Clear Day

Baseball lends itself to poetry and a turn of phrase. "Game Called" or "Casey at the Bat" or any number of Vin Scully's perfect ramblings are at home on the diamond. Baseball's terminology includes big fly, punch and Judy, around the horn, backdoor slider, can o' corn, second division, fungo, dead red, mendoza line, suicide squeeze, uncle Charlie, wheelhouse and eephus pitch.

It is a language unto its own.

Hockey has very little color to the language, little that is unique. Mike Emrick tries to add to Danny Gallivan's words of fame, but when he says "ladles it along" I find myself wanting to strangle him. When Emrick says "over to the helping stick of Elias" things begin to fly toward the telelvision.

Danny Gallivan, the great HNIC announcer, gave the game his own unique language. Spinerama's, cannonading drives, scintillating stops and "kicked out his pad in rapier-like fashion" were often heard when Gallivan was at the mic.

However, his verbal was so unique it would be against the laws of hockey to use any of them, and credit to the current group of announcers for avoiding them. It would be nice to hear some of these men come up with something of their own. I'm not being critical, hell it's a tough job and unlike baseball--with its long pauses and lazy atmosphere--calling a hockey game must be like trying to land a plane upside down. There's a lot going on.
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"Clear day" has some real poetry to it. The AHL declares their clear day roster each season after the NHL trade deadline. The definition is as follows:

• Each Clear Day roster consists of a maximum of 22 players. According to AHL by-laws, only those players listed on a team’s Clear Day roster are eligible to compete in the remainder of the 2010-11 AHL regular season and in the 2011 Calder Cup Playoffs, unless emergency conditions arise as a result of recall, injury or suspension.

The OKC Barons clear day roster is here courtesy Oilers Jambalaya. The list is interesting for a few reasons: a few young Oilers (Eberle, Pääjärvi, Reddox) are eligible but don't appear to be on the list (as described in the link).

For future reference, here is the list courtesy OJ and their source Ryan Aber:

• G: Jeff Deslauriers, Martin Gerber
• D: Richard Petioit, Jake Taylor, Jeff Petry, Colten Teubert, Alex Plante, Kevin Mongtomery, Bryan Helmer.
• C: Brad Moran, Ryan O'Marra, Milan Kytnar, Chris Vandevelde, Mark Arcobello
• L: Alex Giroux, Teemu Hartikainen, Greg Stewart, Andrew Lord
• R: Colin McDonald, Linus Omark, Zack Stortini, Ben Ondrus

Philippe Cornet, Matt Marquardt, Anthony Aiello are not on the list, and injured blue Taylor Chorney is also not on the list.