Thursday, January 31, 2008

ALL THINGS T.O.

  • The Star's Doug Smith is reporting that it's "not out of the realm of possibility" the Raptors might have T.J. Ford playing again by the middle of February.
  • Canada is in a pool with Slovenia (hey, Samuel Dalembert vs. Rasho and South Korea at the last-chance Olympic basketball qualifier this summer.

    The important part is that they stand to face either Croatia or Puerto Rico in a semi-final, which is not as a tough a draw as say, Brazil, with Leondro Barbosa.
  • Nice post from The Star's Morgan Campbell where he admitted his paper's coverage of Toronto FC's first season in the MLS "lacked context ... We covered TFC in isolation, and not as part of a league."

    Anyway, that really hits on he purpose that is served by doing a blog about sports. It serves the hard-core fans who need more than who scored and how.

    Not that there's anything wrong with being a casual fan who is fine with the hometown team being covered "in isolation," since it makes it easier to use the hometown team's ups and downs as a way to validate one's own mediocrity. (This is a long-winded way of saying some of the typical terrible Toronto fans wouldn't know what do with a winner even if they got one, but it's never to late to learn how to become a sports fan.)
  • Last but not least, Drunk Jays Fans stumbled upon some fantasy projections that resurrect the "next Dave Winfield" rubric with respect to Alex Rios.

    Rios, in statgeek-speak, is entering his age-27 season.

    When Winfield was the same age, in 1979, all he did was put up a .953 OPS in a pitcher's park, win a Gold Glove and lead the league in RBI despite playing on a team whose No. 2 hitters had a .255 on-base percentage. (In other words, it wasn't one of those Joe Carter 100-RBI seasons.) He did all that and ended up third in the MVP balloting.

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

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