Hockey’s Grace, Skill and Bravery a Delight : Mighty Ducks will give residents a chance to learn firsthand the charms of the sport and virtues of its players.

My romance with hockey began with a transistor radio that had a tattered black case and the magical ability to draw distant, wavering voices out of the sky.

The broadcasts floated to my bedroom from Toronto, Halifax and French-speaking Montreal, exotic cities represented by people with strange and wonderful names. I was entranced by the strangeness of it, a feeling that grew with the discovery of the Saturday night telecasts that became a ritual and blossomed into an obsession.

The players were tall and regal, like Montreal’s Jean Beliveau, or blond and dynamic like Chicago’s Bobby Hull, whose big, loud slap shot scared goaltenders and left fans gasping in awe. They were brave, taking pucks in the mid-section and sticks in the face and calmly returning to the bench to be stitched up, usually without missing a turn on the ice.

They were from Canadian prairie towns that had smaller populations than my Brooklyn street and when they talked, they had funny accents, saying “aboot” for “about” in the Canadian way. They lived in an exciting world of grace and skill and foreign allure, so different from my corner of the world, and I was enthralled.

That feeling has never died. After covering hockey long enough to be mistaken for Canadian--and after covering every other major sport--hockey still delights me. When the first puck is dropped for the debut of the Mighty Ducks, I’ll be watching, although I’m not sure I can ever bring myself to say, “the Pond in Anaheim.”

Now, Orange County residents will have the opportunity to discover what I did, over the airwaves or firsthand. Many of them are sure to be hooked the way I was.

Why the attachment to a sport scorned by much of the country and supposedly ignored here by all but a few rabid souls?

Because it combines the best elements of teamwork, skills, continuous action and excitement of any major sport. Because its players are the most human and humane of any athletes I’ve met, too humble and blue-collar to develop the arrogance afflicting many of baseball’s millionaires.

And because the players can skate backward faster than I can ever hope to run forward.

Hockey is more than the brawls shown on the news by sportscasters who decry the violence in the game, yet make no effort to learn about or display its beauty.

Hockey is the subtle genius of Wayne Gretzky, who could pass a feather through a snowstorm, and the tenacity of his King teammate, Tony Granato, who might stand 5-foot-10 on a phone book but never lacks for competitiveness.

Hockey is the dazzling skating of the European players who have flooded the National Hockey League in the last decade, and it’s the enthusiasm and scoring knack of Buffalo’s Pat LaFontaine, who grew up in the suburbs of Detroit.

It’s the courage of Mario Lemieux, who is challenging for the league scoring title while he battles Hodgkin’s disease, and it’s the agility and courage of the goalies, who face the force of pucks traveling at 100 m.p.h. Hockey is dreams built on sweat, as when Herb Brooks’ college kids stunned the world at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid by upsetting the heavily favored Soviet team and winning the gold medal. Hockey is the stern face of Viktor Tikhonov dissolving into a smile of boundless joy as his team won the gold medal in Albertville, France last winter, allowing him to forget for a moment that back home, the Soviet Union was falling apart.

It’s walking into the Montreal Forum and knowing the ghosts of so many of the game’s greats are peering over your shoulder, guarding the spirit and tradition of the game they played so well. It’s the red majesty of the Blackhawks’ uniforms, the melodic strains of “O Canada” before games and the crazy, decrepit madness of Bruin games at Boston Garden.

The Ducks aren’t likely to be parading the Stanley Cup--the oldest sports trophy awarded in North America--along Katella Avenue anytime soon, but that doesn’t make them losers. Maybe somewhere in Orange County, a child will tune a radio to a Ducks game and fall asleep with the sounds of hockey filtering through the pillow, and another generation of hockey fans will be born.