WHERE'S RICK MONDAY WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

For reasons that are obvious, the joy has kind of been sucked out of my one true calling today. Here's some short stuff from around the Interweb:

• Like Chris Hitchens said, zero tolerance equals zero thought: The Star's Cathal Kelly reports that an expat named Lee Fraser who's originally from Pembroke, Ont. (which makes it local for us) was hassled by Dodger Stadium for exuberantly waving a Canadian flag during the Jays-L.A. game on Saturday. Where was Rick Monday to defend the flag?
  
  To top it off, Kelly's story quotes the dude who played Mr. Raditch on Degrassi, who was part of Fraser's group. Having Mr. Raditch there just enhances the hoser pathos.
• Deadspin has a thread about a Louisville Courier-Journal reporter, Brian Bennett, who was a ejected from a NCAA baseball playoff game for blogging from the press box. Hopefully the powers-that-be realize how shortsighted this is; speaking as someone who liveblogged from press box/press row during a few Ottawa Gee-Gees basketball games this season, it's a new way to bring the game to people. Beyond that, a blog's not a re-transmission. It's analysis. As the Courier-Journal's attorney said, "Once a player hits a home run, that’s a fact. It’s on TV, everybody sees it. They (the NCAA) can't copyright that fact."
• Mirtle notes that the talk over bigger nets in the NHL just won't go away, and Gary Bettman is getting a raise.

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

BASEBALL ON THE BRAIN...

Note to readers: There is a lookahead at the Jays' two remaining games vs. the Tigers well down the page. It's going to be a regular feature throughtout the baseball season and it will not always be buried under a long post about small-town dumbassery.

RANDOM OFFENSIVES

• Forget the Titanic Division title (it's in the bag)... Raptors fans need to focus on the No. 3 playoff seed; they're a half-game ahead of the Wizards and one up on the Miami Heat. Cool Standings says the Raptors will finish 45-37 and odds are that will be enough to avoid slipping to No. 4 and facing the Bulls.
• mc79hockey points out that the Oilers' slump -- 12 games, 11 goals -- was almost historically unprecedented.
• Some would say that's what you get for dissing the Toronto Argonauts and being a general hypocrite: Joe Theismann (AKA Stupid Joe) has been ousted from Monday Night Football. By the way, that "Norman Einstein" quote that's dogged Joe for the past decade and a half? Leave it alone -- he had a high school pal by that name, and that guy was pretty sharp.
• Twenty-two baseball previews down, eight to go.

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

FOLLOWUPS: ROGUE AGENTS, DOOKIE 'POETRY'

We don't forget about a story once we've had our initial fun with it:

• Just another weird twist in the saga of Rogue Agent David Frost; he was charged with fraud after using a credit card registered to another person to pay for gas in Kingston.
  
  The card was registered to... Mike Danton. Frost, still facing several sex charges, did hint to a reporter that he's thinking of leaving the Kingston area, but he would say that just to get my hometown's hopes up, wouldn't he?
• Speaking of rogue agents, remember news of the disgraced Alan Eagleson's memorabilia auction, which even got mentioned on Sportsnet Connected? His old pals in the working press, Bruce Dowbiggin and Russ Conway, have proven that he's selling a fake Bobby Orr sweater.
• In our Mariners preview, we took note of pitcher Miguel Batista's wordsmithing, adding, "No one's literary ambitions should ever be mocked. (Except for this guy's.)."
  
  That may have to be reconsidered after friend and reader Julian Dickinson forwarded a link to former Duke basketballer/current NBA benchwarmer J.J. Redick's poetry, so-called, which Sports Illustrated actually published two years ago:
  
  No bandage can cover my scars
  It's hard living a life behind invisible bars
  Searching for the face of God
  I'm only inspired by the poems of Nas
  
  Anyone else think that finding out that a Dookie was name-dropping him in poems inspired Nas to write Hip-Hop Is Dead?

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

FRIDAY'S RANDOM OFFENSIVES....

But Clay, how'd you get that big motorcycle up there on the high dive anyhow?

• Deadspin wonders why no one complains about NCAA games that go past midnight in the East -- the way they do with the World Series. Meantime, The Big Lead is advising Greg Oden to go to the pros ASAP.
• Leafs fans: Stop scoreboard-watching. If the boys in blue win six of their last nine (which won't come easy, of course), they'll get in the playoffs. Buffalo owes the Leafs a couple.
• Would you believe those PhotoBucket puritans deleted the Michelle Rodriguez pic which ran, apropos of nothing, with our St. Louis Cardinals preview? It "violated Photobucket's terms of service." I'd like to tell them what else they can violate...
  
  ... anyway, that meant scouring the web for a new one. Tough work.
• The Arizona Cardinals recently fired receivers coach Richie Anderson after he was picked up in a john sweep. It was actually the most successful sweep ever run that involved the Cardinals.

DEADSPIN TAKES ON THE JAYS

Note to readers: Our Book of Scrap has a guest blogger today whose ugly mug might be somewhat recognizable to all y'alls.

Also, fans of Deadspin and the diamond game might want to note that their preview of the Toronto Blue Jays has just been published.

Could this day be any more perfect?

Comin' up next, a hour-long episode of 'Mamma's Family.'

.... yes!

This segues into the greatest line ever about "guest" anything, which came from good friend Dan Rowe, who once wrote that Bill Cosby guest-hosting Late Night With David Letterman had nothing to do with dispelling rumours he was dead. Believe it or not, that appeared in the Queen's Journal sports section, apropos of delivering a Vince Carter pisstake par excellence.

JANSSEN SUSPENDED FOR KABERLE HIT

The Devils' Cam Janssen gets three games for this late, and high, hit on Leafs d-man Tomas Kaberle.

Shorter version of Damien Cox's column today: We never learn.

What a week for the Leafs — only two out of a possible eight points and their best defenceman gets injured by a no-talent plug in the game they actually won.

KINGSTON ARENA VOTE TONIGHT

Cue the dramatic music... Kingston city council might take a vote on whether to continue the downtown arena project tonight, and there might be six council members ready to deliver a kill vote (five are for building, and the other six are holding their cards close). You should read this out loud, barely above a whisper, for dramatic effect.

LAZY SUNDAY: CRAZY COINCIDENCES

Forest Whitaker's favoured to get the Best Actor Oscar tonight for The Last King of Scotland ... but Lincoln High's offensive backfield would argue that Ridgemont's Charles Jefferson was a bigger terror than Idi Amin. Other short stuff for your Sunday aft.:

• Let's assume it was a coincidence that this blog was threatened by a certain beer baron's representatives the same week said beer baron was being profiled in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business.
• Paul Zimmerman, S.I.'s Dr. Z, is going on a six-month sabbatical, but not before letting us in on what football was like in the bad old days, when coaches such as Weeb Ewbank would let coaches see the game films:
  
  "So he brought all the writers into the film room and we watched the game close-ups, and oh my God, I'll never forget the lunatic violence I saw that day. The play I'll always remember was Raider DT Dan Birdwell winding up and landing a full uppercut to Joe Namath's groin, after he'd delivered the ball. Jacknifed Joe Willie right over, but he staggered to his feet and stayed in the game. What was the AFL's reaction to this stuff? Fined the Jets for showing us game films."
  
• Cyberbuzz.tv has the purported prototypes for the new 'sleeker' NHL uniforms -- the Canucks may go back to the old blue-and-green. (Via Mirtle.)

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

WORTH CLICKING OVER TO....

Let's all welcome my Sun Media colleague Rob Brodie to the blog world. Brodie's blog, Remote Control builds on the sports media column that he regularly pens for the Ottawa Sun and its sister newspapers.

SQUIB KICKS FOR YOUR SUPER MONDAY

Woke up too late to formulate a good semi-cogent rant, so here's some random offerings:

• As the basketball coach at Toronto's Humber College (defending Ontario champs), Darrell Glenn knows about managing pressure situations... but this is something else entirely: Glenn delivering his own son in the front seat of the family car last weekend when his wife Koren Bogle-Glenn went into labour. Mom and Rayner Winston (7 lbs., 1 ounce) are reported to be doing well.

• Quebec City says it has a budget plan in place to co-host the 2008 world hockey championship.

• There's an irrational little voice that hopes the Boston Red Sox complete the trade for Todd Helton. It keeps repeating, "The more Boston can overpay for guys in the winddown portion of their career, the better!" Helton's not that old (34 on Aug. 20), but once you remove the Coors Field factor from his stats, it kind of paints a picture of someone whose career is in freefall.

Baseball-Reference.com, which is to stat geeks what Saks Fifth Avenue is to shopaholics, has a "stats neutralizer" that puts every player's numbers in a context of a 162-game season where every team scored 4.42 runs per game. When you put in Helton's '06 numbers, it works out to an .829 on-base plus slugging (OPS) -- a drop of more than 100 points from two seasons earlier. The Blue Jays first baseman, Lyle Overbay, had an .848 OPS in '06, and he's both four years younger than Helton and comes cheaper. Overbay's new deal calls for $6 million per, as opposed to Helton's $16.6 million salary, although the Colorado Rockies would cover some of that.

Could Helton correct that? Well, a lot of the "most similar through age 32" players to Helton are guys who went downhill fast, but most of those are 1930s sluggers such as Chuck Klein and Sunny Jim Bottomley, and their short career span may have just been a byproduct of their era. The third-most similar player to Helton is Frank Thomas, and Jays fans are hoping he continues his late-career renaissance.

• Pro Football Hall of Famer John Mackey, who's struggling with dementia, is a little upset that Indianapolis Colts wideout Marvin Harrison wears his old No. 88. (David Steele, Baltimore Sun.)

YES, WE WENT THERE...

A Deadspin commenter pointed this out -- if Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady become an item, will tabloid headlines refer to them as Gisom?

FOOTBALL WRITERS AND FUZZY MATH

It's one thing when a promiment sportswriter balancing all sorts of media gigs says something dumb in front of a live mic on TV or radio, but to actually write something this stupid, as Sports Illustrated's Peter King did...

"Here's the number that really matters to me: (Bill) Cowher and Joe Gibbs have each coached 15 regular seasons. Cowher's teams won 149 games in his 15 years. Gibbs' teams won 145 in his."

Not to be a hard-on about it, but NFL players' strikes during the 1982 and '87 seasons cost Gibbs a chance to coach in eight regular-season games. Seeing how Gibbs' Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl in both shortened seasons, doesn't it sound like a fair bet Gibbs would have made up those four wins if those teams had played a full 16-game schedule?

Washington went 8-1 in 1982 and 11-4 in '87, so the answer is yes.... credit Bill Cowher, the Pittsburgh Steelers coach, for having sustained success in the era of the salary cap, but please think of a more intelligent way to express that thought.