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Empty netter: a fond farewell to my beloved Austin Ice Bats.

Article Excerpt
Back when all I cared about was rock and roll, my weekly forays to the record store inevitably meant buying twelve-inch British singles for the B -sides and hand-numbered indie 45's. Then I became obsessed with hockey. Ever the obscurist, my more modest haul of pucks also favored limited and little-known editions from extinct Texas teams: the Waco Wizards, the E1 Paso Buzzards, the Amarillo Rattlers, the San Angelo Outlaws, the San Angelo Saints, the Central Texas (Belton) Stampede, the San Antonio Iguanas, the Lubbock Cotton Kings, the Abilene Aviators, the Fort Worth Fire. Alas, I never did obtain vulcanized rubber with a Border City (Texarkana) Bandits logo.

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I also never figured that the many pucks I got while following the Austin Ice Bats for twelve years would fit into that collection. This past March, a franchise that debuted with a sold-out, televised game in front of 7,500 people at the Travis County Exposition Center played what was prob ably its final contest in front of less than 500 people at Chaparral Ice, a private rink where...

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