The Trippers ...

It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter! ...Forget the "Milkerson" jokes, Brad Wilkerson, who retired Sunday, was a pretty fine ballplayer. He will always be the only Expo to have a 30-homer, 100-run, 100-walk season. You could look it up.

You know the drill: "It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter..."

... that NBC can dictate NHL broadcast policy even though it paid the same rights fee as your next-door neighbour (zero).

... that hockey announcers, please, have got to stop saying a goaltender who played a great game "stood tall." Technically, everyone stands tall to some extent, except for the goalies who play the butterfly style. They crouch.

... that the woman who got conked on the head by Bill Murray's tee shot missed a golden opportunity by settling for him signing a copy of Caddyshack. She should have made him reveal what he said to Scarlett Johanson at the end of Lost in Translation.

... that the New York Post thought it was it funny to have a headline, "Madonna bucked by horse." Everyone thought it, sure, but it still has not been funny since 1994.

... that drivel from Bleacher Report which is begging to get FJM'd comes up in Google News searches. Making fun of sabermetricians still has not been funny since 2004.

" 'Dear Diary, today I went to the baseball arena and watched a muscle-bound barbarian molest the ball with extreme ferocity. It was truly horrendous. He had three hits in four trips to the plate, but on his fourth attempt he swung at a pitch that was very near the outside corner of the strike zone and was ruled out by the official standing behind home plate. He did not draw a walk today, nor is he slow enough on the base paths to truly garner my respect. Well, that's all for now. Time to treat myself to footage of Steve Balboni getting on base.'

"Look sabermetricians, you can peddle your numbers all you want behind closed doors, or in the company of general managers and team executives. Just keep your math away from those of us who actually enjoy baseball.

"Oh, and curb the attitude as well. There's a reason you got picked last in high school, and the fact of the matter is no one likes you any better now than they did back then."

That's pretty original, playing the geek card. Noting Steve Balboni was not a great on-base guy (.293 career OBP), probably proves his point, so why did you go and look it up?

... what people say about the Leafs, including stretching one long Leaf joke what was apparently supposed to be a newspaper editorial. Making fun of the Leafs is as Canadian as maple syrup, cold beer and going to a cottage in May. There's nothing anyone can say to Leafs fans they don't talk about among themselves.

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

• The three Kingston Frontenacs playing in the world under-18 championship, Erik Gudbranson, Ethan Werek and Taylor Doherty, were denied a medal at the world under-18 hockey championship. Canada lost 5-4 to Finland in a shootout in the bronze-medal game.
  
• A tip of the cap is due to the Ottawa Senators intermediates, who won Provincial Women's Hockey League title by beating the Toronto Aeros 5-3 in the championship game on Sunday. Bryanna Farris, who's off to New Hampshire next season, had three points in the championship game for the Sennies.
  
  (It's a shame their NHL namesakes aren't still playing so the feat could be acknowledged.)

Defeating the cliché ...

It was a privilege last night to take part in a sports journalism seminar at Carleton University (thanks again for having me).

One of the questions that came the bright-eyed J-schoolers posed was how get away from the clichéd answers athletes usually give in post-game answers. Well, under the heading of, "Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday," Bryan Curtis is wrote a piece for The Times declaring War On The Locker-Room Cliché. (Is it not cliché to be declaring war on something?) His opening salvo is pretty direct.

"Let's ditch the hackneyed, almost-useless tradition of the locker-room interview. There’s plenty to write after a ballgame without interrogating the players. The whole ritual proceeds from the idea that the sports press has gotten so professionalized that it feels it has to enforce the same standards of accountability as the political press. This is nonsense. If a political candidate makes a gaffe on the campaign trail, reporters ought to wring an explanation out of him. If (Derek) Jeter flubs a grounder, he doesn’t owe anyone a statement.

It's kind of like what Barry Bonds said 15 years ago about the obligations of athletes to the public compared to other entertainers: "If people pay $8 to see Batman, they don't get to hang around to get Jack Nicholson's autograph." (Remember, like Chuck Klosterman once wrote of Bonds, what he usually says is true, and this usually makes things worse.)

Curtis is might have been playing off the chapter in Will Leitch's God Save The Fan, specifically the chapter on the reporters who have to go into locker rooms. It sort of hits at a big theme, at least for us Gen Xers: Defeating the cliché.

There is admiration for the sports journalists who go into locker rooms as part of their jobs, get what they need and turn around something quickly on deadline. To some extent, we want them talking to that half-naked man. We need them talking to that half-naked man. More to the point, the 24-hour news cycle needs it -- actual people, maybe not so much. Like Leitch says someone , you only need three things if you follow a particular major-league baseball team:

1. Digital cable and the MLB Extra Innings package.
2. A Web connection.
3. A mute button ("Vital. This takes care of the hometown announcers.")

The point is valid. It's obviously of narrow interest, but if you're ever dropped a STFU after hearing another talking head go on about some team that is reeeeeellllling, you should understand why sports clichés are so noxious. It is also unclear how you get away from it, other than to change the entire model of daily journalism entirely as per Curtis' declaration.

That does not sound all that bad to a guy like me who is more of a features writer, which is newsroom code for "can't write on deadline to save his life."

Related:
Wake Me When You Say Something Interesting (Bryan Curtis, The New York Times, Nov. 2)

Zen Dayley: Tampa Bay was never reeeeeling, really; Rays defeat Red Sox, clichés

For probably not the last time, momentum in baseball is the next day's starting pitcher.

There's been some spur here to write a rant about how there should be a moratorium on TV talking heads saying that any team who's lost their last few games is reeeeeling. It's become the insta-cliché of the last couple years, a bit of faux-authoritative, dollar-store psychology used by people who want to pass themselves off like they have been there and know what it's like to be a pro athlete. It's an industry thing. If you have't been there, you should always be Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything: "I know that I don't know." Hey, it worked on the young Ione Skye.

The Rays, as you know, lost Games 5 and 6 before winning the real World Series American League pennant last night behind Matt Garza's two-hit pitching over seven-plus innings and phenom David Price phenomenating to get the final four outs. A truth is Tampa Bay had a much firmer grip on this series than the Cleveland Indians did before blowing a 3-1 lead to Boston in 2007. One can a hazard a guess that a common hallmark of instances when teams have come back from a two-game deficit to win a best-of-7 series is the first few games flattered the other guys. That did not happen here. Tampa Bay was better through the first four games and the first 6½ innings of Game 5, when the Red Sox made that epic eight-run comeback. They had an evenout over 12 innings of baseball, but were good enough to get through it, thanks to Garza showing his worth as a big-game pitcher and Price nailing it down at the end,

Miked Up offered a pretty good window into some of his colleagues who had the mindset. That's not a media-bash; a lot of people no doubt felt that way after the Rays blew it in Game 5 and somnabulated through Saturday's Game 6.

For the Series, the first knee-jerk thought is that the Rays have a huge advantage in starting pitching. The Phillies starters beyond Cole Hamels aren't much to look at and their home stadium is a launching pad.

At times like this, it's good to be reminded of the thin threads the larger glories hang off. Rany Jazayerli pointed out that Price became a Ray by virtue of the Kansas City Royals winning on the final day of 2006 season, giving Tampa Bay the No. 1 overall pick the following season. Ouch.

Anyway, getting back to the main point, there is some momentum in baseball. It's just more subtle.

Related:

• It looks iffy that Canada's own Matt Stairs will DH for the Phillies in either of the first two games at Tropicana Field. The Rays, going by the way they set up their rotation in the ALCS, would start lefty Scott Kazmir on five days' rest in Game 1. Stairs can't hit lefties. He has also hit .213/.303/.331 in 155 career plate appearances in Tampa Bay, not a great omen. It's more likely that their best pinch-hitter, Greg Dobbs, would be the DH.
  
• Rogers Sportsnet, in the future, should consider having Mike Wilner in the studio for its playoff coverage instead of the man who gives new meaning to square peg, jamiecampbell. Goodness knows that he's earnest as heck, shucks, he really tries his darnedest. This probably needs a bit of context, but during the wrapup the last night, he had this stilted moment:

  "Evanka, Jim, how does this sound: The Tampa Bay Rays are in the World Series: Are you kidding me?"

  Campbell (or as a journo friend calls him, Captain Obvious) set it up like he had a clever and original line -- only to rip off one of Chuck Swirsky's catchphrases. This really happened.
• The latest on the Seamheads Historical Sim League (name that will seem clever at first but will seem less funny the more you hear to be named later) is that the teams will be grouped by their start date. The Jays will be in a division with the Seattle Mariners, the Rockies/Diamondbacks (Diamond Rox?) and Rays/Marlins (Raelians?). That bodes well for their chances, or it would if their GM was not an idiot.