Foolish story

Now, a quick story about one of my few April Fool's Day pranks over the years.

Back in the mid-1980's, when I worked for WEBR Radio in Buffalo, we had people frequently coming and going. OK, at times we needed revolving doors, which is why that was the unofficial name of our softball team. Mike St. Peter, our news director at the time, was in charge of writing the memos to inform that staff about the latest departure.

So one April 1, I came back to the office after a game of some sort. It was 10 o'clock at night. I finished my job duties, and then went to work.

I started typing fake memos in Mike's exact style -- one for every person in the news department. Employees were off to California, the Buffalo Bills, NPR, Associated Press Radio, wherever. Since the statute of limitations has expired, I can now reveal that Sarah Britton walked in on me during the creative process, so I had to explain things. Sarah quickly volunteered to help come up with destinations for staffers. By the way, every memo's last paragraph started with "We obviously have a need for a {insert job here, like editor, etc.}." Every memo was dated April 1, by the way.

Once that was done, I took the pile of announcements and carefully placed them in each company mailbox. The careful part was that announcement A went into mailbox B, announcement B went into mailbox C, etc. I tried to put the news about afternoon crew workers in the morning staff's mailboxes, etc. to create a little more, um, confusion.

Then I quietly left the building, not to return until 1 p.m. or so.

The next morning, bombs started going off at 5 a.m.

John Gill walked in the office, looked at Greg Mott, and said, "YOU CAN'T GO!!!" People were running up to others and demanding hugs from confused staff members. Marc Chodorow was angry that he didn't get a memo on another person's departure that someone else had mentioned.

At 1 p.m., I stepped quietly in the back door and into the former garage area. I said, "Is it safe?" Marc practically applauded when he saw me. I looked a little sheepish when I saw Mike, but he kind of smirked at me as in "OK, nice job." Mike later sent out a memo that read something like, "I give up, no more memos for this crowd."

I figured that one was tough to top, so I got out of the April Fool's Day business. For a while.

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Foolish behavior

I was hired to work for the Buffalo Sabres in October 1986. I really wanted to work for them just on April 1.

That's because of April Fool's Day.

The Sabres had established a reputation throughout professional sports for practical jokes in the previous several years. Paul Wieland was the mastermind of the projects. Every year he'd send out a release that stretched the limits of credibility.

One year the Sabres were officially pronounced America's team, complete with a White House letter from the President and fake magazine cover. One year the Sabres had rented a battleship for training camp; the ship would go up and down Lake Erie as the team worked out on it. One year the team announced the invention of artificial ice, "Sliderex," which would be installed in Memorial Auditorium.

The news releases were faithfully mailed out, embargoed for April 1 release. Most simply laughed at the jokes. One local reporter, so excited about the news of Sliderex, broke the embargo to breathlessly report it the night before. His reputation has never quite recovered.

I think I helped write the first release during my tenure with the Sabres. The team had taken over a practice facility in Wheatfield called "Sabreland," and it seemed logical for it to expand its holdings that way. Therefore, the team announced a housing complex in Wheatfield called "Sabre Meadows." I believe it was supposed to have 47,000 units, which you have to admit is a lot of houses for Wheatfield.

I received a call from a reporter at one of the local radio stations that afternoon. I didn't really want to go on the air with him and ruin his credibility, so I started asking questions. "Did you read the release closely? Don't you think 47,000 units is a lot? And what day on the calendar is it?" Finally, he got it.

Future projects were placed on television as Wieland's responsibilities shifted, but we tried to do something every year. One time a friend from the Washington Capitals called, and I said, "I'll call you back. We're planning our April Fool's Day TV show." He was ready to switch jobs that day.

We came up with interactive television one year. We asked a question per period, and had an alleged fan vote. In the first period, the question was "Should the Sabres change their lines more quickly?" The fake response (the phone number flashed was in the Sabres hotline recording) was posted: an emphatic yes. Announcer John Gurtler was shown going into the Sabres' coaches office to tell them the fans' decision ... only to reveal Ted Sator and Barry Smith playing table hockey between periods.

In the second period, the question was whether Mike Robitaille should interview Christian Ruuttu, but have Ruuttu answer in Finnish. Not surprisingly, the yes responses easily won. So Robitaille asked a question in English, and Ruuttu responded in his native language. Robtaille was shown shaking his head up and down every so often, as if he knew what Ruuttu was talking about. Once he added, "So when you say that, it follows that ..." I asked Ruuttu later what he had actually said; I believe it was something like "That's a really ugly suit, but I really like your haircut." I'm sure the Finnish audience loved it.

The best one, though, was the Sabres' Shopping Service. I must have spent a month trying to come up with a series of items to sell. We had Wowie Housley Cola, J.F. Sauve game-used sticks (he was the smallest player in the league, so the stick was a foot long), Benoit Hogue-ee sandwiches, and the Daren Puppa Scoopa. Gurtler transformed himself into Wink Dickerson, talkative host and ultimate salesman. He was assisted by my friend Andrea, who became Andrea Hedberg (in honor of the ex-pro star). Talk about bringing material to life -- Gurtler deserved an Emmy that night.

Toward the end of my time with the Sabres, I could sense that the organization was starting to lose its sense of humor about such projects, even though such stunts seemed to help the team's image. Why a fan or two might be actually fooled! Wieland left in the mid-1990's, bringing his bag of pranks to other jobs.

Pro sports has grown dramatically in the past 20 years on the business side, and it's lost some of its sense of fun along the way. That's inevitable, but still a little sad. It's not allowed to be foolish even one day a year.