LYNX: THEY DON'T SELL HAIR SHIRTS AT THE CONCESSION STAND

To paraphrase Vince Vaughn's character in Old School, "These guys are playing hardball, and I have to admit, I'm kind of impressed."

The city of Ottawa's ultimatum to the Lynx just politics, which is beyond yours truly's ken, and the Lynx surely knew that was coming. The frustration comes out of feeling like the people fighting to keep baseball in the capital are playing the other guy's game, always in a constant game of catch-up. The tall foreheads at City Hall have an advanced sense of politics and probably less common sense than the people.

Baseball is the best fit for the Lynx Stadium site and hopefully enough people are going to come around and do what's right in the next week or so. Still, it's hard to look at the headlines ("Lynx put on legal notice," "City wants to know where Lynx will play" at another outlet) that make it 52-inch plasma clear who's ahead in the image scrimmage.

For the 100th time, Lynx owner Ray Pecor and GM Kyle Bostwick came caps-in-hand months ago to the city escorting in Can-Am League commissioner Miles Wolff as a summer sports saviour and said, we think we have a reasonable solution for reasonable people: Let the Can-Am League become the Lynx, no one has to go to court. Who knows if that's still in play, but still, there's hope for baseball here.

To be clear, the Lynx never aspired to be Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay in 1984 moving his team to Indianapolis in the dead of a winter night. They offered to leave pricey equipment behind, forgo an $11-million lawsuit and it feels like even that's not enough. What were Pecor, Bostwick and Wolff supposed to do, go down to City Hall in hair shirts?

The lowdown (as in, it's very low of the city and as a result many baseball fans across the city are feeling down) is over at Ottawa Lynx Blog. Carl has gone well beyond the call of blogging duty being a voice for loyal Lynx fans who hoped we could have baseball here in 2008 and beyond. He's a busy guy, a family man and he's stuck his neck way out keeping readers in the loop. He and another man who's shunned the spotlight deserves medals for this, but they would rather take their kids to games here in Ottawa next season.