Snark break...

It's not clear what the Boston Red Sox are thinking by introducing new uniforms. New Englanders aren't the type to jump on the bandwagon and snap up officially licensed merchandise willy-nilly.

Will Leitch has suggested that instead of saying you're going to "scalp" an extra ticket to a sports event, you should say you're going to "Blago" it.

Disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich should have been indicted long ago just for what he told ESPN.com's Gene Wojciechowski during a 2004 interview, "Baseball is a metaphor for life, and it's very much a metaphor for politics. Politics is very competitive. The campaigns are long, just like baseball seasons. Like innings in a ballgame, you have a certain game plan. You have tactics and strategies." Enjoying baseball is hard enough without the George Will-type dilettante drudges who are always looking for meaning between the white lines.

It's owners such as the Tampa Bay Lightning's who are responsible for leading the Frank D'Angelos of the world to believe they could own a NHL team. Investigate Barry Melrose all you want, fellas.

The Philadelphia Phillies ace Cole Hamels called the New York Mets "choke artists" yesterday. You'd think he'd just led his team to the World Series title or something.

A day in the life for a Minnesota Vikings fans: Interior linemen kick butt in court, team courts disaster by going with Tarvaris Jackson as its starting quarterback.

(Seriously, T-Jack is gonna be OK. He just needs a receiver like the Chicago Bears' Devin Hester, who can draw a pass interference flag whenever the QB underthrows him or overthrows him by 10 yards, which happens a fair bit with Kyle Orton.)

A happy 58th birthday to Battlin' Billy Smith. It seems like yesterday that the last welt he left on a crease-crashing NHL forward's leg healed. Actually, it probably was yesterday.

The Columbus Blue Jackets are letting Nikita Filatov play in the World Junior Hockey Championship for Russia, which is training in Kingston. This will be the first time any Frontenacs fans have seen a good European player up close since Larry Mavety's been GM.

(OK, Radek Smolenak. That's one in 11 seasons.)

You know what's great as a Toronto sports media consumer? Hearing Howard Berger do a fluff piece on Lee Stempniak being from Buffalo in the afternoon and then reading the same damn story in the paper the next day. Isn't pack reporting great?

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• Vancouver basketball phenom Bol Kong, who's been barred from entering the U.S. due to his Sudanese citizenship, is practising with the NEDA program in Hamilton. This is such an underreported story that's it not even funny.
• Doug Marrone, the next coach of the Syracuse Orange football team.
  
• It was nice of the Globe & Mail to pick up on the story about the Chicago Blackhawks busing up to Gravenhurst, Ont., to visit GM Dale Tallon after his father's death. It would have been even nicer to credit Deadspin for the scoop (the Chicago Sun-Times did)
  
• The score in last night's potential preview of the OHL final: Mike Murphy 4, Windsor 0.
• Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Bunning, now a U.S. senator, is ballsy, give him that much.
• Jason Clermont is apparently a Saskatchewan Roughrider.
  

That's all for now. Posting, will be light on this second-to-last Friday before Christmas, since plans are to head to an OHL game out-of-town, the Barrie Colts at the Kingston Frontenacs. No one will Blago tickets outside that one.

(Listen to Offsides, Kingston's most-listened-to sports talk show, 4 p.m. ET with Kinger, cfrc.ca).