Mornings with Mr. Canoehead

Water off a duck's back, raisins off an Oldsmobile ... what's not bothering you know.

... Sports columnists who think they have a right to comment on Serena Williams' body. Shame on you, Jason Whitlock: "She'd rather eat, half-ass her way through non-major tournaments and complain she's not getting the respect her 11-major-championships résumé demands...seriously, how else can Serena fill out her size 16 shorts without grazing at her stall between matches?"

... Whoever at FOXSports.com came up with the "Jays' Halladay all but gone in Toronto" headline based on J.P. Ricciardi saying, "if something makes sense, we at least have to listen." Flimsy basis, much? New rule: If a list of teams a reporter believes someone might be traded to exceeds one-third of the league, it's straight out of Eklund country. Quoth Craig Calcaterra: "The Blue Jays ... cannot spend a decade talking about how impossible it is to compete with Boston and New York and then turn around and give them one of the best starting pitchers in baseball during a pennant race ... if it did, it would potentially kill baseball in Toronto forever, and the fact that Rosenthal spends any time on those options at all suggests that this is more of a 'throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks' column than anything else."


... Whatever possessed an Ohio sportswriter to say, "Let the rest of the world play rugby," after Team USA beat Canada in the final of the world junior football championship on Sunday. Far be it to point out Americans should be flattered some of their backwards neighbours throughout the world have taken up the gridiron game. No matter how bad the over-the-top chauvinism gets in Canada during the world junior hockey championship, you'd never catch someone saying, "Let the rest of the world play ringette."

... The rumour Leafs first-round draft choice Nazem Kadri did not put on a hat on draft day because of his Muslim faith. Brian Burke was hilarious shooting that down: None of the Leafs' choices put on a hat when called down to the podium at the NHL draft as per a team policy (Burke noted he wanted photographers to get a better shot of the players' faces), plus there were published photos of a younger Kadri wearing a Canadiens hat. Whoever started that is out of touch.

... Bob Uecker dropping hints on-air about the possibility of a Major League 4.

... idly wondering if ave people seen the blog, Tennis Has A Steroid Problem?

BT to the dub, Erin Nicks is back up and blogging at The Universal Cynic. It will get more traffic than this site without even trying, and that's OK.

Tennis ethics are different when a Williams sister is affected

Your guess is as good as any how the wire-service reporter could get that the ball "appears to glance first off (Maria José) Martínez Sánchez's right forearm, then off her racket, before going over the net."



It quite something how the reaction could be so varied, when it's that bloody obvious that Serena Williams got hosed on that call. It's also beside the point if it did hit her opponent's racket, since the point should have been decided as soon as the ball hit her arm.

It's not clear what ism is really most at play, other than the media's need to create conflict when there really isn't one and pander to the knee-jerkers.

Yahoo! Sports attempted to characterize it as "a tough one," when it was not:

"If, as Williams claims, Martinez Sanchez knew the ball hit her and didn't say anything, it's not honest, but it's not an egregious violation of tennis ethics either. You can see where Serena is coming from, but what did she want Martinez Sanchez to do, overrule the chair umpire?

"Tennis players aren't responsible for their own calls."

However, over in London where they know their tennis and speak really good European, that's not how it's being seen. The Sunday Times believes there should be an investigation, while a lot of people here are saying in not so direct language, "Shut up, Serena."

"When Serena Williams accuses her Spanish opponent Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez of cheating, then things need to be investigated. After all this is the sport where players admit that the ball bounced twice on their side of the net and the French Open is the place where competitors scuff out ball marks on the clay when they know they are out, to save the umpire the task of getting out of his chair to invigilate.

"... Those with a long memory immediately cited the case of Ken Flach in the 1985 US Open doubles final when he and Robert Seguso confronted Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte. Flach wore his hair stylishly shoulder long in those days and a drive from the French duo hit his flowing locks.

"Noah, very much a man of peace since his retirement, was incensed but Flach insisted he had no idea whether the ball touched his hair or not which quite conceivably have been the case. Long hair has no nerve endings in the follicles but anyone who has been dealt a heavy blow on the wrist of forearm will know what’s hit them."

The point is the obvious. There's a long history in tennis of players owning up to it when an incorrect call went in their favour. Even people who only pay attention during the Grand Slam events probably remember the story of what happened at the 1982 French Open, when Mats Wilander overruled the official on match point vs. José-Luis Clerc (and Wilander went on to win the replayed point and won the tournament).

However, suddenly when it happens to a outspoken player who is African-American, suddenly that's never happened. That's what you get when you have a media that is overly opinionated and undereducated.

Related:
Cheating and Racism at Roland Garros: Ahhhh, It Must Be Spring in Paris (Sports On My Mind)

Snark break...

As you were hanging out with your mysterious cousin ... Willie Gardener was LeBron before there was a LeBron ...

Apparently, Chris Paul is Basketball Jesus ...


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 Raines lumped 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.

Male tennis players are a little too friendly with each other.

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.
  

(Clip via Puck Daddy.)

Jerry West: The man behind the silhouette

Those who enjoy a good sports tome might enjoy hearing that Jerry West, the greatest NBA player turned executive, is planning to pen his memoir:

"With the help of critically acclaimed writer Jonathan Coleman, bestselling author of Long Way to Go: Black and White in America and Exit the Rainmaker, West will candidly and poignantly recount the fascinating, complex life of one of sports' greatest heroes — on and off the court."
— Book Deals For The Book Publishing Industry

There has been a need for a West bio ever since 1996. A writer named Ken Fuson penned a piece called, "The Man Who Loves Basketball Too Much; The Exquisite Torment of Jerry West."

The Fuson piece was included in The Best American Sports Writing 1997. That collection, edited by George Plimpton, got criticized for being a wee bit phallocentric, prattling on about "men of letters" and then including only one piece written by a woman. It was redeemed by having the late David Foster Wallace's "The String Theory," a profile on obscure tennis pro Michael Joyce.

It ran in Esquire right before Infinite Jest was published. It was something else, all right. It referred to the American player Michael Chang having, "an expression of deep and intractable unhappiness, as unhappy a face as I have seen outside a graduate creative writing program," which no doubt influenced more than a few wannabe writers' future schooling and career choices, perhaps for the better. It was later anthologized in Wallace's collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

Getting back to West, remembering that Fuson piece certainly whets the appetite for a full-length book treatment. Basketball, contrary to Plimpton's rule that "the smaller the ball, the better the writing," tends to lend itself to good character studies. West's journey from an impoverished upbringing in backwoods West Virginia — he didn't care for his college nickname Zeke from Cabin Creek — to assembling the Showtime Lakers of the '80s should be a joy. West was someone who absolutely could not stand to lose, yet his Lakers lost eight of nine NBA Finals during his career, mostly thanks to Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics.

West is still the only player to be NBA Finals MVP while playing on the losing team. He did so 1969, when the Lakers kept Wilt Chamberlain on the bench in the closing minutes of Game 7 and lost by two points. West put up 42 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists on, get this, a torn hamstring.

Those are facts. West turned 70 last year, so he's at the age where people are usually pretty open about the details of their own life. It's a promising piece of news.

(Meantime, a good read is the interview Michael Joyce did with Tennis Week in the wake of Wallace's suicide last summer.)

Related:
Basketball Legend Jerry West to Publish His Autobiography (BookCatcher.com)

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!!

I've figured out -- Wimbledon was nothing less than a showdown of 2 Highlanders! And obviously, since the victory, Nadal took all the power that once belonged to Roger Federer, with a pending claim to supremacy not far behind.

Ok but c'mon, you try and provide a better answer to explain Ferderer over these last 2 tournaments! So the First Round exit at the Rogers Cup here in Toronto - as awful as it was for both organizers and fans alike being robbed of the much-anticipated Federer-Nadal rematch - was excusable for Roger since it was his first match post-Wimbledon epic battle to the death. However, after losing his Third Round match in the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters today to 16th seed Ivo Karlovic, his third loss in his past four matches mind you, then we enter question period. It's not too rash to reach this point either because Roger Federer does NOT lose 3 of 4 matches, EVER! Not to the best of the best in the tennis world, and certainly not to lower/unseeded players. Federer had become the Tiger of tennis, but even an injured Tiger still has what it takes to at least make it respectable at his tournaments (if not win it all). Therefore it's clear that something is rotten with Roger.

If Rafael Nadal takes this tournament Roger Federer, for the first time since February, 2004, will no longer claim the #1 Men's Seed. There Can Only Be One!

Double the fun, half the glory

Daniel Nestor must sometimes wonder about us Canucks. Desperate for homegrown heroes in world sports like golf and tennis we lionize Mike Weir and even a single win by Niagara Fall’s native Frank Dancevic can find its way onto the front sports pages. Yet Nestor usually ends up as an afterthought—a two paragraph add on to the AP wire story. …Toronto’s Daniel Nestor retained his world No. 1 doubles ranking with a straight set win over…

The man’s won Wimbledon. And an Olympic gold medal. Yet he’s an agate page guy, if he gets ink at all.

So, yesterday we have Weir putting a mediocre performance in against a mediocre field at the Canadian Open, but he still gets higher billing than Nestor, who actually won a Canadian open championship in Canada. Something Weir will likely never do (he had his chance in 2004 when he was at his peak).

As a soccer and CIS guy I realize that you can’t make people care about what they don’t care about. However, that said, Nestor still gets the short stick from us. I dare you to find a Canadian athlete as under appreciated as him, actually (and there are a lot of under appreciated Canadian athletes).

A legitimate gold medal contender in Beijing (along with partner Frederic Niemeyer) Nestor will likely get some well-deserved attention in China. For a variety of reasons (hockey blindness, lack of appreciation for doubles, J.P. Ricciardi — I’m sure it's his fault somehow—etc.), we will likely forget about him by the time the U.S. Open rolls around.

And that’s a shame.

Celebration of Sport

It is truly magnificent in these modern days, bogged down with countless concerns outside the game itself, that a match can just be great because of what has transpired on the field of play.

As this week has progressed I couldn’t shake the Wimbledon Finals from my mind. I thought initially it had a lot to due with the instant classic I witnessed on Sunday, but then thinking it over I actually feel it was because this was nothing short of a shining beacon of light in an otherwise predictable and redundant world of sports. There was no perfect domination by the most dominant player, no Cinderella Story win in dramatic fashion, and beyond a slight mid-match injury no heroic return to claim victory either. Just two elite athletes in an epic showdown, and for that reason it was something truly fantastic to watch.

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few days of how this match may have single-handedly resurrected the game in far off distant lands where the game is not truly embraced like…North America. But the reason for this resurrection is why this event is so great, because the celebration is thanks to really nothing more than sport in its purest form: the performance of its athletes. And debate what you will over that performance - some have mentioned the conditions in favour of Nadal, and of course that whole matter of whether or not either player could even see the ball at the end of the match. Regardless, it was still the play on the court, the amazing rallies and fantastic shots each player produced, that intrigued the world, and that caught everyone’s attention.

There were interesting storylines, suiting of a Final held at the hallowed All England Club. The Williams sisters brought back the carnival that surrounds them every time they play together in a Major finale, and obviously there was the continuation of the Roger Federer-Raphael Nadal saga. But in the end the stories played second fiddle to the action that unfolded on the courts – even the Williams sisters behaved, that match appearing to be more of a contest between two athletes than a rigged family Sunday rally.

I see this as one of the more important sporting events in quite a while because it’s a display of sport as just that and nothing more, and making headways in a time where something else is ALWAYS necessary to grab the interest of fans. There was no cultural significance drawing attention here, no feel good sappy story that people followed, nothing more than a clash of the world’s best. And for once a marquee sporting event that finally surpassed all the high expectations that came along with it; in this “hyper-promoted” world of sport this was a Championship worthy of the title.

It’s resurrecting the interest in sport simply through a superior performance prevailing over any and all other factors on that day. Wimbledon was something special this past weekend. The debate is already on over whether or not this was the greatest Tennis match of all time, but it should also be mentioned that this appears to have been a moment where sport could just be enjoyed for nothing more than the game itself, for a welcome change. It just feels right to celebrate such an event, even a few days later, because really these things don’t come around all too often.

Putting a lid on the drama

Well, it's no wonder the powers-the-be at Wimbledon are putting a retractable roof over Centre Court -- a columnist from America's most important newspaper couldn't even be bothered to wait out the rain delay during Rafael Nadal's seminal win over Roger Federer.

(Yeah, we know who's the empire which the sun never sets on. Take that, John Oliver. You too, Jimmy Hogg.)

It's completely irrational to feel upset over the end of one sports' great anachronisms, yet there's still a sense of loss. People are funny that way. Over here in North America, with our lack of couth, we never would have put up with the rain delays -- one of the charms of an English summer -- and play being suspended due to darkness that are part of the fortnight. (Nor do we use words such as fortnight.)

When it's the other guy, there's something compelling about how the fans at the All England Club just wait the downpours and the matches that take three days to complete, in their cheerfully resolute British way, just like the way they survived the Blitz back in 1940 without a bit of woe-is-us. At least that's the way it seems from here.

Now it's gone for good. It's really silly to have any kind of sad bastard lament over it, but then again, there are still people who prefer CDs to iPods and would rather make popcorn in an air popper than in a microwave, too. The truth is Centre Court probably should have had a retractable roof years ago, the same way it was absurd that Wrigley Field in Chicago didn't have lights until 1988, or that it's taken this long for college football to have a true national championship. (Whattya mean they still don't have one?)

There's a sense of loss, probably as a reaction to the push for everything to be more cost-efficient, time-efficient and manpower-efficicent, where everything runs smoothly and fits into a nice little prefab three-hour window. From the sounds of it, though, the rain delays and the gathering gloaming enchanced the tension of Nadal's four-hour, 48-minute, 62-game dethroning of Federer -- and at least in my small, isolated corner of the world, everyone was jazzed up about tennis, of all things.

That won't be the case on a future fortnight. C'est la vie.

A couple more late leaping-off points:

• One thought that keeps bubbling up is whether or not this might herald a second tennis boom -- more people following and playing the sport, as was the case in the '70s and '80s, when the game, for a lack of less obvious cliche, was dragged out of country clubs and brought to the masses.
  
  Two big drivers might be Wii tennis and more worldly American sportscape. Apparently, Wii tennis is pretty addictive. It seems unlikely that playing a sports video game creates curiosity to follow the sport (although some people have said they understand football better after playing Madden), but maybe a popular video game might lead a few people to check out the sport on TV.
  
  Secondly, the end of the tennis boom, at least in the States during the '90s, somewhat stemmed form the absense of American personalities. Pete Sampras was a great champion, but he was bland, and the sport sagged in popularity.
  
  There seems to be a desire among U.S. sports fans to feel more worldly and outward-looking, especially during the last throes of Bush-Cheney. Living vicariously through a global sport is a great means to that end, even if it doesn't make you any smarter. Rooting for Rafa Nadal might become one of the accoutrements (he typed, sarcastically) of being an it-getter international sports fan.
• It's odd how we're conditioned to be speculative. Nadal just edged by a reduced Federer and already this raises speculation over whether he could win the Grand Slam, now that he's won titles on clay and grass. Sports On My Mind poured some cold water over the idea, pointing out the conditions were ideally suited for Nadal to stay back on the baseline, like he does on the slow-playing clay courts.
  
  Still, we're overdue for a Grand Slam. It's been 20 years since Steffi Graf's 'Golden Slam' in 1988. Nadal is probably not good enough to win the Australian or U.S. Opens.
• Last but not least, tennis when played well is the most beautiful and demanding game you can name.

(Lay off The Times' brilliant Bill Rhoden, -- granted, when you've written a book as good and as searing as Forty Million Dollar Slaves, you're gonna be a lightning rod . So he left the greatest match ever to go see a Will Smith movie, big deal, wanna fight about it? It's not like he woke up at 12:10 Eastern time on Sunday, assumed that match which had started three hours earlier was probably over, went looking for the first sports event on the TV, just to have something on to ignore, which happened to be a WNBA game, carried on blissfully unaware of what was transpiring at the All-England Club, then got to work at 4 p.m. to see it was tied 7-7 in the fifth set ... like some people we could name!)

Related:
Memorable Wimbledon Final Also Signals End of an Era (Christopher Clarey, The New York Times)
How the Courts of Wimbledon Stole Immortality from Roger Federer (and Made Rafael Nadal Appear Great) (Sports On My Mind)

CENTRE COURT IS ROGER'S HOUSE

Time for just a short post before France and Italy kick off in about 40 minutes:

Tennis at its best is a bloodsport.

Yes, you have that air of politesse, especially at Wimbledon with the strawberries-and-cream, the mandatory all-white attire and the announcer intoning, "Quiet please," in the most dulcet of tones.

However, that's just a veneer: the game is about breaking your opponent's will, point by point. You make him and her wilt under the steam bath of a British summer the glare of thousands of well-heeled martini drinkers.

That's what Roger Federer did to Rafael Nadal about an hour ago a 6-0, 7-6, 6-7, 6-3 win that gave him his fourth straight Wimbledon men's single title and made up for Nadal beating him in the French Open final a few weeks ago. There's one point that sticks out in my mind. At 1-2 and 30-40 in the fourth game of the final set, Nadal had Federer dead to rights after getting him on the run and inducing a return that floated high over the net. However, Nadal smashed his return long, giving Federer a break game and a 3-1 lead.

That was it, really. They could have presented the trophy right there.

It was an unforced error, but those are brought on by being intimidated by the player on the other side of the net. In this case, it was Nadal realizing that he might beat Federer at Wimbledon some day, but just not today. Still, the Spanish lefty at times showed that he's got into Federer's head a little bit, too. There is a gap between them as the No. 1 and No. 2 players, at age 24 and 20, but it won't be as large when they're 26 and 22.

OTHER BUSINESS

• When a 7-5 win over the Royals is described as one of a team's "most vital yet" this season, that's a worrying matter for the Blue Jays. Regardless, last night's victory was the end of a drought, and hopefully Roy Halladay helps them salvage a split this afternoon.
• Girlfriend-friendly sports movies. Learn it, live it, love it.