A true Canadian would laugh this off since our sense of humour is what we're known for, eh? That said, good on Minnesota Twins slugger Justin Morneaufor sounding off about Major League Baseball not having a vocalist for O Canada at the all-star game.
"I wasn't very impressed with that to tell you the truth ... You figure they could find somebody to come and sing the song. They have a hockey team here, the Canadian teams play here.
"It's something that didn't really go over too well. I think if it happened the other way around, if they were playing in Toronto and they did that, it would have been a lot bigger deal. But nothing you can do about it."
The rub is, though, getting indignant over such a trifle does not make you patriotic. Shame on media outlets who pander to the Great Canadian Inferiority Complex by running a poll asking the leading question that begins, "Do you think Major League Baseball disrespected Canadians and the Toronto Blue Jays..."
The reality is there was no outcry in Canada when it happened last year at Yankee Stadium. Secondly, it's nice to be acknowledged, however a country finds validation within, not from Bud Selig and FOX Sports' Americana porn on an idyllic summer night in St. Louis.
Deep-down, a true patriot would not care too much. It stung at first during last year's all-star game when on top of the anthem omission, FOX's Joe Buck mispronounced Roy Halladay's name and Tim McCarver incorrectly identified the Blue Jays' stadium as "the Rogers Dome," but it just doesn't matter. In hindsight, maybe that wasn't a snub, maybe it was just honest mistakes by one man who would rather be mediocre at seven media gigs rather than master one and a colour analyst who is well past his best-before date.
Making this out as even a mild international incident is facts-plus-fiction. The fiction is that MLB has to give Canada any acknowledgement simply because "for now, at least" (fist bump: Bob Costas) one of its 30 teams is based in this country.
Granted, it is a smaller fiction next to the way FOX presents baseball as something uniquely American. The sport would be screwed if it wasn't for players from the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. They should play the national anthems of the Dominican Republic, Japan and Venezuela.
Using a taped version of O Canada has been standard at the all-star game for some time. The pregame ritual of trotting out sundry baseball legends, topped off last night by President Obama throwing out the first ball and squeezing in a ton of commercials is very tightly scripted. Something has to give. That's the reality. A celebrity speaks up, though, and suddenly everyone's a patriot.
(There is a talking point that should no national anthems played at all, but please. It's a logical, rational thought, especially since the practice is largely limited to North America. However, you live in this world — do you really see a day when that won't happen? Part of loving sports is resisting logic and rationalism.)
It's all raisins off an Oldsmobile. None of this should have kept you up at night.
... Knowing today is not the day when you will finally go a full 24 hours without feeling embarrassed by Canada. The NHL Free Agent Special starts on TSN2 at noon.
... Sarah Palin telling Runner's World she could beat Barack Obamain a footrace. It didn't work out so well the last eight years when the U.S. had a president who was tryin' to be the best at exercisin', instead of governin'.
(About Canada Day. Fair is fair, though, and you're dead inside if you don't love the clip of Chandra Crawford singing O Canada at the Olympics three years ago.)
... those nonsense stories you see every year around Canada Day about how a shockingly high percentage of Canadians can't identify "famous faces." Do you think any other country measures patriotism by the ability to ID someone from a 125-year-old photo?
... wondering how long it will take the Toronto Blue Jays to get the scent out Paul Godfrey out of the good linen (see Vernon Wells' contract and nostalgia hire Cito Gastonburning out his best hitters).
... realizing one of the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats will be 1-0 tomorrow. Great, now they'll probably tie.
... the CFL not making the Montréal Alouettes appear at the stadium in Calgary yesterday to promote the second half of tonight's CFL season-opening doubleheader, "forcing the media hordes to battle downtown traffic" to get interviews (Calgary Herald). Think about it. The CFL is such a slick, professional operation that it induces feelings of nostalgia when it does drop the ball. Where is Murray Pezim when you need him?
... Vibe magazine folding. What happened to the money from Peter Gibbons buying 40 subscriptions? (Wait, that was in Office Space.)
What's not bothering you today, since it's all raisins off an Oldsmobile ... oh, and an Islanders beat writer says the team will takeMatt Duchene No. 1 overall.
... Being the only person who ever saw a resemblance between Oren Koules and Michael Bluth from Arrested Development (it was the hair). The comparison is totallyapt, considering what's happened to the Tampa Bay Lightning. At this rate, they'll soon be holding a Save Our Bolts fundraiser?
... Rosie DiMannogetting into it with the entire city of Hamilton after she called it "a dump." Shame on her for violating the unwritten rule to never to point out the Hammer's failings in print. She missed the point that people love Hamilton, Ontario, the way you love a three-legged, half-blind, hard-of-hearing dog with a flatulence problem (so sayeth the guy whose sister and brother-in-law live in Stoney Creek, so hold the hate mail).
... ESPN.com failing to put Peyton Manning on its All-Decade NFL team.
... sports columnists who go on about the Tiger-and-Phil overkill during major golf tournaments. Please just explain to people that the way it works is the PGA's corporate sponsors expect the big names who move product to get more camera time, regardless of the leaderboard. Looking for serious storytelling on a golf broadcast is like looking for chastity in a cathouse.
... Peter C. NewmansayingHeather Reisman "saved the publishing industry." Apparently saved is synonymous with running independent booksellers and small publishing houses out of business, but hey, Newman's books still sell at Chapters once they're marked down to $9.99.
... the MuchMusic Video Awards getting a worse ass-kicking than Perez Hilton. CBC got twice as many viewers by showing Happy Gilmore, a 13-year-old comedy.
The Tao of Stieb seemed put off by the discovery of a YouTube channel called ActionSeat, which seems to consist of two very blond young women asking allegedly off-beat questions to major leaguers.
One person's off-beat is one person's inane, but it seemed worth a toss. Every other Blue Jays blog is getting mileage out of the clip of the Jays' Vernon Wells deadpanning that teammate Aaron Hill is "racist." One of The Tao's commenters claims one of the interviewers, so-called, is a server in those primo In The Action seats behind home plate at Rogers Centre, which could get, uh, interesting if reporters choose to follow up instead of seeing it as benign.
Really, it's pretty benign. With the wrong kind of mind, one could even argue the one young woman saying to Houston's Michael Bourn, "I don't get baseball," is an homage — a modern re-imagining — of Bob Newhart's classic routine.
Every Seamhead has been there once, asked to explain baseball.
"You got a pitcher and a catcher. They throw this ball back and forth. That's all there is to it?
"All right. A guy from the other side stands between them. With a bat. I see. And he just watches them?
"Oh, I see. He swings at it?
"He may or he may not swing at it. Depending on what?
" ' If it looked like it were a ball.' Uh, what's a ball, Mr. Doubleday?"
It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team who you know fully well won't win. In honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things tangentially about each Major League Baseball team. At bat: The Chicago Cubs.
Baseball Prospectus 2009's leaderboards see Rich Harden of Victoria, B.C., leading the majors in ERA (3.04), WHIP (1.12) and strikeouts (235).
Canadian insult: Ryan Dempster can go do his impression of Will Ferrell doin' an impression of Harry Caray out in the middle of a mosquito-infested lake, eh.
Dempster and his spouse, Jennifer, were expecting a baby (a girl who was born last Thursday), so it's understandable that he demurred from playing for Team Canada at the WBC (although someone should have told the guy in Montreal who wrote, "Dempster must think those millionaire hockey players in the NHL who always seem to jump at the opportunity to represent Canada are crazy." There's still one living Montreal Maroon.)
Dempster also just put up Triple Crown stats of 17-6 and a 2.96 ERA with 187 strikeouts, a once-a-career season, so one can understand why he wouldn't want change his routine. Granted, liking sports is not about being rational.
Sometimes it is this simple: The Cubbies led the National League in on-base (.354) and slugging percentage (.443) last year before addingMilton Bradley's big bat.
Their outlook summed up in one line from an Apatow movie: "Try some wrong, dog." It's a good group of complementary players, with catcher Geovany Soto as the one legit star at the eight everyday spots.
It's tempting to think ace Carlos Zambrano spoke for more than a few players when he wished the Cubs would get a new stadium. The place is 95 years old, for pete's sake.
The Cubs don't have a ton of depth in their farm system, raising the question of what they would give the Padres for Jake Peavy.
Harden has a rep as damaged goods. The Beep notes that Cubs manager Lou Piniella has a track record with brilliant-but-brittle pitchers. Jose Rijo had his three best seasons with Piniella in Cincinnati from 1990-92, averaging 204 innings a season with a 2.59 ERA and 1.107 WHIP.
Carlos Marmol has been the closer-elect for a while. Kevin Gregg, who saved 29 games for Florida last season, has been installed as closer.
You'll grow sick of hearing that leftfielder Alfonso Soriano went 3-for-28 in the playoffs the past two seasons. The sample sizes in the post-season are too small to really form firm conclusions.
Milton Bradley, who's 31, wasn't born the last time a Cubs had a 30-homer season from a left-handed hitter. That streak likely continues unless you believe Kosuke Fukudome has some latent home-run tendencies.
Bradley is more dangerous from the right side, but going with Fukudome in right field again is the equivalent of bringing Zambuca to a party. Fukudome's passable in centrefield if there's no one better.
Neither second baseman Mike Fontenot nor shortstop Ryan Theriot is up to playing every day, but they can be on the Bobby Hebert All-Stars every day (that's American athletes with French-sounding names; they won a College World Series title together at Louisiana State).
Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez make for a decent set of corner infielders. It's still hard to believe Lee once had 99 extra-base hits in a season.
Minor League Ball says the Cubs have "no one with impact hitting potential at the higher levels" of the minor leagues. There goes another destination for Roy Halladay.
Theodore Lilly is a good glue guy as the fourth starter, 200 innings a season, ERA in the high 3s or low 4s. Sweet liquor eases the pain of the year when he was the lone Jay selected for the all-star game, even if he and I share a birthday.
Former Jay Reed Johnson, according to a panel of Jays Talk callers, has been voted the greatest baseball player of all time. He wasn't a league-average hitter last season. He didn't have a 50% success rate as a base stealer (5-for-11) and he only hit six home runs all season while playing at Wrigley Field, but he's a white guy who always looks like he's trying really hard.
We dare not think of the bitterness that will happen if the Cubbies make the World Series.
True to form, the Chicago writers are already up in arms over Fukudome starting in centrefield over Johnson: "Forget the idea of a platoon unless Johnson shows one is necessary."Johnson has a career on-base-plus-slugging of .712 vs. right-handers. What more does he have to do to show it's necessary?
The Cubs are 163-128 (.560) since June 1, 2007. Keep in mind that includes the oh-fer in the playoffs.
It's fake baseball, so it shouldn't really be annoying, but National League teams shouldn't get use a DH whenever they pretty much feel like it during spring training games. They get to have it both ways: More swings for their players before the season starts, less swings for the AL teams' guys once the season starts. Screw them.
Kris Pollina was the only one out of Baseball Daily Digest's 11 prognosticators who doesn't have the Cubbies making their third straight playoff appearance (which would be unprecedented for a Chicago baseball team).
Good trivia question for the year 2025: Utilityman Aaron Miles got the first hit in the new Yankee Stadium.
Right-hander Jeff Samardzija gave up football to focus on baseball, but as long as he's in same city as the NFL's Bears, he's the best wide receiver in town. (Yes, Samardzija is in Triple-A.)
(This what happens when you cheer for the Vikings and they don't get Jay Cutler. You have to compliment a Notre Dame guy to zing the Bears.)
Great Bermanesque nickname suggestion, which best of all, did not come from Chris Berman:Bleed Cubbie Blue has come up with Starlin "Vocal Band" Castro.
The Cubs do play the most afternoon games of any major-league team.
Pedro Martínez's career 4.12 ERA at Wrigley Field is the worst for any part where he's pitched at least 50 innings. That might come up later this season — or not.
One reason not to replace Wrigley that no one thought of: There is the risk future generations might not get the part in The Blues Brothers when Dan Aykroyd's character listed his address as 1060 West Addison St.
Doubt Paul's Messianic qualities all you want. Why else would he say he watches NBA League Pass, "religiously?"
It's past the point where one even gets angry to see Tim Raineslumped in with the Steroid Era ballplayers for doing cocaine in the '80s. Raines had trouble with the nose candy and came clean, so let it go.
The Montreal Canadiens — the CH is for "cratering Habs" — are giving Alex Kovalev some time off. It's no big deal. Kovalev usually takes off about 25 games a season.
Jesse Lumsden signed with the Edmonton Eskimos. As if Alberta's health-care system isn't under enough strain.
Owen Wilson might play a ballplayer in an upcoming movie. It's a Reese Witherspoon RomCom, so you've been warned well in advance.
The Calgary Hitmen junior hockey team might have gone a little heavy on the honey shots in this commercial. It's a good-looking town, but this isn't doing much for Edmonton's inferiority complex (don't worry, Edmonton, you're unique and have a great personality).
This post was worth nothing, but this is worth noting
The Kingston Voyageurs have advanced to the second round of the playoffs. So that is possible for a Kingston junior hockey team.
The Frontenacs' Ethan Werek is up to 24th in the International Scouting Service's rankings for the NHL draft. Yes, this typist tends to beejo Ethan Werek. Incidentally, The Hockey News' hot list includes a player from the Indiana Ice, the team Werek supposedly left because the calibre of hockey was not good enough.
Best of luck to K-Towner and former Queen's Golden Gael Matt Kirk. The CFL D-lineman has signed with Radoslav's beloved Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
It figures the ATJs' first series loss would come courtesy of Jonah Keri's Montreal Expos.
Dropping the first two games of a three-game set at the Big O (a 17-1 curbstomping in the opener, followed by a 6-4 setback at the hands of Triple-A callup Charlie Lea hurts, man. The Expos have been just a memory for nearly five years, but it has not been forgotten that 'Spos fans never liked to admit anything about the Blue Jays is very good or useful. Toronto, after all, could never hold a candle to Montreal when it came to the finer things in life, no matter how many World Series titles or Canadian head offices of Fortune 500 companies it boasted. It sucks to see them gain imaginary bragging rights. These outrages will not be forgotten.
The Expos won the first all-Canadian interleague game. On June 30, 1997, the eve of Canada Day, Pedro Martínez, on his way to his first Cy Young, Award, beat Pat Hentgen, the Jays' first Cy Young winner, 2-1 in a tidy one hour and 57 minutes. (This is burned in memory since I was umping a ball game that night and had counted on getting home in time for the last couple of innings.) The Expos also won the final interleague game against the Jays, on the Fourth of July in a minor-league park in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The fact that Canadian Shawn Hill earned his first major-league W (to go with the one he now sports as a member of the Washington Nationals) provided the lone grace note.
Saying that it is just two games out of 154 is cold comfort. The ATJs are rolling otherwise, leading their division with a 23-12 record, good for a six-game lead over the D-Rox and the best record among the 12 expansion franchises.
Losing to the Expos sucked. The Jays have won 4-of-7 since the last update, scoring 48 runs in that stretch.
That day, he was Tom Terrible: Some of you might not know that the great Tom Seaver pitched for the Cincinnati Reds for a few seasons.
Cincinnati Tom could only get through three innings against the ATJs in a 15-3 shellacking on May 14. The starting corner infielders, Carlos Delgado and Troy Glaus, apparently begged out of starting against Seaver. In their stead, backup infielders Fred McGriff (3-for-5, three runs) and Rance Mulliniks (4-for-5, three runs) each got on base to start big rallies, a four-run second and a four-run fifth inning.
Grab some Bench: Right-hander Roy Halladay shaved his ERA down to 1.23 after pitching eight solid innings in a 4-1 win over the Reds on May 13. He struck out Johnny Bench, whom some consider the greatest catcher of all time, twice.
Clutchiness: Toronto's 9-2 record in one-run games does not include late-game breakthroughs they had in consecutive wins over the D-Rox on May 10-11, winning 15-8 (in 13 innings) and 7-3.
The lineup shuffle: The rule of thumb is you're supposed to stick with what works. Tony Fernandez, batting of the No. 9 spot, is on-basing .431 and is second on the team with 8.46 runs created per 27 outs. (Delgado leads at 9.31.) Fernandez has been more productive than leadoff man Lloyd Moseby (6.64 RC/27) and 2-hole hitter Robbie Alomar (5.22). Fernandez might rate some time in the 2-hole, much the same away that Cito Gaston flip-flopped Alomar and Paul Molitor in the lineup in 1993 depending whether the other team was starting a right- or left-handed pitcher.
Regardless, some changes might be coming. Cleanup man George Bell is racking up RBI (team-high 32 in 35 games), but his .245/.262/.396 rate stats are barely replacement-player level. Bell has come alive in the last week, so he stays put, for now. None of the other righty-hitting corner outfielders seem to offer much pop, so he's the best option.
Regrets, there a few: Not taking Dave Winfield based on his one season in Toronto in 1992 might have been a mistake, keeping in mind that the 40-year-old would have had to play the outfield every day. There's no need to double-check that Winfield only played the outfield 26 times during the regular season.
The not-as-cold corner: Third baseman Troy Glaus has hit safely in six consecutive games (big woop), including his first two homers. He's still hitting a tepider than tepid .196/.304/.278, which isn't cutting the mustard for a No. 6 hitter. He's lost at-bats to Mulliniks, who gets on base but offers no power.
The tall tactician:Jonah Keri has pulled out all the stops to keep his Expos around the .500 mark, going with a "seven-man rotation and a shuttle bus between Montreal and Ottawa," to cobble together a pitching staff.
Anyone who uses a word such as "breastophobic" shouldn't get the time of day.
One is loath to link to something which has been Deadspinned. Long story short, it's hard not to laugh like hell seeing the American reaction to some Vancouver columnist named Mark Hasiukcalling the NBA "ghetto garbage," especially after you read his eponymous website.
It all comes back to a basic principle of writing online, not to be a pedantic putz about the whole thing: Consider the source. Ten minutes of Googling reveals that Hasiuk, God love him, seems to be a big of fan of wingnut tropes.Siding with hatemongers on the principle of free speech? Check. Warning of Canada becoming a Third World country due to immigration and the erosion of a "Euro-centric" culture? Check. Invoking the slippery slope -- that's a classic -- whenever possible, such as in a column about a clothing store in Vancouver allowing customersto breastfeed on the premises:
"But what about H&M's duty to its other customers? The staunchly religious, whose particular sect forbids public nudity. The squeamish or breastophobic, who prefer a definitive line between off-the-rack retailer and nursery. What about their expectations of comfort?
"H&M also set a dangerous precedent and exposed itself to future aggrieved groups of all stripes and persuasions that may choose H&M outlets to practice their own brand of necessity. Imagine a group of Salafi Muslims kneeling before Allah in H&M's men's clothing section. Or a woebegone narcoleptic who seeks shelter at H&M for his afternoon nap."
He used the word breastophobic without even a hint of irony. Far be it to wonder why he would go from the phrase "dangerous precedent" to the image of Muslims kneeling for prayers. For Allah/Buddha/Christ's sake, even George W. Bush conceded that Islam is a religion of peace. Question: In exactly what scenario are a group of Muslims going to end up needing to pray "in a clothing store known for two-for-one T-shirts and Madonna-inspired design," in Haisuk's phrase?
Way to think it through, sir, while you were busy crawling up your own arse.
Believe it or not, this is written in sympathy. The writer in question seems to be a fairly young guy who hasn't learned two basic rules of opinion writing. One comes from Don Henley -- "the more I know, the less I understand." The other is from W.B. Yeats -- "the best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity."
This is written with full awareness that it's hacky to fall back on someone else's pithy phrase to back up your own bias. Haisuk seems fond of it, and you have to communicate with people in language they understand.
It is amusing to see someone drag out the same tired stereotypes -- "NBA players wear saggy shorts, roll in posses and cuss on camera" -- and people become indignant. Consider the source. For pity's sake, the man called Allen Iverson the greatest basketball talent of his generation, which sort of overlooks Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade, Brandon Roy and Dirk Nowitzki, who obviously grew up in the ghetto in Germany.
It's understandable if people in Canada turn up their noses at the NBA. The season runs concurrently with the NHL, where half the players and 20% of the teams are Canadian, as opposed to a handful of players and one team in Canada witht the NBA. That is plenty good reason to make a decision and say, hey, time is valuable, there's only enough of it to follow one league. That's acceptable, although could people please stop saying they "only like college basketball," it's annoying.
At the same time, don't hate on it and call it the "worst of America." Look at the NFL. It doesn't offer guaranteed contracts or look after players who leave the game with a permanent disability -- ask Brian DeMarco.
Boxers have nothing to fall back on once they're past their best-before dates -- no pension plan, nothing. Evander Holyfield is still fighting, that's obscene. Basketball players, starting from about age 12 or younger, get shuffled through high schools and colleges. They might end up with their degree in communications, but are on their own when it comes to how to learn (aren't we al). Michael Lewis' The Blind Side laid out the student-athlete hoax in big-time college football.
None of that is any reason to become NBA fan. The point is, get some perspective. As an entertaiment venture, the NBA is doing pretty well. It's hilarious someone would rather focus on the "thug culture" than on what Van City might have had if the Grizzlies had not left in 2001. They would have got to see Steve Nash play meaningful games in his home province. Chinese-Canadians would have had two visits a year from Yao Ming.
It's just too bad all those African-American players had to wear those saggy shorts, eh Mark? Related: NBA: a ghetto gutter run by money grubbers (Mark Hasiuk, Vancouver Courier)
A good Minnesota Vikings fan knows about crazy coincidences, so this could not have happened by accident.
On Monday, Edward Greenspan, the Toronto lawyer, wrote a rather whingey op-ed about how he was a "bit angry" over the Bills in Toronto fiasco, saying it made the city and country look "podunk." Fair enough, but he also took a swipe at the Vikings' home base, one of the few cities with teams in all three major sports as well as the NHL, saying "no one would mistake Minneapolis for a truly world class city."
Well, that very night, the new How I Met Your Mother involved the sitcom's Canadian character, Robin Scherbatsky, getting turfed from a bar full of Vikings fans from Minnesota -- complete with a Gary Anderson reference (10 years next month; it's a pain that never ends). It also included some wise words for all the poseurs up here who think the city needs the NFL for some sort of self-validation. It all starts about a minute into the clip.
(Now, can anyone explain the significance of Jason Segel's character wearing a No. 70 Vikings jersey?)
For those of you who don't have time to watch the clip, here's the money quote to share with Greenspan, Rogers vice-president Phil Lind and the whole lot of them:
"I'm proud to be Canadian. We may not have a fancy NFL team, or Prince, but we invented Trivial Pursuit -- you're welcome, Earth. Plus, in Canada, you can go to an all-nude strip club and order alcohol. That's right. From Moose Jaw to the Bay of Fundy, you can suck down a 20-ounce Pilsner while watching some coal miner's daughter strip down to her pelt. Jealous? In Canada, people don't care where you're from. As long as you're friendly and loan them a smoke or hand them a donut. I'm proud to be Canadian. I wish I was there right now."
Don't get hung up on the facts that it's tough to find a coal miner anywhere these days or that you actually can't drink alcohol at a strip club in Saskatchewan (as confirmed by a Sasky expat). No doubt that Greenspan and his friends, who live in a different world where people have underlings to order around and own cottages and own more than one suit, would just see this as something from the idiot box. They wouldn't get the connection. Too freakin' bad. They probably didn't even notice Marshall Eriksen (Segel's character) was wearing No. 70 and why that is significant in Vikings lore.
Regardless, there's a lesson in there. We could stand to improve many things about ourselves in Canada, especially when it comes to how we support sports, but through Robin (played by Cobie Smulders, a Vancouver girl), something like the truth has been revealed. We don't need a fancy NFL team (and the Buffalo, soon to be Toronto, Bills are only fancy with how they contrive to blow games in the final minutes). It's a pretty good country even if we don't steal Buffalo's NFL team, even though we're probably going to, eventually.
No disrespect to Greenspan, who can buy and sell yours truly several times over before lunch, but his whole notion that you have to have four major pro teams to be a world-class city is just bumph. San Francisco only has baseball and football, and both its teams stink, but people still visit it in droves. Seattle is still great even its post-Sonics, pre-Sounders landscape. Friends speak well of Omaha, Nebraska, which doesn't have anything bigger than a Triple-A baseball team.
Happiness can be had without having four teams or worrying what people are thinking about you. It's not how much it takes to make you happy, it's how little. Anyone who can't get that through his head is beyond saving.
And how this relates to the Vikings' tortured history
It's acknowledged that it tempts fate to reference Gary Anderson and the Almost Perfect season four days before a Falcons-Vikings game. However, enough time has passed to at least start making jokes about it. Besides, anyone who has adopted the same interpretation of karma as Jared Allen probably isn't worried.
Weird little reminders of that kick keep popping up. For instance, in that same year, 1999, the Queen's Golden Gaels' season ended with a loss to McGill by a near-identical score, 30-28. McGill's kicker, Anand Pillai, unlike Gary Anderson nine months earlier, had a perfect day, 5-for-5 on field goals.
And who is now the kicker for McGill? Austin Anderson, Gary Anderson's son. You could look it up.
A mea-culpa is in order for having wondered once if the NBA could ever go back to Vancouver.
That said, anyone who really follow hoops knows what David Stern said to Bill Simmons said about regretting that it didn't work out in Vancouver is far from "a surprising, Canadian admission," as Posted Sports called it this afternoon. The hilarious part is that The Sports Guy didn't see the answer coming, but that happens when you have crawled up your own arse.
That, to channel the hyperkinetic history prof that the late Sam Kinison played in Back To School, plays into the popular version of what happened. Scratch a Canadian NBA fan -- and this is not a personal opinion, but one gleaned from being in that generation -- who was high school age when the Raptors and Grizzlies came into being and he might still argue it could have worked in Vancouver. Granted, some people say the Montreal Expos could have been saved (and they could have, you know, but that's just loser talk, eh).
The Grizzlies caught every bad break possible during their six-year run -- you know the whole litany with Bryant Reeves, Stevie Franchise Killer and a 63-cent Canadian dollar. However, looking at the fact the Raptors were recently valued at more than $400 million US by Forbes magazine, you can only wonder what could have been in Vancouver.
There's a fat chance of hearing that in the major media in Canada, though. The NBA has been in Toronto for 15 years and already there's chattering-class Chicken Littles talking aboutChris Bosh leaving would lead to the Raptors' demise. It's not happening; they might end up being a middle-pack team, but they won't go away.
Honestly, Stern's admission is only surprising when held up against certain other commissioners (they know who they are) who were seen as being less than remorseful when other Canadian franchises bolted for south of the border.
One has to hand it to the powers-that-be in junior hockey.
They're stuck with a pretty good little Canadian conundrom -- a Canada-Russia series that no one could care about, one that a shoulder-separating shrug from Buena Vista to Vancouver Island. Even guys on the junior hockey beat such as Regan Bartel at Regan's Rant and Guy Flaming at Coming Down The Pipe! are fed up with the ADT Canada-Russia charade. The Russians brought one NHL-drafted player with them to North America. It does not exactly scream excitement.
The fourth game of the series was Monday in St. Catharines, and for the life of me, I can't remember any details about the game, other than that the Ontario Hockey League all-stars won. The score might not have even made the agate page of the Ottawa Sun, that's how little it matters. (And it's Canada playing Russia.)
The fifth game is tonight in Swift Current, Sask., but honestly, do you know anyone who is going to opt to tune in over the Red Wings-Canadiens game on TSN, or the Raptors' home game on The Score?
The mass interest and the TV audience will be there one month today when the World Junior Hockey Championship begins in Ottawa, but that's not the point.It is true that all news is local with junior hockey, but talk about letting an opportunity slide past for both the leagues and Sportsnet, which telecasts the series. It could be a lot better -- Flaming has suggested a Canada vs. PlanetUSA format, similar to the AHL's All-Star Game -- if someone bothered to do a little brainstorming.
Does anyone else these jerseys are a little too similar? Thank goodness that baseball fans in Canada don't matter much to any of the movers and shakers in the U.S., and even less in their own country, eh?
Nationals manager Manny Actaeven said it reminded him of the Expos road uniform.
To anyone who has a problem with Lennox Lewis' induction into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame: You are violating the one face to a person rule. When did we start caring so much about an institution that has been educed to having "artifacts of this country's athletic heritage" sitting "in storage boxes, out of sight?" (Toronto Star, Oct. 29.) How many pre-1990s Canadian Olympic gold medallists have not been inducted? Lewis met the standard for what he did fighting as Canadian. (The 2008 class included one athlete who won two bronzes. Seriously.)
Lyle Overbay is reminiscent of that Seinfeld where Elaine dated the jazz musician who "doesn't do everything." The Blue Jays probably should trade him. (See The Tao for more.)
Different sport, sticking with the Thursday night on NBC analogies: The Italian soccer player Alessandro Del Piero -- is Toronto FC really serious about bringing him in? -- has been likened to "The Office ... wearing the same formula thin and some people even argue it should be canceled. Yet every once in a while, there’ll be a hilarious episode that reminds us of why we loved it in the first place."
The Grey Cup will air in the U.S. on Versus, which claims it has 73 million viewers.
Kingston is bidding for the Ontario ParaSport Games and Ontario Senior Games -- worthy events (I covered a senior games one time in a past life -- good times), but not exactly top-drawer in terms of spectator appeal.
Granted, Kingston's hands are tied when it comes to going after something half-decent such as the World U17 hockey tournament or the CIS University Cup. Frontenacs owner Doug Springer will not stand for people seeing good hockey up close.
One day we'll have a Canada which can have a collegiate football spectacle one-10th of the scale of Texas Tech's last-second win over No. 1 Texas on Saturday.
How would that ever happen? For starters, conference alignments and playoff formats that emphasize that every Saturday matters a hell of a lot better than the OUA, and by extension, Canadian Interuniversity Sport. It's the best against the best down there every week, produce or perish. There is no coming back from losing four games.
That is not meant to diminish the Ottawa Gee-Gees' win over the previously unbeaten Queen's Golden Gaels on Saturday. Ottawa can say it was the better team all along after its 23-13 win. Hey, it might speak well for our system that teams have more leeway if they go through an injury bug or had some close losses. To forgive is divine, eh?
Down south of the border, Texas Tech will not go back next Saturday and face a team it can beat 71-0, 71-3 or 80-0 (that is more for the first two weeks of September). The Red Raiders have No. 9 Oklahoma State, same bat time, same bat channel, since it's the national Saturday night game on ABC. They face No. 4 Oklahoma on the road the following week.
Granted, it's easier in the U.S. to line up top teams every week. They have 120 teams instead of 27, bigger budgets and don't have to pay usurious Air Canada surcharges. However, the past two years in the OUA, where three of the four teams who have earned byes have bit the dust in the semi-final, is either an anomaly or a catalyst for change.
Perhaps with a different setup would spark a different attitude about an Ottawa-Queen's playoff matchup (just look back at 2006). When one team is 8-0 and another is 4-4, there is a certain expectation for how it's going to go, even as a long-time fan. This is probably the geek lashing out, but whatever. It's not that the OUA rewards mediocrity, but it does excuse it to an unforgivably large extent.
The way it is becoming in the OUA, it's almost like you have to drop a couple games and have that feeling of no tomorrow, balls thisclose to the bandsaw, just to counter-balance the effect of cupcake opponents. I kick myself for being too stubborn to bend to this before now, but am more willing than even to accept that the regular season does not matter in the OUA.
That's fine for the teams who win. More power to them. It is completely wrongheaded when it comes to growing the game. How do you build season-long sustained interest in Canadian university football when everyone suspects the first eight weeks do not matter that much? Of course, here I am, obviously the biggest pathetic four-eyed geek who ever lived, posting about Canadian university football every week.
Competitively speaking, the bye week which can rob a team of momentum has been a mighty leveller over the past two seasons. Western got by Saturday vs. Laurier, but even the Mustangs had trouble finishing some drives.
The other part of the problem is the second tier of the OUA. As several cisfootball.org commenters have pointed out, Queen's might have been more prepared if they had interlocking games against the likes of Concordia, Saint Mary's or Sherbrooke instead of walkovers against the you-know-whos.
The result suggests the Gee-Gees, much like Western last season, had a more well-honed ability to play desperate. It's OK that Queen's lost. Life goes on. What is not OK is going through a full regular season and having no certainty how it might shake out when the team batting 1.000 faces the one hitting .500. People want to believe; some of us want to know.
The OUA, at a conference level, should do some self-examination after back-to-back years when the No. 1 seed lost in its first post-season game. Is the bye really a good idea? Look into interlocking games, look at the competitive balance of the league.
Or it could rest on the laurels of Laurier's 2005 Vanier Cup. That ought to be good until well into the next decade, barring what the Ottawa-Western winner does against Saint Mary's in the national semi-final Nov. 15.
The idea of interlocking games should be explored. Next season, have the six playoff teams play the five good Quebec teams and Saint Mary's. The four also-rans can play McGill and the other three Atlantic teams.
The second suggestion is a realignment, already suggested this summer at The CIS Blog. There could be a Big East drawn from the schools which really value football. Concordia, Laval, Montreal and Sherbrooke come to mind; Saint Mary's from down East; Queen's, Ottawa, Laurier and Western from Ontario. There would not be that big a cost increase, and teams would probably draw more fans and more advertisers.
The other schools would have their own division. They, like Davidson or Valparaiso in the NCAA basketball tournament, would still have an outside shot at a national championship. It would be for the schools such as Mount Allison or Toronto, who still retain a bit of the 1970s view that football is just a student activity. They could have their own schedule, their own championship, be akin to the Patriot League in the NCAA. Perhaps there could be a promotion-relegation system akin to professional soccer, just to keep it interesting. This might encourage other universities to form teams, if they knew they didn't have play Laval right off the hop.
Play an eight-game regular season. Have each conference's top two teams play off in a championship game akin to those in major NCAA conferences. Then have a selection committee pick an eight-team national championship.
Imagine the interest you would have two weeks ago for a Saint Mary's-Western game in Week 8, both teams 5-2 and the winner likely to get a bid for the national playoffs. That sounds a lot better than matchup of two 3-4 OUA teams playing for the final OUA playoff berth, which is what The Score aired Oct. 18. (After all that, McMaster got shut out the following week.)
Ottawa-Western in the Yates Cup will draw a decent TV audience, but why settle for that?
Every team across the country would be better off in that situation. Solid programs such as Ottawa and Western would not take a mulligan on half their season -- they would rise to the level of competition. I believe they would -- it all comes back to motivation.
Texas Tech's rise is an example of having to meet a tougher standard. It was a non-entity in the old Southwest Conference, which by the mid-1980s had ceased to be competitive nationally (for proof, check out the highlights of Miami's infamous 1991 Cotton Bowl shellacking of the aforementioned Texas Longhorns). When that league broke up in the '90s, Texas Tech joined the Big 12, and once it got Mike Leach as coach, it became a powerhouse. As for its former foes which ended up in smaller conferences, none of them will ever get close to playing in a major BCS bowl game.
It all comes back to the notion of produce or perish. In Queen's case, it has now gone 6-2 or better four times in the past seven seasons, but reached the Yates Cup only once. It is almost to the point where taking Bishop's place as a plucky underdog in the cutthroat Quebec conference would be welcomed. Sure, for any school that's not Laval, that league can be a hellhole, but like Spinal Tap sang, you know where you stand in a hellhole.
It's only fitting that a team named for a governor of New France would impart a new appreciation for the concept of c'est la vie.
Only the Mavine comedy which is the Kingston Frontenacs could have this happen. Thursday, the Fronts had a player score the winning goal for the other team into his own net, and Friday, had the same player break a 0-0 tie early in the third period. Were ours a just God, Corbin Crawford's goal would have stood up as the game-winner, but this is the godforsaken Frontenacs, so you know better than to even ask.
Meantime, announced attendance for the OT loss to Owen Sound was 2,282. Incidentally, you remember that post from the other day about a low-level junior team in Illinois calling itself the Frontenacs. There's a reason both teams might want to use something else: Its connection with slavery.
Seriously, slavery -- and not the relatively benign kind, where teenagers play a professional-length schedule for $60 a week and a three hots and a cot and Larry Mavety threatens to trade them 300 miles away if they don't want to play. Doing some Wiki-ing on the Frontenacs' colonial namesake turned up this nugget:
At the time of his second appointment as Governor in 1689, France authorized the importation of slaves to Quebec from the West Indies.
Quebec's most famous building and landmark, the Château Frontenac, is named after him, as is the Kingston Frontenacs ice hockey team.
With no apologies to Ron James, there's some Canadian history they don't teach in schools. It would be silly to think a name change would be contemplated; this is framed more in the context of most of us Canadians are unaware of our brief but shameful involvement in the slave trade, let alone that one of its progenitors would be the namesake of a major junior hockey team.
Incidentally, a poster at the New OHL Open Forum had a great suggestion for how this case with the Illinois team could be solved:
"Instead of taking Kingston's logo, this Jr. C team should take Mavety, so he'd be at his proper coaching level."
Well, that is is just mean. The Fronts have a northern swing coming up -- Sunday at Sault Ste. Marie, Tuesday at Sudbury. They fired Bruce Cassidy in the middle of that trip last season; his Royal Mavesty can't really fire himself.
It's been an exceptional fortnight for the gang of idiots on Madison Ave. who run the NHL.
Start the season in another continent. Have Gary Bettman show up at the New York Stock Exchange only too happy to ring the opening bell the day after a global financial meltdown. Have the frontman of some relic of a 1980s hair band mistreat the Stanley Cup ("it's upside-down, never mind" might be a great epitaph for the Bettman era). Top it off by having Gov. Sarah Palin's appearance in Philadelphia reduce a Rangers-Flyers game "to a prop in a political campaign." (Puck Daddy) Oh, and broadcast the fact that one of your Sun Belt teams is giving away tickets for free. The Palin puckdrop wasn't even that bad, who knew?
"This is yet another example why hockey is the worst-marketed game on the planet. It's like inviting PETA to a barbecue. Palin's negatives are almost Bushian. Outside her narrow base of nationalist bigots, the country is recoiling. Yet (Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed) Snider and the NHL reasoned her presence would be a big publicity coup. All the while, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly insisted this was not about politics: 'Governor Palin is a supporter of the sport, which she has proclaimed publicly. As a public figure who has a very public connection with hockey, her recent associations with the Flyers and other NHL franchises is not surprising and, in our view, not inappropriate.' " -- Dave Zirin and Daniel Denvir
It's been said many times, many ways, but hockey must be the greatest game in the world to have survived the fools who run it. My hat is off to the people who carry on as if all of the above has nothing to do with the game itself. I'm just not wired that way.
Lest you question the bona fides as a hockey lover, when I read Denvir/Zirin's assertion that, "A Google search reveals that Palin may have nearly coined the term 'hockey mom,' " an e-mail was fired off near-instantly to call them on a bit of American exceptionalism. "Hockey mom" has been in use in Canada for decades; we're not about to let the Yanks take credit. Maybe we did with insulin, the telephone and the First World War, but not with "hockey mom."
Anyway, there probably is a spin-off post here. It's plainly obvious that the Canadian teams basically subsidize the U.S. teams and Gary Bettman's (and Philip Anschutz's) agenda, thus making sure that Canadians have less access to watching top-notch professional hockey (and pay much more to see it). The more the six NHL teams become a cash cow for a dozen or so struggling U.S. franchise, the less the chance of Canada getting two more teams in Southern Ontario and one more in Western Canada, which could easily be supported (especially if the salary cap goes down). Does that not sound like taxation without representation?
How is this for irony? The theory going around is that snapping up the rights to two syndicated Ameerican game shows you can see eight times a day on U.S. channels greased the skids for CBC to lose an iconic piece of Canadiana, Dolores Claman's The Hockey Theme.
Those of you who got your Sunday Ottawa Sun know an awful truth.
"A well-placed league source told Sun Media what might have sparked the anthem move was CBC outbidding CTV for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! Both bring in huge audiences. The whisper making the rounds is the day after CBC secured those two valuable game shows ... network officials met to try to find a way to make their rival feel some pain. CTV officials knew that CBC was having a difficult time getting a deal done with Dolores Claman, who wrote and composed the HNIC song. That's when CTV jumped in and made her an offer she couldn't refuse." -- Bruce Garrioch
It is quite possible that is merely rumour. The fact remains that taxpayer-funded CBC, which is supposed to aspire to something higher -- that's why it shows reruns of Arrested Development instead of The King of Queens, people! -- sold out its principles. Importing Jeopardy! and frickin' Wheel, while cost-effective, goes against the CBC's mission. One need not worry if there was a direct cause-and-effect. It looks good on the network.
To quote Torontoist, "The song's not bad, but its win over 14,000 other anthems demonstrates that what the CBC—and, we guess, the Canadian public, who picked this song out of the final five— really wanted to replace one of our country's iconic songs was something safe, a little on the dull side, and more than a little generic. We're sure that CTV is pretty happy about the whole thing, though."
It just seems wrong somehow to see a sports columnist refer to Roy Halladay as the "ace of a nails starting staff."
The sentiment is appreciated. The misappropriation of the immortal adverb popularized by Drunk Jays Fans to describe a a lights-out individual and group effort is not. The usage that has to be known and loved is to say a player or an element of the ballclub is nails, as in, "the Jays' pitching has been nails lately." Some will garnish that with a couple of F-bombs. No one is judging.
This is not some mundane detail. It has everything to do with how baseball fans and creative types get a raw deal every day (two words, people) of their lives in this country, especially the Xers.
It is one word out of several hundred, and it's only in the wrong place. Still, it's the tip of the iceberg that a Canadian baseball nut has to constantly navigate around. Someone thirty-one years old is in no position to make the call on whether it was always this bad, but it's too bad that the media in this country, with a few shining exceptions, is falling so far behind at keeping up with the evolution in baseball analysis.
This is a great time to be a connoisseur of baseball writing and analysis. There's so much -- the hard analysis of Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times. The obsessive chronicling of MLB Trade Rumors. The joy of seeing the guys and gals on the beat -- Jeff Blair, Joe Posnanski and Mike Wilner, to name but three -- who are coming to understand the whole notion of a give-and-take with their audience.
There's some of the think-pieces pouring forth from major-outlet writers such as Tom Verducci (his Tim Lincecum cover story back in July was an essential read, and his piece on the groupthink mentality that influences managers' use of their bullpen is a good one too). It's probably easier than it's ever been to be up to speed and whom other franchises have coming up through their farm systems. Last, but not least, there are all the humour-in-a-jockular-vein sites that can take the sting out from loving something as silly as a baseball team and the starch out of the media that purports to take the games seriously, when it fact they've been rendered unserious through uninterested ownership.
All of this reinforces that even though baseball is a game that you can zone on out on more than any other game, like Rob Gordon in High Fidelity categorizing his record collection for the 1,001st time. You can get lost in something, knowing full well it's only a game. That is beautiful and haunting when it's not reflected in how the media outlets in the country, for the most part, cover the sport. It never goes much beyond whether the Jays won or lost, does it?
What's not to understand? The Jays had won 10 games in a row before Roy Halladay -- or Roy (N-Word) Halladay, although that sobriquet probably should not get used more than once, lost last night. That left them seven games behind the Red Sox for the wild-card spot if anyone actually cares to know, but the enjoyment of it was tempered. You knew each win would only entitle more and more of the know-it-alls to slither back out from under their rocks and get it all wrong, or repeat the same bullflop about why the team couldn't play like that in August. (Apparently, those were "triple word score" games or something. It's a 162-game season. Each game is weighted equally, Jesse Litsch and Shaun Marcum were struggling to find their form in August, end of story.)
The Jays are not making the playoffs. The it-getters made their peace with that even before Opening Day. The deck is stacked against the Jays as an AL East team and no, the Tampa Bay Rays being playoff-bound is not proof to the contrary. Their payroll is $44 million and will probably only be in the mid-50s next season, but when you consider Tampa Bay's brainpower and the benefits of having a high spot in the amateur draft, it's clear they are a wealthy team in their own right.
The Rays are kind of the personification of inconspicuous consumption. That probably gets lost on people in a country whose only MLB franchise's corporate parent makes tens of millions of dollars selling cellphones that people feel they cannot live without.
What's not to understand. The days are growing shorter. The season is drawing down. A 10-game win streak, for lack of any other way to put it, is nice. Del Jordan in The Lives of Girls and Women figured out that there could be happiness without scholarships to university, so a Jays fans can certainly have happiness with no playoffs. There's a lot for the mind as a baseball fan..
There should be a moratorium on people who might watch baseball -- but not with the right kind of eyes -- to actually see the game to bat out a column which lends itself to copy editors using the headline, "Meaningful Games Return To Blue Jays."
Every game is meaningful. That should be as easy to nail down as, well, why the older generation doesn't have licence to say "nails."
Should-reads
There's a little irony in saying the Tampa Bay Rays (now 2 1/2 games clear of the Red Sox) should have gone after Barry Bonds. The improvement they made in their fielding was the equivalent of adding Bonds at his peak. (Yet the same columnist who set me off referred to them as the "Cinderella Rays." Again, what's not to get?)
Good things do happen to bad people: The Florida Marlins are going to get their new stadium.
Damn, the Jays
Casey Janssen will be ready to go for Opening Day 2009, according to everyone's favourite GM with a predilection with for obfuscation. In all seriousness, that is good news. J.P. Ricciardi also said on the FAN 590 last night that Dustin McGowan "might not" to pitch by the end of spring training.
Someone, soon, will wonder if the Jays should make a pitch for Todd Helton as their DH next season.
Over dinner and drinks last night, a friend wondered why Rod Barajas was batting fifth; Mike Wilner wondered as well.
The Jays' 10-game roll is done, and wasn't it fun. Not everything has to be overanalyzed. A.J. Burnett should invoke his out clause so well..
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.
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 LenoDavid 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."
It looks more and more like Peyton Manning wants to be like to Chris Bosh and be a star on YouTube (and at the Olympics, since Team USA made short work of Spain).
The irony: Raptors fans would prefer Bosh was more like Manning -- you know, lose the stigma that he can't win the big game.
"You may say that many countries don't play football, but that makes it more easier, then."
Enjoy:
Father Archie Manning also gets in on the act, after the jump.
Ya, ya, ya, it's the typical ugly Americans who don't get the Olympic message of broadening your horizons and understanding other people's cultures and just thinks it's all about the medals. Certainly, no one in Canada has been obsessing over medals for the last week.
(And look at that -- we got three of them now. All the whining and self-flagellation must have had a positive effect on Carolyn Huynh, Tonya Verbeek and the rowing pair, Dave Calder and Scott Frandsen.)
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