THE BALLAD OF RICKY & BARRY

What are you gonna do about it? You think anyone's gonna believe you? You think anyone gonna take your word over mine? I'm a man of respect around here. They love me. I'm a swell guy.

• First off, a fond farewell to Principal Vernon from The Breakfast Club. The immortal Paul Gleason, dead at 67 after a long battle with a rare form of lung cancer. And he played minor-league baseball, so we can justify leading with this in a sports blog.
• When the Carolina Hurricanes win one like they did last night -- 4-3 in overtime over the plucky Sabres -- you get a real sense of fate. Well, that and the feeling the Sabres just don't have enough strength on the back end, what with all the injuries, to beat the Hurricanes in back-to-back games.
• Barry Bonds passed The Babe yesterday, and exactly three individuals' lives were altered: Bonds, the lucky stiff who retrieved the ball while he was in the beer line and the poor bastard on The Associated Press sports desk who had to keep sending out those "Barry Bonds did nothing in his last at-bat. He remains at 714 home runs" advisories over the past eight days.
  
  By the way, 68% of respondents to a SI.com poll say Barry will never pass Henry Aaron.
• Ricky, lose that number: Ricky Williams has officially signed with the Toronto Argonauts (he'll wear No. 27, not his customary 34 that he'd had since meeting Walter Payton before his final college season). It's no everyday CFL signing, of course, but at the end of the day, it's much closer to that than it is a display of opportunism that will hurt the league in the long run. That's what the dilettantes in Canada who think the NFL is the only pro league worth watching yet have to have their say on Williams coming north would have you believe. Not that we're naming names (cough, Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star).
  
  It's funny how people who look down their nose at the CFL for the 51 weeks of the year always muster up concern about the well-being of a league they usually ignore.
  
  By the way, it says here Ricky will not win the CFL rushing title. Call it a hunch.
• Here's hoping that Argos backup running back and special-teamer Bryan Crawford, a former Queen's Golden Gael, will join Williams on the Toronto depth chart.
• The other controversial CFL import, Onterrio (Original Whizzinator) Smith, might not make the cut in Winnipeg. By the way, this only happens in the CFL: Smith's competition in the Bombers backfield includes a guy with the first name Henri who's not French-Canadian but has worked as a male model. There's no getting away here without a Zoolander reference: While there's no word on how well Henri Childs can turn left, if he makes the team, the Winnipeg cheerleaders will be called Blue Steel instead of Blue Lightning.
• Through Deadspin, I came across T.O.-area blogger Microbano, who got off on a good World Cup rant about soccer fans in the GTA:
  
  

  "Interesting then, how Toronto's sizable Portuguese population and small Brazilian population seem to reverse proportions just around the time the World Cup comes around.
  
  "... I saw a car flying both the Portuguese and the Brazilian flags. I can only assume it will be the standard trooping of the colours, with the Portuguese beating a hasty retreat as they are ignominiously dumped from the tourney.
  
  "... it's not that I have a problem with supporting more than one team. Only that I think it only right to support only one team at a time."

  Isn't that typical of Toronto? Loyalties are a mile wide and an inch deep. God love 'em.
• This small-town hick never played fútbol and has a Heinz-57 ethnic makeup that leaves him free of the Old World grudges that are what the World Cup is really all about. (If I'm hyphenated, it's for common-as-cowshit Canadian.) So I'm neutral on the World Cup. It would be uber-contrarian to cheer for the U.S., but with Bush in office, I'm not going to be doing that.
• Did you hear? Patrick Roy's team won the Memorial Cup. Patrick Roy's goaltender made 46 saves. Patrick Roy's star player had five points and all of Patrick Roy's other players worked really hard to beat Patrick Roy's opponent. Of course, Patrick Roy says now it was just a grandstanding ploy to take pressure off Patrick Roy's players.
• Rosie Ruiz would be proud: Sunday's Ottawa Marathon became a bit of a gong show after some of the race leaders -- accidentally, they maintain -- took a shortcut somewhere around Mile 6. In a shocking upset, the men's winner was not from Kenya. Also, big ups to my one-time basketball teammate (well, he played and I sat on the bench) at Ernestown Secondary School, Gavin Stainton, who completed the 13-mile half-marathon in a not-too-shabby 2:09.40.7.

That's all for now. By the way, do you know where we can get a good industrial solvent? One of the jocks taped Larry Lester's butt cheeks together.