Commentary : Sports Cold War Is Beginning to Thaw

Consider it a positive development in international relations that the Soviets have become frequent tourists. Familiarity has diluted contempt. Alas, it also has dulled the expectations of such meetings.

When Mikhail Gorbachev stepped out of a limousine to shake hands with U.S. citizens during his recent visit, he followed the inclination of his nation’s athletes. For more than a decade, they have enjoyed North American hospitality in increasing numbers. Until the advent of glasnost, they just lacked the freedom of expression.

Now there is as much interest, if not more, in what they say as in the way they play. When the Central Red Army team meets the New York Islanders at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., Thursday night, the focus will be on defenseman Vyatcheslav Fetisov, not only because he may be the best in the world at what he does, but also because he has made public his frustration in being prevented from joining the New Jersey Devils. “If it weren’t for Gorbachev,” he said Wednesday, “this (discussion) would be impossible.”

But the sports exchanges between East and West preceded the improved dialogue between government officials. This marks the seventh tour of NHL rinks by one or more Soviet clubs in the last 13 years, and that doesn’t include such special events as the Challenge Cup, the Canada Cup or the Rendez-Vous ’87 series. And hockey is merely the tip of the iceberg.

This year, Soviet teams have competed in basketball, volleyball, boxing, wrestling and, yes, even baseball on U.S. soil. The U.S.S.R. has sent us wrestlers and weightlifters, among others, in the past. A decade ago, it even entered a team in World Team Tennis. The team wasn’t very good, but it was the only one in the league that managed to turn a profit.

And now we have in our midst the Red Army team and Dynamo Riga team, which played the second game on a western swing Wednesday night in Edmonton, Alberta. The NHL is billing it as a Super Series, but it’s more superfluous than anything. We have passed the point where either side has much to prove in terms of superiority.

That wasn’t the case in 1972, of course. The Soviets were regarded as amateurs (in the most derisive sense of the word) by the Canadian hockey establishment when the NHL agreed to make available its seasoned pros in an eight-game hockey summit.

Officials laughed at the Soviets’ equipment before the first game at the Montreal Forum, and at least one newspaper columnist promised to eat his words if Team Canada lost as much as one game.

“It was our first training camp,” Islanders President Bill Torrey recalled Wednesday. “We watched the game at the beautiful Holiday Inn in Peterborough (Ontario). We went up 2-0 and everyone was saying this is going to be a piece of cake.”

But the Soviets stormed back to win the first game in a rout, and the NHL’s best didn’t clinch a 4-3-1 series victory until the final minute of the final game, played in Moscow. “That was my last year of midgets,” said Bryan Trottier, then a 16-year-old in rural Saskatchewan. “I remember the last game was on at 11 o’clock. The whole school shut down and we all went to the auditorium to watch it on television.”

The drama, intensified by the belief that the teams were upholding a way of life, was riveting. And the lack of previous contact between the groups led to suspicion. There was the story of Wayne Cashman, who, convinced his hotel room in Moscow was bugged, located a foreign-looking object underneath the carpet and proceeded to unscrew it, sending a chandelier in the room below toppling to the floor.

From a sporting standpoint, the cold war between East and West ended on the ice in Moscow. The World Hockey Association sent a team of all-stars to Moscow two years later and, in 1976, the Soviets sent two club teams to tour North America.

On the evening before the Red Army made its initial appearance at the Coliseum almost 13 years ago, Islanders owner Roy Boe hosted a reception for the visitors. “If you want plenty of beer or vodka,” he said, “we’ll do what we can to help.”

North American teams have since gone beyond providing alcohol for the visitors. Last summer, the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association worked to rehabilitate the Achilles injury that had sidelined Soviet center Arvidas Sabonis. He returned from the injury in time to lead his country to an upset of the U.S. team in the Olympics.

Such consideration didn’t make everyone in the United States happy. John Thompson, for one, was critical of Americans giving aid to the enemy even before the team he coached was ambushed in Seoul, South Korea. But, as the Trail Blazers explained, they were only protecting their own investment. They had drafted Sabonis and were hopeful that he would be permitted to wear a Portland uniform after the Olympics.

They’re still waiting, as are the Devils for Fetisov. Many on both sides believe it’s inevitable that individual Soviet athletes will be permitted to play for professional teams in North America, further blurring the distinctions in lifestyle that once gave such bite to games between the East and West.

“In the actual situation of world extension, of the relationship between our countries,” Soviet forward Igor Larionov said Wednesday through an interpreter, “it’s a good step.” Larionov has been drafted by the Vancouver Canucks. Is he interested in playing here? “Why not?” he replied, smiling.

Perhaps some day there will be Soviets sprinkled throughout the NHL, the NBA and other professional leagues. And perhaps at such a time the presence of even the leader of the U.S.S.R. won’t halt traffic in New York.