Violent sports soothe the savage beast known as man

Sitting in the press section of the Petersen Events Center Tuesday, I noticed something about… Sitting in the press section of the Petersen Events Center Tuesday, I noticed something about all the sports writers covering the Pitt basketball game: They were bored! They looked like they had nothing else to do.

Football season is over, and the hockey season is now essentially unsalvageable. It seems it will be a long few weeks until baseball preseason begins, thus beginning the endless, meaningless predictions of who will be in World Series seven months from now.

But that is irrelevant. No one could expect us to survive the hockey lockout for long. I’m sure it’s easy to understand how, being from a South Philadelphia Italian family, I value the cold-weather sport so highly.

OK, so maybe I shouldn’t care that much about hockey. Even during the glory days of the Flyers and the Penguins, I didn’t follow the sport.

But surely everyone can remember that boy from the neighborhood who glided across the ice so effortlessly, and yet no one could catch up to him. He broke scoring records year after year without getting so much as one penalty minute.

Actually, he only glided because kids would push him across the frozen lake after stealing his glasses, and the only thing that got broken was his leg when he owed a loan shark a little too much after the Phillies lost.

Not that I was that boy or anything. He was an acquaintance, really.

Anyway, even though I don’t care much for hockey, the fact that we won’t have it this year fills me with apprehension.

The id, one of Sigmund Freud’s three aspects of personality, deals with the emotional and irrational part of the mind. It operates on the pleasure principle; it is always saying, “I want it all, and I want it now.”

If you punch someone in the street because they made you mad, you know it won’t do any good. But your id acted faster than you could think rationally, resulting in a bloody nose and impending assault charges.

So, if we don’t want our ids to explode, we have to keep them balanced. And the way to do that is to release that id energy in a controlled manner.

Frankly, we have to be able to see a sport where someone hits someone. Hard.

The crashes and smashes of the gridiron ended on Sunday with the Super Bowl. The best we can hope for out of basketball is a good struggle over dual possession of the ball. Baseball? Ha! Not even the dirtiest of slides appears violent.

So, men, what are you going to do?

Please don’t act like they do in North Africa when their soccer gets cancelled. Riots have been so severe in some countries that they now appear the U.S. State Department’s travel warning list.

Football preseason is a long way off. To head off the possibility of increased violence, high tempers and road rage incidents resulting from the lack of hockey, I have a few suggestions:

Watch the “greatest moments of hockey” specials that the networks are bound to show, no matter how many times you’ve seen them before. If nothing else, they may transport you back to a time when a hockey lockout was nowhere in your mind.

Don’t watch the football or hockey movies that are warm and fuzzy, like “Remember the Titans” or “The Mighty Ducks.” Stick with “Any Given Sunday” and “Slap Shot.” They have the hard-hitting edge that will soothe the caveman within.

Also, don’t miss the Pro Bowl on Sunday. In fact, tape it. Since it’s the last game these guys will have until August, they’ll give it their. You might want to watch it again.

And if you still find yourself filled to the brim with primal rage, don’t be a fool and beat the tobacco juice out of a random person. Call up a friend.

“Hey,” you’ll say with feigned relaxation. “How about getting some guys together for a game out on the rink?”

“Sure, sounds good,” he’ll say. “I’m feeling kind of sore today, but I can play as long as we keep it light.”

You’ll smell blood. “No problem, buddy. See you out there.”

With any luck, no one will see the madness in your eyes until it’s too late.

Michael Mastroianni has been undefeated at boxing since the hockey season was unofficially cancelled, and you can guess why. Challenge his title at realityfactory@yahoo.com.