Human Flower Project
It’s All in the Delivery
Flowers sometimes can melt long iced-over resentments. Sometimes not.
Former Canadian football quarterback Joe Kapp offers flowers to ex-tackle Angelo Mosco
Photo: HFP via youtube
The Canadian Football League set up a reunion at a recent alumni banquet: an on-stage reconciliation between two old rivals of the gridiron. Joe Kapp, 73, once quarterback for the British Columbia Lions, and Angelo Mosco, a tackle turned pro wrestler now long retired from both those tough occupations, had held a mutual grudge since 1963. At least.
In the Grey Cup game (Canada’s Super Bowl) of that year, Kapp and others accused Mosco of delivering “a late hit out of bounds to BC running back Willie Fleming and they’ve been niggling ever since.”
Kapp and other BC players and fans must have taken it especially hard in that the Lions lost the championship game at home to Mosco’s Tiger-Cats of Hamilton. Still, still! It’s been 48 years. There has to be more to the story.
Well, now there is. At the recently staged “reconciliation,” Kapp stood up first and dawdled a sprig of white flowers he’d plucked from the table arrangement. As Mosca was invited forward and toiled up with his cane, Kapp at first shuffled to the other side of the stage. He then held the flowers limply out to Mosca, who seemed to ignore them and take a seat. Kapp retreated, then stepped forward again, poking the flowers comically toward Mosca’s face.
Kapp’s second attempt:
a floral poke in the face
Photo: HFP via youtube
He shoudn’t ought’a done that.
The old wrestler came after him with his cane, Kapp threw a punch and the two men collapsed on the floor.
We actually couldn’t bear to watch the full 8 minute clip on youtube, but you can do so here. From what we can gather, Kapp whines awhile about “sportmanship” (please) and his desire to make peace; Mosca says he cares nothing for the old fight, blaming everything on the old Lion and then dissolving into platitudes about how great “the game has been to me,” etc.
Yet another log to throw on the bonfire: let’s burn up the notion that sports “build character.”
Angelo Mosco strikes back
with a caning
Photo: HFP via youtube
A few suggestions about efforts to make amends with flowers:
1. Do so privately. Sending a personal apology with a bouquet or even one stem is an entirely different gesture than swiping flowers from a table arrangement and hoping to make oneself out as the “the good guy” before an audience and cameras.
2. Look up the word “proffer” and then present flowers accordingly, as a gift. Don’t dangle them.
3. Don’t poke flowers at anyone.
4. Sending flowers to an enemy and aging wrestler? Have a florist deliver.