Clemens and Cito: Fascinating reading, or misreading ...

Toronto will never be a true sports city until it learns to laugh stuff like this off.

Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston making an unflattering anatomical comparison with Roger Clemens over decade-old events got a lot of play today. The funny part, if you read the Jeff Pearlman book a certain way, the author did not say flat-out that Clemens got Gaston fired in 1997. Gaston is mentioned by name only twice in the entire book. It's not even the most scandalous thing Pearlman says about Toronto as a sports city.

(Pearlman addresses it: "What my book says is that Clemens had a heavy hand in the hiring of Tim Johnson, Gaston's eventual replacement. But that didn’t take place until well after Gaston was gone.")

It's a good thing for Cito and the friendlies in the press corps to run with. Ripping a disgraced drug cheat a new cornhole is the ultimate in low-hanging fruit, but it's damn entertaining:

"Author Jeff Pearlman made the allegation in his new book The Rocket That Fell to Earth and adds that Clemens pushed for the hiring of Tim Johnson, who was fired after one season for lying about his military service." — The Canadian Press

"Pearlman says Clemens vetoed qualified men such as Davey Johnson, Paul Molitor, Willie Randolph and Larry Bowa. Instead, he backed the hiring of Tim Johnson, who was fired after one season for lying about his fictional military service record."
— Sun Media

Here's what it actually says in the book, on pgs. 204-205:

Pearlman notes that Clemens approached the Jays about signing Jose Canseco before 1998 season, which they did, even knowing, as then-GM Gord Ash said, "what the history was been there." At the time, people would have taken that to mean Canseco was injury-prone and that he had played for the Oakland Athletics when they were one of the Jays' rivals:

Pearlman adds:

"That wasn't Clemens' only tinkering. Having fired manager Cito Gaston with five remaining in the 1997 season, the Blue Jays held an extensive search for a replacement, interviewing such Grade-A candidates as Davey Johnson, Larry Bowa, Paul Molitor and Willie Randolph. But who did Ash and Co. end up hiring? Tim Johnson, an unexceptional yet bubbly man who had just finished guiding the Triple-A Iowa Cubs to a 74-69 mark. Rarely considered big-league managerial timber, Johnson possessed three major attributes:

1. Gobs of boyish enthusiasm. 'I'll communicate with each of players every day,' he vowed upon being hired, 'Even if it's just to say, Hi, how's the family?'
2. He had been a coach with the Red Sox when Roger Clemens was there
3. Clemens really liked him."

It sounds more like the front office made its choice knowing what would make their highest-paid player the happiest, like that has never happened before in pro sports. Reality sandwich, people, sorry it doesn't jibe with What Should Be.

It doesn't say Clemens tried to get Cito Gaston fired, it just says he was fired. Pearlman's books are exhaustively reported, so if that did happen, chances are he and the reporters he had helping him might have flipped over that rock.

The only other mention of Gaston comes a few earlier, it notes that Clemens knew the manager was "a strategic lightweight" before he decided to join the Jays. That's an opinion that many people would have agreed with before Toronto's baseball clock became permanently stuck at 11:39 p.m., Oct. 23, 1993.

Pearlman is pretty smart. Reading between the lines, saying, "That wasn't Clemens' only tinkering," which seems like a direct accusation, could also just be a a transition to a new paragraph. Either way, it seems like it was put it out there like a bucket of fresh fish for a bunch of baying seals and let the reporters in Toronto connect the dots, you know, the way they didn't 11 years ago when Tim Johnson was telling people he fought in Vietnam and half the Blue Jays team was goosed up on steroids.

The biggest takeaways from the two chapters on Clemens' Jays years was that he found an absence of celebrity and tabloid culture in Toronto. He got annoyed when National Golf Club actually expected him to pay his green fees ($1,000 for a foursome) and just wouldn't take 10 Red Sox-Jays tickets in lieu, like a lot of posh courses in the U.S might have.

More tellingly, Pearlman also notes that playing in Toronto meant he had no reason to worry about people unearthing the skeletons in the closet.

"Clemens had found the right place for a guy trying to keep his personal life off the radar. He certainly didn't have to worry about the Toronto Star or The Globe and Mail digging up dirt about Mindy McCready or any of the other women he was involved with. He also didn't have to worry about the second major scandal (for lack of a better word) in his life — the rapid decline of his brother, Randy, whose drug addiction was a tightly guarded secret restricted to family members." — pgs. 192-93

Granted, that is not Sportscentre-sexy. Taken one way, it makes Toronto sound less like a world-class city than a hockey-obsessed Hooterville, so that's why you're not hearing it repeated breathlessly.

The bottom line is Pearlman is an awesome writer and the Clemens book compares favourably with his other three efforts. Here is hoping this juices his Canadian sales, as it were, since there's a lot more to it than recounting all the nasty things he's done. He is supposed to be appearing on Drunk Jays Fans podcast in the next little while, so there will be a chance for discussion.

Think about, though: It's well-established that in 1998 the Blue Jays had about half the team on steroids, had two of baseball's most disgraced drug cheats in their lineup, one of whom was nailing a Woman Not His Wife who was also a chart-topping country singer. However, Cito Gaston is saying Roger Clemens tried to get him fired when he was presiding over a fourth straight losing season and it's a bloody outrage.

Oh, well, it makes Ottawa seem less parochial by comparison, which takes some doing. (The bar has been raised awfully high, or low, in the last little while.)

Some of us younger old fogeys still maintain there's a value to actually reading an entire book from start to finish and in that order. I'll try to have a review up in the next couple days.

Related:
Gaston has foul memories of Rocket (Sun Media)
Cito launches Rocket (Globe & Mail)
Cito Gaston has sharp words for Roger Clemens; Book on Clemens says he pushed Jays to fire Gaston in '97 (Morgan Campbell, Toronto Star)

Habs fans caught sleeping. "No-name" Crosby vaults to the lead in all-star voting

Whether it was a case of Montreal fans becoming just a little too self-conscious, a backlash against insane homerism, or just that they ran out off all-star ballets in Quebec is unclear. But, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have managed to vault past Alex Tanguay in voting for the eastern conference all-star team.

It doesn't really matter of course. No one actually cares about the all-star game. Except the fans in the home arena. So, it says here let the Habs fans have their fun (and not just because it further solidifies their evolution into Leafs fans with better accents). Forget getting Alex Ovechkin into the starting line-up. Let's all band together to make sure Saku Koivu plays. Hell, is Guy Lafleur available?

Less effort will be needed to get the defense and goaltending all Habie. Mike Komisarek still has 80,000 votes on Sergei Gonchar and even if Marc-Andre Fleury catches Carey Price the 'keeper will still be French, eh.

That's just Ill

No one's 15 minutes of shame is complete until it's been commemorated by a minor-league sports franchise.

The Las Vegas Wranglers are going to wear "prison-style uniforms to pay tribute to recently disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich" during a game next month (Las Vegas Sun, via Gapers Block). Leaving aside the irony that a team whose NHL parent employs Todd Bertuzzi would wear prison stripes, it's a stroke of brilliance.

"The Wranglers' uniforms will feature broad, horizontal black and white stripes with mock prison numbers on the back of each jersey that begin with 'ILLGOV' followed by the players' actual number.

"Following the game, the Las Vegas players will autograph their uniforms and auction them to the public to support the team's various charities.

The Wranglers previously held a Dick Cheney Hunting Vest Night. One wonders if a Tom Cruise Blackberry Giveaway Night or Sean Avery Jaw-Wiring Night is in their future.

Related:
A little jail house fun; Wranglers to host Gov. Rod Blagojevich prison uniform night

The non-apology apology raised to art form

It's only sporting to pass along a nice epilogue on ex-sportsnet.ca NFL analyst Chris Landry's shenanigans.

"I, Chris Landry, sincerely apologize for several recent internet columns published under my name at Sportsnet.ca that contain passages that are identical or almost identical to internet columns previously published by Mike Lombardi and Andrew Brandt on nationalfootballpost.com. If anything I have said could be interpreted as indicating I believe either of these gentlemen used my material, directly or indirectly, I wish to make it clear that I do not believe they did." -- via ProFootballTalk.com

One commenter likened this to O.J. apologizing for the dead bodies. That is just unnecessary.

Related:
Landry apologizes for accusing Lombardi, Brandt of plagiarism (PFT)

Fronts: Gilmour to coach; that oughta hold the little SOBs

The fact Doug Gilmour is coaching the Kingston Frontenacs with the same rotten regime in place is enough reason to question his judgment.

No doubt Fronts owner Doug Springer and GM-for-life Larry Mavety have made the same promises to Gilmour, or as he shall henceforth be known as, Dougie!, that they made to Bruce Cassidy, Jim Hulton -- how's the weather down there in Florida, Jimmy? -- and Greg Bignell. For the uninitiated, those are the last three coaches that Mavety and Springer undermined.

There is no way to call this to a hockey move. The only way to feel good about it is if Gilmour is trying out the coaching side before he buys the team lock, stock and barrel. Otherwise, this is intended to keep the diehards from organizing a Bring Your Own Pitchfork night at the K-Rock Centre. The Frontenacs announced this on a Monday, with a home game coming up against Belleville on Friday -- plenty of time to sell tickets. That is the closest Kingston comes to having any long-term vision -- a home game four days away.

Gilmour, God love 'em, if I could still squeeze into my old No. 93 sweater that I wore faithfully across the mid-'90s, I would -- has six months' coaching experience as an assistant coach with the AHL's Toronto Marlies, the Leafs' farm team. That's all, aside from the bit of dubious team imitating dubious art that Andrew pointed out over Sporting Madness:

More revealing, though, is Gilmour's recent cameo [Miss 604] in the soon-to-be-released Slap Shot 3: The Junior League, a straight-to-DVD movie. Perhaps he enjoyed seeing a gong show of a junior franchise on film and decided he'd go for the full experience? If so, he's certainly come to the right town: the Frontenacs are currently a bigger joke than anything in the movie will likely be.

Doug Springer, by dint of his actions, must believe the Kingston faithful are so stupid that they will turn out en masse to watch the same struggling team, just because it's Dougie! behind the bench instead of His Royal Mavesty. Kingston fans are not stupid. That is there is a sea of empty seats at the K-Rock Pot.

Gilmour, having worked for the Leafs, at least has some experience working with a dysfunctional outfit. He is an icon in his hometown and across Ontario, but this move is small-town cheap. It is straight out of the Bush-Cheney school of management -- put a newbie in charge of something, so he will be easier to control, and then tell him, "Dougie, you're doin' a heck of a job."

The only improvement one can foresee is that maybe Dougie!, having done the dance in Canada's media capital, Toronto, will actually go on the post-game show after embarrassing losses. Springer, Mavety and assistant coaches Tony Cimellaro and Darren Keily apparently don't feel is part of their job descriptions, even though taxpayers built a $43-million arena for their team.

The reality of this is that the Springer Frontenacs are putting a celebrity ex-player behind the bench. Did Gilmour take this after getting turned down by The Surreal Life? Loose Pucks has noted that His Royal Mavesty "will resume his duties as being strictly the General Manager of the Frontenacs," which should send a chill down any thinking person's spine.

For god's sake, Mavety the great GM can barely be bothered to scout a player before he trades for him -- he just makes moves based on the assurances the team he's trading with and what he half-remembers the player doing against Kingston. Anyone in Kingston who is not suckling at the Springer teat will tell you as much.

One wishes Dougie! all the best, but honestly, if he's going to grow into becoming a good coach, it will not come in Kingston. This is small-town cheap. Springer played the experience card in August when he 'fessed up that he was keeping Mavety on as coach, some two months after it was first reported on the king of Kings' Offsides. Here's Springer, turning around and hiring someone with no experience.

The reality is that the house has slid off its foundation, so they decided to have it painted. Mavety's extensive coaching resume, as it's called in every Frontenacs press release, includes a 680-726-106 record. With the the Ottawa 67's Brian Kilrea in his final season, Mavety was perilously close to having people mention that he was in line to become the losingest coach in the history of the Ontario Hockey League. Kilrea has 34 more losses, but get this, he has almost 500 more wins (485, to be exact).

The Springer Frontenacs end up hiring another guy nicknamed Killer to avoid that embarrassment. A friend suggested this is analogous to hiring Gary Carter to manage the Blue Jays. It is the equivalent of hiring Joe Carter to manage the Blue Jays.

The Springer Frontenacs, of course, can burn through goodwill in no time flat. The positive feelings generated by the move to the new arena lasted about two weeks. Unless this is a first step to an ownership change, the only thing to say is shame on Doug Springer, shame on Larry Mavety, shame on anyone who peddles their party line and pretty please, pray for Doug Gilmour.

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

Update: The Toronto Sun's Mike Zeisberger's report notes, "Before accepting the job, Gilmour made it clear that he needed to return to Toronto at least one or two days a week in order to spend time with his sons Jake, 12, and Tyson, 10. Gilmour said the team was quite willing to accommodate his request."

Family has to come first, but who is going to run practices on those 1-2 days a week when Gilmour looking after his boys? The same guys who are doing such a great job with a team that has the worst power play in all of major junior hockey!

Thank you to all the sites who have linked here! Also, catch the Offsides broadcast from last Friday.

Of the Illinois Frontenacs ...

It's just a day in the life with the Limestone City Light Brigade.

Item the first: For reasons bizarre and befuddling, it has come to light that there is a Junior B team in the U.S. called the Illinois Frontenacs -- same godawful logo (only the Circle K deserves to be called a crest). Who knows, maybe junior hockey players get fired up by reading about New France.

Item the second: Among the 20 member OHL teams, only the Fronts and the Erie Otters did not have a player selected to play in the Canada-Russia Hockey Challenge. How brutal is that?

Item the third: Our own Kinger has a birthday today, so many beers should be purchased and poured in his honour. He was born on Oct. 29 -- two days before Halloween and too righteous not to fight for truth.

Anyway, one wonders what's up with that Illinois team using Kingston's logo. Granted, the Junior B team in the States has won three of its four games, a better start than its Eastern Ontario namesakes have had in the past two years. Who should be suing whom?

What the--? One of your all-time crazy coincidences

"If you thought you were already sick of hearing Tank for Tavares, wait until people start saying it about the Senators." From Saturday's Snark Break

There was a weird disturbance in the Van Allen belt, obviously:

"TORONTO -- Wasn't it supposed to the Maple Leafs who were going to lead the charge for John Tavares?" -- From Sunday's Ottawa Sun

It's too bad the Cardinals in Phoenix overruled His Holiness

It's funny how it goes. In the mid-'90s, you could dub in dialogue in order to have the pope saying, "Save the Jets" and not have anyone look at you as amateurish. Now sports broadcasts try so hard to be funny that they often come off as amateurish. So it goes.



Bless you, Gene Principe.

(Were it not such facile rubbish, posting YouTube clips from 10-15 years ago could become a regular feature.)

Canadian connection to football match fixing

Canadian international Tomasz Radzinski has put himself straight in the middle of the match fixing controversy that is currently swirling around European football .

Speaking to a Belgian magazine he admitted that his former Greek Superleague team Xanthi threw a game last season (no link to the Belgian article, but the key parts are repeated here). Radzinski says that he was not part of the fix.

It isn't quite as big a story as the possibility of Bayern Munich throwing the UEFA Cup semi-final (for you non-soccer folks that story is akin to the Detroit Red Wings throwing a game), but it is interesting that a current player is admitting that there is something going on. It will also be interesting to see if the Canadian media picks up on this when Radzinski plays in Edmonton next week.

When sports broadcasting was ring-a-ding-dong dandy

Sometimes it needs to be pointed out what humanity lost when local affiliates, bowing to competition from cable and the Internet, got rid of the 11:30 scoreboard shows that were common in the late '80s and early '90s:



There are three cable sports networks in Canada and a bajillion websites that provide a sports fix. You know what, though? Not a one has truth and fun on its side the way a young Mike Toth, of the FAN 590 and Sportsnet Connected, did back in his days doing local TV in Calgary.

There is a point to putting this up: One, it's to remind people who get tied in knots over Toth's commentaries that it's coming from someone who once dressed up as the Honky Tonk Man on TV. And two, saying this in a Norm MacDonald voice, Mike Toth once dressed up as the Honky Tonk Man on TV. If you don't like Toth just a little after this, you are at least 77 per cent legally dead.

(Clip via Cox Bloc.)

Beijing 2008: Bring on the scandal

For an Olympic junkie, Beijing is a nightmare. All you want to do is focus on sports—continue your research into the favourites for women’s doubles badminton gold (that would be China’s Yang Wei and Zhang Jiewen). But instead you are constantly distracted by the latest scandal emanating from the Nation That Wants To Control Everything And Thinks It’s Still 1987.

Like whether Yang Wei and Zhang Jiewen are really human. Would you put it past the Chinese to make robots that play badminton?

Ok, so that one might be a stretch, but it’s clear that China will do anything to prove to the world that it’s a swell kinda place that happens to be vastly superior to us lazy westerners. If that means fudging pre-pubescent gymnasts’ passports so be it. Shame, evidently, is in short supply in the lead up to these games.

However, if the goal was to paint a pretty picture for the rest of the world about the openness and reasonableness of new China then this whole Olympic experiment is failing badly. China is learning that they can’t control the western press (and good on the western press for figuratively telling them to shove it). Every day another story appears about something that is horribly wrong about China. Algae, locus, pollution, corruption, the list goes on and on.

As an Olympic junkie you want to push it aside. As a human being you know that would be irresponsible. When the history books are written one suspects that sports historians aren’t going to look kindly on these Games. Bad air and a corrupt host will often make the results questionable. But, the rest of the historians may look at the Games differently. With the world’s attention firmly focused on China it’s possible that some truly nasty things could be reported. That, in turn, could be the impetus to change.

Even on the sporting front, if China continues to get caught with its pants down then maybe, just maybe, other countries/athletes might start to realize that it’s really bad karma to cheat in a hop, skip and jump competition. It’s kind of pathetic, actually.

The shenanigans of the 29th Olympiad ...

It's stuff like this that really drives the point home that holding the Olympics in Beijing has to be the worst idea since Ferris Bueller was turned into a TV series. Olympic gymnasts have to be at least 16 (mostly to protect the welfare of the young female athletes, partially so guys who end up catching gymnastics on TV only feel a little dirty), but China's allegedly found a creative way around that:

"Another registration list that is unblocked, dated Jan. 27, 2006, and regarding an 'intercity' competition in Chengdu, China, also lists He's birthday as Jan. 1, 1994. That date differs by two years from the birth date of Jan. 1, 1992, listed on He’s passport, which was issued Feb. 14, 2008.

"There has been considerable talk about the ages of Chinese gymnasts on Web sites devoted to the sport. And there has been frequent editing of He’s Wikipedia entry, although it could not be determined by whom. One paragraph that discusses the controversy of her age kept disappearing and reappearing on He’s entry. As of Friday, a different version of the paragraph had been restored to the page." -- The New York Times

Related:
Records Say Chinese Gymnasts May Be Under Age (Jere Longman and Juliet Macur, The New York Times)

A great theme for an utter Gong Show...

Most people who came of age during the mid- to late '90s can appreciate a good bit of culture jamming. Logan Aube's effort to sabotage the CBC's lamebrained Canada's Hockey Anthem Challenge is much appreciated.

One almost has listen to it to believe it, but once you do, you might agree that Aube's creation, Hockey Scores, is what a crown corporation's highers-up deserve for escalating a legal fight with an 80-year-old woman.

Aube's plan, as described in further detail by Torontoist, was to first create the most wretched theme possible, some sort of bastard musical offspring that even Bjork or Yoko Ono would admit was unlistenable. Step 2 was to get people of a certain deviant mindset to vote for his song "mostly comprised of cat and sheep sounds, baby cries, and gunshots/explosions -- and it's working.

"Aube created "Hockey Scores" as a joke, then posted a thread in the Something Awful forums last Thursday, asking for the goons there to help make it popular. (There, he more honestly described the song as "mostly comprised of cat and sheep sounds, baby cries, and gunshots/explosions.") A week later, with a spectacular animation on YouTube and an advocacy group on Facebook to further the cause, "Hockey Scores" is dominating the competition: almost every other theme uploaded can't get a rating higher than two out of five, and commenters on Aube's theme—those not in on the joke—are understandably confused, distressed, and furious.

"Sadly, Aube's submission almost certainly won't win the contest's $100,000 (plus 50% royalties) prize and serve as Hockey Night in Canada's next theme—semi-finalists, announced on October 4, are not selected solely by popularity and are vetted by a producer and judges—but it's certainly a valiant effort. Even the CBC seems to think so: when "Hockey Scores" was briefly taken down on July 12, the CBC sent an e-mail to Lowgain clarifying that the move was a mistake on the part of a third-party moderator, and that Aube should 'expect no further trouble with your most excellent submission.' " -- Torontoist

Well-played, sir. Should we start a legal defence fund for when the CBC initiates a lawsuit against Mr. Aube for making a mockery of their wholesome, grassroots song contest? (Some people didn't get the joke, but like a character in JPod mused, only about 20 per cent of people get irony.)

Here's the YouTube clip, via Mirtle.

Ambi-curious: The next step in our evolutionary cycle (OK, not really)

The story from a few days back about the switch-pitcher, Pat Venditte facing a switch-hitter, has naturally lent itself to all sorts of crackpot thinking.



The clip of the gamesmanship that went on between Venditte, a Yankees farmhand and Ralph Henriquez, from a game last month, really has to be watched to be fully appreciated. The story, which went out on the Associated Press wire, was largely treated as a one-off -- that only-in-the-minors story that gets e-mailed around among friends and is quickly forgotten.

What if there's something more to this than Venditte and his father, Pat Sr., trying to find an inroad into major-league baseball, the same way Tim Wakefield did when he became a knuckleball pitcher in the early '90s.

There's an article up about Venditte at MiLB.com that details how a guru named Michael (Hammerman) Lavery from Southern California (where else?) is promoting the concept of Whole Brain Power, which uses a series of exercises to stimulate each side of the brain (the logical/linear left side and the creative right side) and promote ambidexterity.

Lavery, an artist whose bio says he had a cup of coffee as a catcher in the Blue Jays farm system, has taught himself to be ambidextrous -- and he believes that in future generations, we could see all sorts of ambidextrous athletes -- baseball pitchers, tennis players, golfers, you name it. The MILB.com article says he speaks with "messianic zeal when it comes to the effects that widespread ambidexterity could have in the world of sports." As you can see below, he comes off as a bit, uh, idiosyncratic, but what if he's on to something?



Of course, one person's messianic zeal is another's nuttier than a pecan log. That can't be stressed enough. Who knows, maybe the above clip would leave the neuroscience community in fits of laughter -- can't you just see a bunch of scholarly types in white coats and sensible shoes rolling on the floor right now?

Regardless, it is common knowledge that being left-handed is somewhat learned behaviour (most lefties were somewhat fluid in childhood before choosing the path that doomed them to a lifetime of messy handwriting and difficulty with handling a stick shift). Activities such as sport stacking can help develop ambidextry. Believing Lavery might be along the same lines as the junk thinking which has caused millions of people in North America to believe in intelligent design.

Reason and caution doesn't stand a chance against a sports geek's ental Wikipedia entry of ambidextrous athletes: Greg Harris, the Expos relief pitcher, used both hands during a game in 1995. In the early '90s, there was a quarterback at the University of Arizona, George Malauulu, who could throw with either hand. Gordie Howe could shoot from either side, and in the 1940s the NHL had an ambidextrous goalie, Bill Durnan, who's in the Hockey Hall of Fame. It wasn't so long ago that lefties were forced to "go right," and as we move into a more post-industrial age, people are performing fewer tasks which have to be done right-handed.

Gender is somewhat socialized, why couldn't it be similar for your dominant hand(s)? There's a little bit of that Fox Mulder I-want-to-believe element here, even if it is completely crackers.

(Incidentally, this can be spun into another item in the people's case vs. J.P. Ricciardi. How could he not have signed Venditte, whose college team is called the Bluejays? Think about the synergy!

Instead of Yoric's skull, he's got an iPhone

Google search of the day: "Mats Sundin Hamlet" turns up 4,290 matches.

Good gosh a'mighty -- only a bunch of journalists would think they're being clever or literary by referencing a play that everyone in the goddamm Western Hemisphere reads in high school.

It's far, far better to work something on the scale of a Jim Croce reference -- "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask of the ol' Lone Ranger and you don't push Mats Sundin to make up his mind."

Seriously, though, hopefully someone with head for business (Krister?) can figure out if Sweden's tax rates have anything to do with Sundin's feet-dragging. What's his tax situation if he ends up signing with a U.S.-based team and thus establishes residency in two countries outside Sweden? Plus there's the whole issue of Quebec taxes.

(This is coming from someone who can barely figure out how to do his own income taxes in Canada.)

They'll hire a GM sometime before 2025...

There's no need to flip to the sports sections of the Toronto dailies tomorrow -- it's going to be all about the Leafs hiring Ron Wilson as coach. An interview is up at the FAN 590 website.

Lakers/Celtics--how nice for you David

As we sit two days before the NBA's wet dream final, it's worthwhile to take a trip down memory lane to watch this:



God love the NBA--so shameless. Amazing luck that the Bulls won the draft lottery, eh?

(Boston in 6).

Rapidz: Ironically, 'putz' also has a 'Z' on the end

Someone, please, enlighten us all on what was the point of the article the National Post ran today on the Ottawa Rapidz.

Let's presume this has nothing to do with the CanWest chain being preferential toward the Liberal Party and Rapidz co-owner Rick Anderson being an ex-Liberal who changed parties many years ago. It would be pretty low to crap on a fledgling baseball team and the people who are emotionally invested in it just to service a shallow political agenda.

There isn't the will or the malice to do a Fire Joe Morgan-style line-by-line dismantling of a column batted out by Don Martin. He either had some encouragement from higher-up or just settled on it himself. Let's just say that this hit-and-run hatchet job wasn't right and it wasn't fair.

"And when what looked to be an easy double play by the Rapidz became two runs scored for the visiting New Jersey Jackals after a wild throw from second base soared five rows behind first base, well, that could arguably be creatively marketed as the sort of ball game entertainment you'll never see in the big leagues."

It was the first flippin' game. Why not point out that Nick Trainor made a great throw from right field to cut down a run in Friday night's game, if you're just going to use one random example? Slagging a ball team and its players based on a couple misplays, yeah, that contributes a lot to the discussion.

Hey, on Sunday, Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox made a throwing error against the Oakland Athletics (or as The Post abbreviated it, "Oakland As" -- it's only had an apostrophe for about 100 years). What a loser! This guy's actually getting paid to play baseball? So what if he threw a no-hitter in his previous start? There have been seven errors committed in the majors today, and that's with a light schedule.

That's a pretty typical example from the article. Granted, this is coming from someone who gets defensive and protective when people who don't have a screw's clue about baseball write about baseball. It's an outrage (granted, only about 1/100th of an outrage as this) to see a paper with the Post's reach not bother to get multiple sources or double-check basic facts.

It would have been nice, for instance, if a journalist from a paper distributed across Canada had bothered quoting more than one person for his column, like say any of the 4,246 paying customers who turned out on Thursday for Opening Day, some of whom he could have found with just five minutes of Googling, maybe less. Contary to the article's claims, Vancouver is still in affiliated baseball. It's a farm club of the "Oakland As," as a matter of fact.

Some Can-Am League players do get signed by the majors. The league's leading slugger from last summer, Sandy Madera, is hitting .333 with a 1.002 on-base-plus-slugging (OPS) in the Boston Red Sox organization. Of course, the Red Sox also employ Jon Lester, and he made a throwing error on Sunday, so what do they know?

Of course, putting any of this in the article might have provided some context that didn't fit into the neat little package.

(Of course, no one really believes Don Martin is a putz, but Frank magazine readers should appreciate the pun. This is more about yours truly being defensive and sensitive when someone else gets the space to do a big column about baseball.)

Related:
Pro ball, but low ball (Don Martin, National Post)

SEAN AVERY'S LATEST SHENANIGANS

Sean Avery, once again, is either the most creative performance artist of our time or he's just a big cheater.



It makes a travesty of the game when a player screening the goalie on the power play isn't even making a perfunctory effort to follow where the puck is in the zone. The NHL probably can't make a rule against this right away, but some would say that there's no justice like NHL mob justice.

There's also no justice like the Devils ultimately winning the game in overtime to get back into the series.

Again, Epic Carnival is still the place for irreverent playoff updates.

(Clip via James Mirtle. UPDATE: Eric Duhatschek reports the NHL has players on notice that no one better try this again, even though Avery's actions had "ingenuity and creativity." When did Gary Bettman learn to be so magnaminous?)

UP AT 6: CAPITAL IDEA STOPPED AT THE BORDER, PLUS MORE SHENANIGANS

As you were trying to convince T.C. to let you borrow the chopper...

• Eric McErlain offers a window into the brave new world of bloggers and the MSM mixing on the Washington Capitals beat. Read it and weep if you live in Canada, since the teams up here are years away from even considering letting in the great unwashed.
• Praise the lord and pass the NHL draft guide; the Leafs are done. Most lapsed Leafs fans will admit that they were almost back on the bandwagon, but then they decided to keep living their lives.
• Rogers Sportsnet's Dean Brown and Ian Mendes both slipped "shenanigans" into the last night's Sens broadcast, hours after it appeared in the Ottawa Sun's sports poll. Nicely played, sirs.
  
  
• Senators centre Chris Kelly committed a Freudian slip when he told Sun Media of his ankle injury, "It could (have happened a) week later, which would mean missing the playoffs." He meant start of the playoffs, right, or deep-down in his subconscious, did he figure it will be a short stay for the Sens?
• Resident OHL expert Trevor Stewart's picks are looking pretty good, aside from Brampton over Barrie in five. (Barrie is up 3-1, but will probably blow i.)
• The Lehigh Valley IronPigs (né Ottawa Lynx, 1993-2007) are in a Best Logo Tournament at CNBC. Yes, it would be retty low-down to encourage people still in mourning over the late and lamented Lynx to head over there and vote for the opponent, eh? Perish the thought.
  
  The IronPigs are in the second round against the Clinton LumberKings. Good thing it's a logo contest, not a spelling bee. Voting closes at 9 a.m. today.
• There's a great symmetry to this: Zing Ottawa city councillor Clive Doucet ("We might get the CFL back, but not as soon as 2010 -- Clive Doucet needs more time to polish his special poem for the debate") one week and then open up the Ottawa Sun to see him use a phrase that's very near and dear to describe Mayor Lare. Doucet called the Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien's office "a gong show."
  
  Back in the day at the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic, there was a two-man sports department (names redacted) which took great delight in working "gong show" on to the sports page whenever possible.

Shenanigans ... gong show ... the revolution is gaining traction.