After Rough Day, Hawley Cools Off With the Hotheads

Sandy Hawley has just ridden two winners, one of them a long shot, and had two other mounts in the money. It has been a long day. As he stands at a mirror in the Santa Anita jockeys’ room, knotting his necktie, another jockey taunts Hawley.

“Gotta work again tonight, eh?” the jockey says.

Hawley smiles and nods.

He has the strangest double life in sports, except maybe for Bo Jackson.

By day, Sandy Hawley is a hard-charging, mild-mannered thoroughbred jockey. By night, changed into his preppie blue blazer, he becomes . . . Penalty Box Man!

When the Kings are in town, Hawley leaves Santa Anita after his last ride and speeds across Los Angeles to the Forum, usually arriving just in time for the 7:30 puckoff, or punchoff, or whatever they call the start of a hockey contest.

Hawley is the keeper of the visiting team’s penalty box, the 5x10 holding cell for convicted slashers and high-stickers.

A few years ago, Sandy was simply a fan who went to most of the Kings’ games, which is unusual in itself. One night, the visitors’ box keeper didn’t show, and someone asked Hawley if he wanted to fill in. He’s been there since, almost every game.

Hawley probably doesn’t do it for the money, considering that he is currently the third-leading jockey at Santa Anita, and the hockey job pays $300 a season, plus two tickets and all the industrial-style food he can bolt down in the press lounge before the opening slashoff.

It seems a strange way to unwind from his day job. But Hawley is a guy who has undergone two major operations and continuing treatment for cancer--it is in remission--and who a year ago battled back from a big slump to regain his place among the top jockeys at the big track in Arcadia.

If he wants to spend his evenings in a penalty box, who would begrudge him?

“I like being where the action is,” Hawley says. “I get to meet a lot of the players, and that’s exciting. It’s an honor meeting some of these guys.”

If it seems odd that a 38-year-old man would think it cool to meet a lot of angry, bleeding hockey players who are being confined against their will, you have to understand that Hawley is from Canada. He loves the game. He played hockey avidly as a youngster, reluctantly giving it up when the other kids kept getting bigger and he didn’t.

Now he’s an important part of the hockey scene. Before the game, the officials skate over and say hello to Hawley, and a few of the players yell out greetings or nod his way during warmups, as Sandy sets up shop.

“The players (confined to his box) talk a little, sometimes,” he says. “A lot of times they’re upset, but some of them talk. I met one kid from my hometown, Oshawa (near Toronto), kid named John MacLean. Plays for the Devils. I guess he knew who I was. He asked me, ‘How long have you been retired?’ ”

Hawley’s night job is not an enormous intellectual challenge. He keeps track of penalty time, because players hate to be kept too long. And Sandy is in charge of a bucket filled with ice cubes and pucks--a warm puck will stick on the ice instead of sliding. When the game puck is slapped into the stands, Hawley must flip a new puck over the plexiglass to an official skating past at about 50 m.p.h.

Hawley seems to have mastered the timing.

He also makes sure that the plastic squeeze bottle is filled with water for thirsty felons.

This particular night, the Kings are skating against the Montreal Canadiens. Business is brisk in Hawley’s box. At one point he has three gloomy players shoehorned into the tiny cell.

Hawley is a King fan, but when he has guests in the box he restrains his instinct to cheer. It wouldn’t go over well.

Psychologically, he functions as a bartender, offering sympathetic clucks and head shakes to penalized players who rail at the world’s injustice. Sandy understands. He’s been in horse racing’s penalty box a few times for riding infractions.

Most conversations between Hawley and his clientele go something like this:

Player: How much (time left on the penalty), eh?

Hawley: Fourteen seconds.

Player: (Spit).

In the first period, a Canadien is penalized two minutes for an infraction. He checks into the box bleeding from his left ear. Hawley hands him a towel.

When the penalty is up, Hawley unbolts the door and steps back quickly to let the skater exit. Players are always in a hurry to leave, and one night a player skated over Hawley’s foot, slashing his shoe. In a panic, Hawley removed the shoe to count his toes. No damage.

In the second period, Sergio Momesso is penalized five minutes for fighting. He storms into the box, picks up the squeeze bottle and violently spikes it to the floor. Players are not penalized additional time for boorish behavior in the box.

Most of the prisoners while away their sentences cursing, sulking, glowering, spitting and pounding their sticks violently against the boards or glass to encourage teammates.

Many of the players seem unaware that the fellow tending their penalty box so efficiently is a major celebrity, a superstar in a sport that is faster, more violent and infinitely more dangerous than their own.

All they want is out, and Sandy springs them right on time, on the second, then sits back to enjoy the game.