From the newsroom to the ice: Ditching work to play in Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey Tournament in Santa Rosa

Don’t tell my boss, but I’m playing hooky this week. Or, as the Canadians spell it, hockey.

The Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey Tournament has been on my bucket list for a long time, and on Wednesday I got to join with a bunch of guys, most of whom I’d never met, as a free agent, playing against another bunch of guys I’d mostly never met.

They didn’t seem to mind that I skate like I’m wearing frying pans on my feet and I shoot like I’d starve in the wild. In fact, we seemed to have a lot of fun. And beer.

After all, the motto of just about every team I’ve ever been on has been “win or lose, we still booze.” And lose we did, 8-4, but winning really wasn’t the point.

I started playing hockey in my 40s. My young son was playing, and it looked like too much fun for the kid to have all to himself. Plus, my wife digs hockey players, so I was hoping she’d like me better. The jury’s still out on that one.

I first became acquainted with the Santa Rosa senior tournament soon after I started playing. I was in a learn-to-skate scrimmage at the late, great and sadly misnamed Oceanside Ice Arena in Tempe, Arizona.

Not everyone on the ice was a beginner, I’d soon learn. A bunch of more experienced guys liked to join in for the ice time.

One of them was a guy wearing a white Snoopy jersey. On one shift, I saw him with his head down handling the puck, and I did what any other rookie who had yet to master the art of stopping would do. I crashed into him and sent him flying.

Even though checking wasn’t allowed, I skated back to the bench pretty proud of myself and asked my teammates if they saw my hit.

“Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?” one replied. “You just laid out a 75-year-old man.”

“Wait, what?” I stammered.

“You don’t know Artie? Everybody knows Artie,” another guy chimed in. “You better hope he’s OK. He’s a legend.”

When my next shift came around, I took to the ice feeling a little sheepish, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a white blur coming at me fast. I tried to brace myself, but it was too late. This time I was the one who went flying.

As I hit the ice, the 75-year-old guy in the Snoopy jersey turned around, and with a huge grin that was missing a couple of teeth, said, “Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

Over the years, I grew to cherish that grin, that sense of humor, and the fact that he was still playing at his age. Artie Horowitz was a legend, and not just in his own mind. He played in the Snoopy tournament every year, and was perhaps its best ambassador, always coming back to Arizona with tales of hockey derring-do on his excursions in Santa Rosa.

Artie was also a retired pharmacist with a brilliant mind and a quick wit. He wasn’t exactly what I’d call humble, but he did love to brag that the brains of the family was his wife, Renee, a university professor with a PhD in comparative literature and the author of a series of detective novels about a woman pharmacist who solves murders.

And Artie was above all, a character. He used to hold court in the locker room with nothing on but the ratty and seldom-washed mesh undershirt he wore beneath his gear. Invariably someone would yell at him to put some pants on, and invariably he’d reply that “The mohel did such a lovely job on my bris, it would be a shame to cover it up.”

Sadly, Artie is no longer with us. He went to that great big rink in the sky 10 years ago at age 84. His mesh T-shirt was framed and kept on display at Oceanside until it closed for good. Every year in Tempe they have a big tournament in his honor. This year’s was sold out.

And while I’ll be thinking of Artie this week while checking the senior tournament off my bucket list, I won’t be checking any senior citizens (probably), and I definitely won’t be putting myself on display in the locker room, though I can’t speak for anyone else.

And for the record, I don’t even own a ratty mesh T-shirt.

John D’Anna is managing editor of The Press Democrat. Reach him on the ice or email him at john.danna@pressdemocrat.com.