It's Buckaroo Day
It's a special weekend honoring Portland's old hockey dynasty, and the city has declared today Buckaroo Day.
Unfortunately, this week the city has pulled the rug out from under hockey in favor of the Merritt Paulson stadiums deal. As best we can tell, there will be no place for the Buckaroos' current successors, the Winter Hawks, to call home after Memorial Coliseum is torn down this summer to be replaced by a minor league baseball stadium. Maybe Paul Allen will let them use the Rose Garden for every home game -- maybe.
| Posted at 11:10 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (10)
I still have my fully autographed Buckaroo Hockey Stick !
The Mem Coliseum is one of our finest Works of Modern Architecture AND our Vet Memorial.
Put a BBall Park down the hill on the PPS site where there will be room for expansion into a MLB
park someday.
Go Pirates ! [i mean bevos]...
Posted by billb | March 13, 2009 12:59 PM
I'm proud to say that my father was the Oregonian's beat sportswriter covering the Buckaroos back in the early 1960s. He's got great stories of traveling with the team on the bus across the wilds of Canada.
I think I still have a Buckaroo metal office garbage can in my basement.
Posted by hilsy | March 13, 2009 1:26 PM
Doug Messier played for the Buckaroos in the late 60's. My Dad coached his boy in Raleigh Hills Little League, his name was Mark Messier,he turned out OK.
Posted by meg | March 13, 2009 2:56 PM
Jack, are you sure the Coliseum will be torn down this summer, or even next? I'm not.
Posted by lw | March 13, 2009 7:30 PM
Green rehab of the beautiful Memorial Coliseum building, and keeping it a multi-use facility, would make far more sense and bring much more honor on Portland. Imagine the East, South and West faces covered with deciduous vines like the Tazo Tea building!
But, of course, we have to declare it a useless, derelict white elephant in order to put a fig leaf on the give-away.
Posted by dyspeptic | March 13, 2009 9:54 PM
The only reason that it's derelict is that its owner, the City of Portland, has deliberately neglected it.
As I heard it, the Paulson giveaway calls for the MC to close in September 2009.
Posted by Jack Bog | March 13, 2009 10:11 PM
I think the Hawks will be playing full time in the Garden. They played a few games this season in the Garden and reportedly are going to be playing atleast half of their games in the Garden next season, and now may be playing all of their games there.
Without getting into the baseball/soccer issues, I will say that the MC is a total dump that is not adequate for hockey any longer due to a smaller then regulation ice surface, and the MANY updates needed for the building.
The Rose Garden is a great place to watch hockey and I think the Hawks will do better money wise being in the Garden in the long run.
It would be nice if the city would have involved the Winter Hawks and the Blazers in the choices that were made...but as we all know Portland is being run by a bunch of idiots!
Posted by Westside Guy | March 14, 2009 12:12 AM
I strongly suspect that trying to schedule the full season of the Winter Hawks around the Blazers and the other Rose Garden events (like March Madness, for example) isn't going to work.
Posted by Jack Bog | March 14, 2009 4:56 AM
This is Randy's MO - step on as many toes as possible. Orc diplomacy.
Posted by A Hopeful | March 14, 2009 8:43 AM
I'm one of many who believe the Memorial Coliseum is a fine place to watch and play hockey. It's a historical building that needs to be preserved as it has housed our greatest sports dynasty, the Portland Buckaroos!
Also, in these times of city/state/national economic crisis, should we really be spending millions(that we don't have) to tear down a completely fine building only to put up one we can't afford? Does the city government plan to take money from schools or roads to make this happen?
Posted by Dan Schaefer | March 15, 2009 10:16 PM