Blog blast past: When Doornekamp's MVP performance was for some birds of a different feather ...

Former Carleton Ravens hoops star Aaron Doornekamp is on Canada's roster for the FIBA world championship, which begins Saturday in Turkey. From March 19, 2007, here's a post from someone from the same corner of the world, written the day the Odessa native was MVP of the CIS Final 8 after scoring 20 points in a championship-game win over Brandon.

Back in the day, Ernestown Secondary School had an English teacher named Peter Peart. Give a weak answer in his classroom — the sacred confines of 208 — and often you'd get zinged, "Good enough for Odessa."

With that line, Mr. Peart* summed up everything about the hometown and alma mater of Aaron Doornekamp (pictured), who was the linchpin of the Carleton Ravens' latest national championship run on the weekend.

Odessa, Ont., is a basic bedroom community which has had 1,000 people forever and hasn't changed much since I graduated in 1996 (I lived between Odessa and Bath, another bedroom community). It's so nondescript that during the Capital Hoops Classic in January, one writer asked the rest of the press box denizens, "Where's Odessa?" even though there was a good possibility he had driven past it on Hwy. 401 dozens of times.

Anyway, "good enough for Odessa" laid it out there. You had a choice: Be small time and never live a day in your life, or go for the big time. You might pull it off, but it could also be a royal asskicking.

Hopefully that gives some context to why it was such a trip yesterday, a for a fellow ex-Ernestown Eagle to see Doornekamp hugging his proud father Henk on the Halifax Metro Centre floor in front of thousands of people and a national TV audience. Aaron, the last in the Doornekamp-Smart line of succession that basically was one-half to two-thirds of Ernestown's basketball program for about a decade, kicked plenty of ass himself to help secure the Ravens' fifth straight national title.

Canadians generally don't do the whole alumni thing like Americans do when it comes to their high schools. Ernestown is no exception in this regard, but damn is it freakin' sweet to see one of our own garner such accolades. It almost makes up all the jokes and snide comments people make about a rural high school, along with the myth about buying a statue of the horse instead of football equipment, which is even acknowledged on the school homepage.

My mom teaches at ESS. Last April, a popular recent graduate, Tristan Webb, was killed after being struck by a train. A few weeks later, three students were charged with making alleged Internet death threats, which made national headlines. Right after the new school year started, there was a pellet gun shooting on a school bus which occurred the same day as the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal. It's been a rough 12 months, so any positive publicity for Ernestown is really good these days.

So call it cornball, maybe even a little sad on my part, but yeah, it's OK to vicariously celebrate this.

On Saturday, you could watch one former Eagle, '96 grad Adnan Virk, anchor NCAA Tournament coverage on The Score in the afternoon, then flip over to TSN and see Aaron Doornekamp play a big part Carleton's semi-final win over Ottawa. Was there another high school in in Canada, let alone one with 650 students in a village of 1,000 people, which had two of its grads playing prominent roles in the hoopla for both the U.S. and Canadian versions of March Madness on the weekend?

Good enough for Odessa? Hell, we're good enough for the whole country. One cannot help but think back to mentors such as Mr. Peart, who saw that we were. Thanks, Aaron, for making sure some of us can't forget where we came from.

(* No relation to Neil Peart of Rush fame, although over the years Peter probably gulled more than one teenage metalhead who asked. Deadpanning, "Yes, he's my brother," would have them going, usually for a couple seconds.)

Moral of the story: Think before hiring a 'Barbie blonde' who blabs about going to Dr. Anthony Galea when your marquee sport just had a doping scandal

Only in Canadian Interuniversity Sport do you get this good of an ironic epilogue.

This summer, yours truly was fairly consumed by pointing out the Waterloo Warriors doping scandal was exacerbated by a bush-league approach to collegiate sports in Canada (there are exceptions to the rule, which one should be grateful for). It was, to my mind, blown out of proportion since it was the only point of reference many media consumers had to Canadian university football. Meantime, CIS has moved aggressively to increase drug testing, but it's only a half measure if they don't start to market it better.

Anyway, so over the summer Ontario University Athletics, with a team shut down for the season by doping, needing to continue to take those steps, went about hiring a new PR person for for media relations.

Presumably those factors would rule out giving the senior communications job to a 24-year-old who blogged about being treated by Dr. Anthony Galea during the period while she was interviewing for a job with the OUA.

Yep, Laura Bridgman, a self-described "Barbie blonde" and "occasional vixen," whom I'm told has been hired as the OUA's communications and social media coordinator, claims to be a patient of Galea. The Toronto physician is is facing "separate U.S. and Canadian criminal investigations for, among other things, alleged smuggling and drug-related offenses."

It's irony, on a base level. There's nothing wrong with going to Dr. Galea. However, a big part of being a communications professional is realizing what needs to be dealt with seriously. Much of spin control is knowing what you should not say. And here is the OUA, hiring someone who not only lacked the self-awareness to realize she shouldn't say that about Dr. HottiePants while applying for a job with a league that's been doing damage control over doping all summer, but was amused by his notoriety. Did the OUA check that out? That's all.

"The man who injected my ankle, Dr. HottiePants, is actually Dr. Anthony Galea. He founded his clinic (ISM Health & Wellness) when I was 4 years old. My love of old men wins again!

"The name sound familiar? He's the doctor that's treated Tiger Woods, A-Rod, and others in the states without a license to practice in the US. Read the telling story about him in The Washington Post from June. Oh even without trying, I'm all drama, drama, drama!" (Aug. 11, 2010)

Nineteen member schools, countless numbers of newspaper journos looking to abandon ship and this is who the OUA hires to help increase its media presence? This is about who hired the person, not the person who was hired.

Some might question quoting Ms. Bridgman's blog, but it was discovered in about, oh, 10 seconds of Googling. Her LinkedIn professional profile links to a Twitter account connected to her blog. That makes it fair game. Many an employer does an Internet search on a job applicant, just to see what comes up.

Also, Twitter followers ain't everything, but Ms. Bridgman only has 231. At least two cisblog.ca contributors have several times more.

I don't presume to know what's in the minds of female athletes aged 18-22. Surely, there are some progressive women who play sports in the OUA and might be interested to know their interests will be represented by someone who uses phrases such as "PR chickies" on her blog.

You really have to wonder about the due diligence and thinking-it-through elements on the OUA's part. Bridgman, by the way, is a recent grad (2007) of the University of Windsor, where OUA president Gord Grace is athletic director. She was a communications assistant for the conference in late 2008, so she has some experience, just not a lot.

Ultimately, if the OUA wants to be looked upon at big-time, there are standards. One is having a resident communications specialist who doesn't raise concerns by failing to cover her tracks online. People have to keep their fun and professional sides separate, or it could be bad for credibility.

No one is saying you cannot hire a young woman, but hire a experienced communications professional. Instead, a sporting concern with an upstream swim to to earn credibility with a sadly still male-dominated sport media went and hired a young woman who's blogged about having her panties exposed ("navy lace boyshorts for all those walking on a different street this morning and are curious to know") by a chance gust of wind.

Ms. Bridgman's blog also contains misspellings of simple words ("with out" and "miss-read"). To quote Toby Flenderson, "Is that enough? Do you want me to go on?"

Of course, in that same episode of The Office, Michael Scott shoots back, "Why are you the way you are?" To answer the question, it's about wanting the OUA and CIS to grow. An organism only grows if it exposes itself to light, turning to people who think about the league critically, bring new ideas. Not sure that happened here.

There were some reservations about getting into such an obscure topic, and full disclosure, some of the unsuccessful applicants are acquaintances. Sometimes you have to call in your cards, though.

One has to believe the OUA had applications from people who were better and more mature than this — female, male, 20-something, 30-something, 40-something, whatever.

The point is the obvious, though. It's all inter-related. A lack of professional standards contributed to the Waterloo debacle blowing up real good. Now it gets reinforced by hiring someone who doesn't filter very well. This isn't an personal attack, and I'm deeply sorry if it's construed as such. The sticking point is Grace's screening process.

It's not so much a literal connection. Still, people in the same realm of sport which has become super-serious about steroids have turned around and hired someone who did not seem to grasp why Dr. Anthony Galea is in legal trouble, to work in media relations. That beats just about all.

Damien Cox strikes out, but why is José Bautista hitting all those homers?

Saying someone doesn't know rate stats from counting stats is the new "doesn't know his ass from second base." Put another way: it's tough to trust a journalist with semantic data if her/his age exceeds José Bautista's home-run total — 40.

That's a gross generalization intended it makes the point. Greater minds have hit Damien Cox's weak-ass cheese about the Blue Jays' Bautista out of the park -- Cox Bloc even came out of retirement -- but whatthehell.

A couple points: One is that Cox showed what can happen when the perpetuation of PED hysteria is combined with an age of digital democracy. It's possible for anyone to write a So-And-So Must Be On Steroids post any day of the week. (Bleacher Report must exist for some reason, people.)

Every sport is in play (Mike Wilner: "You can either choose to believe those who have passed [drug] tests are clean or you can choose to believe that cheating is still rampant in the game and enjoy the game anyway.").

That makes it awfully curious that since every sport is fair game, a hockey writer such as Cox went out of his way to ding a ballplayer. Just saying.

The second point is that Lloyd Dobler principle from Say Anything, "I know that I don't know." One of daily journalism's old saws is the "good at English, bad at math" stereotype. Speeding up the sports culture hasn't changed that; it's only served to reveal it. And it's not any more prevalent among older journos than younger ones.

The difference, though, is some realize journalism is not the totality of one's personal experience and general knowledge. As a former mediocre math student, I know I am the wrong person to come up with all-encompassing, quintessential answer for why Bautista has been such an outlier, with 40 homers and counting through Monday. (His previous single-season high in the majors was 16.)

(Update: Dave Cameron, who might be that right person, has looked at it over at Fangraphs.)

At the very least, you gotta make an effort, you know?

Cox's first mistake, of course, was focusing only on the raw sum, Bautista's home-run total. It's not about the counting stats. It's about the rate stats.

At a glance, Bautista seems to be on a unique if unsustainable run. Only two everyday players in the majors have had a higher percentage of their batted balls become fly balls than Bautista (53.2%, according to what was posted at Fangraphs as of 12 a.m. Eastern on Aug. 24).

Only three had had a higher percentage of their fly balls go out of their park than Bautista (20.8% home run/fly ball rate). You want to question anything, question why he's able to get more loft on the ball, and hit it so far (although we know steroids don't make you hit the ball farther).

Rogers Centre, according to Hit Tracker, is the homerdome this season, yielding a MLB-high 2.86 gopher balls per game. New Yankee Stadium is next at 2.78, then there's a huge drop-off down to the 2.5 range.

Bautista has hit 25 of his 40 homers at home, in about 50 fewer at-bats than on the road.

That helps make the case Bautista is just an outlier. It doesn't give us all the answers, but it gives us a good framework.

Only one other everyday player hits more of his batted balls in the air and has also seen at least 20% of his fly balls sail over outfield fences — the Arizona Diamondbacks' Mark Reynolds. But you know where this is heading. Reynolds, who had 27 homers through Monday, is famous for striking out in a 40% about of his at-bats, nearly twice Bautista's whiff rate. Reynolds' home park is also a launching pad.

Who else is beating Bautista in home run/fly ball rate? The Cincinnati Reds' Canadian first baseman, Sports Illustrated cover boy Joey Votto (26.1%), leads the majors. Votto doesn't hit the ball in the air with any great frequency, which is part of why he's vying for a batting title in the National League while also being up with the leaders in home runs (and guess what, Votto's home park in Cincy also is notoriously generous for homers, 2.39 per game).

Tampa Bay's Carlos Pena (23.5%), has a ratio of almost three strikeouts for every two base hits he collects, for pity's sake. Next up is another Three True Outcomes slugger, the Washington Nationals' Adam Dunn (21.7%).

Bautista has struck out 95 times in 522 times at-bat this season, which isn't a lot for a cleanup hitter. He's more of 2 1/2 True Outcomes & mdash home run, base on balls, a few strikeouts.

A mathematician, I am not, but there is some plausibility to saying Bautista is on a roll, derived from changing his approach to produce more fly balls in his home run-friendly home stadium. The increase in his home run/fly ball rate from 2009 over the past season (12.3% to 20.8) is almost identical to that enjoyed by Votto (17.5% to that aforementioned 26.1). But no is wondering how that came to be for Votto, even in his hometown of Toronto. Nor should they.

None of this completely explains away why Bautista made it to 40 homers this season before anyone else reached 35. He did show signs when he put up a .339 on-base / .606 slugging with 10 homers in 125 times at-bat in Septemeber. It wasn't meant to, since I ain't that smart. The point is it's not that hard to at least be in the ballpark, so to speak, when an ballplayer's performance improves markedly. It's asinine and reductionist, not to mention played-out, to just automatically mention steroids. You could even say it's pathetically naive to think going for shock value for its own sake works.

The truth is out there if you care to learn how others are looking for it. Perhaps Damien Cox will learn to do that someday.

(The gist of Cameron's post:

"For the most part, he’s been hitting bombs like the two he drilled [Monday] night. If we look at his HR/FB rate, you can see that his frequency of getting balls to clear the wall isn’t that unusual: 21.5 percent of his flyballs have left the park this year, which still ranks him behind Joey Votto (25.7%), Carlos Pena (23.7%), and Adam Dunn (21.7%). Over the past three years, five players have averaged a HR/FB rate of 21.5% or better, which isn't exactly uncharted territory.

"Bautista will likely never have a year like this again, but there’s no reason to think he’s going to revert back to the version we saw before last September."

Good stuff.

(Image credit: The Canadian Press.)