Stay Classy, Kansas City: Steve Durbano

Over the course of the last three and-a-half decades, there've been a lot of professional sports played in a lot of cities across the country. Naturally, this means that a lot of people have been involved in organizing, officiating, playing in, and keeping score of tons of contests. This mix of people opens the door to countless personalities all tied together by a common bond: the love of the game. Therefore, we're going to launch a little feature here, wherein we run down a list of interesting guys that have, at one time or another, collected a paycheck from a professional sports franchise in Kansas City. Why? Because a) that opens the door for lots of Hey-I-didn't-know-Kansas-City-had-professional-sports cracks, and we can never have enough of those; b) sources affiliated with the House of Georges are semi-familiar with KC; and c) we're a blog, thus it's in our contracts to overload our pages with mean-spirited potshots and sophomoric attempts to look like professional sports reporters. The intention of this grand scheme will be to run a blip on a sports figure a day, then we'll re-cap, and everyone can vote. Sound fun? Great. Jump ahead.

Steve "Demolition Durby" Durbano

Although tough-guy defenseman Steve Durbano wore the sweaters of the New York Rangers (13th overall pick in the 1971 NHL Draft), St. Louis Blues, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Colorado Rockies. In between stints with Pittsburgh and Colorado, he donned the blue, red, and gold of the Kansas City Scouts for a portion of the 1975-76 season, a campaign in which he logged an impressive, league-leading 370 penalty minutes.



Durbano moved on from the NHL, playing some minor league hockey before retiring in the late 70s with some 1411 PIMs. His life, however, would only get nuttier off the ice. In 1983, he was busted trying to smuggle roughly $550,000 worth of cocaine into Canada, an act for which he was granted seven years in the can.

Buried in a snowdrift of cocaine, yet drugs were not the worst of his problems. Cocaine didn't make Durbano crazy, although the last thing he needed was that extra jolt of aggression. This man seethed with rage, with violence, with malice. His own teammates feared him. Once, after he'd disappeared from the bench with 59 seconds left in a game ---- simply took off, peeved over his low ice-time ---- he was only permitted back on to the squad after the other players took a vote. What shocked is that a majority of teammates had given him a second chance. Perhaps they were afraid of what he'd do to them if they didn't...

...In 1998, the spectacularly inept Durbano had been sentenced to three months in jail on a charge of procurement. In other words, he was a pimp. He'd attempted to hire a woman ---- she was actually an undercover police officer ---- to work as a prostitute for the escort service he was running out of a Welland hotel room...

...Prison was familiar to Durbano. He'd spent 28 months in the slammer in the previous decade ---- one-third of the seven-year sentence he'd received upon conviction for trying to smuggle $568,000 worth of cocaine into Canada. He'd been employed as a bartender back then. That was in '83, just three years after his retirement. Between the coke bust and the hookers, Durbano had also been arresting for shoplifting five shirts from a men's clothing store. At his arrest, he had $12 in his pocket and claimed to be living on welfare.

(Courtesy of Boxing Scene.com, who attributes this to an obituary in The Toronto Star)

The following clip is a swell blend of Durbano fights, or attempts rather, that occurred while he was collecting a check as a professional athlete.



My favorite part is where the announcer says, "a bench-clearing brawl, something the WHA has grown accustomed to as the league slowly destroys itself.." Well, that and the fact that he cheap shots Bobby Hull. Apparently, Durbano once nabbed Hull's toupee and launched it into a crowd.

Durbano is said to have suffered from alcoholism for most of his adult life, and he died of liver cancer in 2002, having lived in the Northwest Territories for some time.