Blog blast past: It's a mad, mad, mad Madden world, baby

The first Sunday night NFL game is on and it seems weird seeing Cris Collinsworth next to Al Michaels in the NBC booth. It seemed worth re-posting this, from April 16.

It's going to be tougher to enjoy a perfectly good game of football without John Madden.

Gushing over the retirement of the 73-year-old coaching, broadcasting and video game icon, not necessarily in that order, is a bit silly. Celebrating the career of John Madden is akin to a quarterback tossing the ball helplessly into the air before the blitz buries him.

His career was a triumph of commercialism and he probably lingered a little too long. At the end of the day, who cares, though? That's just a truth. A larger one is that, for Gen Xers, Madden or Madden, whether you're talking about the man or the video game, was the conduit for learning football. He's even credited with suggesting the virtual first-down line, so try imagining watching the NFL without that innovation.

The first generation that was weaned on television was occasionally described as McLuhan babies. The point today is that football-obsessives of a certain age could be called Madden babies. In a sense, this is being written by the ultimate Madden baby, since yours truly, no word of a lie, was born on the Tuesday before Madden's Oakland Raiders crushed the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl 11. Minnesota (all together now: "Damn!") has not played in the big game since, except in Madden, "the one place where the Vikings hold roughly a .996 winning percentage all-time," according to Daily Norseman.

Someone had the wisdom to position Madden as the jovial next-door neighbour, a kind of Foghorn Leghorn who knew football backwards and forwards. It helped him become ubiquitous as a commercial pitchman, but no one ever said the high priest of football commentary was required to take a vow of poverty. Please bear in mind, if you take Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football as the baseline, Madden still comes off as pretty good.

The point is Madden wouldn't have become as big as he was if he wasn't, deep-down, the genuine article. He was the perfect guy to bring football to the masses, since he had a special eye for seeing what all 22 players on the field were doing. He demystified a very complex game.

In his prime, he could make an exhibition game in August seem riveting just by talking enthusiastically about some rookie free agent. The player was probably going to get cut the following Thursday, but Madden could make you care about a San Diego Chargers running back named Jo Jo Jones like no one else. He sort of radiated an interest in anyone who stepped on the field (which was why he came up with the All-Madden team), not just the glamour-boy quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers.

That carried over into his style of analysis. He didn't plug the stars, or stick to story lines hammered out by producers. (How many times have you watched a NFL game where some lesser-known player does something good, and the commentator immediately goes into a spiel about his more popular teammates?) He was always good for the stream of consciousness observation, like saying, "No kid wants to grow up to be a catcher or a nosetackle," or employing pants as a verb. He never seemed to get crusty with age, either, or see himself as bigger than the game.

Madden, the ex-coach, made it known that football is the most thoroughly team sport of them all. It's meaningless unless everyone on the team is seen as important, right down to the 53rd man on a NFL roster. He had a human side that made him unique in the cutthroat pro football world, as one of his Raiders players, the defensive lineman turned author Pat Toomay, related years later when recalling how Madden stood by New England Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley after he was paralyzed in a game in 1978.

"It was Madden's first instinct to go to Stingley. At the hospital, Stingley had been found to have fractured vertebrae in his neck and was being fitted with a halo brace to stabilize the injury. Our physicians, thankfully, had risen to the occasion. Having overseen a safe transport, they had summoned the appropriate specialists. Experts were now at hand.

"But even at the hospital something was dissonant, out of sync. Expecting to find himself among concerned New England officials, Madden found himself alone. No one from the Patriots was there. Not the owner. Not the coach. No one.

"Grabbing a phone, Madden called the Oakland airport. Immediately, he was patched through to the New England charter, taxiing out to take off. A more-than-animated discussion followed. The plane returned to the gate. The business manager was put off.

"In the hospital, Stingley was conscious, as doctors worked to fit the halo. Having donned surgeon's garb, Madden appeared beside him, leaning close. 'Everything's going to be all right,' he whispered.

"... In the days and weeks that followed, Madden visited Stingley, if not daily, then as often as he could. During one visit, Madden discovered a malfunction in Stingley's ventilator. In summoning a nurse to fix the problem, Madden might have saved Stingley's life."

Curiously enough, two other coaching icons, Marv Levy and the late Bill Walsh, who are often credited with possessing the same traits, also cut their coaching teeth at colleges in California in the 1960s. As Toomay has written elsewhere, that was a last bastion of football being the players' game, instead a coaches' game.

In one of his books, published during the mid-1980s, Howard Cosell sniffed in one of his books that Madden had "allowed himself to become a caricature of someone bursting through the wall with a beer can in his hands." That was a small price to pay, and it's worth noting that Madden is leaving beloved, while Cosell, not to speak ill of the dead, was bitter at the end.

Madden was as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola, but a lot of people like Coca-Cola. With respect to the video game, the story that he wouldn't allow his name to be put on the game until Electronic Arts (now EA Sports) could offer full 11-on-11 play shows he was bit of an early adapter. He might not be able to articulate or explain it, but it's impossible to understate how Madden's helped a generation of guys and a few girls learn the difference between a 3-4 and a 4-3 defence without having to put on the pads. People speak knowledgeably of I formations, trips right and Ace formations, not entirely because but largely thanks to the man.

In a sense, we're all a bit smarter as football fans thanks to him. It goes without saying that pausing to mull his legacy is a reflection that, as Ray Ratto at CBSSports.com noted, we're reflecting on the end of the sports broadcaster as national institution:

"Madden broke in an era when there were three sports carriers, not hundreds. We have replaced authoritative voices with cacophony because we have democratized the airwaves, at least insofar as we now have access to every broadcast of every baseball, basketball, football, hockey and major college football and basketball game that can be reasonably found. There is not one voice, but hundreds, and most of them are, well, not Madden. They work for the teams, and you can't be a national figure that way."

It's simply different. There can't be another John Madden. He has rubbed off on countless people, and speaking as someone who spent untold hours playing the original John Madden Football on the family's Tandy back in 1990, the gratitude is all on this end.

(It's impossible to resist including a Madden ambulance montage.)



Related:
John Madden retires from broadcasting (Lisa Fernandez, San Jose Mercury News)
Only one Madden, then, now and forever (Ray Ratto, CBSSports.com)
BOOM! Madden Retires (Daily Norseman)

Zen Dayley: Notes on Buehrle's perfect game!

It's not for nothing Chicago White Sox Mark Buehrle would throw a perfect game vs. the Tampa Bay Rays, wait for it, 27 months after he pitched a no-hit, no-run game.

Twenty-seven is numerically symbolic of the number of outs in a baseball game. Seamheads get off on this, especially with the catch one-time Blue Jay Dewayne Wise made in the ninth inning, robbing Gabe Kapler of a home run and then securing the catch with his bare hand after the ball popped loose.



Some other fun facts below the jump:

• Some say Buehrle is a left-handed Roy Halladay, a pitch-to-contact ace who's automatic for 200 innings a season, except he has a World Series ring. In 2007, Buehrle pitched a game against the Blue Jays where he did not have a single baserunner and lost 2-0 to, wait for it, Halladay, after giving up two solo home runs.
  
  
• Who do Tampa Bay Rays hitters have to face on Friday? Roy Halladay.
  
  
• Buehrle broke with baseball code by talking about the no-hitter in the dugout between innings.
  
  
• It was not the fastest perfect game on record. Mike Witt's (Sept. 30, 1984) and Tom Browning's (Sept. 16, 1988) were both over in less than two hours. Buehrle, though, apparently spent only 32 minute on the mound.
  
  
• The last left-handed pitcher to have two no-hitters in American League was Dutch Leonard. He was a pretty good pitcher with the Boston Red Sox when one of their other main arms was some guy named George Herman Ruth, so you know it was a long time ago.
  
  
• Buehrle had the same home plate umpire that he did in his no-hitter in April 2007, Eric Cooper. He went 27-up, 27-down in that game since he picked off the only baserunner.
  
  
• Wise's saving catch came right in front of an outfield-wall mural which honours 1950s White Sox ace Billy Pierce. On June 27, 1958, Pierce lost a perfect game with two out in the ninth inning.
  
  
• Steve Rosenbloom at Rosenblog: "It’s not a matter of whether the Sox ever retire Buehrle’s number. It’s a question of whether it’s done by morning."
  
  
• Wise was in the opposing dugout for the previous perfecto, Randy Johnson's vs. the Atlanta Braves on May 18, 2004.
  
  
• White Sox catcher Ramon Castro had never caught Buehrle before. He's not the first to do so. Current Pittsburgh Pirates manager John Russell caught one of Nolan Ryan's no-hitters the first time he caught him.
  
  
• No left-hander ever went 27-up, 27-down in the American League until 1994 (Kenny Rogers). Buehrle's was the third by an AL lefty in the past 16 seasons.
  
  
• The cross-town Chicago Cubs are still waiting for their first perfect game. (Are there any other baseball feats that have eluded the Cubs in the past, oh, 100 years?) In a 1972 game, Milt Pappas lost the 27th hitter on a full count when he was squeezed by umpire Bruce Froemming.
  

The wildcat formation: Dr. Z totally called it

Deadspin has a nice tribute to Sports Illustrated's Dr. Z, Paul Zimmerman, the long-time NFL writer who was stricken by a pair of strokes last November.

Zimmerman always wrote to increase understanding, which is one of the two nobler goals of sports writing, and he didn't blow smoke up the superstars. One way to appreciate Dr. Z is to harken back on one of his more memorable pieces, from S.I.'s 1989 NFL preview, which had Randall Cunningham on the cover with the words, The Ultimate Weapon. It was one of those end-of-decade pieces, envisioning how football might look in the 1990s. It might be fun to wonder, two decades on, how prescient he was.

Dr. Z's predictions:

"The defensive emphasis in the years ahead will shift to big people who can run — 'tweener types, 220-pound linebacker-strong safety combinations and 250-pound linebacker-defensive ends." Partially right. There are plenty of NFL stars who could fit that loose description. Off the 2008 All-Pro team alone, one could pick out the Miami Dolphins' All-Pro linebacker Joey Porter (started his college career on offence and then moved to defensive line), the Arizona Cardinals' 230-lb. strong safety, Adrian Wilson and the Steelers safety Troy Polamalu (who plays in the tackle box on a majority of plays). The Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, who was a college safety, could also fit in ther.

"Offensive coaches will give some thought to the emergence of this new monster and then come up with one of their own, thereby fortifying the most neglected position in football, tight end. They'll convert college linebackers and quick defensive ends." In 1988 and '89, no tight ends were among the top 20 NFL receivers in yards gained (yes, it's still strange the NFL ranks players by receptions instead of yardage). In 2007, three tight ends were among the top 20. In 2008, then-Kansas City Chief Tony Gonzalez was 12th and Dallas' Jason Witten was 25th.

"Players on both sides of the ball will be taller but lighter, because an effective anti-steroid policy will be implemented, preferably in consort with the Players Association (more on that later." Swing and a miss. Chalk this up to wishful thinking.

"Teams will load up on running backs, carrying as many as seven regulars, as more and more good runners come out of college. Teams will attack in waves, with three sets of running backs, to ensure that the offense always has fresh legs in the game. The heavy-duty 1,500-yard back could become obsolete." Forty-two NFL running backs had at least 100 carries in 1989, in a 28-team league. Forty-nine toted the synthetic leatherskin at least 100 times in 2008, in a 32-team league, about the same average per team. There might be more good running backs, but only so man coaches are willing to use regularly.

"With the emergence of mobile, more athletic quarterbacks from the colleges, NFL teams may put an extra passer in the back-field, much the way the Dolphins sometimes used backup quarterback Crash Jensen with (Dan) Marino in the mid-'80s." Talk about prescient. The evolutionary process has not been as quick as one might like. However, between the emergence of the Wildcat formation, the Miami Dolphins drafting a dual-threat quarterback such as Pat White of West Virginia, he might have been on to something.








(Kissing Suzy Kolber, of course, did this way better last summer.)
Type rest of the post here

Saturdays with Steve Durbano? The greatest combo since Hull and Oates

Cripes! It's as if someone unscrewed the top of my head and decided to take some of the disparate elements to make a movie. Noted hockey buff Kevin Smith is planning to adapt the late, great Warren Zevon's Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song) for the big screen.

Notwithstanding that Mitch Albom stands to reap a windfall since he co-wrote the song with Zevon (David Letterman did the backup vocals on the album version), that's pretty awesome. It's also a minor miracle to get a melding of a great song with hockey, considering what you hear during stoppages in play at most arenas.

" 'The song's been one of my favorites since I heard it and I’ve always seen this whole movie behind,' Smith continued. 'I got in touch with Mitch because Warren Zevon has passed on and we started talking about it and he was into it and into what I was kind of pitching.'

"Smith is gunning to get the project going in 2010 or 2011, singling out the film from all his other projects as 'the one I really want to do in a big, bad way.' It will be set in the late 1970s within the World Hockey Association, before those teams were absorbed into the National Hockey League. 'It takes place during the last gasp of the goon era of hockey when it was all about fighting,' Smith said." — MTV Movie Blog

Smith, as you know, is a big New Jersey Devils fans and has always sprinkled hockey references into his movies. He also wrote a paean to all things puck for Time magazine and is planning a pilgrimmage to Brantford, Ontario next month to play in a road hockey tournament organized by Walter Gretzky, the most famous sports dad in recorded history.

Smith's hockey references include: Zack Brown, the titular character played by Seth Rogen in Zack and Miri Make A Porno, played for a beer-league team named the Monroeville Zombies. There was a road hockey scene in Smith's first film, Clerks, along with Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee) in Mallrats unpausing a Sega game when he was supposed to take a girlfriend to breakfast. (He promptly scores using the wraparound move that was near and dear to anyone who played a lot of hockey video games in the mid-1990s.)

Zevon, at least according to another dead personal hero, Hunter S. Thompson, got the inspiration to write You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared while watching Patrick Roy shut out Smith's Devils in a Stanley Cup playoff game. There's irony.

The game was the most dominating display of big time hockey either of us had ever seen. The Avalanche humiliated the favored defending champion N.J. Devils.

Patrick Roy got his shutout and "could have beaten N.J. all by himself," Zevon boasted. "He made midgets of us all. I will never forget this game. Our song will be called 'You're a Whole Different Person When You're Afraid.' "

Which proved to be true, when we played it back on his new-age Hugo machine 40 hours later.

Anyway, that's something to brighten up a Friday. You'll excuse anyone who overdoes it on back-patting because he listened to a lot of Warren Zevon albums when he was alive and wasn't on a major label.

According to the above-linked article, Smith plans to film his hockey epic after he finishes his current project, A Couple of Dicks. Somehow, Chris Pronger is not starring in that one.



Related:
Kevin Smith Making Hockey Movie With Mitch Albom Based On Warren Zevon Song 'Hit Somebody' (MTV Movie Blog, via Total Film)

Top 5: And that's why you can stay so long ...

Corner Gas' writers have always mined the world of sports and competition for laughs throughout the show's run, which ends tonight (7:30 Saskatchewan time on CTV). Like King Of The Hill, it's always understood the way people in small towns can get caught up in some good old-fashioned healthy competition, as a way to help pass the time.

It's captured the fun of fandom, like the time Brent Leroy dressed up in his full Saskaman grab to show his devotion to the Roughriders — and weirds out 'Riders players Gene Makowsky and Matt Dominguez when they stop at The Ruby for lunch with a couple tickets to an upcoming game. It got into the drama of human competition when Brent and Karen went head-to-head in an eight-game Summit Series of table hockey.

As a way of giving thanks, here's the shows top five sports-themed episodes. It's not meant as definitive. Really, it's supposed to be random, like the show itself.

"Bend It Like Brent" (Season 6)

Brent and Lacey start trying to outdo each other after signing up as co-sponsors for a youth soccer team coached by Davis Quinton, the local RCMP officer. It's worth it since it takes the piss out of both soccerphobes and the pretensions of footy fans. When Davis corrects Lacey for saying soccer instead of football, she asks him, "What's the word for someone who uses British expressions even though they aren't British?" ... "A wanker." ... "Good to know." There's also:

"Brent, who's your favourite football team?"
"That's easy, the 'Riders."
"No, I mean football."
"Oh, the Minnesota Vikings."
"No, I mean in England."
"Oh, that would be a tie between the Manchester I Don't Give A Craps and the London Not A Real Sports."

A tension soon develops between the co-sponsors. Lacey wants the team to win at all costs, whereas Brent wants to give them candy even when they lose.

"Face Off" (Season 1)

Ignore the fact that having the prim-and-proper female lead emerge as an unlikely ringer ripped off a Cheers episode where the gang challenged Garry's Old Town Tavern in bowling. (In the Cheers episode, Diane Chambers emerges as the bar's best bowler — she took a class in it at college since she needed a phys-ed credit and you could read between frames.)

The Dog River Riverdogs hockey team is beyond hopeless, but the scores they lose by are never too embarrassing thanks to the goaltending of Brent, which means they never have to try too hard. However, Dog River's rival, Stonewood, is urging him to defect to their side ahead of an upcoming showdown,, forcing Brent to choose between playing with friends and actually having a chance to win a game. Lacey, though, saves the day by stepping in as the team's first coach. "A lot of teams have coaches now," reasons Brent. "Even in the NHL."



Lacey's infusion of strategy helps Dog River eke out a 1-1 tie. "Ha-ha," Brent tells the Stonewood players. "You suck just as much as we do."

"At The Good Old Table Hockey Game" (Season 4)

Hockey is not the national sport, contrary to popular belief. It's road hockey. When Davis buys a vintage table-top hockey game for the police detachment and discovers Karen is a god with the rods, table hockey becomes the local obsession.

Before long, thanks to Davis and Wanda's big yaps, Brent and his old-time, dump-it-in-the-corner style is put up against Karen's crisp, precise passing attack in an eight-game series — four in Brent's parents' basement, four at the cop shop. Lacey is the only one who doesn't get caught up in it, until Wanda informs her, "It's not a game — it's a way of life. Think of those little metal kids growing up on little metal farms."





"Slow Pitch" (Season 2)

Makes the list for the name of the gang's beer-league ball team — the Corner Gas Guzzlers — and the game they make out of hiding their open alcohol from Karen and Davis, since they don't want the two cops to issue citations for drinking in public. It turns out the cops are fully aware of the drinking and don't care, but appreciate their friends making the effort.

"I Love Lacey" (Season 1)

Better known as The One Where They Don't Go To The Grey Cup. A series of flashbacks relate how the gang from Dog River had tickets to attend the CFL championship game, which is being played in Regina. A series of unfortunate events conspire to keep Emma and Wanda, Brent and Lacey, Hank and Oscar and Karen and Davis from making it to Taylor Field. However, none of them have ever let on to the others that they missed the game — or questioned why it was 20 Celsius and sunny on a late-November Grey Cup Sunday in Saskatchewan.

And look at the way they invert the everyman fantasy of making time with a beautiful girl while wearing a shirt supporting your favourite football team:

Pat Burns at peace ...

Pat Burns' interview with Hockey Night in Canada is probably worth a view on a lazy Sunday afternoon. His is an unlikely story, from police officer to Stanley Cup-winning coach. As a coach, he came off the way fans hoped they would if they ever got to coach a NHL team: Nasty, a little dictatorial, but sharp-tongued.

Meantime, on the hockey front, there are some pointed words for Don Cherry after his editorial reply to Alex Ovechkin's "hot stick" 50th goal celebration. At least Cherry's first rant had a point; this was all over the place.

Much obliged to crazieman76 for the video capturing.

One Shining Moment originator dies; but our wasted youth is eternal

Doug Towey, the man behind making One Shining Moment into the anthem of CBS' NCAA Tournament coverage, died earlier this week. It would be remiss to not acknowledge his passing.

"Folk singer David Barrett penned the song in 1986 and gave it to his high school friend CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent, and then Sports Illustrated staff writer, Armen Keteyian. He passed it along to Towey who planned to use it to accompany the network's closing highlights of Super Bowl XXI in January 1987. But due to long-running interviews the song never made it to air.

A couple of months later, Towey was looking for a way to bring CBS Sports' NCAA Tournament coverage to a close and decided to use it. One Shining Moment made its Final Four debut on March 30, 1987, following Keith Smart's baseline jumper in the final seconds that gave Indiana a 74-73 victory over Syracuse.

It's schmaltzy as all hell, but you'd defy anyone not to get a little misty.

Two personal favourites always stick out: One was 1997, Arizona's overtime win over Kentucky (the Wildcats beating the Wildcats), just for the shared experience of a bunch of guys sitting in the TV room at a university residence, living and dying with every basket, every foul. There was so pent-up emotion in that room that once it was over, the only way to let it out was to throw on some sweats and running shoes and go out and play touch football on the lawn outside, even though it was midnight out and snowing heavily. Of course, we waited for One Shining Moment.



Last, but not least, Syracuse in 2003.



There was room full of yelling, screaming 19-year-olds that night, at least not with that mid-20-something who watching on a TV in a newspaper office's boardroom. Times change and you learn to put away childish things, but not all of them.

Related:
Strange karma: CBS' "One Shining Moment" guy dies (Los Angeles Daily News; via The Quad)

John Candy, legend

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of John Candy's death. Greater minds could come up with a Top 5 J.C. moments. Personally, the water-skiing scene in The Great Outdoors ("You bastard! You bastard!" ... "What did he say?" ... "Faster, faster!) always tops "those aren't pillows!" from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, or anything from the Melonville oeuvre.

Anyway, John Candy telling Dave Letterman being grand marshal of Oktoberfest and owning a farm, pretty sweet.

Top 5: Conan clips

By no means should anyone claim to have the definitive post on Conan O'Brien's run as host of Late night on NBC.

David Letterman has always fulfilled my hero worship. Outside of Dave, Craig Kilborn, for about a two-year stretch in the early 2000s, made for very consistent viewing. It might look bad now, but nothing, but nothing, explains the turn of the century like Dave Grohl answering the question, "What's the best Beatles song to play when you're lit?", except for a game of Yambo between Mini-Me and the mom on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Regardless, nocturnal types who have had a roughly 3 p.m. to midnight shift since 2002 owe Conan a debt, so here's five faves from through the years.

Triumph takes on Star Wars fans ... "You don't deal with lesser life forms? You must be a lonely guy."



The more you know ...



Andy on The Today Show



"NBC has merged with Universal. Universal owns the USA Network. USA Network owns the rights to Walker, Texas Ranger which means I can play a Walker, Texas Ranger clip any time I want to, simply by pulling this convenient Walker, Texas Ranger lever."



The brawl to settle it all...



Have a nice today.

New opening to make life worth living

Everyone has seen the new Simpsons opening, but it's only fair to share it (Tomacco Juice? Mr. Sparkle?). The long-running series has given us thousands of hours of entertainment for free, so if anything, you owe them.

This site has plumbed the show's briny depths for a post likening Canadian university football teams to characters from the show. (the Laurier Golden Hawks are Homer, although to our knowledge no one, even at the old Seagram Stadium, ever hit the referee with a whiskey bottle, what on account of being in uptight Ontario). There were the best sports-themed episodes from the series' Golden Years and its Long Plateau. Just to be fair, there was a Top 5 for King of the Hill too.

Top 5: Pearls of wisdom

Jeff Pearlman's new gig fairly demands some sort of tribute, since he's one of those sportswriters you wish you could touch with a 39½-foot pole.

For his and our sake, Sports Illustrated better figure out how to put Pearlman front and centre.

"This is just my take, but it seems the network/website/magazine became obsessed with adding every big journalism name out there. So it started unloading tons and tons of money on the Rick Reillys and Howard Bryants of the business. Those guys are, of course, wonderful talents. But at some point, ESPN seemed to be hiring for the sake of hiring. They treated journalists in the way sports organizations treat players — gobbling up 'free agents' without much thought. Now, they’re loaded with big names, but is the finished product that much better? Probably not."

Along with his biography of Barry Bonds bio and thumping good reads about the 1986 New York Mets (The Bad Guys Won) and 1990s Dallas Cowboys (Boys Will Be Boys), Pearlman has produced some first-rate stuff for ESPN.com. His stuff speaks for itself, but it's like he's able to bring the point home that a sports figure does not cease to be interesting once he or she is no longer playing, without hitting people over the head with by being overly obvious.

Assuming Mr. Pearlman wouldn't mind, here's five gems among many from his body of work:

1. Fifth and Jackson (September 2008)— A retrospective on the slain California Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock, 30 years after he was shot to death.
   
   
2. From a Benz to a bike; the rise and fall of Clayton Holmes (January 2008) — It's a big myth that journalism leads to public good, but after Pearlman's empathetic profile of former Dallas Cowboy Clayton Holmes, the former Super Bowl-champion cornerback made an effort to get his life turned around. Of course, only Holmes could rescue himself, but who knows if he got a nudge from someone taking an interest in his life.
   
   
3. Joe Kennedy is gone, but not forgotten (March 2008) — A look at the widow of former Blue Jays pitcher Joe Kennedy and the support network she found through people in baseball.
   
   
4. Turning a critical eye to the ol' alma mater (August 2007) — One of the more welcome trends in sports media is that writers who don't claim to have all the answers and work through their own blind spots. Pearlman turned the focus on himself, questioning why in a decade of inveighing against Native American team nicknames, he'd never objected to his old high school being the Indians.
   
   In hindsight, this one resonates. My old high school's sports teams are the Ernestown Eagles. In Don Marks' book They Call Me Chief: Warriors On Ice, he talks about how there was a large dispute in the mid-1990s when a reserve-based Junior A hockey team in Lebret, Sask., opted to call itself the Lebret Eagles. The use of bird imagery is a very sensitive issue among aboriginals. It was not surprising, yet still embarrassing to have gone through 30-plus years not knowing this. It doesn't mean ESS should change its name, but just as it's good to know the Kingston Frontenacs' historical namesake had a tie to slavery, it's good to be aware.
   
   
5. Nothing meek about Meek's game (June 2007) — Remember Chaminique Holdsclaw, who was supposed to turn women's basketball on its ear in the late '90s? She had a couple good seasons and pretty much faded away, as she dealt with clinical depression. People don't forget.
   

Pearlman also believes Tim Raines should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Hopefully, all of this speaks to the man's ability to get people to use their heads in ways they didn't know they had. Reading Pearlman at SI.com will be a treat.

Related:
Goodbye, ESPN.com; hello, SI.com (Jeff Pearlman.com)

Updike and the Splendid Splinter, for those scoring at home

For anyone wondering, John Updike's famous essay, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," on Ted Williams' final game was referenced into the fourth paragraph of his obit in The Guardian in England. The New York Times put it in the 11th paragraph.

In keeping with some of Updike's themes, one has to feel guilty for being able to quote part of the Williams essay ... Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs — hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of ... which isn't even from the best part of the essay. It was not even the best piece of writing produced from that day, Sept. 29, 1960.

Rereading Updike now, having devoured it as a younger reader, what sticks out is the part about baseball is the one team game where a loner can flourish.

"But of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful intermittences of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled with poised men in white, its dispassionate mathematics, seems to me best suited to accommodate, and be ornamented by, a loner. It is an essentially lonely game."

That is it in a nutshell, even you can see Updike making it about himself.

The funny part is that out of that day, Ed Linn, who was there for Sport magazine, wrote one of the best pieces of his career. It was the kind of blend into the background and observe piece, but it was in keeping with most of the writing about Ted Williams, as a cranky guy who was very particular, but was a genius at baseball (like another leftfielder named Barry Bonds, as Sports On My Mind noted).

It is nowhere near as widely quoted, although when a book called Impossible Dreams: A Red Sox Anthology was published in 2003 (conveniently, just before Boston fans become completely insufferable), the Linn piece was included.

It's worth picking up. One should go for Ed Linn making writing accessible over John Updike making it look impossible every day of the week.

A reminder to enjoy every sandwich ...

Chris Lynch over A Large Regular just put up a post that was a reminder that the late Warren Zevon would have been 62 years old today.

There was a time back around 2000, 2001, through his death in September 2003, personally speaking, when Warren Zevon was a lifesaver. To each her/his own when it comes to music, but since Zevon had a couple sports songs -- eponymous odes to Bill Lee and the boxer Boom Boom Mancini, along with the hockey anthem Hit Somebody.

Warren might have only come to my attention since David Letterman was such a big fan and had him on Late Night and The Late Show so often. Maybe it's best just to share a few of his appearances with Dave:








The last Letterman appearance, Oct. 30, 2002:



All these years later, thanks again, Warren. Being down in Adelaide sipping Foster's in the shade sounds really good these days.

Blog blast past: Paul Quarrington, on life boxes and bullet-counters

Toronto author Paul Quarrington died earlier Thursday from lung cancer. One obit remembered him as a "hockey bard." As a small token of appreciation, here is a post from June 3, 2009, when news of his illness went public.

One way to stay positive about the sad news about Toronto author Paul Quarrington is to reflect on something taken from his work.

Quarrington, who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, has has indulged his sports sweet tooth for a couple of his comic novels. Home Game revolved around baseball, while King Leary traded on hockey.

He also provided two concepts serious sports obsessives probably should have a greater appreciation for, Life Boxes and bullet-counters. The first was from a sports book but covered life its ownself. It was the opposite with the latter, which is in keeping with how it goes with Quarrington. He usually turns it all inside-out to reveal any kind of truth.

LIFE BOXES

Life Boxes comes from Quarrington's Hometown Heroes. The book is kind of obscure. Quarrington hung around with the Canadian national hockey team during the months leading up to the 1988 Calgary Olympics. It's out of print and might not have a ton of appeal to either literary types or sports nuts (Canada doesn't have a national hockey team anymore). It was valuable for Quarrington's theory that the grid of career statistics that sports fans memorized off the back of trading cards in the days before Baseball-Reference.com or hockeyDB should be called Life Boxes.

"I have learnt about Life Boxes.

"No-one else calls them Life Boxes, although the name seems fairly obvious to me. Media people, scouts, creatures of this ilk, make a concerted effort to sum up a man's professional career in a box about yea big:"



"You see enough of these Life Boxes, you learn some things."

Quarrington wasn't the only one to muse how one could infer details about an athlete just from the rows of numbers. Bill James also covered it off in one of his Baseball Abstracts. However, the idea of a Life Box has some appeal. It offers clues about how someone lived, what kind of hopes they woulod have had early in their life, their personal frustrations, the bumps in the road and how it ended.

It reaffirms that pro athletes are blessed. Their Life Boxes are filled out for them. The rest of us are on our own. Most of us, frankly, don't have a screw's clue how to fill in the blanks if your life was laid out in the style of a hockey card.

2001-02 University of King's College ?
2002-03 Portage Daily Graphic ??
2003-04 Portage Daily Graphic ???
2004-05 Simcoe Reformer ????
2005-06 Simcoe Reformer ?????
2006-07 Ottawa Sun ??????
2007-08 Ottawa Sun ???????
2008-09 Ottawa Sun ????????

Thankfully, life isn't broken up into chunks. Don't miss the point, though. The appeal is in wishing it could be that simple.

BULLET-COUNTERS

Bullet-counters speaks to the old saw about never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. It comes up with writing about sports. There are so many statistics and names to that must be correct and every sport attracts it share of knowitalls and the literal-minded, God love 'em, plus a few honest-to-goodness dullards. Screw one detail up and all the blood, sweat and tears which went into capturing the spirit of the thing is null and void.

The way it works is there's no coming back from having all that meticulously crafted prose unravel on a nail thanks to a misspelled last name or writing a 25-yard pass was a 30-yard pass. The person pointing it out, take it from someone who's been on both ends, usually means well. However, the proper huffy response is to receive them as another those-who-can't type, as Quarrington's main character in The Ravine, Phil Quigley, a producer on a TV Western set in the 19th century, explains to an underling.

" 'See, the thing is, Willy, there is magic in television. But no one around here ever trusts the stuff. We don't need to get an actual hundred-and-sixteen-ear-old typewriter. We could shoot a dishwasher and just say it's a hundred-and-sixteen-ear-old typewriter, and everyone — everyone except Ernst Kibble — would believe us. Send it back.'

"Ernst Kibble, in case you are wondering, is a man who lives in, I don't know, a rabbit warren in Northern Ontario. He watches Padre faithfully, but has no interest in the show beyond the spotting and reporting of historical inaccuracies. He's the supreme bullet-counter. You know what I mean, right? For example, in the crowd at the Galaxy Odeon there were at least four kids who, upon commencement of any gunfight in the Old West, would start counting aloud the bullets fired. If there was ever a seventh bullet discharged from a six-shooter these little creatures would howl derisively. Bullet-counters grow up to be accountants, although Ernst Kibble has the syndrome too profoundly to function in society. He once pointed out to us — via an email, a godsend to the insane — that the stars in the night sky were in an alignment that belied our stated time of year. 'That is simply not a November vistage!' "

Bullet-counters seems like a good term for people who get hung up on something tiny and ancillary. They might be right. They're wrong if they can't see the magic that just happened, although the existence of such is usually a function of the writer's ego.

Who knows what fate awaits Paul Quarrington, since the survival rates for people diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer are not overly promising. He made the magic happen, and trying to popularize a couple of his concepts is just a modest way to join the people wishing him well in his fight.

Related:
Quarrington says lung cancer diagnosis 'surreal'; Writer and musician hopes to see some projects through (John Doyle, Globe & Mail; via Quill & Quire)

FNL: Burning for you, but not enough of you

Friday Night Lights does the slow burn so well.

That's the best stab at a segue into what makes FNL so "critically adored." (Its return to network TV was last week, after the full season ran on DirecTV.) Characters' emotions come out the same way you would expect it to in real life. It's the iceberg analogy: The show keeps seven-eighths of the emotion hidden until an appropriate time.

A slow burn is tough to bring across on TV. No doubt Mad Men pulls it off, but that's for someone else to say. Friends who are FNL devotees have often said they can relate Dillon, Texas, to any number of small Canadian towns where everything rotates around junior hockey (a subculture which has never been fictionalized particularly well).

A great case in point of how in the season opener came when a mortified Tyra Collette, the femme fatale played by Adrianne Palicki, watches her mom and older sister Mindy, a stripper, dance closely with some questionable dudes at a questionable bar. It ends with Mindy's boyfriend, Billy Riggins -- older brother of Tim Riggins (the Taylor Kitsch character), getting up on stage so he can drunkenly propose marriage.

It was supposed to represent trivial people, but there was no gawking or look-down-the-nose judgment. Watching it, as someone who grew up in the country, there was the sense that someone who works on the show gets that vibe. They've seen the desperation of a dive bar at closing time. They might have attended the Texas equivalent to a buck-and-doe, which in rural Canada is a party that's held to raise money for a couple who's getting married. (Generally, they tend to be all-time pissups.)

Any other show would have had Tyra make a face and stomp off on those long legs of hers. In the FNL universe, she stayed put, but you could read her like a book, the sense of someone seeing her future if she didn't get the hell out of Dillon.

Someone who grew up in a major city, which is most of us (especially in Canada, a country of big cites) might not fully understand. Those who have that background might not want a reminder of that decrepit Hooterville where they were raised.

Obviously, there is more to FNL. Others who write professionally about entertainment can better talk about its acting, how its characters don't come from affluence or wealth, unlike most popular prime-time dramas and how there are real consequences for bad decisions. One gets the sense that Smash Williams' situation, a former all-everything running back with a bum knee working at an ice cream parlour, is more commonplace than the media would ever care to let you know.

For a fan, the show is on such a level that reading the plot summaries on IGN.com (not to mention the spoiler for Season 4 hinted at by Variety, assuming there is a Season 4) before the series came back on network TV was practically a requirement.

For one thing, it allows one to zero in on how the actors and writers are going to pull it off. Secondly, it opens up awareness to the show's subtleties. Like The Simpsons, one is rewarded for paying attention.

For instance, in the season debut, Riggins/Kitsch goes to the ice-cream parlour to talk Smash/Gaius Charles into not giving up football. There's no hints dropped that in Season 1, there was tension between the white fullback and black running back(mostly personal, perhaps somewhat racial). Viewers are expected to know.

During the scene, there's a close-up on Smash standing behind the corner, and in front of him is a placeholder with the number 20 on it -- his jersey number. It was there, if you cared to notice.

It happened again in the final scene. The Panthers had just won their opening game. There was a postgame party, drinks flowing, band playing (both kinds: country and western). Riggins was telling Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly's character) that he didn't mind if she didn't want to come out as a couple. Prim, proper Lyla, the one-time one-half of the school's power couple going out with Riggins, who was best friends with her ex, Jason Street? It would not do.

Lyla, won over by Riggins playing the role of the concerned guy, moves in for a kiss. The shot switches to an overhead view and as the band twangs, "help me find my daughter," there's Buddy Garrity, Lyla's dad, standing there slack-jawed because he's been watching the entire drama unfold.

That alone is not going to make you check out the show. Most people make up their mind about a show in its first season, although thankfully advances have meant that's no longer possible. For a fanboy type, though, it illustrates FNL's appeal -- you want to know what's coming, just to be able to notice the little nuances.

And you're waiting for the next slow burn to hit its boiling point.

Related:
Why Matt Saracen got surly (Slate)

MacLean closing out '08 with a bang ...

On a show on the See Bee See no one will see...

"The seven member Royal Canadian Air Farce troupe went out in style, offering a fast, funny show that will air as an hour-long special Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. on CBC. There were several guest stars, including Hockey Night in Canada host Ron MacLean, who got to fire the chicken cannon at his favorite target (you know who)." -- TV Feeds My Family

One can only presume that would be NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and run with it like Derrick Ward did for the New York Giants in the NFL Sunday nighter. MacLean and the commish have a special rapport. Perish the thought whether it's appropriate for a serious broadcast journalist to be making sport of someone he covers on the beat, even if it is Bettman. Try to see the humour in this, although it would be about the first time anyone has been anything humourous in Air Farce since about 1997.

For the uninitiated, here's how the Chicken Cannon works.



Sports figures have been on the receiving end of the Chicken Cannon's blast from time to time, dating back to March 18, 1994, when future Kingston Frontenacs figurehead coach Doug Gilmour fired on a Detroit Red Wings poster on March 18, 1994. Presuming Bettman's getting it, it would be the second time the NHL commissioner-for-life has been the target of the year. His image, along with then-NHLPA Bob Goodenow's, got a joint splattering on the year-end 2004 show, during the last lockout.

Not that anyone asked, but an Air Farce finale definitely had to have some HNIC representation, since it allows shut-ins and people stuck working New Year's Eve to ponder which franchise is more date. (Luba Goy was making Lorena Bobbitt jokes when she was given a large knife to cut the cake at Friday's taping, for crying -- certainly not laughing -- out loud.)

Keeping it classy, Air Farce was a lot better as a radio program, especially when they taped in a different city each week and rip on the mayor and such. The humour tended to be broad, but one million viewers per week for 16 straight seasons demands that attention must be paid.

Those of you who demand that a Canadian sketch comedy should be absurdist (The Kids In The Hall), inventive (SCTV), topical (the original This Hour 22 Minutes) or goofy in an understated way (The Red Green Show) should drink a glass of shut-the-hell-up. Someone found Air Farce funny all these years.

Since this post is completely self-indulgent, it's probably OK to post one of the all-time greatest Kids sketches.

Zen Dayley: Veni, vidi, vici for Vin

It's a trip, on a December afternoon, to watch Vin Scully speak outlined against the backdrop of Dodger Stadium.

Next season will be Scully's 60th calling Dodgers games, and judging from what he's saying, it could be the last one: "Certainly I'm very aware that the wolves are getting closer to the campfire, and I know that I've spent a lot of yesterdays and I have just a certain amount of tomorrows," he said. "I'm taking it day by day and year and year, so God willing, I will go through 2009 and then we'll just have to wait and see."

It's probably too glib by half to say that he is kind of the broadcast booth's equivalent to Johnny Carson, someone whom everyone knew and respected, even if they didn't tune into him all the time. In Scully's case, he even staked out Southern California 14 years before Carson, since the Dodgers moved west in 1958, 14 years before The Tonight Show.

Hearing Vin Scully string out the word "marvellous" brightens the day, that's for sure (hope this clip embeds properly). Broadcasters have to learn to read and write before they learn to speak (just like writers have to learn to watch and listen), and Scully, in his word, is a marvellous example.

Something is up

The cryptic sentence of the day, from Brew Crew Ball:"The Padres and Blue Jays both might sell for less than the combined contracts of CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett." (Emphasis mine.) What are you guys saying?


Very Brave

Bringing in the veteran Rafael Furcal and having him displace 26-year-old Yunel Escobar at shortstop seems too chancy by half.

Someone was bound to take a chance that Furcal can play a full season. Escobar, who's going to get moved to either second base or traded, drew good reviews for his fielding last season. His .288/.366/.401 slash stats would have looked better if he hadn't gone in the tank in July.

Furcal is the better player if he can play a full season, but that's a big if to contemplate.

This, that and the other

• Langley, B.C.'s Brett Lawrie is rated as the third-best prospect in the Milwaukee Brewers system. Minor League Ball notes that he was taken down a peg due to his lack of a defined defensive position, but the Brewers haven't done too badly with bringing along hitters and moving them around in the field (Ryan Braun, Bill Hall).
• If it's any consolation, Rob Neyer didn't like the Yankees giving a five-year deal to A.J. Burnett: "(Burnett)'s not reliable, and the Yankees have pretty obviously overpaid. Too many dollars, too many years. If the Yankees wanted an impressive fifth starter, they probably could have spent a little less money for a slightly better pitcher. But what's a few million dollars to the Yankees?"
• The Yankees probably still need to sign Mark Teixeira to really challenge in 2009.
  
• The best takedown you will ever read of the sportswriters who are lobbying for Jim Rice to get into the Hall of Fame.
• A six-word argument for why the Blue Jays should not try to trade Roy Halladay: "The Padres couldn't trade Jake Peavy."
• No word of a lie, Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers' mustache actually has scared small children.
  

Top 5: Hank Hill, a fan for all seasons

The Fox Network announced late last week that this is last season of King Of The Hill. Sports has been a frequent go-to for series creator Mike Judge since the first episode in 1997, when Bobby got a shiner after being struck by a line drive in a Little League game because he was distracted by Hank's coaching advice.

The series never had the cultural import of The Simpsons. A book titled Planet Arlen would sell about 12 copies, and most of those would be pity buys, from the author's immediate family. The series, more so than other comedies that air on Fox on Sunday nights, has always brought a knowing sensitivity to the meaning of competition to people in small towns. The only difference between a small town in Texas in a small town in Ontario, other than the weather, is often the name of the game -- be it Boggle, lawn mower racing, middle school football. In the spirit of that, here are five of the show's best sports-themed episodes.

THE MAN WHO SHOT CANE SKRETTEBURG (Season 2)

Hank and his drinking buddies, Boomhauer, Bill Dauterive and Dale Gribble find out the hard way that they have passed to the other side of the generation gap thanks to a gang of teenage punks, voiced by the members of Green Day. The teens are terrorizing the neighbourhood, through high-volume jam sessions in their garage and by driving around firing a paintball gun at helpless bystanders (namely, Bill).

Hank challenges the teenagers to a paintball match -- "I am a finely tuned ex-high school athlete. I spent four years holding guys like you over toilets." The teenagers win easily and Hank and pals resign themselves ("Yep....") to the reality that drinking beer in the alley will be their main source of amusement for the rest of their days. "Don't try to figure 'em out," advises Pop, the neighbourhood's elder statesman. "They can't be figured. Just shake your fist at 'em like this!"

Hank asks for a rematch and the guys get their asses handed to them again. However, Hank refuses to give up, and rallies the troops, despite Dale's objections -- "I thought we agreed never to discuss the horrors we saw on the killing fields of the Fun Centre." Hank gets Cane to agree to another rematch, for high stakes -- Bill's leaf-blower vs. Cane's amp. The guys then devise a game plan, which of course, results in Hank splattering Cane to decide the match: "I think you're going to enjoy the world of acoustics."

BOXING LUANNE (Season 7)

It is no Million Dollar Baby, but it's a knockout all the same when Luanne, Hank's niece with a heart of gold and a built-in magnet draws in every jerk, bum and out-and-out weirdo in Heimlich County, is hired by Hank's unholy pig of a boss, Buck Strickland, who's promoting foxy boxing matches.

It starts out as a joke, but Luanne takes boxing seriously and deals a haymaker to gender stereotypes. "Women boxing, huh?" muses Bill. "If they wear gloves, how do they scratch each other?" Not unlike the plotline from Rocky III, Luanne dispatches a string of inept opponents, which leads her to be matched up against the bona fide No. 1 female boxer in Texas, Freeda Foreman, daughter of the ex-heavyweight champ George Foreman.

Hank visits the elder Foreman to get the fight called off. The champ agrees and suggests that as a favour to him, maybe Hank should see about carrying the George Foreman Grill at Strickland Propane. Hank, the propane purist, refuses, calling the appliance a "novelty grill," which sets Foreman off: "Fight's back on!"

Overmatched, Luanne gets in the ring against the younger Foreman. She ends up with a black eye and bruised face, to Buck's dismay ("We're shootin' the company calendar tomorrow!"). Luanne loses the fight, but she earns something else from the guys who'd come for three rounds of jiggle and jab: Their respect.

CARE-TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS (Season 9)

It's football season, and Arlen appears to have its best team since the late 1970s when Hank, as he's wont to point out, set "Arlen High's single-season rushing record." The only weak link is that the school groundskeeper, Smitty, is a bit out to lunch, and the shoddy field conditions cause Arlen to forfeit a big game.

As dedicated fans, former team members and members of the booster club in good standing (save for Dale, the only booster who did not take out an ad in the game program), Hank and the guys start maintaining the field under the cover of darkness. They make sure to give the old coot -- Dale nicknames him the Wizard of Sod -- all the credit for growing the grass long to slow down the oppositing team's speedy running back, or for making the field soft so the other team's star kicker couldn't kick any field goals.

The attention goes to Smitty's head, though, and soon the field is unusable. However, Hank gets Lucky -- Luanne's new boyfriend -- and his truck-racing pals to come to the rescue.

A BEER CAN NAMED DESIRE (Season 4)

There has to be an episode on this list that plays off Hank's love of the Dallas Cowboys. He wears his hair in a "modified Roger Staubach." He once tried to get the NFL team to move its training camp to Arlen. Peggy also once accused him of, after a Thanksgiving dinner where Hank's parents quarreled, of "defending Troy Aikman more than you defended your mother," to which Hank replied, "He had six dropped passes. All Troy can do is get it there."

Hank wins a contest where he gets to try to throw a ball through a hole in a giant Alamo Beer can for a million dollars at halftime of a Cowboys-New Orleans Saints game at the Louisiana Superdome. He builds an exact replica of the can and practises for weeks in the backyard to get ready for the momentous occasion. Once there, Hank is told that he can attempt the throw himself for the million, or have Cowboys legend "Dandy" Don Meredith throw on his behalf for $100,000. Of course, Hank's play-it-safe natures backfires on him.

Meantime, dateless wonder Bill tags along for the trip in order to visit long-lost Louisiana relatives, including a trio of comely Cajuns eager to bed one of the last living male Dauterives. One challenge for him -- figuring out which two of the three women are not related to him by blood. Suffice to say, he succeeds: "Did you have a good time, Bill?" ... "Both of 'em!"

BOBBY ON TRACK (Season 9)

Although a devout Methodist, Hank knows from having a cross to bear, since his pudgy, prop comedy-loving progeny Bobby, the only sire he's been able to produce due to his narrow urethra, cares little for sports. When Bobby signs up for a 5K fun run at school but can barely make it a few hundred metres beyond the starting line, Hank takes him to the track and field coach to whip him into shape.

The coach devises a strategy of putting Bobby into events in order to punish his better athletes when they act like anything less than elite athletes instead of 13-year-old boys. At first Hank is delighted Bobby is on a team and even has a nickname, The Stick.

Then he finds out the source of the nickname from the coach, who explains the state championship is "the carrot and your boy is 'The Stick.' " Regardless, the Tom Landry Middle School track and field team is so good that it can afford Bobby's last-place finishes and the boy enjoys being part of the team, even though he comes last in every event he enters.

The strategy works like a charm until the state finals. With Arlen trailing by a few points entering the final event, the relay, Arlen's last runner pulls up lame -- forcing Bobby to compete, for real.

Almost as good, but too similar: "What Makes Bobby Run" (season 4). Bobby becomes Tom Landry's mascot, but embarrasses Hank and the town when he flees from the traditional McMaynerbury Whuppin' that the Landry Longhorn is supposed to receive if the team is ahead at halftime in the big rivalry game. Bobby, however, makes good by stealing a rival school's pet armadillo, which sparks a new tradition -- the "Belton Beating."

Honourable mentions:

• How to Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying: Hank and Bobby participate in a father-son markmanship contest, but Hank's a terrible shot due to buried childhood trauma inflicted by his daddy, Cotton.
• Peggy Makes The Big Leagues: Hank is caught between his loyalty to his wife and to Arlen High's football team after Peggy fails the team's star fullback, David Kala'iki Ali'i ("The Flyin' Hawaiian"), making him ineligible for the annual grudge match against McMaynerbury.
  
  (Stadium announcer: "He says 'aloha' to the end zone and 'aloha' to the Temble Tigers! It means both hello and goodbye! My wife is Polynesian!")
• Bobby Slam: Bobby joins the school wrestling team, but ends up having to compete against his girlfriend, Connie
• Three Coaches And A Bobby: Hank is mortified when Bobby elects to play soccer -- "ballerina ball." Will Ferrell voices the coach of Bobby's team, the Wind: "A tie! No one has to feel inferior!"

Cheering for the Fronts has always been existential

Huzzah for TVCogeco for acknowledging that following the Kingston Frontenacs will make anyone question her or his existence.

At least it's established that Ethan Werek is very real. The Frontenacs power play, penalty killing, goaltending, heart, defence, third and fourth lines, coaching and management, well, that remains be to seen. The video, after the jump.



And then he scored in his first home game. Unfortunately for the Fronts, so did six players from Mississauga:



Incidentally, ex-Fronts centre Luke Pither was player of the week in the OHL.

R.I.P., Little General: Ron Lancaster's era a nice place to revisit

Between Bob Ackles in July and Ron Lancaster today, it's been a very tough year for CFL legends.

Lancaster's death is a reminder that the CFL and Canadian sports will never again have anyone like the Little General, who lost his fight with cancer today at age 69. There will be always be very good quarterbacks who come to the CFL, walk humble and seem unprepossessing. Anthony Calvillo comes to mind but he could never matter to as many Canadians across the country the way Ron Lancaster will forevermore.

People should mourn the man and keep his family and friends in their thoughts first, second and third. Lancaster's death gives pause to reflect on how difficult it is in Canada to have whose best work comes on Canadian soil. That's a part of the mourning. He was above us and he walked among us in a way no one can now.

We know much to deify a CFL player. At the other end of the spectrum, the great Canadian sports figures today, all the guys in the NHL, along with the likes of Steve Nash, Kara Lang or Justin Morneau, each do their thing in the U.S., so there's not the same familiarity.

As much as people are reflecting on Lancaster's careers as a Grey Cup-winning quarterback who threw for 50,535 yards, coach, CBC commentator and team executive, that's something else to reflect upon. To a generation which only knew him as a player thanks to the Grey Cup Classics that CBC used to run during the build-up to the CFL's championship game, Lancaster best evokes a bygone era. When you want to take people back in time to that era of Canadian sport, mentioning Ron Lancaster does the trick.

This is, for all its flaws, is a fairly golden age in sports. The digital revolution has basically made it possible to follow any athlete, any team, in any league -- if you decided you were going to abjure all other sports and only follow the Swedish Elite League or a small-college NCAA football team (how 'bout them Montana Grizzlies!), chances are some of your friends would nod in understanding. They might actually applaud your attempts to simplify, man.

What does this have to do with Ron Lancaster? There's so much opportunity to know so much as a sports fan. Frankly it can be off-putting if you think too much about the futility of trying to keep up with everything, especially if you take pride in not having to check sports scores first thing every morning. (You check them before bed, silly.)

That's why the passing of Ron Lancaster is not so much a chance to wax nostalgic for the good old days of the CFL, especially as someone who wasn't there. It's more of a desire to have what Canadian football nuts seemingly had in the heyday of Lancaster, Russ Jackson, George Reed, Ronnie Stewart, Angelo Mosca and the greatest generation of Canadian football legends who played from the dawn of the 1960s through the early '70s.

They knew that as a sports fan in Canada who liked football, you could set your watch to seeing Ron Lancaster, No. 23 with the single-bar facemask, under the centre for the Saskatchewan Roughriders on a September afternoon. They knew you could call him Canada's answer to Johnny Unitas (both were from the same part of the U.S., Lancaster from Ohio, Johnny U from Western Pennsylvania) without it seeming like an overreach from a second-rater.

As well, in an era when the salaries in the CFL and NFL were actually comparable, you knew he wasn't settling or looking at the CFL as a way station. Not unlike Jack Donahue, the long-time national team basketball coach, or Michael "Pinball" Clemons nowadays, Canadians had a special place. An Ameri-Canadian -- born in the U.S., but born to make his mark here -- is a special validation that although we can't match the U.S. for glitz, glam and over-the-top hyberbole, we're just as good.

From this vantage point, there must have been great comfort in having that kind of certainty. The roughly 2,000 or so remembrances that will be written across this country over the next day or two will certainly be full of first-person anecdotes, reflections on Lancaster's impact on the Canadian game, the records, the Grey Cups.

There was a shared experience taking place. It's quite possible it was just as cliche then to say that the entire country came to a standstill for Grey Cup, just as it doesn't today. In the sports world that existed before NFL Sunday Ticket, you could watch the Grey Cup knowing that was the first choice for most people who were watching football that day. No one was saying, in a somewhat guilty tone, "OK, I guess I'll watch the Grey Cup."

No one was guilted into trying to be a good Canadian (not that anyone should feel guilty if they watch the NFL instead). Back then, though, the CFL was the first choice, with good reasons.

There's no desire to go back to those days. However, along with celebrating the man, please reflect on how Ron Lancaster was important because everyone understood what Ron Lancaster did. He was the Little General. People probably learned how to do math problems by figuring out his completion percentage, even though he was the one who said statistics are for losers if you didn't win.

He belonged to Canada in a way that no CFL player ever could again.

Related:
CFL legend dies at age 69 (Canwest News Service)