Why Benjamin Wendorf Builds History and Hockey Narratives
Learn what Wendorf, a Hockey Graphs cofounder, has done since getting his doctorate in African & African Diaspora Studies.
As Benjamin Wendorf recently detailed how his childhood enthusiasm for Ken Burns' Civil War documentary series put him on a path toward becoming a history professor, he briefly stopped to note the trope in his story.
"In the history community, it's a cheesy thing to say," he explained of his Burns fandom.
Narratives that reinforce cliches cause Wendorf, a co-founder of hockey-graphs.com and a former editor of the Behind The Net hockey blog, to pause. Drawing from the past to make sense of the present is rarely as simple as the task seems, a reality obvious to Wendorf, who holds a doctorate in African & African Diaspora Studies.
That's one reason why the northern Wisconsin native, in sharing his formative experiences, made sure to mention another of his favorite childhood films, one also critiqued by historians.
Released in 1980 and set in South Africa, "The Gods Must Be Crazy" is a slapstick comedy about a San Namibian man's travels through southern Africa that favorably contrasts the intuitions and inclinations of the Kalahari Desert's San people with those of the mostly white citizens who live elsewhere.
Wendorf now recognizes the problematic elements of the film, but as a child, he appreciated how it challenged cliches.
"That juxtaposition really shook me out of the classic, old European presentation of Africa as being 'backwards' or something like that," Wendorf said. "Instead, I grew up with this notion that there’s genius and sophistication in the way these communities are building their lives, and that really reverberated with me.”
He continued later: "When people start to settle into formulaic narratives, they actually learn less. They’re making assumptions about things and being comfortable. I’ve always found I learn more by shifting over to the areas of discomfort, if possible.
"I think there’s a part of me too that feels like there’s a lot of redemption that needs to happen, whether it’s trying to get a more faithful presentation of what constitutes U.S. history or world history, or maybe a more faithful interpretation of who are the valuable players on the rink. If we just go along with what everybody has been telling us, we don’t get any closer to those answers and realizations."
Photo credit: Cecilia Rogue
"The immersion experience"
The sound of pucks slamming into endboards stirs more nostalgia in Wendorf than any other sensory cue at hockey rinks. There's no shortage of options, though.
"I got what you might call the immersion experience," he said.
He remembers the chill of skating around the outdoor, open-to-the-public rink his father and others in the town of Phillips, Wisc., built from scratch just a few streets down from Wendorf's house when Wendorf was about 3.
Benjamin Wendorf and his sister, Pam, on the rink their father and other members of the Phillips, Wisc., community built for public use. Photo by Bill Wendorf.
There's the unforgettable stench from the numerous hockey pad sets Wendorf's father kept in the family's basement and loaned to other kids in town at no cost.
Wendorf also watched sparks jump from the skates he and his family sharpened for the town's players. He later admired the twinkle of light reflecting off the ice he refreshed as a Zamboni operator in college after learning from two longtime drivers named Arnie and Larry.
The list of Wendorf's experiences that would fit in an NHL Winter Classic montage or Gordon Bombay's backstory is long. But he finds hockey's data just as compelling as its visceral moments. That fascination started with trading cards, said Wendorf, who collected thousands and only parted with most of them in the past few years.
"As a kid, I consumed all of the information on them," Wendorf said. "I had this thing where my siblings, I'd challenge them to cover the entire card up and just show the player's face, and I could tell you who it was. I knew the cards that well. I'd read the back, all of the data in there. … I think in the process of doing that, it wasn't my intention, but I became much more interested in numbers and working with data with regards to hockey. But I didn't realize (analytics) was something I could do until about 2008 or so."
"What we were doing could influence the direction of hockey"
Though Wendorf later landed freelance gigs with the Chicago Tribune and The Hockey News, his earliest writing on hockey analytics consisted of blog entries that settled arguments among friends and fan posts on what became SB Nation pages.
Wendorf needed just two fan posts to grab the attention of Gabriel Desjardins, who had emerged as one of the most prominent voices in hockey's burgeoning analytics community with his site, Behind The Net. They chatted, and Wendorf joined as a writer.
"The minute I started reading that site, I was hooked," Wendorf said. "And Gabe would be the first one to tell you, for most of his posts, he wasn't throwing much narrative out there at all. He basically just shared some information or data he came across and found interesting. What he was doing is saying, 'Here's an interesting conversation piece, this data that I came across.'
"Behind The Net took me to the next level as far as research was concerned. I never got to the level that Gabe was at. I'd never call myself a data scientist. But I would say I got enough into it that I could use statistics to make good arguments and build narratives, so that's what I did."
As Wendorf evolved, so did the blog he called home. SB Nation nudged Desjardins, a lifelong Winnipeg fan, and Behind The Net to become a team-focused site when the Jets returned for the 2011-12 season.
Wendorf rooted for Winnipeg -- he couldn't imagine cheering for Minnesota or Chicago as a Wisconsinite -- but he still wanted a place to dig into league trends and other curiosities. He learned another Winnipeg writer, Garret Hohl, and Islanders blogger Josh "Garik16" shared similar ambitions. Together, they created Hockey-Graphs.com and began pouring energy into research and stories during their spare time.
Doubts about Hockey Graphs’ viability ebbed and flowed during the first couple years, but the cast of contributors eventually became a who's who of diverse, up-and-coming hockey analysts -- several are currently or formerly employed by NHL teams -- and Asmae Toumi took the site to new data science heights as its editor-in-chief.
“I felt like what we were doing could really influence the direction of hockey into the future, but it could've also been something that just vanished," said Wendorf, who was earning his doctorate while getting the site going. “Josh, Garret and I were all really tired by that two-year point. … We were looking toward the next generation, and we thought we have this thing that’s taking off, and we have this great opportunity.
“We wanted to basically say this isn’t an exclusive, white, male fraternity. And we found a lot of people who were interested. It didn’t take long. It was a lot of very talented people. And it’s completely surpassed me now. Most of the people who are writing for Hockey Graphs now are way, way ahead of me as far as data analysis is concerned.
"I was really happy I was a cofounder of something that did that. But I was also ready to go be a historian.”
"How can I be most effective?"
Wendorf, who took the only class on African history available to him as an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay -- a one-semester course unironically titled "The History of Africa" -- now teaches courses at Quinsigamond Community College on African American history, African history, world history and U.S. history.
He's still figuring out how to fit the events of 2020 into lectures, but he's certain his students and any other audience he attracts must understand how to connect the past and the present.
"We’re trying to strike out on all fronts and influence change in as many areas as possible," Wendorf said. “What’s happening right now is really hard to get around when you’re a historian, because you’re used to having that historical distance between yourself and the things you’re analyzing. But in my own personal experience, I’ve found that we’ve become too historically distant too often. … It was such a grim realization that when our U.S. history courses stopped at the civil rights movement, in a lot of ways, they were denying us a lot of incredibly important information for understanding the present."
Wendorf's message might surprise someone relying on stereotypes to understand this particular white, male Midwesterner who loves hockey. He's not shy about his beliefs or his background, though.
"One of the things I bring up, usually early in the semester, is I’m not going to pretend I’m anything that I’m not," Wendorf said. "I’m not going to pretend that I know what it feels like to be African American. But I can be a useful resource. I do know a lot of this history. I do know a lot of organizations locally, if you want to get involved in the push for progress. I do know how to understand the system of racism, and hopefully also how to dismantle the system of racism. … At the end of the day, you can’t just wear a badge that says ‘I’m the OK white person.’ You have to earn it through your actions, and it has to be continual. It can't just be something you achieved. You keep pushing. That’s why progressive is a really good word for it. Because progression never stops.
"What happened with me, especially in the last five years or so, the point at which I really moved away from hockey analytics and into my academic life, is I also started asking myself ‘How can I be most effective?’ … I realized the greatest contribution I could make is through the presentation of history. That means not just having courses on African history that get away from the colonizing perspective and refocuses more on African lives and African experiences; it also means when I teach my world history courses and U.S. history courses, I get away from the Eurocentric versions of those stories.
"I don’t want to upset what I have right now (by writing about hockey again). But by the same token, I love reading the work that’s coming out. I still check stats all of the time. When and where I can — I don’t even know if I have much of an influence anymore — but I try to promote the good work that I’m seeing going on, especially Hockey Graphs work. So I guess in some ways, I’m trying to step back and be a supporter in this area too."
Bill West2 hr
Wanted to add two other things Benjamin said, because they're important, and the first one definitely applies to hockey:
"Probably the most uncomfortable realization that especially white men have to come to is to give up power and control over things, whether it’s control over the conversation, or control in terms of what position they assume in whatever institution or company they’re involved in, to really give up that position in power. That is a very difficult and uncomfortable challenge for people who hold power in the first place. How does that apply to myself? Certainly if I’m going to be helpful in this, it’s not going to be because I’m taking the lead and placing myself as the leader of some kind of movement or leader of change. It’s because I’m going to be in support of the leaders of the change. I’m going to be as much of a resource as possible without assuming control either over the narrative or over the physical movement itself. The term allyship gets thrown around a lot, and what does it mean? Probably some of the most important elements of allyship are not centering the conversation around yourself and not placing yourself at the lead, and instead being a good support, being understanding, not getting on the defensive and using your baggage about what’s happening to become a distraction to the real purpose and the real focus of what people are trying to do.”
"The greatest nationwide body we have for systemic change comes in the form of our Fair Housing Councils, scattered across all the metropolitan areas of our country. They investigate and address racism in the application process, and while some focus on rental/real estate applications, many go beyond and look at the application processes for loans, financing and employment. They receive government funding through the Fair Housing Act, but they need to continually receive additional support to function efficiently, whether it's through donations or participants for their testing of organizations/companies. Find your local Fair Housing Council, and spread the word about their importance. Invite them to talk to your schools, your work; help them work for us, and signal to racism that it can't hide behind radio silence and rejected applications."
This man contains a thousand lifetimes of wisdom.