Bill Hicks speaking truth from beyond the grave ...

Bill Hicks kicked off some 16 years ago, but not before being way out in front on having Jay Leno pegged.



Here's the full bit. The comedian Payton Oswalt probably had the killer sum-it-up for Leno: "It doesn't even feel like a bad guy winning, it feels like a guy winning who doesn't even know why he wants to win the thing." You would expect no less from someone who shilled for Doritos back when he was only making $3 million per year at a time when that was still a lot of money.

Meantime, 19 years later, wherever Johnny Carson is, he finally has an answer to, "Just how pissed off are you?"

Zen Dayley: 589 reasons why Jeffrey Loria is ...

Laughing like a hyena over the Florida Marlins had a crowd of less than 600 for an afternoon game is just a little reactionary.

Just listen to the excuses. It was a day game. It was too hot out (90 degrees and humid). The Marlins play in a football stadium that is terrible for baseball. They're fading out of the playoff race. They would get more fans out -- maybe even like 3,000 -- if they got a new ballpark. (Even the U.S. economy going into a nosedive won't stop politicians who want to build big shiny things, and all off the pro-stadium pols in Miami did get re-elected.)

All of that is true, of course, but excuses are like what the common anatomical comparison for Jeffrey Loria and David Samson, the Marlins owners. There's some poetic irony that has to be pointed out.

When Loria/Samson (and Claude Brochu) was chasing away whatever portion of the Montreal Expos' fanbase that hadn't been killed off by Quebec politics and a 65-cent Canadian dollar, no one wanted to hear about any extenuating circumstances. Small crowds at the Big Owe (did you hear the Habs might play a game there?) were proof that Canadians Didn't Get It.

It's long past time to still be bitter about what happened to the Expos. It bears pointing out how it's a different story when it's in an American city. The Marlins, whom Loria/Samson got in a sweetheart deal, have games where the number of bodies in the stands doesn't crack four digits.

This summer, there has scarcely been a day that goes by when you don't read about the Washington Nationals having poor attendance (13th in the NL, despite a $600 million ballpark) or dismal ratings for local radio and TV broadcasts (although those are not the most rock-solid metrics). Four years on, the Nationals will finish with a worse record than the Expos did in their final season, 2004. (They were mathematically eliminated yesterday.)

The saddest part is you won't hear a peep out of anyone in Canada. Someone should point out that Loria, Samson, Bud Selig and MLB wanted to solve their problem in Quebec, and created problems in Washington, D.C., and South Florida. It's hard to see what basis there is to believe either locale will ever yield a team that's in the top half of MLB teams in revenues. That won't stop them from working harder than they ever did for Montreal, which once had a five-year run where it was in the top third in the NL in attendance. Washington, D.C., will get second chance after second chance. Miami, Fla., will get a new ballpark.

The MLB mafia is getting their just desserts, served to them in luxury boxes.

(Link via ShysterBall.)

Errata

• It's a little funny that baseball finally just got instant replay when it was talked about as far back as 1985. (That link is to a Bob Uecker appearance on The Tonight Show when Johnny was still in his prime and wasn't marking time for heir apparent Jay Leno David Letterman.
• No no-hitter for CC Sabathia, but you knew that already.
• Thank god the comedy trope that "Pedro Alvarez is Spanish for J.D. Drew" is passe.
  
  Drew, as far as a lot of people are concerned, came into the majors with two strikes against him because he wouldn't go to the team who drafted him. He's been a brilliant, if brittle, player at times. It doesn't matter one bit with people since he made such a bad first impression when he wouldn't go to the team who drafted him.
  
  Judging by the reactionary press Alvarez is getting in Scott Boras' spitting match with the Pittsburgh Pirates over whether Alvarez' contract is valid (shame on MLB for not having a drop-dead cutoff to get first-rounders signed and giving Boras an opening), he's going to have the mark of Cain on him. Some people, illogical and ignorant as it is, never forgot that Eric Lindros refused to go where he was told to go by the NHL, either.
• Attending a game at the new Nationals Park in Washington is an underwhelming experience. People could be just as bored and disappointed in Montreal, you know.

Damn, the Jays

• Paul Godfrey calling the first-place Rays an "aberration" makes you wonder if he keeps J.P. Ricciardi around as a cover for his own ignorance. The statheads knew as far back as the winter of '06-07 that Tampa Bay was going to be good
• A.J. Burnett as a Red Sock or a Yankee, which would be worse? By the way, there's talk, it's just talk, that the Jays could be the new home for Hideki Matsui. A left-handed hitting, gimp-kneed 35-year-old who "mix(es) torrid spells with periods of pointlessness" (Baseball Prospectus 2008, pg. 341) and can only play left field ... that's the perfect formula for how to retard Adam Lind and Travis Snider's development.
• The Triple-A dominoes are falling. The Syracuse Chiefs have told the Jays "it's not us, it's you," while the Buffalo Bisons are no longer with Cleveland. The Buffalo Blue Jays? It's probably going to happen.
• A little more concrete info on Chad Beck, the right-hander picked up in exchange for the Eck Factor: "A scout who saw him recently said he never really had a feel for a change-up or a split, but the scout liked his arm, liked the command of his fastball, liked the movement on his fastball.
  
  "From what I was told earlier in the year, he had only just begun to tinker with a split, a pitch that the organization thought might work for him given his arm angle.
  
  "He's done well as both a starter and a reliever, but it sounds like people seem to see him in the bullpen down the road."

The truth hurts, Coach Hoodie

Vic Ketchman, a long-time sportswriter who works for the Jacksonville Jaguars website, got a lot of attention last season when he posted NFL power rankings that noted how the New England Patriots "cheated in one game."

Pro Football Talk (which you gotta have in your Google Reader, you just gotta) notes he's gone back to that well, in a question about NFL teams putting a radio transmitter in the helmet of a defensive player, the same as they do for the quarterbacks on offence:

"You may elect not to use the transmitter, but that could be dangerous in a game against the Patriots, who no doubt have stolen your hand signals. Of course, they'll probably steal your transmission signal, so maybe it would be a better idea to use hand signals and have everybody on the sideline making hand gestures, that way the Patriots wouldn’t know who the real signal guy is. You could do that, or you could do what the Giants did: Rush the quarterback and rush the quarterback hard."

VERY SPARTAN WITH RESPECT TO ORIGINALITY...

Evidently, the Senator Spartan wasn't a completely original idea.



It's curious how Metallic Studios' green-screen short film has travelled. It went on YouTube last May 25, in between the conference and Stanley Cup finals, but about 95% of the comments on it have been made within the past two days.

It's quite possible some biswanger from the Senators marketing department, being somewhat spartan in the area of orig did see it and decided to rip it off for their own end. As so often happens, a corporate took something that was light, nonsensical and fun and sucked all the fun out of it by playing it as serious as a heart attack.

It is far too nice out today to be indoors talking hockey (not even through one lousy round yet, good god) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is calling.

The Red Wings have benched Dominik Hasek, scuttling his plans to pull the chute on another team during the playoffs and Bugs & Cranks really, really wants the Tampa Bay Rays to sign Barry Bonds.

(The Paper of Record is pointing the finger at one Senator who didn't play in the entire series. It's too funny that that was pretty much what the commenters here predicted -- it would all be pinned on Ray Emery.)

FRONTS: EX-LEAF GILL IN LINE TO COACH?

Reading a blind item that ex-Leafs defenceman Todd Gill will be coach of the Kingston Frontenacs is a little curious.

Some time between now and the May 3 OHL draft, the Frontenacs are expected to announce the hiring of former Toronto Maple Leaf Todd Gill as their new coach.

Gill, 42, guided the Brockville Braves to the third-best regular-season record in the Central Junior Hockey League before they lost to the Smiths Falls Bears in the playoff semi-finals. -- Don Campbell, Ottawa Citizen

Again, this is still hearsay and conjecture. There's no word if Gill would simply coach
with Larry Mavety continuing as GM-for-life, which would be a real downer.

Cynics would suggest Gill is a good choice since a man who played with the Harold Ballard-era Toronto Maple Leafs has plenty of experience with a hockey team with, um, idiosyncratic ownership. Also, the Frontenacs floundered with a former NHL coach, Bruce Cassidy, they might as well try their luck with one coming up from Tier II Junior A. Their next coach will have to come over from university hockey.

Granted, Gill, whom Sun Media's Bob Elliott profiled over the winter, is serious about being a junior hockey coach. The ex-defenceman coaching the Frontenacs would keep up with the trend of ex-NHLers making the switch to running junior teams -- Bob Boughner in Windsor, Patrick Roy in Quebec, Greg Hawgood in Kamloops.

(Oh, and Todd Gill was a better player than 95% of Leafs Nation ever gave him credit for. Just watch Game 7 between the Leafs and Red Wings the next time it pops up on ESPN Classic Canada.)

BATTER UP: FLORIDA MARLINS

It's staying light longer, the Leafs are all-but-eliminated ... that can mean only one thing: We'll soon see the first halter top of the season. OK, two things: It's almost baseball season, that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team for six months, knowing full well they won't win. Here's a starting nine for the Florida Marlins.

1. Tough call: Say you're a fantasy baseball aficionado in a keeper league where you draft minor-leaguers for the future. What would you choose if it was a choice between centre-fielder Cameron Maybin opening the season in the minors or opening the door to find Cameron Diaz?
   
   On second thought, don't answer. Maybin is that good. Twenty-year-olds who put up a .304/.386/.493 hitting line in the Florida State League -- the magnet league for fast-tracking players -- are usually the real deal.
2. The Fish bite: Last season the call here was forthe Marlins to end up with something like a 72-90 or 73-89 record; they ended up 71-91. More of the same is in store for this season since the fielding and starting pitching -- Scott Olsen, really? -- remains in absentia.
3. Stocks are depleted: The Marlins have a great rep for developing players (for other teams, mostly), but they have only one player on Baseball Prospectus' Top 100 prospects list -- Maybin.
4. What a dimension, though: Marlins all-star Hanley Ramirez (pictured) hits like a young Dick Allen. He plays shortstop like Andy Dick, and about as funny.
   
   Ramirez is basically on the same track as his ex-teammate, Miguel Cabrera, as a helluva hitter who will have to move to another position sooner rather than later.
5. They'll score some runs: Ipso facto shortstop Ramirez, second baseman Dan Uggla and outfielders Jeremy Hermida and Josh Willingham half of a good National League lineup. That's about it.
6. No joking around: The manager of the Marlins' Triple-A team, Dean Treanor, used to be an undercover narc.
7. He doesn't spike, he just wears them: Backup catcher Matt Treanor definitely has a place on the Ray Knight All-Stars as pro athlete whose wife commands somewhat higher stature in her own sport. Treanor is married to Olympic gold medal beach volleyball player Misty May. You know what she looks like, so no picture.
8. Recycling last year's preview: "They'll eventually have a new stadium -- probably around the same time the renovations on the Miami airport are finished. If there's a God in heaven, hopefully around that time Jeffrey Loria and David Samson will get what they deserve for breaking Expos fans hearts -- maybe something like the fate of Craig Kilborn and Jeremy Piven's characters in the final reel of Old School. It could be Samson driving his car off a bridge and landing on Loria as he fly-fishes in the river below, or vice-versa. Either way would be fine.
   
   "True, it is hard to imagine that a snooty art collector such as Jeffrey Loria enjoying the simple challenge of fly-fishing. It's not hard to imagine David Samson going fishing, although given his flair for public relations, he probably uses dynamite. "
9. Need-to-know: See above. The baseball industry is stronger in the wake of the Expos' demise and the greasy little franchise flip that Loria and Marlins-turned-Red Sox owner John Henry were part of six years ago, but that doesn't mean having to swallow it.

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

VC IS A VAPOUR...

It's worth poring over Sports Illlustrated's article on the cultural significance of the slam dunk just for this fun fact:

"At the All-Star break Nuggets reserve forward Linas Kleiza had more dunks (40) than Vince Carter (35). What a surprise that Carter wasn't voted onto the '08 East All-Star team. "When that jumping ability dissipates," says (former NBA star Dominique) Wilkins, "you're just an ordinary guy.

Fewer dunks than Linas Kleiza? To think that some people accuse Vince Carter of being too spineless to take the ball inside and instead settling for jumpers. He's a settler. No true man settles. He always wants more.

On a semi-tangentially related note, had to laugh at the headlines some papers ran after Chris Bosh torching Dwight Howard for forty points in the first game since that display in the dunk contest: "Bosh is Howard's Kryptonite" ... "Bosh gets last laugh against 'Superman' " ... "Super, man."

It must have been the most dominating performance by a Raptor going all the way back to February 2007, when someone named Chris Bosh lit up Orlando's Dwight Howard for forty-one points. Of course, the first time Bosh went off on Howard, there might have been 14,000 people in the Air Canada Centre. Last night, it was a sellout. The Raptors' increasing popularity is a welcome development.

Oh, and fare thee well in Detroit, Juan Dixon.

Related:
Bet you wish you could dunk (Chris Ballard, Sports Illustrated)