Michael Smerconish: Their Stanley Cup runneth over

STREET hockey was once the stick ball of suburbia. In the Philly suburbs in the early 1970s, it was an after-school sport that lots of kids played.

The Flyers were the rage, and we each had orange and black jerseys emblazoned with our favorite players' names and numbers.

We'd imitate Bernie Parent and Bobby Clarke. And every class bully became the team's Dave Schultz. A guy in my neighborhood took metal from a swing set and made two goals, using sewn-together burlap bags for netting. Goalies had foam-rubber pads. It was teenage bliss.

Long before organized soccer, kids would face off in parking lots, on tennis courts and anywhere there was a lip around a flat surface to stop an errant Mylec ball. Each neighborhood and subdivision had its own loosely affiliated team, and pick-up games were easily hatched without any formal league and were free of adult oversight.

I once played at the Burpee Playground, named for the local family of vegetable-seed fame. It had a fenced-in basketball court, making it the ideal rink. The team from the Burpee neighborhood had a guy named Joel Gingras. He was a "ringer" who played ice hockey at the Face Off Circle in Warminster, and in college for St. Bonaventure.

Unfortunately, Joel died in 1988 of a brain tumor at 27. The next year, family and friends established the Joel Anthony Gingras Jr. Memorial Fund to increase awareness of brain-tumor research and raise money to help combat this deadly affliction. In 20 years, the JAG Fund has given more than $806,000 to the American Brain Tumor Association. It's a silver lining to a sad story. And it's just gotten better.

Enter Bill Clement.

Clement is, of course, the former Philadelphia Flyer and now a Versus and NBC broadcaster. It's his voice you hear on EA Sports NHL '09.

Clement lives in Bucks County, not too far from where Joel Gingras grew up. He's one of the guys whose jerseys we wore playing street hockey when he was a member of both Flyers' Stanley Cup teams in 1973-74 and '74-75.

Today, the NHL has a grand tradition of entrusting the Stanley Cup to each member of the championship team for 24 hours, but that tradition didn't start until after the Flyers won their back-to-back championships. A couple of years ago, Clement started thinking about trying to bring the Stanley Cup to Bucks County. When the NHL and Hockey Hall of Fame graciously agreed, he began organizing a charity fundraiser.

Four years ago, Clement heard of the JAG Fund from a co-worker at ESPN named Jay Altmeyer, a college classmate of Joel Gingras'. Clement decided that the visit by the cup would benefit the JAG Fund and NOVA, which aids crime victims in Bucks County.

"When I knew I was getting the cup for a day, the first person I called was Johnathan Gingras," one of Joel's brothers, Clement told me. "I am also close to NOVA, and the two charities seemed like naturals. I wanted to keep the money local because of my affinity for Bucks County, where I have lived for 20 years."

The visit was scheduled for last Saturday.

On Friday, when flights from Toronto to Philadelphia were canceled due to weather, the event was in jeopardy. Within a half-hour of learning of the transportation dilemma, Altmeyer called a buddy in Canada named Joe Duplantis, who works as a PGA caddy, and in no time, he and a friend were in a car, with the cup and its minder (Mike Bolt), headed for Bucks County. They arrived at Clement's house at 4:15 a.m. Game on!

Later that day, at the Middle Bucks Institute of Technology, a few thousand dads and sons were happy to pay a buck or two to see the cup. By mid-afternoon, police were directing traffic away from the school. The crowd of several thousand was already so large that they couldn't fit any more people in.

Clement said it was one of the best days of his life, and that the event raised more than $55,000.

"Some people might not believe this, but Saturday for me was better than winning the cup," he said. Johnathan Gingras' take? "I truly believe that Joel had something to do with this weekend's success." *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.