No Debits

My favorite sport is still baseball. But when the National Hockey League has things like this, it makes it really easy to pick a #2.

Scott Foster, an accountant who played goalie for the Western Michigan University Broncos about a dozen years ago, is on backup as an "emergency goalie" for the arena in case either team loses both of its regular goalies. Most of the time that means watching the game from a good seat and having a good time, but in the Chicago Blackhawks Thursday game against the Winnipeg Jets, Chicago started the game one goalie down when starter Anton Forsberg hurt himself during the morning skate practice. So Foster was signed to the emergency one-game contract.

When backup Collin Delia went down with fourteen minutes left in the game, in came Foster, who racked up seven saves and allowed no goals during what may very well be his entire pro hockey career. The Blackhawk crowd greeted his first save with an appreciative roar, and the team presented him with their "championship belt" in the locker room afterwards.

Gabriel Baumgaertner, writing for Sports Illustrated, outlines a way that major league baseball could conceivably have a similar arrangement with an "emergency backup catcher" on hand in case the same kind of need arises. He puts a couple of restrictions on it to avoid making the backup too much of a liability and points out a couple of things that the team employing the backup might have to overcome. For example, to qualify for the spot a candidate would have had to have played collegiate, professional or highly-comptetitive recreational baseball within the last three years and pass a Major League Baseball evaluation and physical. He also wouldn't have to hit.

It's a little complicated, but this rule has an advantage over this year's minor league experiment of starting extra innings with a runner on second base: It's not the single stupidest thing ever devised by the mind of man. Plus, it could be fun. The Blackhawks operation is going to get a lot of public relations mileage out of the "regular guy plays a night in the pros" thing, and Foster himself had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. What's bad about that?

(Charles has a video here.)