IT'S TOO HOT FOR A PENGUIN TO BE OUTSIDE

A little Saturday hodgepodge of stuff:

• The Montreal Gazette's Stephanie Myles has a good review of former NBA player Paul Shirley's Can I Keep My Jersey? Shirley might be the best pro turned prose stylist since ex-Dallas Cowboys Peter Gent (North Dallas Forty) and Pat Toomay (The Crunch, an underrated classic), so hopefully his debut book finds some shelf space at Chapters in between all the books about what hockey means to Canada.
• John Axford update: The rookie right-hander spun three scoreless innings of one-hit ball in an emergency start for the Charleston RiverDogs last night, getting a double-play grounder to escape a bases-loaded jam in the first inning of a 7-1 win. Axford's been decent thus far with the Class-A team -- the walks are high (10 in 15 2/3 innings), but he has the kind of ground ball-to-fly ball ratio teams want to see out of a short reliever.
• The Whig's Pat Kennedy points out Kingston isn't Senators country -- not when the Ducks have a first-line centre, Andy McDonald, and two members of the front office -- director of pro scouting Rick Paterson and assistant GM Bob Murray -- with ties to the Limestone region. Murray, as Kennedy notes, was integral in the Ducks dealing Sergei Fedorov for Francis Beauchemin early in 2005-06.
• You see what we mean about how politicians give basketball the back of their hand compared to other sports in Canada? Susan Sherring of the Ottawa Sun has a column today about Ottawa city council's rather fatuous claim it is lifting the much-lampooned ban on road hockey (oh, and hopscotch):
  
  "Well, of the 100 complaints bylaw gets a year about kids playing on the road, they've received not one for kids and hopscotch. The top two? Road hockey and basketball.
  
  "But of course, basketball hasn't made its way into the headlines -- and so, in fact, under the city's existing bylaw, is still illegal." Why make an exception for road hockey and not basketball? Can you imagine this happening in Toronto?

Talk to you much later tonight; it's too nice out to be in front of the computer. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.