Fronts: Murphy's Law, Werek and Dougie's plausible deniability

It's a pretty nice little Saturday in terms of Kingston-related hockey stories — anything to avoid that whole "nine wins in 45 games" unpleasantness with the Springer Frontenacs.

Mike Koreen hit one out of the park with a profile on the pride of Inverary, Belleville Bulls goalie Mike Murphy. Damien Cox in the Toronto Star has a very nice piece on the Manchurian Coach, Doug Gilmour.

Meantime, it was noted last week Ethan Werek's draft status with the NHL's Central Scouting Bureau (43rd-ranked North American skater) was perhaps more of a reflection on the Fronts organization. Werek showed well during the CHL Top Prospects Game this week. Today, the the Frontenacs centre was praised as "sleeper pick"by Shane Malloy, who hosts Hockey Prospects Radio on NHL Home Ice (XM Radio 204).

Malloy noted (loose paraphrasing), "If I'm a NHL team, I'm taking him early. He's a player who displays a lot of intelligence, with our without the puck. He has very high hockey sense. I think he'll be a solid second-line centre.

A few moments later, Malloy added, "One more thing about Ethan Werek. He's a 17-year-old who was scheduled to go to Boston University before he decided to play in Kingston for Doug Gilmour. (Ed.'s note: Larry Mavety was still the coach in September — so Werek is really smart.) He graduated from high school a year early, he's taking business at Queen's University, and Queen's is a very prestigious university. That's the kind of intelligence we're talking about."

Getting back to Gilmour, it seems like Dougie! is going along by rote. Every item in the media about him coaching seems to have some quote along the lines of what he told Cox:

I didn't know the team, I didn't know the league ... It's been a tough learning curve. I've enjoyed it, as much as it has been painful at times to see the players so frustrated. They all want to take the next step. I'm here to teach these kids how to work."

The niggling little concern is that when every time Gilmour says, "I didn't know the league," it comes off, at least to paranoics who overthink these things, as him giving himself an out from Kingston — plausible deniability, in political argot. It's like how you say something because you're not ready to admit or face the truth.

Gilmour's hockey sense is rubbing off on the Fronts after The Royal Mavesty's disastrous coaching stint (Larry Mavety seems to taken the old Chinese table-tennis axiom that "a coach is best who coaches least," a little too literally). Sam from from The Canadian Stretford End noted in a comment last night that Gilmour, during last night's come-from-ahead 5-3 loss to — wait for it — Belleville, "was literally engineering the power play from the bench. He was just pointing to every player, then where they should be standing. It looked like a coach teaching an eight year old team how to position yourself on a power play. The worst part was the Doug was right in doing so."

It would asinine ass-talkery to doubt Gilmour's sincerity when he says he's committed to coach in Kingston next season.

Meantime, the gang at Fronts Talk have that last night, the Frontenacs had Special Olympics figure skater slated to perform and messed up his music. Apparently, they also had a ceremony for Belleville's P.K. Subban, the two-time Canadian world junior standout, but owner Doug Springer opted to not to come on the ice, since he's been booed during the last two pregame ceremonies (for long-time trainer Len Coyle and radio voice Jim Gilchrist).

Meantime, the Fronts try to break into double-digits in the win column tomorrow at 2 p.m. vs. Saginaw. Fun, fun.

Related:
Goalie a rising star ... and that's no Bull (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)
Gilmour has come full circle (Damien Cox, Toronto Star)

A classic case of guy on the ground

Nine weeks until Judd Apatow's I Love You, Man opens. Incidentally, J.K. Simmons really is a household name for being that guy who's in all the movies.

Related:
Must Watch: Hilarious Red Band Trailer for I Love You, Man (FirstShowing.Net)

CIS Corner: Classic confrontation to be shown coast-to-coast

The Score is airing the third annual MBNA Capital Hoops Classic between Carleton and Ottawa on Jan. 28. A story should run in the Sun in the next day or two.

Jason Thom, who appears both on camera and works behind the scenes with with Court Surfing, will be on the call for both games with Concordia coach John Dore providing analysis. Cabral "Cabbie" Richards, with his man D, will also be on hand to mix it up with some of the expected crowd of more than 10,000.

The Score Tonight's Tim Micallef, the network's lead announcer for university sports, will be covering the Super Bowl down in Tampa. He noted he was disappointed he couldn't do both.

Thom, as you know, directed and produced the five-part documentary The Re-Birth of Canada Basketball that The Score aired in 2007, right before the FIBA Americas Olympic qualifier. He had some good thoughts about how, among the "hoopheads," there should be more effort to bring together Canadian basketball fans.

In his role at The Score, he'll sometimes even edit highlight packages to give more prominent play to Canadian basketball players: "When I'm doing highlights of a Miami Heat game, I'll put in Joel Anthony getting his first career double-double instead of clips of (superstar) Dwyane Wade. If Devoe Joseph" — the Pickering High School graduate who's a freshman guard for the Minnesota Golden Gophers — "gets eight points, I'll put clips of him in our NCAA highlights in since we're the only network that will do that for Canadian basketball fans."

It's great the Carleton and Ottawa women's teams will be on the stage as well. Women's basketball is, relatively speaking as far as women's sports and the CIS are concerned.

Here's some bonus quotes from Micallef, Thom, and Carleton athletic director Jennifer Brenning:

Thom, on the improving Canadian talent pool: "The Carleton-Acadia game was the best CIS basketball game that I’d ever watched. "The level of basketball is coming up, and you're seeing teams also attracting players from south of the border to try to continue their studies and their career. There's a lot of talk, how would Carleton or Ottawa fare if they were in NCAA Division 1?"

"There are more and more good players coming up all the time. The Raptors started in 1995-96, so the players who were eight years old and grew up with a NBA team in Canada are now in the CIS ... The ones in Canada are the ones we should be highlighting, because they're choosing to pursue school and their basketball careers here."

On the need to for more cohesive hoops coverage in Canada — a basketball bloc, so to speak: "Hopefully, people will be start to follow someone like an Aaron Doornekamp (Carleton's reigning CIS player of the year) make his way on to the national team, and then follow him through a professional career overseas ... We will see more Canadian basketball players in the next 5-10 years. Right now teams are looking overseas for their glue guys, why not have a 6-9 Canadian in the role?"

Micallef, on the push to get this game on the air: "When we saw the first attendance number of over 9,500 fans for the Capital Hoops Classic (in January 2007), we really started pushing. We were disappointed that we couldn’t do it last year. Some people will remember that 4-5 of us from The Score showed up, just to take it in."

"This is a great way to promote the CIS product, not only to show Canada that it could be done, but to show Ottawa that it could be fun to be on hand for the national championship ... The last two games of the nationals were just incredible."

On why this game rates a national broadcast: "If you think about what would be done for a NCAA game of this magnitude (No. 1 vs. No. 2), the goal is to try to make it something like that ... the Final 8 is our national championship, we want to do something that shows the nation that people care about it, legitimizes the product."

Brenning, on the exposure the broadcast gives each Ottawa university: "It's so valuable to the institation, in terms of visibility. It brings a lot of pride the campus, faculty, staff and students, see the calibre of play and the quality of basketball. You'll see it in full colour. We'll be decked out in our red. When you're looking around in an economic climate is pretty tough, institutions looking to attract people, this is something that promotes the university very well."

(Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

Heartily endorsing this event and/or product: XMp3 portable satellite radio

Astute readers might have noticed the odd reference to XM radio over the past few weeks.

This is long overdue in posting, but long story short, a marketing company hooked me up with the new XMp3 portable satellite radio a few weeks ago. From here through Jan. 31, they're on for $199 (they retail for $279), and they'll throw in a $50 programming credit, which will cover the first three months, and a two-gig SD card. It works out to savings of $150. Just click through:

www.xmradio.ca/xmp3offer

It's a XM Radio you can actually take with you as you're walking down the street or using public transit (wform calls for a review.

Sports programming: Obviously, this is where the big payoff comes for someone who is sports-minded. XM has the home team broadcast of every NBA and NHL game, along with college basketball and football from the Big East, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast (ACC) and Southeastern (SEC) conferences. It helps break one's dependency on hoping that there's a good college basketball game available on one of your cable channels early on a Saturday afternoon. It's a lot cheaper than buying a specialty package in order to watch an occasional college game, such as the Syracuse Orange's 19-point rout over Notre Dame today.

MLB Home Plate and NHL Home Ice each offer a very good alternative to over-the-air channels, which are aimed more at a general interest. The baseball channel is manna at this point in the calendar, when most over-the-air channels in Canada might go a whole week without talking about baseball in any depth. It's a breath of fresh air to hear a host use a term like "AAAA player," assuming listeners know what that means.

Former Blue Jays catcher and TSN/ESPN analyst Buck Martinez hosts in the late morning slot; it's great just to hear Buck again. The afternoon show, Baseball Beat with Charley Steiner, has baseball writers from throughout the States. (Update: Unfortunately, Steiner's show has been cancelled, but it could always be resurrected.)

Home Plate could stand to improve in the type of analysis. It is high time someone did a baseball show that embraced more sophisticated, Bill James-style analysis. It would be a natural for something that's aimed at a niche audience.

NHL Home Ice is also better than advertised. It's a reflex to slag anything that comes from the big brains at BettmanCo., but it provides a pretty good survey of what's going on in in the game. Hockey Prospects Radio, a Saturday show with Shane Malloy, is a good offering. Just today, they were talking about Kingston Frontenacs centre Ethan Werek being a "sleeper pick" in the NHL draft.

As for live games, XM breaks the monotony of listening to the same commentators game after game (in the case of a certain Ottawa team, it also means getting a refreshingly honest take on the team's state of affairs).

Music: It must be a sign of creeping middle-ageness. The music channels probably need to go deeper in their song catalogs; it seems like there is a lot of repetitiveness within each one, but that can mitigated if you expand your listening range to several genres/styles. I'm veerly sharply toward old-fartism

Canadian music selections, save for the artists who really hit it big in the U.S. (Neil Young, Nelly Furtado) can be few and farther between, although The Band's Acadian Driftwood came on at the perfect time last night. It was followed by the late, great Warren Zevon's Carmelita, so you can imagine where I was at that point.

Favourites include Classic Vinyl (Channel 46), especially late at night, and XMU, which is more college rock.

Bottom line: XM costs a lot less than digital cable. It's better than most of commercial radio and could even be considered as a reasonable alternative to cable TV, especially as streaming picks up in the next few years. It's worth looking into. Thanks again to the company who hooked us up.

If you reference Jeff Foxworthy, you might be ...

It's a good week when FOX Sports' Joe Buck and ESPN.com's Bill Simmons have so clearly worn out their welcomes.

Simmons hasn't stopped mewling about taking the collar on his NFL playoff picks last week, going 0-for-4 on the divisional games. It earned him a Drew Magary denunciation on Deadspin () and a right good FJMing from Kissing Suzy Kolber.

BS: "Can you think of any two people who have less in common than James Brown and Pacman Jones?"
KSK: "Caligula and Judge Reinhold."

There is the element of "who cares? So they're big media stars and you're not," but it's worth sharing since some people be like-minded about both individuals in question. Magary also had a great point that people should maybe get past the, "I think (blank) are going to win," unless you're someone on the level of Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus and FiveThirtyEight fame. His rant would have done yours truly some good after 8-0 Queen's lost to 4-4 in Ottawa in the OUA football playoffs.

Simmons' act was fresh in the late '90s and in the 2000s, but it's become the sport media's analog to Will Ferrell's man-child act. It ticked the giggly in the late '90s and early 2000s, when people -- especially men who realized that you're not going to be young forever, but you can at least be immature -- just needed to disappear into, say, one of Ferrell's comic constructs and laugh like a hyena for 92 minutes. Eventually, you wonder when someone who's a NBA guy in his medium will stop making an ABA movie, to paraphrase one review of Ferrell's thin 2008 vehicle, Semi-Pro. It is often a similar deal with Simmons' references to 1980s pop culture, the Boston Celtics of that era, gambling, Grady Little and porn.

(Et tu, Sagert?)

As for Buck, there's nothing wrong in gnashing your teeth as he somnambulates through a telecast for the 1,001st time. Buck is a good traffic director, to borrow a term used by a TV person in one of Dan Jenkins' satiric novels. He works in television, where they take a break every seven minutes, reinforcing the message that nothing matters (not this is anything close to an original insight). As a Deadspin commenter noted, it is fun to re-imagine iconic sports moments, like the 1980 Miracle on Ice, as they would have been called by the late, great Jack Buck's issue:

Dave Silk clears the puck, it doesn't look like the Soviets will be able to regroup in time, and the U.S. advances to the gold medal game against Finland.

Again, it doesn't matter, but it's a good release. The larger point is that we are at the end of a decade, and in on the very small sports-fan scale, Buck and Simmons should be left behind in this one, where they belong.

(Buck and other play-by-play guys will be a topic of discussion today on Offsides, Kingston's most listened to hour-long sports show, 4 p.m. ET on CFRC 101.9 FM, cfrc.ca.)

Related:
Winless, but not witless ... (Bill Simmons, ESPN.com)
Always Be Covering: Unless Of Course You’re Too Busy Dissecting Teen Wolf (Kissing Suzy Kolber)
Kenny Albert Should Replace Joe Buck as Fox's No. 1 NFL Voice Before We Are All in a Coma (Stephen Kaus, Huffington Post)

Zen Dayley: Of Bonds, Bill Lee, Bud, ballparks and back-patting

Almost 14 months to the day that someone predicted he would never serve a day in jail, it appears Barry Bonds is accused of taking something that wasn't actually illegal.

That sounds like the classic MAD magazine definition of entrapment — "this guy is guilty of crimes he hasn't even been accused of." Yahoo! Sports is promising more relevations, but you can't blame people if they start wondering if the case vs. Bonds is as strong as the San Diego Padres' reasons for signing David Eckstein and Omar Vizquel for their middle infield.

This is more of a notebook-style Zen Dayley. Item the second is that MLB is giving lip service to the notion of participating in the Olympics if baseball and women's fastpitch are reinstated for 2016 (all four bidding cities say they will accommodate both sports). Selig didn't actually say how that would be accomplished, which makes one wonder if all the talk amounts to a belch in a windstorm.

This, that and the other

• Bill Lee's interview with the Toronto Star on Thursday was a scream. That's why they call him the Spaceman:

  " 'There's something inherently wrong with the Hall of Fame,' he offered. 'It's just a bunch of sycophants, apple polishers and everything else. Everybody's got faults; all but Brooks Robinson. Hey, Lucifer had wings at one time. Don Sutton was a cheater. No one cheated more than Gaylord Perry – except maybe Charles Barkley.' "

  Absolutely brilliant.
  
  
• It has been almost exactly one year since this site first co-opted Dan Rowe's phrase "uninterested ownership" to describe Rogers Communications' approach to owning the Blue Jays. It has, if one can be totally smug about it, made it easier to accept the Jays' winter of inactivity or not getting to hear Jim Hughson do play-by-play, which was a nice change of pace for the team's other TV voices. It is all water off a duck's back at this point.
• Geoff Baker, a former Star baseball writer who's now at the Seattle Times, is pretty candid about what it's like to cover a ballgame at the Rogers Centre, which he rated ninth out of 14 in the AL:

  "The press box food is pretty good, but the team is stingy on the portions. It's famous for putting up signs warning people not to take more than one cookie or pudding (most parks don't limit this). The press box is comfortable, but very high up. At night, the setting sun causes a glare around gametime that makes it tough to see your computer screen. The wireless access is among the worst in baseball despite the fact the team is owned by a cable giant. They also haven't figured out how to control the temperature in here and when they close the retractable roof after games, all the humidity gets trapped inside and turns it into a sauna. Getting to the clubhouse in this outdated, 1980s-style ballpark requires a hike down a long hallway, a ride on a terribly slow elevator and then a march down a very long basement concourse area. Security staff are not as bad as at Yankee Stadium, but tend to consider themselves as Canada's frontline to the War on Terror. No, that's not a joke. Well, it is, but it isn't."

Related:
Ever-drifting Spaceman cries out for integrity shift in Hall balloting (Richard Griffin, Toronto Star)
Bonds blockbuster: 'The Clear' was legal (Jonathan Littman, Yahoo! Sports)
Pressbox view of best/worst AL ballparks (Geoff Baker, Seattle Times)

Plucked from the transactions: The year of living vicariously

It's not as if Troy Bodie's progress as a hockey player has been a major obsession, but seeing him pop up on The Canadian Press list of transactions was a gas last night.

ANAHEIM DUCKS–Recalled RW Troy Bodie from Iowa (AHL).

Poz, at some point, has probably covered how the "Transactions" listing in the sports section is one of the best parts of the newspaper. It basically compacts man's accomplishments and failures into very short sentences, printed in tiny type. It might seem as alien as the yearbook from a high school you didn't attend. For a beyond-saving sports nut, poring over the hirings and firings, the trades and demotions, seeing a familiar name pop out from time to time – the former major leaguer who's now managing in the low minors, the guy who played junior hockey in your hometown who's been called from the ECHL to AHL – is brain candy.

Bodie, a big winger who has been called up the NHL by the Anaheim Ducks, was a rookie as the same time as yours truly, so to speak. Bodie's first season in the WHL with the Kelowna Rockets, 2002-03, coincided with someone else's first full-time job in print journalism at the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic. Troy Bodie was a Portage kid and having a local boy in the Dub was a big deal for a town of 13,000 people, so we did stories on him from time to time.

It's not as if there was a lasting bond, just the standard jock-reporter conversation, one person trying to pull teeth and the other being polite but tight-lipped. We spoke when the Edmonton Oilers took him in the ninth round, 278th overall in the 2003 draft. The draft doesn't even have a ninth round anymore. He eventually owned up to the fact that around the age of five or six, his first replica jersey had been an Oilers one. It was a story that had to be done, but it didn't seem like a big deal. He was an 18-year-old who had played in only half Kelowna's games, and it he been drafted by the one-time NHL team of the Rockets coach, Mark Habscheid.

The following season, when Kelowna made its only visit of the season to Brandon to play the Wheat Kings, off I went to get a couple photos of Bodie to go with a feature story Keith Borkowsky was writing for the following Saturday.

Going to a game to get photos of just one player can be feast-or-famine. Earlier that summer, I'd driven to Winnipeg to get photos of a local girl named Haylee Irwin who was playing in a Canadian women's fastpitch championship. She was playing third base, which meant taking a position on the first-base side, in hopes of getting a shot of her snagging a hot grounder and coming up throwing. Wouldn't you know it, Haylee Irwin got one ball hit to her the whole game – and it was foul. She made a great backhanded catch on it, jumping up against the screen in front of the dugout for the third out of the inning, but the photo was no good. The one Keith ran was actualy of her taking a warmup throw.

In the second period that night, though, I was positioned in the right wing corner of the Wheat Kings zone when Bodie, in his capacity as a big-bodied third-line grinder, collided with a Brandon player. Another Wheatie jumped in, the gloves came off, right in camera range. Seconds later, there were 5-6 half-decent photos on the card. None of them had a snowball's chance in hell of making it to print since the Daily G did not run photos of hockey fights as per the publisher's edict, but it chased away any fears of letting Keith down by coming back with lousy art. By the game's end, there was something in the can that was usable, and Bodie had picked up a goal and an assist to complete the Gordie Howe hat trick.

He only scored eight all season, but hey, shallow people believe in luck. Bodie sniped seven in the playoffs to help Kelowna win the Memorial Cup that spring – you could look it up. There are thousands of pro-calibre hockey players, though, and once the chance came to leave "the Mighty Plap," to move up the media food chain, Troy Bodie faded into the vast benign landscape of professional sports. Even with all the attention Puck Daddy has lavished on the Iowa Chops for their gimmicky logo and nickname, it never dawned that there was this tissue-thin, tangential connection to my old sports beat.

You move on, eh? Getting a blast from the past is a reminder that Portage was a very good place to be at the age of 26 and 27. The same goes for Simcoe and the Reformer from ages 27-29, although it requires the most accurate six-word coda going – it wasn't funny, at the time.

Who knows where any of us are headed. Troy Bodie is going to The Show. The Ducks play tonight in Pittsburgh and assuming he dresses, that means he'll have his name in the NHL Guide & Record Book. That alone should not put a smile on someone's face on the coldest night of the year, but it does.

State of the Raptors - January 2009

For all the excitement up north as the NBA season began this year, the wind has been taken out of the sails of many. Toronto and Canadian hoops fans are now stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the Toronto Raptors, whether to give up entirely on this team this year, or hold out hope for a dramatic turnaround. While concern and even doubt have begun to emerge in the Raptors fanbase there should actually be a good deal of optimism instead; Toronto actually has a pretty good foothold in the Eastern Conference at the moment and yes, are even geared to make a playoff run in this 2008-09 season.

The Raptors side had a rough start, that much is clear to anyone who follows this team or basketball at all. But when you look at the fact that even 27 games into the season they still had what could be regarded as the hardest schedule in the entire NBA - as based on the strength of their schedule (the cumulative winning percentage of their opponents). So it should be a little forgivable that they were not fighting for the top of their division, despite the fact that the expectations leading into the year would never allow for it.

Yes, many certainly had hoped for that scenario, the one where the Raps square off with the Boston Celtics nightly for ownership of the Atlantic crown. All things considering though sporting the toughest draw should buy a little bit of consideration (even if it had not worked out that well for Sam Mitchell). With retrospect it is time to start looking forward once more, as Toronto has proven for the most part it can take care of the lesser competition and really is not all that bad of a squad when playing at full strength.

Now with such a hard start to the season there obviously has to be a point where things swing back into Toronto's favour and this comes at the end of their season. Going by the NBA standings as of today, the Raptors would play only 3 of their final 16 games against teams that are currently playoff bound. So as long as there is even a glint of hope for the playoffs in March then this team should have little trouble securing that postseason berth.

Making the assumption that both Jose Calderon and Jermaine O'Neal return to the lineup, with the way the team has gelled recently - most specifically the way the bench has stepped up and come together while missing two key components - in theory Toronto should be fine. You can add to that the apparent awakening of Andrea Bargnani if you'd like and it may raise hopes that this team really does have a chance at gaining some form of legitimacy within the Association, and yes even in this current season.

It would not be that far fetched to believe that the Toronto Raptors, presently 3 games out of the playoffs, would secure another postseason position by year end. Which is what makes a loss such as last night against the Bulls so hard to stomach, where the Raptors - close as the score may have been - were not really in the game at all. Yes, Bargnani and Chris Bosh were in the game, but the rest of the team was lacking. It's this sort of outing that breeds negativity in fans, and it is this sort of effort that cannot be tolerated during the key stretch run to end off the season. The players need to keep their minds in check, and the fans need to accept these losses with the understanding that the playoffs are still a very real destination, that these guys are not "bums".

Bryan Colangelo has taken a lot of heat this year, the saviour GM has now become an openly questioned man - not targeted as of yet, but depending on the way this season ends itself that could easily change. But all this man has done is taken a perennial loser team to the playoffs each season he has been in office; and even this season, far below expectations, still provides a very good chance at another playoff run. The question is whether the playoffs are enough anymore, whether the team formerly lottery bound year-in year-out, after 3 years as a regular playoff team should be making a serious run at the Conference crown and League Championship.

The offseason trades certainly gave that impression of greater things to come, and that is what has so many worked up. However this season would only be the fourth straight year sans lottery selection, and that in itself is an accomplishment for this young franchise. Toronto has not yet earned the right to expect a basketball title, they are not there yet. Should the Raptors not make the playoffs it will be a disappointment but the situation is far from dire at the moment. So just as the team must stay focused on their goals, maybe that same advice can go to the fans as well.

Junior hockey is uncool; what are you gonna do about it?

Reducing a sporting issue to a spitting contest between Toronto media personalities is an easy way out, even when it is Mike Toth and Steve Simmons.

Junior hockey players get the rock-star treatment for two weeks during the world juniors and are afterthoughts 24 hours later, especially in the GTA. Toth, of Rogers Sportsnet and the FAN 590, had his say a week ago today. Sun Media's Simmons, on the following day, had a column headlined, "Apathy greets juniors," which began, "It is Thursday night at the Powerade Centre and for every seat that is occupied at least five are left empty."

(You can almost picture Rainn Wilson as a Rolling Stone editor in Almost Famous -- "Mmmmm, dark. Lively.")

Simmons' column was referred to as a "disgrace" during a rather pointed editorial reply during a subsequent Rogers OHL broadcast. Please leave personalities out of this, since it's a good topic (and our own Duane Rollins made a point to go see for himself when the Brampton Battalion and Mississauga St. Michael's Majors played at 12 noon on a weekday so classes of schoolchildren could witness major junior hockey in all its splendour).

Simmons was blasted a bit. Presumably some people would not mind hearing him accused of ripping the attendance when he had "never been in the Brampton Centre prior to that game."



That being said, Toth at least dared to run his hand along the fourth wall of every story about low attendance at OHL games in Toronto -- namely, how well these franchises do to turn first- and second-generation Canadians on to hockey? Simmons, no disrespect, goes on about "tak(ing) the easy highway drive for the least expensive entertainment you'll find everywhere," which seems to gloss over the fact that most Toronto sports fans, especially younger ones, rely on public transit when they're going to see the Raptors, Leafs, Blue Jays or TFC. It also assumes people who live close by Brampton's arena, which is located in a huge South Asian enclave, won't.

It's not even apparent that those transit options are handy for either the Battalion or Majors. Toth, who granted has come on a little strong on the subject in the past, at least waves hello to the elephant in the room, the question of growing the fanbase:

"Toronto is completely multi-cultural and sporting allegiances include everything from soccer to cricket. Brampton and Mississauga also have huge ethnic populations and many people from the two communities have never been inside a hockey rink.

"To their credit, both the Battalion and Majors are reaching out to new Canadians. For example, the two teams staged a special game for school kids earlier this year, featuring a 12.00 p.m. face-off on a Wednesday afternoon."

It is something of a common opinion among younger media types that stepping into an OHL arena often feels like a time warp. The crowd skews older and more homogenous. Between the incessant playing of Jock Jams '95 over the P.A. and the fact Larry Mavety is still GM of the Kingston Frontenacs, it is something straight out of another century.

There's no excuse simply accepting that it won't change. Look at it this way. It's not mandatory you should adopt the favourite sport when you're relatively new to a country. However, if you were a sports-mad Canadian who had relocated to England, what would you check out first: The local soccer team's game, even if it was down in League Two, or a game between the Coventry Blaze and Hull Stingrays?

People look to sports as a cultural touchstone and will turn to what's popular -- socially approved mass movements and such. People come to Canada, they do take to the NHL. It's only right to wonder why that doesn't carry over to the major junior teams in the country's largest city, instead of going on about the Battalion's "disturbingly ugly green uniforms" and inveighing against teenagers being traded in junior hockey (although it's hard argue the players are not pawns in the grand scheme).

At least Toth tried to move the debate forward. It is also worth asking if how the OHL's a keep-your-helmet-on rule, which will probably reduce fighting, might affect attendance. There might short-term pain. It might also change some impressions of the sport among people who are missing the hoser gene that makes you stand up and cheer when two 19-year-olds start whaling on each other at centre ice, although granted, fighting has not been banned.

Point being, the whole low attendance issue is worth getting into. It happens to involve two media personalities who have sizable jeering sections, so there's a little something for the haters, plus knowing that Rainn Wilson was in Almost Famous will win you drinks at bars and cocktail parties.

Related:
A Toronto thing (Mike Toth, sportsnet.ca, Jan. 8)
Previous:
Forcing them to care. That always works (Nov. 13, 2008)

Snark break...

First things first: Cox Bloc presented its Mittenstringer of the Year honour last night.

Paul Maurice's money quote on coming back with the Carolina Hurricanes to coach against the Leafs: "It’s absolutely personal. You get fired, you want to see that team lose every game for the next ten years." Before Leafs fans take offence, find out what hotshot eight-year-old will be available in the the 2018 draft.

Research suggests a lack of projectile weapons was what doomed the Neanderthals. That sounds like what happened Josh Towers when he pitched for the Jays. (Towers is the newest Washington National.)

The Montreal Canadiens are going to stop saying whether a player has an upper-body injury or a lower-body injury. In a related story, the world will spin off its axis today at noon (12:30 in Newfoundland and Labrador).

The only way not to be brought down by the Raptors' struggles is if you picked up Andrea Bargnani in your fantasy league two weeks ago. Thirty-one points, 10 rebounds last night? Losing at home to a bad Chicago Bulls team is superfluous.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Former Ottawa 67's goalie Danny Battochio, who now plays for St. Francis Xavier, was named CIS male athlete of the week. What, no love for Lethbridge's Scott Bowles, who stopped 74 of 75 shots in a pair of Pronghorns wins last week?
• The fact I know that is sad, but it will be even sadder if you don't visit cisblog.ca.
• Thirty-six hours until Friday Nights Lights is back on TV, at least for those who do not dabble in the dark world of torrents (or get DirecTV).

The Jays not on CBC: There is a small upside

It's unclear how much CBC dropping the Blue Jays counts as news, unless you spend a lot of weekends at a cottage that doesn't have a satellite dish:

"I love the property and I was really proud of the quality of our telecasts. But we're not in a position where we can lose significant amounts of dollars on it." -- Scott Moore, CBC Sports, as told to globesports.com

The Blue Jays being on the people's network had symbolic value, but symbolism does not pay the bills. It is bad for the Jays' bottom line, plus there is the consideration that it means fewer Canadian media pros get to work on a baseball broadcast. As for media industry buzz, it means CBC has lost another sports property, which is getting to be like Dr. Cox on Scrubs calling J.D. by a girl's name: It's just not funny anymore.

Beyond that, does it matter if the Jays' 145 broadcasts are only on Rogers Sportsnet and TSN, notwithstanding the hate-on people have built up across the past few summers for the one whose name is lower-cased and set off in bolditalics?

Baseball is perfectly suited to radio, since all the action takes place in your head. The Jays broadcasts, with Jerry Howarth and Alan Ashby sharing play-by-play and Mike Wilner mixing perspicacity with the possibility he's going to lose it should a next post-game caller refer to Cito Gaston as the Jays' "coach" instead of "manager," provide far more edification and entertainment. It's like something Will Leitch said in God Save The Fan. All you need to follow baseball is a mute button to take care of the hometown TV announcers, an Internet connection and the MLB Extra Innings package. In recessionary times, two of the three will do the job.

(Don't worry, Jamie Campbell, 'tis all in fun.)

Related:
Blue Jays strike out with CBC (William Houston, globesports.com)

Don't walk away Van, eh (run, instead)

Would that we could walk away from Vancouver 2010.

It is a question no one has asked, for a reason (and to be honest, this is a such as five-alarm media firestorm that almost defies commenting, so might as well say something crazy). Backing out would be unthinkable, but so is the global credit crunch. Those who got the Globe this morning know the alarm bells was sounded before the economic excrement hit the aerofoil device, although talk of Van City being on the hook for a billion dollars gets thrown around a lot when there's politicking to be done.

It is probably not that bad, but it could get worse. That's why it's fun to cite the precedent of Denver, which welshed on hosting the 1976 Olympics and has found various sports power brokers can sustain a grudge for decades.

Thirty-six years later, it is still an open wound that Denver voters rejected a bond issue, which ultimately led to the '76 Games being held in Innsbruck, Austria, which had also hosted in '64. Denver did not become a ghost town although as Warren Zevon sang, there are things to do there when you're dead.

Any suggestion of Vancouver bailing is lunacy. Denver was three-plus years from hosting when it walked away. It is only 13 months in Vancouver/Whistler's case. That's yesterday in terms of planning an Olympics. It's also acknowledged straight up that in terms of Olympic finance, the only way to make a small fortune is to start with a very large fortune.

The Games always lose money for nearly everyone involved except the IOC (International Oldwhiteman Cartel) as Stephen Brunt noted in a column from this morning which also touched on the fact that you can't put a price tag on everything. Seriously, that column should be stapled to the foreheads of any and all Canadian Taxpayers Federation types (who you'd be nodding in agreement with 99% of the time).

Nevertheless, the question with Van 2010 might be not how bad it is, but how bad it might become. Nortel's woes are a bad sign. The security prep work will top a cool billion (thank the Lord that Stockwell Day is looking after that one) and taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the entire Olympic Village. On top of the Olympic Athletes Village project, and not to dally too much in despondent leftism, but there is the opportunity cost of not earmarking some of the village as future social housing.

On a blog front, VANOC's attitude is that social media does not exist. London is already planning how it's going to handle that aspect come 2012. While we're here, that one RBC commercial that runs ad nauseam during NFL and NHL broadcasts on CTV and TSN is already annoying.

No doubt this is classic Canadian carping, knowing the price of everything and value of nothing writ large (Oscar Wilde had this country nailed and he never even visited it), but seriously, there is the sense of being in too deep. Granted, that can always be blamed on the media.

Related:
Whistler wonderland trumps money woes, for now (Stephen Brunt, globesports.com)
Legislature to okay village financing; 'We want to do everything we can to help and we will do it as quickly as possible,' premier says (Vancouver Sun)
Security budget games means another Games embarrassment (Vancouver Sun)

A-twitter about getting Tavares, maybe

Sens Army Blog is having some fun with the revelation that someone has assumed the personality of Daniel Alfredsson on Twitter.

At least the imposter likes a challenge, since Swedish hockey players are not exactly known for having much in the way of identifiable personality. Twitter Alfie is apparently a caring type, writing after one loss, "Murraysburg, sorry it may have cost you your jobs."

He's also a culture vulture, who gets updates from CBC News and dishing that he relaxes with ABBA's Christmas album, which plays into any number of Swedish stereotypes. That is one giveaway that it's not Alfredsson, along with the fact "Murraysburg" is the kind of clever compound word that usually comes from some random corner of the web, not a hockey player who's got way too much time for such silliness.

You probably care more about whether the Senators will try to get into the John Tavares/Victor Hedman hunt. (James Mirtle advocated that course of action today at From The Rink.) The Senators organization loves them the Twitter, although they aren't following anyone else's tweets (0 following, 106 followers), which seems like poor form.

Anyway, it would be fun if it was really Alfredsson. The question is who has the time and the motivation and who has the know-how to ferret out the culprit? Please bear in mind this is from the same person who thought a popular Sens blog was actually an inside job. Some of us -- the same ones who wish they could say they were the last to know about THE_REAL_SHAQ -- still believe.

Tech, Money & Sports: George W. Bush, The End Is Near

Writing a coda to the presidency of George W. Bush is surprisingly tough. Almost every major publication in the United States has written and published their final laments for a presidency gone so terribly, horribly wrong.

None of you need to hear again the litany of horrors Bush and his inner circle have inflicted on America and the world: 9/11, two major wars with no real end for either in sight, Katrina, New Orleans, Gitmo, the use of torture, Abu Ghraib, alienating nearly every political ally of the United States, the emboldening of America’s enemies like al-Qaida, the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood, national debt set to exceed $10 trillion, the near-collapse of what was once known as the world’s most powerful economy. It's Mission Accomplished alright.

Even Osama bin Laden probably couldn’t have imagined this kind of endgame back on Sept. 11, 2001. Hell, when comedians like Jon Stewart can barely contain their anguish, anger and outright indignation on The Daily Show, no longer interested in generating laughs vis-à-vis irony or sarcasm, it's gotten pretty damn bad.

Bush is about to spend his post-Presidency years in the wilderness of seclusion and near-universal hatred around the world. There will be no lasting tributes. There will be no Presidential Library. He is spending his remaining years as a dark vision of enmity for Americans - a man who personifies the worst characteristics of the American Dream turned nightmare.

It's hard to believe, but one of America’s Top Five Worst Presidents (there’s considerable debate if he is the worst, but only future historians will be able to say for sure) is nearly gone.

But since this is a sports blog, I want to talk about what the Bush Era has meant for sports culture in North America.

If there's one tip of the iceberg for what the Bush Era has meant for sports culture, it’s undoubtedly this week’s revelation that FOX Sports’ Troy Aikman, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver have been travelling to NFL games and this year’s World Series accompanied by armed U.S. federal marshals.

In many ways, this is just another in a very, very long line of government abuses of taxpayer funds over the past eight years (let’s not mince words and suggest any Presidency has been squeaky-clean and responsible with taxpayer funds). But what this kind of story suggests is another example of the cynical, abusive, wasteful nature of the Bush Era: Three sportscasters getting the Five-Star Treatment with taxpayer money?

The Bush Era culture of unabashed greed and cavalier attitude towards the public infected professional sports like a virus in the past eight years. The FOX story is ultimately harmless (as Shysterball noted, if something happens to Buck, Thom Brennaman becomes their lead baseball play-by-play man), but it's a window into the soulless, money-hungry nature of the sports-industrial complex that has left us all jaded.

It’s a sentiment that sports, like business and politics, has become divorced from the people these institutions presume to serve. Accountability, leadership and cooperation seem like sick, unfunny punch lines nowadays.

In the past eight years, we’ve seen some truly awe-inspiring moments of selfishness in pro sports. We’ve seen players like Mark McGwire and possibly Roger Clemens either lie or take the Fifth to Congressional committees in front of millions of people in vain efforts to save their own skins from permanent damage (talk about wasted energy).

We’ve seen the inequities of baseball revenues increase to the point of absurdity. We’ve seen rich teams get much, much richer and everyone else barely holding on. The survivial of the fittest mentality America used to use as a quiet turn of phrase to justify its numerous "bad acts," foreign and domestic, metastasized into something else in America during the Bush Years; the utility of saying "I care about me first, screw you all" became particularly self-evident the day sports reporters railed at the lunacy of America’s Most Hated Team, the Yankees, spending $400 million in one week and launching the New Yankee Stadium during a time of economic austerity measures. The Washington Nationals' new ballpark was a prime example of government without representation.

We’ve seen what hubris and hypocrisy can do to an entire sports league with the jaw-dropping decline of the NHL. Case in point: The Phoenix Coyotes –- a team on the verge of bankruptcy due to poor managerial decisions and a market best described as ambivalent. Even after the two-faced parlour game that was the season-killing Lockout of 2004-05, the NHL has fallen into an economic tailspin, has no major TV deal in America and has alienated fans across the continent. In the zero-sum game that is pro hockey, the unabashed greed of players and owners alike have killed whatever goodwill towards hockey there ever was in tenuous markets like Florida or Nashville.

These are just a few examples. And really, listing them all off isn’t going to accomplish anything.

Bush and Co. didn’t make these aspects of professional sports happen themselves. But it’s also naïve to think sports is distinct and separate from politics. If anything, sports and politics got a lot closer (some would say much too close) during the Bush Years. After all, the Rovian Strategy of Win At All And Every Cost, But Just Win It has a lot in common with sports. Even the fact both domains have the tendency to feature, once in awhile, people who will break the rules for the final big score at the end.

But it’s not as if sports are a pointless activity for the people who love it. Sure, sports are a business first and foremost — entertainment for the masses of people who just want something to celebrate about.

But it’s also, quite candidly, something people need to believe in. In a world full of empty slogans, false rhetoric and strange analogies involving pit bulls and lipstick, sports is something a person can have faith in . We can see it, touch it or relate to it unfailingly. It’s real. It’s a place of transcendence, emotion and transformation. It reminds people that no, life isn’t all about living paycheque to paycheque or coming home to a house full of pain and dreams unrealized. It’s something you, your neighbour and someone 3,000 km away can share in.

Thing is, belief is a precarious thing. If the Bush Years accomplished one cerebral, indefinable truth these past eight years, it's this: Bush made people stop believing.

People stopped believing in a lot of things during his Presidency: Government run by people for people, businesses that didn't so brazenly and publicly act with contempt and ignorance of average people –- the list goes on and on. When people lose faith in their leaders, it won’t be long before people lose faith in the institutions that support them.

But there's hope.

Two great aspects of American Life came into their own during these eight years of tumult that may help restore faith in sports: The Internet and Barack Obama.

Back in 2000, the Internet and blogs were largely ineffectual to the way things were done in politics, business and sports (the dot-com crash now looks like a small-time correction compared to today). While it’s important to not overstate the case at the risk of OOLF's own potential for hubris, blogs and the Web have become powerful tools to keep our leaders in check, balance power and report stories that can change things.

Even the 44th President, Barack Obama, has done more before his inauguration to restore hope to Americans than Bush could ever achieve in eight years. He’s brought back the idea that the ideas of accountability, leadership and vision have places in government; let’s hope that it also filters into areas of business and sports. It has more to do with the economy than any talk about change, but the Cleveland Indians, coming off a sub-.500 season, are holding town hall-style meetings to try to rally their core fans.

Obama’s even ventured into one of America’s most precious sports institutions —- college football -- and inspired the possibility of change in one of the most hidebound sports institutions. Did anyone really swallow whole the notion that the Florida Gators were national champions after that unwatchable BCS title game broadcast on FOX Sports with the heartbeat-away Thom Brennaman mucking up the call? (Brennaman is the son of a long-time baseball broadcaster, Marty Brennaman, so how appropriate that it was graced by someone who has been legacy pick all his life -- like Bush!)

At the end of the day, Bush’s Reign of Error has instilled a lesson into all of us: Ideas about the world are meaningless if you can’t back them up with responsibility and action. Cynicism is only possible when we allow it to happen, for taking control of ourselves and our democratic institutions means more than just concerning yourself with just yourself.

The sports world has seen some rough times during the Bush Era. It is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Of course, keeping the faith is important. As goes one of the lines in The Dark Knight — perhaps the single most defining film of the Bush Era —"people deserve to have their faith rewarded."

Enjoy Inauguration Day next Tuesday.

For I am Costanza, lord of the idiots

It's a somewhat busy day with another writing gig, so posting might be light.

Anyway, this must be shared. A couple years ago, in the wake of the World Cup, I set himself to finding an English Premier League team. Aston Villa seemed like a good prospect, but it never took.

Creating a rooting interest out of whole cloth might appeal on some contrarian level, but people's sports-viewing habits tend to become entrenched after 20-plus years of wasting your life watching games. Footy fans also have to get up at ungodly hours, like before noon on Saturdays and Sundays. A Minnesota Vikings, Toronto Raptors and Kingston Frontenacs fan can only belong to so many championship-starved fanbases, ultimately.

Well, that was mid to late 2006. In between, good friend Neil Acharya, over a few Innis & Gunns, welcomed yours truly into the fold of Liverpool fans. Liverpool is neck-and-neck with Manchester United for the EPL title, which is awesome.

Meantime, Villa under Martin O'Neill is rocking the claret and blue all the way to a Champions League bid. Thing is, they're something of an underdog team, while Liverpool is "famous for being good," to quote the Colin Firth version of Fever Pitch, which when combined with the Nick Hornby book furnished 75% of my understanding of how to be a footy fan.

Liverpool winning would be good, but it's so mainstream. Then again, so is Hornby. Ultimately, maybe it was good to ignore the inital appeal to cheer for Villa and go with The Opposite, knowing you'll never walk alone.

Related:
Champions League football is Aston Villa's to lose (Stuart James, The Sport Blog)

The search to locate the World Cup of Hockey trophy is on

Those of you who subscribe to the theory Major League Baseball wants no part of the Olympics have some more ammo, courtesy the NHL:

"(Y)ou'll be happy to hear the NHL and the NHL Players' Association are working toward staging another World Cup of Hockey tournament in the not-too-distant future.

"According to an informed source, the sides are looking at two dates, the most probable being late August or early September 2011. Another possibility is February 2012. That date, however, is less likely because the 2011-12 NHL regular season would have to be shut down to accommodate the tournament. The owners aren't thrilled with the idea of dimming the lights during the season for any reason. They do so grudgingly to allow the players to participate in the Olympics. In this case, I believe they'd be wise to at least consider it." -- ESPN.com

In MLB's case, Bud Selig and the boys want to build up the World Baseball Classic and keep the revenues for themselves. It's more preferable than being a supplicant to the International Olympic Committee, which is full of foreigners who don't understand freedom, liberty or why the second baseman doesn't have to touch the bag when he's turning the double play.

One can see why hockey might be headed down the same road, where they're not buying the notion that participating in the Olympics serves any noble purpose. It's isolationist and greedy, sure, but the noblest purpose for the NHL these days is trying to stay at 30 teams. Given the ongoing COC-up over the crest on Canada's hockey jerseys, one wonders what side Hockey Canada would be on if the NHL decides to end the Dream Team experiment which began 11 years ago in Nagano.

One completely crackers suggestion for the Olympic hockey tournament: Once every four years, fold the world juniors into the Games. Teenagers represent their country in other sports all the time.

Related:
NHL, union continue World Cup of Hockey talks (E.J. Hradek, ESPN.com; via Kukla's Korner)

Snark break ...

First of all, wish a happy birthday to our own GJH; many metaphorical beers will be downed in his honour.

A quick update on the situation with WTVH-5 in Syracuse. It is resolved, notwithstanding anything one has to suck up. The Josh Wright story was taken down promptly after the issue was raised, and after being informed of the shock and stress that stemmed from seeing one's own article used word-for-word by another media outlet (below the byline "By WTVH Sports," which apparently is posted automatically when articles are posted to the website), sports director Kevin Maher and president and general manager Matt Rosenfeld each apologized for the inconvenience.

Any lingering self-loathing is neither here nor there. For pity's sake (literally), it was the lead story on WTVH-5's website last Thursday. Some would say that some hickish geek from small-town Canada should be so lucky to get that kind of media exposure. On with the cheap jokes ...

Little League Baseball Canada has been stripped of its charitable status. Far be it to point out that it's odd, whatever the reason, that none of the sports bodies affected by this involve hockey.

Golfer Adam Scott and actress Kate Hudson are apparently dating. He was looking in the deep rough for his ball one day and found her career. (Bride Wars might be the greatest career-ender since thanking Hitler.)



Michael Bishop is preparing for "life without football," says the National Post. Make your own Detroit Lions joke.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Stampede Blue has linked to everything written about retiring NFL coach Tony Dungy.

Fronts: What are the prospects for new ownership?

The latest NHL draft ratings really put the lie to Springer Frontenacs GM-for-life Larry Mavety's claims about being such a great place to get exposure.

Forward Ethan Werek's and defenceman Taylor Doherty's stocks have each fallen, to Nos. 43 and 71 among North American skaters. Funny how that would happen with both draft-worthy 17-year-old in an organization helmed by unaccountable owner Doug Springer, Mavety and their Manchurian Coach, Doug Gilmour.

The spin when Werek reported to Kingston this fall instead of decamping to the USHL for a season before going on to Boston University was that that league was not very good. Others theorized he would get more exposure for the draft by playing in the OHL. Well, after a half-season with the Springer Frontenacs, Werek is ranked below five skaters from the USHL including Alex Chiasson, who committed to Boston University after Werek told the Terriers, thanks but no thanks.

There is no disrespect intended to either Werek or Doherty, who are hopefully destined for better and brighter days after toiling for the franchise with the worst record in the 60-team Canadian Hockey League. (When the QMJHL's Val-D'Or Foreurs won Friday, that left Kingston as the only team in the three major junior leagues that has yet to win 10 games this season.)

It goes double for Werek, who has had to suffer constant line shuffling, being bypassed for a defenceman in a shootout one day after he scored both goals in a 2-1 victory and having the "C" taken off his sweater after wearing it for only one game. The story goes that Springer issued an edict that defenceman Brian Lashoff be made captain. Lashoff (who, to be fair, is supposed to have a bright future) was also picked by Dougie! to take the final shot in the shootout Sunday vs. Niagara while Werek was kept on the bench.

Doherty, meantime, was being pegged as a possible late first-rounder earlier this season. TV Cogeco's Tim Cunningham noted several weeks back on Kinger's radio program, Offsides (Kingston's most listened to hour-long sports show, Friday, 4 p.m., cfrc.ca, 101.9 FM), Doherty's progress has been slower than expected.

Doherty and Werek's slip in the Central Scouting Bureau ratings (which should not be taken as gospel, since every team does their own homework) might betray how people are looking at the great Springer gong show in Kingston. They have probably seen what has happened this season with the two Kingston players taken during the NHL's cattle call in 2008.

Anaheim Ducks draft pick Josh Brittain was jerked around all season before being traded to the Barrie Colts in December (He's still Kingston's leader in goals, six weeks leader, although Werek should overtake him soon). Pittsburgh selection Nathan Moon' has had an up-and-down season. None of this does much for the Frontenacs' already poor reputation for developing players. It is reasonable to wonder what the talk is in hockey circles about Springer's organization. A commenter on Save Our Kingston Frontenacs might have put it best:

"You cannot drop a promising career into Kingston and hope to develop. Had a long chat last night in London with parents of two very good young players in London and both had no interest in Kingston. They would of done anything to avoid the Mav draft and watch their kids not develop properly."

Granted, this entire post is staked on the assumption Springer doesn't want to keep icing a bad team and increase the chance of the K-Rock Centre being a drag on the city of Kingston's finances. That is a big if to contemplate and it might explain why The Royal Mavesty, that "astute hockey man" to quote the owner himself, is being kept around.

It has been 448 days since Doug Springer promised he would do "whatever it takes" to give Kingston fans a winning hockey team.

Related:
Cheering for Gilmour; Frontenacs coach has difficult task ahead of him (Jan Murphy, Kingston Whig-Standard)

Raines '09 — That's the kind of day it's been

Rob Neyer has a post up saying "all hope should not be lost" with respect to Tim Raines' Baseball Hall of Fame chances.

Block-quoting from it almost doesn't do it justice and neither does excerpting anything from Joe Posnanski's post, other than what he said about Tim Raines getting only 22.6%. It would be nice to be as sanguine as FanGraphs ("I can no longer get emotionally invested in it. The process is too broken, the voters too uninformed"). There is so much so much Neyer hits on, especially the cold, hard truth of how Raines and Andre Dawson's careers were marked and marred by the labour wars of their era. His contention is without collusion, Raines might have been National League MVP in 1987, and people would have regarded his career differently. What the hell. One blockquote:

".... Raines reached base more times in his career than Tony Gwynn, and that's true: 3,977 times for Raines, 3,955 for Gwynn. Did you know Raines reached base 503 more times than Dawson? That Raines is 41st on the all-time list and Dawson is 96th?

"You might have read somewhere that Dawson finished his career with a .323 on-base percentage — exceptionally low for a 1980s outfielder/Hall of Fame candidate — and that's true, too. Did you know Dawson's .482 career slugging percentage isn't anything special, either? Did you know Dawson's 119 career OPS-plus (OPS adjusted for league and home field) is worse than Raines' 123? Did you know on-base percentage should be weighted more heavily than slugging percentage? Did you know that for all the talk about Dawson's impressive combination of power and speed, Raines stole nearly 500 more bases?"

OK, a little more. You can read between lines and understand how frustrating this day has been. Take it away, Mike Wilner:

"My formative years as a baseball fan were from about 1979-1985, and I don’t remember thinking that (Jim) Rice was an incredibly scary guy. That’s one smell test that fails, but the truth is in the performance.

"You know how you think Scott Rolen was a major disappointment offensively this season and is pretty much done as a good hitter (see how well I know my readers)? Scott Rolen's 2008 was Jim Rice's CAREER away from Fenway Park. Rolen hit .262/.349/.431 this year, for a .780 OPS. Rice hit .277/.330/.459 on the road for his career, for a .789 OPS."

Poz was a little more circumspect about the future prospects for Raines:

"My biggest disappointment in the voting this year is that Tim Raines actually went BACKWARD. I can't for the life of me figure this out. Maybe it's because Rickey Henderson was on the ballot and a few people felt like they could only vote for one great leadoff hitter at a time. I don’t know. Raines was a great player on so many different levels. I hope that he starts to gain some Hall of Fame traction next year."

People want to remember Jim Rice as the mostfearedhitterofhisgeneration. (More than Mike Schmidt and his 548 home runs? More than George Brett, who once hit .390 -- .390 with power -- over an entire season!) As for dominance over a 10-year period, Raines scored the most runs in the National League from 1981-90.

It just goes on. The voters want to remember Tony Gwynn as this incredible hitter, they want to remember Dawson as an exemplar of class and dignity. They want to trim the facts to fit their opinions, like most people.

Fair enough. It's fine if you want to have your memories. It's far better to do some homework and make sure.

Related:
Shifting the Hall argument (Rob Neyer, ESPN.com)

Seeing red over the land of the Orange

One tries to maintain some privacy and a stiff upper lip ... but readers are owed an explanation if something happens that affects your ability to provide a service to them.

Last week, I wrote an article about Ottawa Gee-Gees basketball guard Josh Wright for the Ottawa Sun's Jan. 8 edition. It appears that around 3:22 p.m. Eastern time that day, it was posted verbatim by WTVH, the CBS affiliate in Syracuse, N.Y., where Wright previously played for the Syracuse Orange. They tried to cover their tracks by saying "Reprinted from Ottawa Sun," but it was not authorized. At best, it's not fair use and at worst it is out and out plagiarism. The fact it is was the third most popular story as of midnight Sunday (more than their story about the Orange's win Saturday over Rutgers) is cold comfort, especially when it's your work and you're not getting any of the revenues. Not to get on the high-horse, but the facts are on my side.

(Update, Jan. 12, 5:20 p.m. — the story has been taken down from WTVH-5's website and its sports director apologized "wholeheartedly" over the phone.)

I wrote posts earlier on the night before teasing the article for this site and for cisblog.ca, lest anyone dispute the timeline. The Kingston Whig-Standard, a sister paper of the Sun's, also ran the article ("Former NCAA player joins Ottawa," Jan. 9).

It is true that blogs do use other media to provide context for their posts. However, we all take pains to make sure that we are not representing someone else's work as our own. That did not happen in this instance.



Since when do American TV reporters use phrases such as "non-puck-headed Canadians?" Is that WTVH's target demographic all of a sudden?



The individuals responsible at WTVH might think they did by saying, "Reprinted from Ottawa Sun," but that is insufficient. At this time, there is not a lot of collaboration and content-sharing between metropolitan newspapers in Canada and network affiliates in upstate New York. Our beats seldom overlap.

Hopefully my ant overlords will talk to their ant overlords, and this will be smoothed out to everyone's satisfaction. I'm pissed off and don't know when that will not be the case.

Thanks for listening. Every effort will be made to carry on and keep on keepin' on at Out of Left Field, but it's going to be tough for the next few days.

(Rob Pettapiece has a put a companion post up at cisblog.ca. Thanks so much, Rob.)

Raines '09 — right back where we started from...

Tim Raines: 22.6% support in the Baseball Hall of Fame voting.

All the screaming and yelling in the world and sitting at home eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell like dog food won't make it better. One of our contributors, who doesn't have the seamhead sickness, probably nailed it just now over MSN: "I think Raines is a lost cause."

Nothing is over until we decide it is, to quote a great man who never actually existed. In our heart of hearts, the belief is people will come around.

Neither Raines, Andre Dawson nor Bert Blyleven budged the needle. Raines' support dipped by 1.7%, while the Hawk and Rik Aalbert each jumped by 1%. It looks terrible, especially as a harbinger of what might be in store for Roberto Alomar in 2010, but everything looks clearer in time.

Congratulations are due to Rickey Henderson and Jim Ed Rice. The latter, thanks to the politicking of Masshole nation -- there's a mental image of Donny from Southie writing mostfearedhitterinthegame mostfearedhitterinthegame mostfearedhitterinthegame all over the walls of his duplex -- squeaked in by seven votes on his final try. Good for him. It's a baffling choice and it's just loser talk to point out, as Poz did, that a team of Rices, over a 162-game season, would score only 30 more runs than a team of Raineses, even though one played in Fenway Park and the other played at the Big O and was a much better defensive outfielder.

Mike Lynch at Seamheads did the calculating, based on a straw poll done through Facebook (full disclosure: I participated). No player had a bigger difference between his support in the Seamheads poll and the BBWAA vote than Rice, only his worked out in his favour in the official vote (76.4%, compared to 39.1% support among us geeks). Raines had the second-biggest (35.5%), only it worked against him.



Who knows where it goes from here. It's always better to veer away from being a drama queen. One comparable in Cooperstown voting for Raines is Billy Williams, the Chicago Cubs outfielder of the '60s and '70s. Williams polled in the low 20s in his first time on the ballot, 1982. On his second try, he jumped to 40.9% in '83, and was eventually elected in 1987. Raines didn't jump at all.

What can you say? Politics trumps ability.

Cooperstown: T minus one hour

The Baseball Hall of Fame voting will be announced in about a hour. In the meantime, some good background on the voters comes from King Kaufman at Salon wrote a pretty inspired rebuttal to Seamheads' interview with Dave Kindred. Kindred, as you'll recall, sniffed at the fandangled new stats, "when I grow up, I hope to have my elders explain them to me." Kaufman shot back:

"Sabermetric analysis is used not just by a wide swath of baseball fans and chroniclers, but also in baseball front offices. It's relied heavily upon by, among others, the Boston Red Sox, who have been one of the most successful franchises in baseball this century, winning two of the last five World Series, and by the (Tampa Bay) Rays, who beat the Sox on the way to the Series last year.

"It's what's going on in the world we're covering. In what other profession do practitioners brag about their ignorance regarding current events and developments? In what other area of journalism is lack of awareness a mark of distinction?"

One of the commenters on Kaufman's article likened it to political reporters persisting in referring to Russia as the Soviet Union. It's only sports, not geopolitics or even the Golden Globes, but there is a responsibility to keep up. No one who covers baseball has to become a babbling fount of BABIP (batting average on balls in play), DIPs (defence-independent pitching statistics) and VORP (value over replacement player) and such, but it's a professional obligation to at least understand how it helps puts players' performances in context. It's good background before you yammer on about home runs, RBI, ERA and win-loss records.

That's the end of the rant. Chances are, Jim Rice will squeak in along with Rickey Henderson today and no one else will. (Update, 2:02 p.m.: Yep, nailed it.)

Not to sound like a busted iPod, but hopefully Tim Raines, as his former Expos teammate Steve Rogers said on MLB Home Plate (XM channel 175) today, continues to "build a following," hopefully in the 40% range, but more likely in the mid-30s.

The best bet seems to 2010 will be Andre Dawson's year.

It's regrettable that this site didn't get around to doing a Keltner test on Rik Aalbert Blyleven, he of the 3.31 career ERA, 287 wins, 3,701 strikeouts (fifth all-time) and 60 shutouts (most of any post-1950 pitcher not named Ryan or Seaver).

Bert Blyleven, who is in his 12th go-round, should have gone in long ago. Speaking personally, it's never taken on the quality of a crusade the way it has with Dawson, Raines and Robbie Alomar, but it would be brutal if he's excluded. That being said, the BBWAA election is very much a poll and the Hall of Fame is very much a wonderful museum in a bucolic tourist trap. They're not electing the president or the pope.

That's one way of rationalizing it away, but ask again in a hour.

(Thanks to Pete Toms for the link.)

Related:
Ignorance is not a sportswriting skill (King Kaufman, Salon)

Mats Sundin's poker face

Some gambling websites are having a little fun with how Mats Sundin handled a poker question during a Hockey Night in Canada After Hours interview late Saturday. It's more worth it to see how he reacts when he's asked about coming into Toronto next month to face the Leafs, around the four-minute mark.

Related:
We Hope Mats Sundin Sits at Our Table (Wicked Chops Sports)
Mats Sundin fails Poker 101 (Gambling911.com)

Canada is always the underdog, right?

Someone else can better judge what this means for women's hockey, with the Winter Olympics coming up in 13 months.

Outside the Olympics, there are four major international events in the women's game -- the worlds, the Four Nations tournament, the MLP Cup U22 tournament and the world U18 championship. Canada is not the title-holder in any of the four. The U18 team ended with silver on Saturday after a 3-2 overtime loss to the U.S. on Saturday in Fussen, Germany. It was a one-shot game, obviously, but Team USA never trailed.

The U22 team ended up second after losing to Sweden in the MLP Cup final on Tuesday, a reversal of the outcome from the world junior gold medal game in Ottawa the previous evening -- and giving a certain someone a reason to rock the Tre Kronor that day. Sara Grahn, who was also in net when Sweden's senior national team beat Canada for the first time ever at the Four Nations in Lake Placid, N.Y., in November, was the goalie of record in that game too.

One does have to wonder if the sports-admin types in this country are starting to take the success of the women's national team for granted. The mainstays who have served Canada so well for a decade-plus such as Hayley Wickenheiser, Jennifer Botterill and Jayna Hefford are not going to play forever.

USA Hockey already has their veterans, the players who are out of college, playing together in a residency program (New York Times, Dec. 21). Granted, there is an argument over the efficacy of residency programs for national teams (it hasn't always helped Canadian in international soccer), but you could also say the Americans are ramping up their efforts for Vancouver.

"...postgraduate players faced a stone wall in their development.

"... Some, like Molly Engstrom, a University of Wisconsin graduate, joined a Canadian women's team, but she said she found the competition and intensity lacking.

"... On the days between games, players spend four hours working out in the morning at the complex’s Herb Brooks Training Center, a mix of on-ice drills, power skating, yoga and weight lifting ... USA Hockey refurbished the team’s dressing room last month, so players no longer have to lug their equipment from home.

" 'We’re playing 70, 80 games a year, some of us,' (national team veteran Angela) Ruggiero said. 'The amount of games we’re going to get is making us all better hockey players. We’re getting more games than the college kids. That’s something that will help all postgrad players.' " (emphasis mine)

Canada's national team will live and train together for several months before the Olympics, where they will also have the emotional lift from playing on home ice. However, one wonders if expecting the vets to train on their own and play with their club teams, while counting on major NCAA schools to train the younger players is really wise.

Speaking of which, the best team in women's college hockey, Minnesota-Duluth, is actually draws its leadership Scandinavians, with Turin heroine Kim Martin in goal, compatriots Pernilla Winberg and Elin Holmlov as its top scorers and Finnish Olympian Saara Tuominen as its captain. Evidently, it's a natural fit, considering that UMD has players named Fridfinnson, Mattila and Olson who are not among their four Swedes and two Finns.

It seems worth wondering about, and one hopes the media in Canada would take a similiar look like The Times did -- and not two weeks before the Olympics, soon.

The bottom line is it's a welcome sign that women's hockey is more competitive. However, that rational side has to give way to wanting reassurance Canada is going to win. A U.S.-Sweden final come February 2010 would be no fun at all, even as an intellectual exercise.