fighting—not his eye-popping scoring—that he made his bones (and broke a few). A boxer like Muhammad Ali might have 60 fights in a career; Tiger had 600. Parsimonious as a scorer, as a fighter he was profligate. In a 10-year career, he spent 3,000 minutes in the penalty box—50 hours, enough to watch 100 Seinfelds.

With that many minutes, he should have had his own contoured chair and reading lamp inside, quipped one wag.

If he had applied himself, Tiger could have mastered Trigonometry—or Latin—from the captive confines of the Sin Bin. Instead, he did stomach crunches. There were battles ahead to be fought.

Hockey’s rough-and-tumble Adams Division was not for the meek. With the likes of Chris Knuckles Nilan and Terry The Tasmanian Devil O’Reilly running amok, a willingness to scrap was necessary.

The Norris Division was known as the Chuck Norris Division after the kung fu expert. The Philadelphia Flyers fielded a line The Legion of Doom that averaged 6’4’’ and 230 pounds. Lurking elsewhere were Stu The Grim Reaper Grimson, Linc The Missing Link Gaetz, and Bruise Brother Bob Probert.

He was, noted one observer, a Lilliput (sic) amongst Gullivers.

But even though you might stand a foot taller, weigh 40 more pounds, have both eyes, and more toes—with Tiger, the whole was greater than the sum of the missing parts. He took them on, one and all, and rarely faltered.

When asked how he did it, night after night, knowing the toll it was taking, the emotion of his answer overwhelmed him.

"I never fought for myself—ever," he said, tears streaming down one cheek. They said a lot of mean things out there—‘specially ‘bout my mug. I never lifted a finger. But if they ripped Hartford or the Whale… at that, his raspy voice faltered, they were in for the fight o’ their lives.

After repeated efforts to compose himself, he finished in a whisper: I love dis place, ya’ know.

Although he was small, he was strong. He skated with a city on his shoulders.

To signal his willingness to fight at the drop of a puck, or civic slur, he wore a tiny scrap of a leather helmet—a cross between something worn by Red Grange, the Roaring Twenties football star, and The Red Baron, World War I flying ace. Padded models with face shields were an abomination to him.

Easter bonnets! he sneered.

For protection, he relied on natural defenses: calcium deposits that encircled his face like a monk’s cowl; shoulders sloping like black diamond ski trails; the neck of a prized boar. Everything about him became adapted to the absorption of blows—and at a pace that befuddled science.

Whereas Darwin’s finches developed larger beaks over millennia, Tiger’s physiognomy evolved over but a few NHL seasons. But his face was no threat to Darwin. On the contrary, it illustrated a central tenet: Nature cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to any being.1

But his most unusual feature was this: he loved Hartford and the Whalers.

Tattooed in green on his muscle-slabbed chest was a full-rigged whaling ship. Etched on his biceps was his motto: Pro Cetus et Hartfordiae. So what if his Latin was butchered—his heart wasn’t. He was a rara avis indeed.

Understand that a lot of players in the league – and on the team—despised the Whalers. The feeling was that Hartford, the smallest and poorest of NHL cities, was strictly minor league. They mocked the shop-lined arena (a Mall), the team song (dumb), the jubilant fans ("assholes"), anything associated with the Whalers was subject to withering contempt.

When Edmonton’s Dave Semenko, Wayne Gretzky’s bodyguard, was traded to Hartford on December 11, 1986, he wrote in his autobiography: Don’t cry, I kept telling myself. Whatever you do, don’t cry. The plane was getting closer and coach’s words kept pounding in my ears. ‘I’ve traded you to Hartford…I’ve traded you to Hartford.’2

Then another low blow from the tarmac: "When I got off the plane, I was humming that dumb Hartford Whalers’ theme song."3 Look it up!

When winger Dave Williams was released, he said this about the team: They had no class. Never did have any class. Never would have any class.4

Coming or going—it didn’t matter—players harpooned the Whalers.

But these slurs were as nothing compared to the hue and cry of the hoi polloi.

Hartford had entered the popular culture as a joke. In one episode of The Simpsons, when Homer entered a How Low Will You Go? contest, first prize was—a weekend in Hartford.

In 1986, when the city staged a parade to honor a team that had finished fourth in a five-team division, the breach in form forever sealed their fate. To pundits, it was the equivalent of rewarding a C in Gym class with a trip to Disney. The Whalers cemented their reputation as Mickey Mouse.

So what if that team had finished on a 12-3-2 tear, propelling itself into the playoffs for the first time; sweeping first-place Quebec; and extending Champion Montreal to overtime of game seven? Success-starved Hartford had won nothing.

Still there were those who loved the Whale, as they were affectionately called. When the Hartford Civic Center roof collapsed in the Blizzard of 1978, a caravan of thousands followed them up Interstate 91 to Springfield (MA) during the two-year reconstruction. Dubbed the 91 Club, this group was lampooned as a gang of rejects from the Gong Show, by Hartford Courant columnist Alan Greenberg.

From 1985-90, the Civic Center turnstiles clicked at a clip of 550,000 fans a season. In 1986, Hartford hosted the NHL All-Star game. A year later, the Whale won the Adams Division title, ahead of Original Six Boston and Montreal.

At the height of the Cold War, they trounced the Soviet Red Army Team. Captain Ronnie Francis was an All-Star four times, and feisty Kevin Dineen thrice. Celebrities like Roger Staubach, of the Dallas Cowboys, Ivan Lendl, the tennis star, and Busty Heart, the burlesque queen, all attended games—as did local meteorologist Brad Fields, who rarely missed one.

For Hartford, it was a time of limitless possibility— truly a golden era. Ask anyone aboard for the ride, the Whalers hitched this sleepy New England city to a rising star. It seemed like it would never end.

2. Tiger’s Walk

Hartford is America’s File Cabinet.5

—Dan Shaughnessy, The Boston Globe

At the center of this rollicking romp—and madcap adventures too many to regale—was Tiger Burns, Hartford’s pint-sized pugilist. In a city with a charisma deficit—let’s face it, the Insurance Capital of the World inspires little awe—Tiger brought flair.

Before every game, he led a parade of stragglers and street urchins, whose ranks swelled to hundreds, on the jaunt from his Asylum Avenue home to the Civic Center. For Tiger, girded for battle, it was simply a matter of walking to work. For City Fathers, however, it was a grievous affront to the common civility! The City Council, alas, had recently banned street performers.

The Puritans were opposed to fun and we’ve tried to carry on that tradition, too,6 lamented Courant columnist Colin McEnroe.

Charles Dickens, in his 1842 American tour, noted as much:

Hartford is the seat of the local legislature in Connecticut, which sage body enacted, in bygone times, the renowned code of Blue Laws in virtue whereof, among other enlightened provisions, any citizen who could be proved to have kissed his wife on Sunday was punishable, I believe, with the stocks. Too much of the old Puritan spirit exists in these parts to the present hour.7

Dickens could have penned much the same a century later—but for Tiger Burns. On his daily walk, he turned arse-over-tea-kettle cartwheels delighting shopkeepers lining the road, office-workers gawking down, and his own ragtag brigade of ne’er-do-wells.

It’s a great day fa’ Hartford, he proclaimed, in a voice garbled from too many elbows to the throat.

To accommodate sponsors, he wore a satin-green fighter’s robe fitted for a heavyweight, the train dragging like a wedding dress. Stenciled on back was "MAC’S MUFFLERS ON ALBANY AVE—$10 OFF FOR EVERY KO." It took a wide back—and fast fists—but Tiger’s measured up.

That’s our Tiger! the crowd roared, engulfing their sawed-off hero as an amoeba does a germ.

Before games against Boston and New York, he hired out the Weaver High Band. When the parade reached the players’ lot on Ann Street, the adults having peeled off at the Russian Lady Café, Tiger snaked his ragamuffins through rows of BMWs and Mercedes. At the player’s gate, he led them in cheer:

One-two-three, WHAAAAAAALE, they screeched in accents of all dialects.

Tiger’s Cubs hailed from every neighborhood in the city: Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Frog Hollow; Blacks and Jamaicans on Albany Ave; Italians on Franklin Ave. As a farewell, he tossed out tickets like confetti at a Connecticut-Georgetown game.

Time to rumble fa’ Hartford, he explained, and ambled off bow-legged to do just that.

Although short in duration, and confined to 40 game nights, Tiger’s Walk did not escape the notice of City Fathers—who were not amused.

It must be smashed with the iron fist of government! thundered one irate Councilor.

Tiger’s Walk, you see, had become a happening; worse, it was creating a buzz; and, worst yet, Hartford was becoming a destination. Folks were streaming in from all over—even the suburbs.

This so-called ‘walk to work’ is civil disobedience masquerading as pedestrian rights! railed another. What’s next? Street Mimes? Elvis Impersonators? Jugglers? He walks again over my dead body!

Not since Alabama Governor George Wallace intervened at the schoolhouse door had politicians taken such a bold stand in upholding the law. Councilors, backed by a battalion of club-wielding cops, aimed to restore decorum. A showdown was set a week hence before a game against the Winnipeg Jets.

Throngs—triple for a Boston game—swelled the route, many waving placards GOONS ARE PEOPLE TOO! and chanting LET TIGER WALK! Amongst them was a phalanx of skateboarders, and a knock-kneed, third-grader named Keyshawn with a pair of contraband rollerblades.

With the wind at his back, the size 5 blades strapped on his feet, and chants of GO, TIGER, GO! ringing in his cauliflower ears, Tiger was slung, Roller Derby style, down Asylum Hill, escorted on all sides by skateboarders. Careening on one leg past Union Station, he veered into the Civic Center Garage, screaming on the descent: Yeeeeeeee-oooooooooowww!

The dragnet’s been foiled! declared a fist-pumping Keyshawn. All of (non-Puritan) Hartford rejoiced.

That night, at an emergency meeting, speeches were made, passions inflamed, and mild-mannered men came near to blows, before a midnight vote was (narrowly) passed: Tiger could walk to work!

One small step for Tiger, but a GIANT LEAP for Hartford, exulted columnist McEnroe.

Inside the arena, to the rousing fanfare Brass Bonanza, the fight song that heralded the Whalers’ arrival on-ice, he vaulted the boards, with furiously-churning strides, three of them the equal of one stately glide of the others.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are YOUR Hartford Whalers.

DAH DAH DAH dadadadada…

As the others skated in lazy circles, Tiger launched a furious frenzy of shadow boxing, launching haymakers at imaginary opponents on all sides. Visualization! he termed the unorthodox ritual.

Telescoping the crowd with his good eye, and spotting one of his cubs, he hoisted him onto his shoulders, the two together as tall as the others, and dashed between blue lines. Blood Circulation! he proclaimed it a tonic for.

Entering the familiar penalty box (Acclimatization!), he pumped out 50 pull-ups from against the glass. Against Boston, he might commandeer a forklift, and circle the ice with a Bruins mascot hanging in effigy (Terrorization!).

One humid night, when fog lifted off the ice, as if up off London streets, he hopped the Zamboni, startling the driver.

Three eyes are betta’ than two! he hollered, offering up help.

Finally, as a matter of solemn duty, he never (ever!) left warm-ups until the last of the practice pucks were tossed into the crowd. It was the only time that he ever touched a puck —and never with his stick!

Superstition! he divulged, with a twinkle of his right eye.

Between periods, he wandered from the locker room to compete on-ice in the Shoot-to-Win Contest for a trip to Hawaii. Try as he might; he’d lose to some overweight actuary from Avon.

CHIN UP, Tiger! You’d win in a fight! the leather-lungs shouted.

Buoyed by the support, he bee-lined it up to the "Whaler’s