TRADERS.... SOME MORE THAN OTHERS

News of note as you wondered why July goes by so fast and February seldom does.

To little surprise, Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi didn't make a trade at the deadline to improve the Jays, who are 51⁄2 games out of the wild card and 61⁄2 back in the AL East. (Actually, he did make a trade to improve the Jays: he got rid of Shea Hillenbrand.)

Opinion seems split 50/50. One pet peeve here is with fans -- talking the people who clog up the call-in shows who says a team should have done something at the deadline but never supply specifics about who, exactly, that have might have been. Besides, did anyone notice the Red Sox didn't do anything either, with all their cash? Let's not shill for the Jays, though: Two good shortstops -- Julio Lugo and Cesar Izturis -- were traded, and either one would be an upgrade over John McDonald.

OTHER BUSINESS

• How many hockey metaphors can you run into the ground for Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk's current entanglement with the Ontario Securities Commission. Can the Sens billionaire boss skate or stickhandle around these allegations? Will the securities commission whistle him for a major penalty?
  
  This story gets more play due to the high profile that comes with being a NHL owner, but it's not really a sports story. Stephen Brunt or Bruce Dowbiggin could probably tie in all the sports and business angles, but it seems like Melnyk isn't in major trouble. He hasn't been accused of insider trading at Biovail. The OSC is merely eyeing the paperwork that has to be filed in order to protect insiders such as himself from the appearance of insider trading -- in other words, make the stock market appear like it's a fair fight. Compared to the trouble Conrad Black is having, the potential punishment for Melnyk practically amounts to a parking ticket.
  
  Besides, we've all seen Wall Street -- among traders, the rule of thumb is if you don't have the watchdogs on your case, you're not trying hard enough.
• New York Islanders general manager Garth Snow has set up -- and plans to respond to -- questions sent to askgarth@newyorkislanders.com. Apparently Islanders fans have already sent him more than 1,000 messages. No word on how many asked him to "Garth Snow me some coffee." (Via James Mirtle, who also has some good stuff on the Melnyk situation.)
• Have to love baseball's NL West: the last-place Dodgers not only have a better run differential (plus-18) than the first-place Padres, but have the best in the entire division. Then again, this last-place stuff is all relative; L.A. is only three games out.
• If the Padres, who won the NL West last year with a paltry 82 wins, hang on, they will likely set an unofficial record for fewest wins in back-to-back division-winning seasons. The mark of 175 is shared by the 1984-85 Kansas City Royals (seasons of 84 and 91 wins) and '97-98 Indians (86 and 89). Both of those teams, incidentally, made a World Series appearance. Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com.
• Some well-meaning advice for Floyd Landis from some sports figures who've been in his shoes, courtesy those wacky kids at WBRS Sports Blog.
• Note to readers: Excuse the lack of a middle-of-the-night update -- an electrical storm briefly knocked out my 'Net connection, plus it was really trippy to watch.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.