A sports name you long mispronounced

1. When I was the PA announcer for the ECHL Raleigh IceCaps, Norfolk had a kid named Dumas. I went to our radio PBP guy and asked how to pronounce it. His suggestion of Dumb-Ass was apparently incorrect, because the guy slammed his stick on the dasher board in front of me after he heard it. (By the way, French Canadian hockey players are fluent in the use of the English word for fornication -- F*CK -- when arguing in the penalty box. At times, it was the only word I could understand.)

2. Can't remember who wrote this but love it: "Every little girl and boy, loves the goalie Patrick Roy." I still can't get the Wroo-ah correct.

3. Canadian driver Andrew Ranger. Thought it was like the New York NHL team when I tried to introduce myself. Turns out it's Ran-jerr, like Parc Jerry. Or Mont Royale.

 

Having lived in Acadiana as a young lad, you learn the French pronunciations early, although among that group a couple of dozen surnames did the job.

 

I worked in Houston about 20 some years ago and had to call a guy with the last name Nguyen (Houston had a decent Vietnamese population then). My colleagues laughed when I said, “is Mr. Nah-goo-yin” there?” Obviously the correct way to pronounce is “win”.

 

I remember the CBC asking people to stop calling in to correct their pronunciation of Joan Benoit's name, explaining that she was American and that she pronounced it Ben-oyt, not Ben-wah and there was nothing they could do about that.

 

I was a weekend TV sports in 2004 and was doing a NHL Draft story on a pretty much cold read since I was just copy/pasting from the AP Wire at the last second.

I announced that evening that the Washington Capitals drafted No. 1 overall: Alexander Over-chicken

 

I did the opposite as a memory device every July for the All-England Championships. I'd pronounce it Wim-bled-on, not Wim-bul-don, so I would get it right in the headline.

 

That’s awesome. Did you get any viewer feedback at the station?

 

Can't tell you how many people in North Carolina wanted to get on board with a guy with the surname of "Roy." Then they realized it wasn't pronounced the same as Roy Williams.

 

Nah. Third place in the market, Saturday night ... probably no one outside of a bar saw it, and even then, the volume was probably down.

 

This is completely off-topic, but there may not be a more surprising success story than ice hockey in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Miles Wolff (owner of Baseball America and the Durham Bulls) and Pete Bock somehow got the bright idea of making some extra money in the winter by acquiring rights to an ECHL franchise. But the only facility that might host a rink in the Triangle was an old horse show arena that sat around 5,000 located on the N.C. State Fairgrounds. So the Raleigh IceCaps were born in the summer of 1991.

They didn't have more than a half dozen employees who had even seen a live game before, and being a Detroit native and two generations removed from my Canadian roots, I called there and offered to help with public address. Then I got a call from Jimmie Dupree at the Durham Herald-Sun, asking if I'd write game stories and features. The News and Observer had no clue what hockey was, so they assigned their tennis writer to the beat (hey, stick and ball). EDIT: Poor A.J. Carr was the politest, nicest man I ever met in sports journalism, bar none.

The acoustics in that old round, glass-windowed facility were awful. So was the team at first. But because the tickets were all of $6, people came to see what it was all about -- and then came back and brought their friends. Within a few months, there were SCALPERS outside the arena on most nights. The next season, they sold out all 32 home games, made the playoffs and went surprisingly far -- and players like Jimmy Powers, Rick Barkovich and Lyle Wildgoose became well-known to folks in town.

After he retired, Powers helped grow the local youth hockey program. I wouldn't be surprised to see a North Carolina-born NHL player at some point: the Michael Jordan of his generation!

Eventually, the ESA (PNC Arena) was built, the Hurricanes moved in and the IceCaps became the Augusta Lynx (RIP). But if not for them, who knows if the Whalers would have even considered such a crazy move? Used to be there were two sports worthy of fan interest there: ACC basketball and NASCAR. Now I'm not sure the Canes aren't a solid No. 2.

Raleigh, a hockey town! Where Barney goes to party with the Fun Girls from Mount Pilot.

 

The Mighty Ducks first year, my friend had seats next to the goal judge's booth behind the net. My friend asked the guy how he got that job. He said he just called the Mighty Ducks and told them he liked hockey. They hired him.

 

While ACC basketball is No. 1 by a country mile, I wouldn't be surprised if the Whalercanes aren't No. 2. NASCAR doesn't even register in that market. If it did, would the N&O have made more of an effort on the motorsports beat. After Rupen Fofaria, who replaced Gerald Martin, disappeared, so did the beat there.

You think they'll let that happen with anything Baby Blue in Chapel Hill?

Truthfully, I wouldn't be surprised if the success of the IceCaps showed someone - maybe even Peter Karmanos - that hockey could work in the market. I'm fully aware that Karmanos wanted to stick it to the folks in Hartford who wouldn't give him a brand-new arena - and obviously Raleigh did because it really did need more than just NCSU men's basketball, Disney on Ice and a couple of monster truck shows and concerts to make the arena a serious revenue machine - that he didn't really look before he packed up the Whalers (hence the couple of lost seasons the new Carolina Hurricanes played in Greensboro Coliseum).