Bullfrogs Getting Jump on League Under McSorley

Needing a trash sports fix--I can’t tell you the last time I saw a really good tractor pull--I made an in-line to The Pond Saturday night to take in a Bullfrogs game.

I was not disappointed.

I saw a bunch of guys I’d never heard of rolling around on what appeared to be the floor of a parking garage, swatting at a bright red skateboard wheel called a “JOFA ISD Speedpuck--The Official Puck of Roller Hockey International.”

I saw a guy in a frog suit named Zeus dancing to the immortal verse of Three Dog Night--”Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog . . . “--and high-sticking a couple other guys dressed as foam-rubber manta rays.

I saw the mighty Polly Wogs, seven lean, green young women clad in--what?--neon-lime spandex lily pads, on hand to aerobicize for the fans between periods and sign autographs in the lobby afterward.

I saw a Bullfrog slam an Oakland Skate into the boards and heard the crowd chant its approval--”RIBBIT! RIBBIT!”

I saw a Bullfrog score and heard the FrogHorn roar and watched the scoreboard blink, “GREAT CROAK!” followed by “RIBBIT POWER!”

I also saw the Bullfrogs run their record to 5-0 with a 7-6 victory, pummeling Oakland’s poor goaltender with 51 shots in 48 minutes and terrorizing the Skates’ skaters with an in-your-face style of play that could have only been coached by a McSorley, which it was.

Chris McSorley is Marty’s older but smaller brother, and you know what they say about little man’s syndrome. As a player, Chris was once suspended for 18 games for biting an opponent’s nose. As a coach, merely months ago, he drew a one-game suspension for kicking an opposing player in the face.

“Defending my team,” is how McSorley explains it. “If a rabid dog attacks a family, any good parent is going to protect his family.”

Besides, McSorley notes, “if I was guilty of anything dirty, I’d have gotten a lot more than one game.”

McSorley was coaching Toledo then, in a real hockey league, on real ice, and seemed to be making a nice career of it. He won the East Coast Hockey League championship this spring and, by his count, has lost only 82 of the 288 games he has coached professionally.

So what brings Mad Dog McSorley to the tranquil little Pond in Anaheim, to mold an all-comers cast of ECHL moonlighters into the roller-blading Bullfrogs, in a hockey league that plays “quarters,” has halftime intermission shows and cherishes the home-cement advantage?

“It was a gamble,” admits McSorley, 31. “ The last thing I wanted was belonging to a league that folded and hurt my image as a young and coming coach.

“What I was looking for was credibility, and Ralph Backstrom, who I know from him coaching in Phoenix the last two years, is the league’s commissioner. I knew Ralph wouldn’t be involved in anything unless it was a credible business.”

Money also helped. McSorley will virtually double his yearly Toledo salary with his three-month stint as chief Frog. “And I was one of the highest paid coaches in double-A hockey,” he points out.

McSorley is as new to the slip-sliding world of roller hockey as the 5,409 spectators who showed up at Anaheim Arena Saturday night. He still refers to the playing surface as “the ice” and winced just a bit when alluding to his team’s superior stamina “in the fourth quarter.”

“I told my assistant coach on the first day of practice, ‘If I pull this one off, it’ll be the greatest scam in history,’ ” McSorley says with a hearty laugh. “I didn’t know a thing about roller hockey. I didn’t know if it was better to go with professional in-line skaters and teach them how to play hockey or teach pro hockey players how to be top-notch in-line skaters.”

McSorley quickly developed an idea, however. Of the 56 original Bullfrogs, all of them drafted because they had in-line experience, none made the final roster. Zero. McSorley cut them all and phoned old friends and foes from the ECHL, players he knew were capable of chewing gum and bodychecking at the same time.

“I brought two pro hockey players in, and the first day, they were the worst two players on the ‘ice,’ ” McSorley says. “They couldn’t stand up for a week.

“After that, it was no contest. I brought in, basically, an ECHL all-star team. For a while, I had an owner looking at me cross-eyed. But I knew these guys, and I knew they could play.”

Brad McCaughey was one of those guys. McCaughey, a 27-year-old minor leaguer, said McSorley called him three times, to no avail. “It sounded like just a bunch of guys running around,” McCaughey says.

But McSorley persisted and, on the fourth try, landed his man.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” McCaughey says with a shrug, “and this was a chance to make some money. I said, ‘It’s two months, why not check it out?’ I’m glad I did.”

McCaughey now leads the Bullfrogs in scoring. And the 5-0 BullishFrogs are already gaining a reputation as the marauders of RHI. “The Goons of Anaheim,” sneered Los Angeles Blades Coach John Black last week--to which McSorley responded, “they’ll need paint-scrapers to scrape the Blades off the boards when we’re done with them.”

The Blades come to town tonight. The Bullfrogs publicity staff had planned to distribute paint scrapers featuring Black’s profile through the stands, but a rush-order couldn’t be organized in time.

But a rivalry has blossomed, and that must mean this league’s for real. In Anaheim, the fans are learning fast. One minute and three seconds into Saturday’s game, a Skate pounded the puck past Bullfrog goalie Rob Laurie.

Immediately, a voice rang out, “We want Horn!” referring to backup Bill Horn.

Fifty seconds later, the FrogHorn sounded, and the Bullfrogs, goaltending controversy or not, were on their way.