Arena Polo a Mixer for Elite and Not-So-Rich-and-Famous Set

Now that Wimbledon is over, the sports world can turn its attention to the championship it’s really been waiting for--the title game to decide an issue of tastes-great/less-filling proportions, the first-ever championship match of . . . ta-dum, the American Polo League.

Quite right, America. You knew it all along. When the San Francisco Buccaneers ride into Burbank this evening to play the Los Angeles Colts in the L.A. Equestrian Center’s Equidome, it’ll be for the world title, the whole enchilada, the big chateaubriand. When the champion is crowned, the Lafite-Rothschild will flow liberally for what could be the best arena polo team ever to ride.

The prospect of all this brings chills to hard-core arena polo fans. And there are a surprising number of them out there from varying walks of life. Professional indoor polo, now in its fifth year at the Equestrian Center, draws nearly 4,000 spectators to regular-season games. The APL caters to a crowd that ranges from Rolls-Royce-driving, pardon-me-would-you-happen-to-have-any-Grey-Poupon elitists to fat men named Roscoe who drive Yugos and wouldn’t know beef Wellington from a Dodger dog.

At the final game of the regular season two weeks ago, entertainers such as Sylvester Stallone, Tony Danza, Richard Farnsworth and Jameson Parker were in attendance along with a large group of unknowns who screamed and carried on like Chicago Cub fans.

And like the crowd, the game itself is an ebullient mix of prim-and-proper polo and steel-town roller derby. Take traditional polo, squeeze it into an arena the size of a football field, put up hockey boards, throw in six 1,200-pound horses stampeding at speeds as much as 25 m.p.h. with mallet-whacking riders who are given ample opportunity to bash into each other and you’ve got a game middle-class America can enjoy.

Each team has three riders--as opposed to four in outdoor polo--who attempt with wooden mallets to club a six-ounce rubber ball into the opposition’s goal. Pushing and banging are legal unless a rider “bumps off” his opponent at an angle greater than 45 degrees. Collisions at more drastic angles are inevitable and often result in drastic injuries, lots of oohs and aahs from the crowd, and a penalty shot.

The game is divided into six chukkers, each lasting five minutes. Between chukkers a tractor smoothes the dirt field much like Zamboni machines smooth the ice in hockey--the game to which arena polo is most often compared. Horses just sub for the skates. The grunting, snorting, sweating and stick handling are much the same. This is hockey on horseback.

To draw the comparison further, your Colts would be the Edmonton Oilers of indoor polo. “We’re the best arena polo team around,” says Tom Goodspeed, captain of the Colts. According to the U.S. Polo Assn., which evaluates players and assigns them a goal rating--the lowest being 1 goal, the best 10 goals, Goodspeed is just giving the facts.

Colt Joe Henderson has a rating of 9 goals, highest of any indoor player worldwide. Goodspeed and teammate Ronnie Tongg are both 8-goalers. As a team, the Colts grade out to 25 goals, three goals more than San Francisco. The Bucs, who have 8-goal players Joel Baker and Mike Conant and 6-goaler Kenny Fransen, are the APL’s Philadelphia Flyers. They would just as soon gallop over your face as look at it.

“Playing against San Francisco is like going against the Wall of China,” Goodspeed says. “They bump so much, it seems like they’re riding elephants. Kenny Fransen is an animal out there.”

Such angry words. Gee, is everyone ready to rumble?

The Colts’ ill will toward the Bucs stems from having lost to San Francisco twice during the 10-game season. In the first match, L.A. lost, 12-11, when Goodspeed’s last-second goal was disallowed after the officials ruled time had run out. In the regular season-ending game two weeks ago, the Bucs beat the Colts in overtime, 10-9.

Don’t despair, L.A. The Bucs never really outscored the Colts, they won both games on a technicality.

Because the American Polo League has yet to franchise its teams, all games are played at the L.A. Equestrian Center and all games involve the Colts. The APL’s other five teams, representing San Francisco, Washington, New York, Chicago and Houston, are basically pickup squads composed of professional players who are paid $1,200 plus expense money by the Equestrian Center to participate. The visiting teams play the Colts twice, but never play each other. To compensate for L.A.’s home-field advantage and higher-rated players, a handicap system was adopted this season that utilizes the U.S. Polo Assn.’s goal-rating system. That means San Francisco--with its team rating of 22 goals--is awarded three goals against the Colts, who have a rating of 25.

In simple terms, that means the Colts trailed the Bucs, 3-0, before their two previous matches and they’ll trail by three goals before tonight’s championship game even begins.

“With just one arena, the league is still in a prototype mold,” Goodspeed says. “We were just trying to make it fair for all the teams by doing it this way. Once the league franchises, and I think it eventually will, handicaps will be thrown out completely.”

And Goodspeed, Henderson and Tongg will be glad to see them go. In the past three years, before the handicap system was put into place, the Colts had won 44 games and lost five. This year, the handicapping almost crippled the Colts--they finished with a 6-4 record. The Buccaneers qualified for the championship game because they were the only team to sweep the Colts during the regular season.

Handicapping and contrived schedule notwithstanding, fans have nearly filled the Equidome in recent weeks. It’s even getting to the point where members of the Poupon crowd are putting their white wine aside to stand up and scream their guts out. Says Goodspeed: “This is the first year we’ve felt strong fan loyalty. It used to be we won so much that everybody wanted to root for the other team. Now they’re booing the refs, making a lot of noise and really getting into it.”

Even though Henderson has the highest goal rating of the Colts, Goodspeed is the team’s undisputed leader. He embodies indoor polo in that both the player and the game are bawdy versions of the traditional. Unlike many professional polo players, Goodspeed, 34, didn’t grow up on an estate in the country. He was raised in a suburb of Milwaukee.

His parents didn’t expect him to play polo, and they thought he was a little strange for wanting to. “They pleaded with me to play football--anything but this craziness with the horses,” Goodspeed says. “I was the black sheep in my family because I was a polo player. My father thought I had a screw loose.”

And Goodspeed concedes that maybe his father was right. In the past 15 years, he has suffered a broken back, a broken thumb, a broken hip and three broken ribs. The broken back occurred when another player rammed into him just behind the saddle, knocking him flat on his back. After an eight-month layoff, he began playing again. Goodspeed broke the three ribs and his hip when he fell off his mount and was trampled by three other horses.

“Getting hit by a 1,000-pound horse,” he says, “is like getting hit by the front line of the Rams.”

Tongg and Henderson, conversely, are mainstream polo players. Both grew up on horse ranches, Tongg in Hawaii and Henderson in South Africa. Tongg, an attorney, commutes from Honolulu to play at the Equestrian Center on the weekends. Henderson, 26, is a full-time player who takes offers from wealthy sponsors who need a good player to play in tournaments from coast to coast. On the weekends, he heads back to his Van Nuys home to play for the Colts. He is one of only three 9-goal arena polo players.

Goodspeed leads the Colts in scoring with 53. Henderson has 45 and Tongg has 41.

All three players say the Colts are the best arena polo team in the world.

And what about the Bucs?

“They’ve had a lot of breaks in the other games,” Tongg says.

“We need to get them before they get us,” Henderson says.

“We don’t want them boasting around to everybody that they kicked our butts,” Goodspeed says. “We’re looking to kill them.”

Really now, old chaps, this could be polo’s finest hour--tallyho.