Flashback Fantasy: A proper ’90s Night at a sporting event
The whole thing may be a pipe dream, but parts of the sum would be better than nothing.
A wise Generation Xer all but burst this millennial’s bubble in a conversation that otherwise signaled sentimental sync.
Paul Baker is the president of Stadium Journey, the ultimate travel site dedicated to assessing the game-day experience at a given sporting event. He is also a lifelong Rhode Island resident, reached by this steadfast Rhode Islander at heart for this piece. The former affirms that the only remaining pro team the latter frequented growing up does not percolate quite the same atmosphere as it did during its novel phase in the ’90s.
I might as well just say this is, in no small part, a protracted personal column. For this ’90s nostalgia aficionado, the decade in question is synonymous with Rhode Island. The Providence Bruins, American Hockey League affiliate of their Boston namesakes, are crucially connected with both.
“The P-Bruins were absolutely the first piece of Providence’s Renaissance,” Baker said via email.
He speaks of a cultural rejuvenation to the Ocean State’s capital city, and by extension to the state at large. It started no later than 1992, when the 20-year-old Providence Civic Center gained a long yearned-for new tenant to plug 40-plus dates per year. In the second edition of the P-Bruins’ old program, SCORE, the late Providence mayor Buddy Cianci quickly credited the team’s presence and fanfare for generating restaurants and other integral pieces of newfound nightlife around the Civic Center neighborhood.
Within two years, the nextdoor Rhode Island Convention Center and downtown (or Downcity) rivers’ recurring WaterFire show — long since emulated around the globe— highlighted the entities that followed.
By decade’s end, the Southern New England metropolis’ epicenter finally got its own shopping hub in the Providence Place Mall. The mall is across the street from WaterFire’s prime viewing sidewalks and only a block or two from the Civic and Convention Centers.
Besides effectively greenlighting those projects, the AHL team also prompted a resonant decade in its league. For more than half of their existence now, the P-Bruins have constituted Triple-A hockey’s fourth-longest-running dateline-nickname combination. They were the first of seven still standing that launched between 1992 and 1999. (By contrast, only four AHL brands established in the aughts are still going.)
Given their association with and impact on the era, there is every intangible cause for the P-Bruins, of all minor-league teams, to put on a ’90s Night that sincerely takes its fan base back to that time. That said, Baker sees such a promotional vision falling flat.
“Think about it this way,” said the longtime season-ticket subscriber. “I was 25 when the Bruins came to town. A great deal of the fan base that supported the team back in the ’90s is gone.”
Sounds like the generational changeover puts this proposition at one rung of feasibility above Lewis Black’s dream of installing Santa Claus as president of the United States. But just as Lew says of that proposal, wouldn’t ’90s Night be great?
’90s Night does happen around the minor league sports circuit, and sometimes even in the big leagues. But it is usually conceived and executed as a decidedly different breed than what this author envisions.
A little over a year ago, early in the sports world’s hiatus from crowded contests (or any contests), one likeminded contemporary broadcast his wish for an event of this nature. It happened three weeks after the pandemic curtailed the AHL’s 2019-20 season, as the P-Bruins saluted frontline workers in Throwback Thursday fashion. They created their own GIF with a motion shot of their mid-to-late-’90s scoreboard and its cartoon of clapping hands.
Twitter user Greg Bagian replied with an energetic, straightforward wave of what one might call flashback feels. “Holy moly!” he tweeted. “This was my childhood. I was always hoping you guys would do a 90’s night with music and the old Jumbotron graphics. I still remember the puck diving under the ice with the goal sign.”
Yes, the Providence Civic Center and a host of other minor-league venues supplied what Bagian describes and a handful of other stock animations that made millennial grade schoolers guffaw while cheering the aftermath of a highlight-reel play. You can see evidence of Bagian’s example used by the short-lived Baltimore Bandits between the 26- and 33-second marks of this YouTube upload.
Elsewhere in that cartoon cabinet was a spectator’s eyes breaking through his binoculars and his profile stance twisting to face the viewer before the graphic asks “Did you see that?!” There was skater in white blowing past a line of opponents in red with enough force to send their uniforms into oblivion. There was a goaltender transforming into a literal brick wall.
This was when live camera-fed video boards were coming fast to the big leagues, but still not ubiquitous in the minors. It was when said boards were commonly starting to show more than mere messages. Information got company through entertainment in those spaces.
And the music Bagian tweeted of inevitably consists mostly, though not exclusively, of ESPN’s Jock series. The gradual rollout of three Jock Rock and five Jock Jams compilations between 1994 and 1999 cemented, punctuated, and underscored the transition to canned music, rather than organs, as the predominant medium.
It was, as they say, a different time. More oomph was going in and coming out of an arena or stadium’s amenities, and millennials comprised the first kid generation of spectators to relish it all. It is all but equally distinct from what preceded it in the ’80s and earlier and from what has succeeded it in the depths of this millennium.
A true ’90s Night thus involves the sound crew restricting its playlist to the Jock albums and a smattering of other 20th-century songs that used to grace the arena’s air. And it means going as far as feasible to make the sights match the sounds in recreating the aura of that era as it was within the walls in question. No worries about the outside world, then or now.
One way and another
’90s Night does happen around the minor leagues, and sometimes even in the big leagues. But it is usually conceived and executed as a decidedly different breed than what this author envisions.
To elicit a time-honored Seinfeld disclaimer, not that there’s anything wrong with the sideshows teams have put on. Almost any spiritual return to the lighter side of the time is welcome.
One night in 2014, baseball’s Single-A Brooklyn Cyclones renamed their venue Vandelay Industries Park and had a slew of Seinfeld homages inside. They donned Nickelodeon GUTS-inspired jerseys for a game the next summer, staged a Full House Night another year and have since rerun the “Seinfeld Night” promotion.
A little farther down the Eastern Seaboard, the Frederick Keys put ’90s Nick on display through Rugrats- and Hey Arnold!-themed jerseys for a 2015 and 2016 game, respectively. For the latter, they ran a few extra bases by dressing the concourse in an implicit effort to give fans a sense of being in the show’s universe.
Other ballclubs, such as the Triple-A Reno Aces and Single-A Greenville Drive, have conducted a more generalized ’90s Night. And even the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets, who did not launch until October 2000, offered ticketholders an array of dusk-of-the-20th-century trimmings at a game.
In those cases, ’90s Night entailed lacing the sights and sounds with one-time at-large pop-culture standouts. But not enough franchises who existed at the time have celebrated their contribution to the era.
That is what specific teams, especially those who took root and took shape in the decade, ought to try. Despite Baker’s point about the elder tier of the founding fan bases, there are millennials who supported these clubs as children and Gen Xers who did so as teens and twentysomethings. Catching enough of their interest through a ploy like this is not out of the question.
For ’90s upstarts like the P-Bruins, those generations were the first clusters of kids to support the team, which is pivotal in the minor leagues. The team’s survival, let alone prosperity, signifies a symbiosis between a family-friendly business and the supporters who can claim it as a key cog in their childhood.
A full commitment to ’90s Night means restricting the uniforms, music, introductions, and fillers between innings, periods, or quarters to a visual and audial recreation of the decade as it was within one’s walls.
Naturally, to keep surviving, let alone thriving today, that means tailoring the outreach to today’s youngest fans. But it need not be all or nothing all the time for any generation, especially when you still need ’80s and ’90s kids to supplement your attendance figures and cannot hook casual fans with present-day juvenile gimmicks.
So even if it is not an all-in plunge to the past, this author’s vision of a ’90s Night would be another way for those demographics to relive their younger years. Short of a feature interviewing/writing assignment, it is one of the few ways to convince this author to attend another sporting event. Because like Liberty Mutual said about commercials last holiday season, few things sell quite like nostalgia.
A full commitment to ’90s Night means restricting the uniforms, music, introductions, and fillers between innings, periods, or quarters to a visual and audial recreation of the decade as it was within one’s walls.
Granted, no one could go all the way back. Spectators in the 2020s might still be encouraged or required to wear masks, just as all hockey facilities will have protective netting at each end of the rink and all minor-league skaters will be wearing visors.
Those and a few other indispensable new-age amenities aside, there are enough settings raring for a refreshing annual return to the energetic dusk of the last millennium. Baker hesitates on his home base because, despite their relative seniority, the P-Bruins are still overshadowed by the 51-year run of the Providence Reds among local AHL history buffs. Similarly, the 1997 establishment of the Hartford Wolf Pack to replace the NHL’s Whalers does not leave much of a ‘90s legacy to reanimate.
On the other hand, he mused, “Maybe it could work in Syracuse,” home to the Crunch since 1994. In addition, there were AHL start-ups in Portland, Maine (1993) and Worcester, Massachusetts (1994), which are now home to Double-A ECHL franchises.
Other more recent establishments within the AHL would be right to honor a predecessor in their space. The Cleveland Monsters (inaugurated in 2007) have done this twice by breaking out Lumberjacks jerseys (along with the old mascot and intro) in 2012 and 2020, thus acknowledging a brand that played in the bygone International Hockey League from 1992 to 2001.
“Likewise,” Baker added, “the IHL teams that started at this time may be able to make an IHL throwback night work.”
One of those teams could be part of a community’s three-in-one shot at PR nostalgia.
Grand throwback?
The AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins, a 2001 transfer from the defunct rival circuit, punctuated Michigan’s No. 2 metropolis’ arrival as a pro sports market. Established in 1996 as the first full-time tenant of the pristine, palatial Van Andel Arena, the Griffins had a formative narrative similar to the P-Bruins. Many aspiring attendees had to shoot on the rebound to score tickets for a team that converted the locale’s mulligan on the sport and the level.
The ’90s IHL spared no expenses to immerse itself in its answer to pro wrestling’s Attitude Era. Jerseys, pre-game presentations, and in-game sideshows matched each other’s decibels.
The Chicago Wolves, another AHL tenant that started in the late league, have never really relinquished those elements. In normal times, each home game at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois, begins with a full-throttle pyrotechnic extravaganza set to Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart.” The club has also more or less kept the same insignia and burgundy, black, and gold uniform.
In this century, the Griffins forged all-state unity by affiliating with the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings. They tempered their uniform accordingly and have since redesigned their logo. That said, those who remember their inception and independent era must at least mildly crave another live look at the jersey whose listed colors were metallic silver, metallic gold, navy blue, hunter green, and red.
That identity is synonymous with the third corner of a local sports triangle that was only a singular dot when the ’90s began. Preceding the Griffins were baseball’s West Michigan Whitecaps, inaugurated in 1994 and operating out of suburban Comstock Park in Single-A’s Midwest League. They are still there as members of the Central League.
Meanwhile the bygone Continental Basketball Association’s Grand Rapids Hoops were the locale’s first modern minor-league team, launching in the 1989-90 season. The brand sandwiched a momentary makeover as the Muckers, and ultimately outlasted the CBA itself before folding in 2003. The Hoops also joined the Griffins at Van Andel for a time before moving to the smaller, older DeltaPlex Arena in suburban Walker.
Today the NBA G League’s Grand Rapids Drive — who after seven years will start answering to a TBD new name in 2021-22 — could theoretically bring the Hoops uniforms and vibe back to Van Andel or DeltaPlex for one night.
Play the Michael Buffer/2 Unlimited mashup that kicked off Jock Jams, Volume 1 and used to fill the gap between the national anthem and the opening play like clockwork. And of course no ’90s Night is complete without “Macarena.”
Down in Indiana, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants would likewise be apt to recreate the CBA’s Fort Wayne Fury (1991-2001) experience at Allen County War Memorial Coliseum. The same concept applies to the present-day Oklahoma City Blue and the former-day Oklahoma City Calvary (1991-97). Ditto another Fort Wayne franchise, namely baseball’s TinCaps, who preceded the Whitecaps in the Midwest League, and one more MWL startup and transfer to the Central League in the Lansing Lugnuts, whose silver anniversary is this year.
No such luck so far. Both Grand Rapids winter teams have put on a ’90s Night, but avoided any focus on what it was like in their digs back then. The Griffins pieced together a Home Improvement-based pregame video, and later dedicated a line of one-off jerseys to the Jurassic Park franchise. Meanwhile the Drive personnel reenacted the title sequence to Family Matters for a humorous (if cheesy) intro video.
Again, that is all fine. But couldn’t they have brought back Hoopie, the acrobatic green humanoid with hair the Hoops’ primary color of purple?
The Drive visited Fort Wayne for its ’90s Night a month later, and the hosts marked the occasion with Rugrats-influenced threads. Given that night’s visitor, the opportunity for an all-round throwback to the look and feel of the CBA days should have been an uncontested layup.
But the Mad Ants too went in the more common ’90s Night direction. Ditto two years earlier when they brought in Saved by the Bell’s Dennis Haskins. Ditto in 2013, when their baseball brethren’s idea of ’90s Night was tipping their TinCaps to Forrest Gump and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
It was not unlike one of Baker’s many treks for Stadium Journey, when he attended an ECHL game in Wheeling, West Virginia. Fresh Prince alum Alfonso Ribeiro was on hand, the hometown Nailers sported special jerseys designed to epitomize the decade’s fashions, and the playlist was heavy on the decade’s hits.
Oddly enough, the Wheeling Nailers are another team in another market that established itself on its sport’s and league’s scene in the ’90s. You could say the same about the 28-year-old South Carolina Stingrays, their league’s longest-running dateline-nickname combination.
But instead of centering on their own heritage, they brought unrelated contemporary elements from their longtime fans’ living room into their own domain.
Baker was right to suppose “I’m not sure that would work in Providence,” where the dressings have grown a little more stereotypically minor league, but not to that extent.
But a different approach to ’90s Night, calculated properly, would be a most refreshing reminder of the Renaissance. It would aid ’90s kids in telling their own kids what it was like when nobody dared take this local entertainment option for granted.
On the rebound
If all goes according to plan, 2021-22 will be a threefold opportunity to celebrate the P-Bruins’ existence and heritage. Whenever the Dunkin Donuts Center (nee Providence Civic Center) opens to spectators again, it will halt the longest hiatus between crowded P-Bruins games since the brand’s inception.
That means ending the longest gap between AHL games in Rhode Island — one of at least 19 months — since the 15-year lull between the Reds’ departure and the Bruins’ arrival. So…ahem…party like it’s 1992?
The coming campaign will also be the current team’s 30th, and thus a chance to recompense a tepid 25th anniversary acknowledgment.
“There was not one single piece of merchandise offered,” Baker recalls, “and the fact that it was the P-Bruins’ 25th season was hardly even mentioned until the season was almost over.” He added that not enough players from the team’s formative years appeared at a reunion. Many reportedly would have liked to come, but were not invited.
“I think the team should absolutely do more to honor their past,” said Baker. “Since the team wears multiple jerseys every year that they auction off for various causes, why not put a throwback ’90s jersey in the mix? I’m not sure it would result in a huge crowd at the Dunk, but the jerseys would certainly be popular.”
In copying their Boston parent club, and simply substituting a P for a B, the P-Bruins sported two uniform schemes in their first calendar decade. Starting with the 1995-96 season, and lasting through 2007, the home whites acquired a broad streak of black all the way down the sleeve. Gold did the same to the road black threads. The shoulder logo changed from a gold-faced, black-striped growling bear to a more stoic brown bruin.
As such, the predecessor is most synonymous with the club’s dynasty as runaway AHL attendance leaders. Providence dominated at the gate for four years running. Its average nightly audiences in its original uniform and a building of 11,909 seats checked in at 9,279; 9,203; and 9,015.
Are there enough one-time avid game-goers who are now pro sports’ answer to Easter-and-Christmas churchgoers, with a proper ’90s Night as the magnet holiday?
The team has, for the most part, remained a steady attraction, still subsisting on name recognition through the region’s preferred parent club and putting up winning records more often than not. That said, like a typical minor league franchise, the Baby B’s need supplementary side attractions, especially ones that flow with the times.
“The team’s approach to attracting fans has fundamentally changed,” Baker said, “and the bloom is certainly off the rose. At the beginning the Bruins could just open the doors and people would come. That’s not the case anymore, and the team markets relentlessly to groups to fill the building.”
As ’90s kids are now long grown up, at least legally, actual children of Gen Z’s younger tier and the next generation are the primary targets. Today’s outreach is defined by multiple elementary school classes taking invitations to sing patriotic songs (yes, plural) before puck-drop and multiple youth athletes to play mini-games between periods.
People can either watch that or go to the lobby to enter a multi-arms-length selection of raffles. And of course, when nothing in particular is happening on the ice, the masses are subjected to facetime gimmicks and thundering renditions of TV commercials on the jumbotron.
“I would love to see a simpler game day presentation,” Baker said, then elaborated on his version of a wishful best-case scenario. “Get rid of all the choruses before the game. Get rid of all the groups clogging up the concourse. Get rid of all the extraneous distraction and noise. Play the PA and music at a reasonable volume.”
Of course a thorough throwback like that is out of the question. If all of this century’s elements were scrapped for even one night, Baker figures, attendance would barely break 2,000. The ratio of filled seats to empty would practically be the inverse of what it was on average in the mid-’90s.
For better or worse, Baker figures, the present-day presentation is stuck. No exceptions.
“That’s not going away,” he said, “and a nostalgic night won’t bring back the old way of doing business, either.”
But is a compromise too much to ask? If not, how much leverage could those who remember when nobody took the team and the experience it provided for granted, and when the franchise didn’t need to return that feeling to its fan base, have in this hypothetical negotiation?
In case there are enough one-time avid game-goers who are now pro sports’ answer to Easter-and-Christmas churchgoers, with a proper ’90s Night being the magnetic holiday, here is exactly how one team could put it on.
The 19 ’90s Night wishes
Of course there are some non-negotiable nostalgic no-nos. It is best for the Baby B’s and many other teams who arose in the ’90s to omit their former goal song. No one can unlearn the problematic connotation “Rock and Roll Part 2” has acquired.
But the era in question was when more hockey teams rang a celebratory siren for goals. Most who used that sound effect at any time have since traded it in for a foghorn. Even without a song, that should be one doable element of a bona fide ’90s Night tailor-made for the local team.
Here are 18 others for the P-Bruins to consider:
2. Have the Dunkin Donuts Center, which will be 50 years young next November, answer to the name Providence Civic Center again. While you are at it, bring back the iconic P marquee outside and inside the building.
3. Give away ’90s P-Bruins or ’90s-P-Bruins-inspired merchandise at the gate. Perhaps use present-day action shots as the centerpiece of a commemorative poster replicating the front cover of the defunct SCORE magazine.
4. Enlist the right opponent, maybe one that could join in on back-to-back ’90s Nights through a home-and-home series. The Hershey Bears (established 1938) have an old look that would be neat to sport again. Their old den, Hersheypark Arena, is still standing even after the modern GIANT Center opened in 2002. And they were the visitors at the first P-Bruins home game in 1992.
The Rochester Americans (inaugurated in 1956) have hardly changed their persona. The aforementioned Syracuse Crunch did revive (and slightly modify) their original superhero logo, but not their inaugural color scheme, which all but epitomized ’90s fashion with its loud crowd of colors. The same went for the Springfield Falcons, who began in 1994 like the Crunch, made themselves over multiple times, and have since been replaced by the Springfield Thunderbirds.
5. Dress the home team in jerseys replicating the look of their road blacks from circa 1992-95. With the gold P and black spokes, that works especially well with the current center-ice emblem. Maybe add the later-’90s jersey for warmups and a subsequent auction.
6. Bring back the recently retired Boston Bruins public-address announcer Jim Martin, who fulfilled those duties at the Civic Center before moving to “The Show” full time. He can work in tandem with Dave Zibelli, who succeeded Martin behind the Providence PA mike in 1997.
7. If it is still around, bring back the original Sam Boni mascot outfit. Granted, the mascot looked rather docile then compared to now, but it was what it was, and the last time that costume was used was when Providence won the 1999 AHL championship. Sam Boni has been made over at least three times since then, and the bear plays a slightly less visible role at games, having once casually coasted around the pond between the Zamboni’s shift and the game’s resumption.
8. Since the video screen cannot have a night off, precede the player introductions with a chronological highlight montage, beginning with the team’s introductory press conference in mid-May 1992 and culminating with its first (and still only) championship banner ceremony in October 1999. Maybe set the reel to Van Halen’s ‘Right Now,” the same song that fired up the crowd for opening night in 1994.
9. Play the Michael Buffer/2 Unlimited mashup that kicked off Jock Jams, Volume 1 and used to fill the gap between the national anthem and the opening faceoff like clockwork.
10. Cue up Black Box’s “Strike It Up” — the third full-length Jock Jams track — upon the P-Bruins’ entrance and minute-long warmup laps to commence each period. In the latter half of the ’90s, no one at the Civic Center was really ready for the puck to drop until Martha Wash told them she was waiting on her feelings.
11. Turn up Snap!’s “The Power” — Track 2 on Side 2 of the first Jock Jams cassette — for every Providence power play.
12. Play other Jock Jams at random stoppages. At some point, “Hip Hop Hooray” must compel everyone to stand up and sway their arms the way they still do in dance studios. And naturally, no ’90s Night is complete without “Macarena.”
13. At other random stoppages, if available, play recordings of former Civic Center organists Tom Viveiros and Matt Mello’s renditions of “Here We Go Bruins,” “Mexican Hat Dance,” and “Las Chiapanecas.” It is a tad tough to believe how much the organ still lingered in the early-to-mid-’90s, considering how much canned music was already prickling the purists. Today there are those of us who long for at least a momentary renewal of canned tunes’ “good old days” or even the DJ-organist carousel.
14. Whether or not Bagian gets his way, the video board can come alive for some other mild anachronisms. As part of the compromise, this means stringing together team history segments and flashing evergreen retro TV commercials for long-standing sponsors.
In Providence, where the Civic Center got its current “Dunk” handle in the summer of 2001, a few flashbacks to the late Michael Vale/Fred the Baker’s radiant twilight would be a must. That could at least give attendees the unique illusion of teleporting between the Civic Center and their living room, where a smattering of AHL games could once be watched on the New England Sports Network (another practice that has irrecoverably fizzled).
15. This century’s technology could also come in handy if you want to bring back Claude Scott, aka The Happy Trumpeter. After starting as a staple at NHL Quebec Nordiques games in the ’80s, Claude essentially became hockey’s answer to Max Patkin, the Clown Prince of Baseball, in the ’90s. YouTube has immortalized this look-back-and-laugh moment from one of his many Civic Center stops.
16. But at least when play is in progress, show nothing on the board above center ice except the original spoked P. Throwback night or not, televising a game for a crowd that’s already watching it in person is redundant anyway.
17. To help avert Baker’s worst-case attendance scenario, encourage fans to come and sport ’90s fashions or merchandise bearing their favorite ’90s entertainment entities. There has to be at least one contest in there.
18. Does anybody remember the slingshot crew? That could be worked back into an intermission somehow, could it not?
19. Bring back an old intermission contest in Score-O, but maybe with a less pricey prize than a shiny new Dodge. And for flexibility’s sake, let the peewees keep their intermission games and save the shot from center ice aiming at one of three holes in a net-blocking board for postgame. That way you give the ’90s kids an excuse to prolong their stay in the time portal you have created.
And if Bagian and this author are anything more than two outspoken, anecdotal, helplessly nostalgic eccentrics, enough people just might come for that portal.
Are you a ’90s kid who grew up frequenting one of the teams mentioned in this piece? Would you like to see that team stage a ’90s Night with all (or close to all) the trimming of their old game-night experience? Share the details with me.