Penalty For Rink Rage

Hockey is a beautiful game: it puts strength, finesse and teamwork into play on ice at 35 m.p.h. Parenthood is an honorable, often heroic estate: it sacrifices sleep and self for a child's greater good. But parents at a hockey game--that spectacle is not always either beautiful or honorable. This time it was deadly.

In a case that elbowed terrorism off the top of the radio talk-show topic list and gave American parents and sports fans plenty of dark thoughts, a Reading, Mass., truck driver was on trial last week for killing the adult supervising a kids' hockey scrimmage. Friday evening, after a six-day trial in which the defendant and his son both testified, a jury of nine women and three men convicted Thomas Junta, 44, of involuntary manslaughter, which could earn him up to 20 years in the state penalty box. The most likely sentence, to be announced at a hearing Jan. 25, is three to five years.

Here are a few basic principles, news to nobody. Sports stoke adrenaline, laying out a drama that usually ends in an unambiguous win or loss. "Fan" is short for fanatic; each close pitch or missed basket or hard body check makes manic-depressives of a team's rooters. And some parents are among the most rabid, reckless fans. Inflating their kids' skills, magnifying a child's lapses, they can make dinnertime a celebration or an inquisition; and if they don't take out their frustration on the infant athletes, they may attack the arbiters. "Kill the umpire" is only a marginal exaggeration.

Consider: In 1999 a chunky football dad (and youth-league coach) assaulted a nine-year-old player. In 2000, a Staten Island, N.Y., father broke the nose of his 10-year-old's coach with a hockey stick. And it ain't just tes-tosterone: In 1999 a Virginia soccer mom was fined after attacking a referee; the ref was 14. Americans don't generate the headlines Europeans do (HUNDREDS CRUSHED IN SOCCER RIOT!), and given the tens of millions of parents who cheer on their kids, the number of sports-psychosis cases is low. But we can still fret when adults go nuts over what should be only a game.

The pretty irony about the Reading incident is that it began as a pacifist plea. On July 5, 2000, Junta--whose stature (6 ft. 1 in.), girth (270 lbs.) and receding hairline ensure that James Gandolfini will play him in the inevitable TV movie--was watching an informal practice involving his son at the Burbank Ice Arena. He became so vexed at the violence he saw on the rink that he confronted the man who had volunteered as referee, Michael Costin (6 ft., 156 lbs.), for allowing it. Costin snapped back, "That's hockey." The two men scuffled, and Junta left the arena. He returned and repeatedly whacked the ref, knocking him out, as the children, including Junta's son and three of Costin's, watched in horror. The force of the blows ruptured an artery in Costin's neck, resulting in a severe brain hemorrhage. He fell into a coma and died the next day.