LAZY AFTERNOON LINKIN LOG...

Looking like a cab with all four doors open...

• If it wasn't so ghoulish, there would be justification to run a pool on who gets ousted first: Raptors coach Sam Mitchell (near right) or Blue Jays manager John Gibbons (far right, with an unidentified former player).
  
  Dave Feschuk's column in the Toronto Star published ahead of Monday's season-ending loss pretty much said once the Raptors are done, the next domino to fall over is Mike D'Antoni in Phoenix. As for Gibbons, so much has been said already. Good men, by all accounts, but both have been on the job in 2004, which is an eternity in pro sports.
• The best advice for when you want to get your screed on is to wait a couple days for Dave Zirin to say it with more credibility and eloquence. He pretty much laid into all the media types who kept repeating the word "character" ahead of the NFL Draft -- like the Evanka Osmaks of the world have a screw's clue of what Darren McFadden has had to overcome just to live this long, let alone be a first-round draft pick:
  
  

  "McFadden's story is a case study in the kind of character a typical 'draftnik' couldn't hope to comprehend. Here is someone who comes from a neighborhood in Little Rock where gangs and random killings are a daily fact of life. Instead of being seen as an indication of the remarkable character and perseverance it took to make it out of a home with eleven siblings, with one brother a Blood and another a Crip, his origins become just another strike against him.
  
  "This is someone from a neighborhood with an incarceration rate that exceeds the graduation rate, but who has never been arrested. OK, so he's been in a couple of bar fights, but imagine if entertainers were held to the same standard. What if Sean Penn couldn't get a movie role because he's been in a fist fight or two? What if any actor who has ever smoked weed or made an ass of himself was somehow deemed unworthy? It's a ridiculous double standard driven by general managers who fear they will lose their jobs if they can't predict the future.
  
  "That's the difference between Hollywood and the NFL. In Tinseltown, celebrities who act out for the paparazzi and our US Weekly fix are
  mainly white and largely forgiven for their wildness. Future NFL players who get poked and prodded like prize horses at auction are almost all working class and predominantly black."

• Point being, it's hard out there for the bleeding-heart sports fan to pick up a newspaper and see a headline, "Wanted: Players with character." The use of wanted is a little too ominious (obviously, whoever was on the copy desk didn't sit around listening to her/his parents' old Richard Pryor records.)
• Junior hockey rumour off a message board that has to be repeated for sheer silliness: Erik Gudbranson, the big defenceman from Ottawa who's expected to be a top-5 draft choice on Saturday, only wants to play where there's a French-language high school.
  
  The Kingston Frontenacs are picking fourth and the city does have French instruction at Regiopolis-Notre Dame, which used to be where the players attended high school. Just saying. Fronts followers would also be well-advised to brush up on the new rules that cover what happens when draft picks refuse to report. It has happened in the past.

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

UP AT 6: THRASHING LOOKS GOOD ON 'EM

On second thought, leading with AAA midget hockey on a Monday morning is probably not the wisest decision.

• Relax ... you don't have to be totally heartless to love the news that that the 58-1 Winnipeg Thrashers team choked in the final of the Telus Cup in Arnprior, losing 6-4 to the Sudbury Nickel Wolves.
  
  No doubt it hurts for the players, but life goes on. The joke is on the minor hockey pooh-bahs in Loserpeg. For years and years, they've tried to stack the deck in order to bring a Canadian midget hockey title to the city.
  
  Winnipeg accounts for more than half of Manitoba's population, but has only two teams in the 12-team provincial Triple-A midget league. Six years ago, it had four, then it was down to three for one season, 2002-03, then it was down to two. After Winnipeg blew it against Sudbury yesterday, it might have to go down to one for next season.
  
  The league standings suggest that the situation has made an absolute joke out of the idea of player development and fair competition. The Thrashers were 40-0 in the regular season with a 268-43 goal differential. The other Winnipeg team was 32-7-1, which likely means that it also went unbeaten against teams from outside the city.
  
  This is being written without knowing anything about the Sudbury team, other than it represents a city of 150,000-some people, not a place that has one team per twice as many people.
  
• For what it's worth, Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports thought the Vikings had a pretty good draft week.
  
• One hero from the weekend is the athletic director at Rutgers, Robert Mulcahy, for telling Notre Dame to get lost.
  
  Mulcahy walked away from a deal for a football series starting in 2010 after the Notre Dame insisted that Rutgers' home games be played at a neutral site. (Another Big East school, Connecticut, is playing Notre Dame, but its "home" games won't even be in the state of Connecticut.)
  
  Here's hoping Rutgers fills the vacancy on their 2010 schedule with an opponent which has actually won a bowl game this century.
  
• Something everyone might want to check this out further later this morning: The organizers of a MMA event on the Six Nations reserve in Southern Ontario are facing criminal charges. That could be a fun story for a couple of days.
  
• Thanks, everyone, for not sending word Season 2 of Friday Night Lights came out on DVD last week.

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

UP AT 6: LEAFS FANS, NOT HAPPY

As you were trying to reunite all the members of the Northern Pikes ...

• The New Yorker profiled Sean Avery; if that isn't a sign that the war's over -- low culture won.
  
  Those erudite, always-last-picked liberals actually seem to get Avery pretty well. He is one Advanced A-Hole and if you don't find something appealing in his act, you're probably legally dead. (The noisy gongs and clattering cymbals on the cable sports networks can never acknowledge this, of course, since they need to make Sean Avery into a cartoon, fodder for their shrill little contrived so-called debates.)
  
  There's a telling quote from the retired ref, Mick McGeough, that basically supports the theory that Avery, on some level, is actually brilliant.
  
  

  "Is he an idiot? I don't think so. He's smart. He's doing his job. And he's tough. He gives no quarter. I've seen him in a T-shirt. He's big."

  Avery also wants to intern at Vogue now.
• It takes some doing to finish behind a team that's being relocated against the will of the people in ESPN The Magazine's Fan Satisfaction Survey, but the Leafs did it. Th hockey division of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan finished 121st of 122nd teams. Yep, behind the Seattle-cum-Oklahoma City Sonics.
  
  The Senators were the highest of any Canadian team, at 29th, which just goes to show Ottawa fans are happiest when they're whining about something. (Link via Mirtle.)
• It's the 20th anniversary of both Bull Durham and Eight Men Out, two remarkably prescient baseball movies.
• Kissing Suzy Kolber has a bead on the Detroit Lions' draft broad -- all wide receivers, again?
• Major congrats to the Belleville Bulls -- off to the OHL final after thumping Oshawa 11-0 in the series clincher last night. Not too bad for their Eastern Ontario guys, goalie Mike Murphy and d-man Shawn Lalonde.
• Just doing some Tricolour rock 'n' roll duty -- the Queen's Golden Gaels are taking part in fundraiser called Golf 4 ALS. The Queen's coaches and players will be selling RCGA Golf Cards with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the ALS Society of Ontario. It sounds like a pretty good deal for golfers; fire off an e-mail if you want more info.

That's all for now. I'll be travelling today on business, so posting will be light until late tonight, and even then it's dodgy. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

UP AT 6: CAN'T SPELL 'PRO' WITHOUT HYPROCISY

Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein ...

• The apparent shrug over the Toronto Argonauts signing former Pro Bowl wide receiver David Boston, compared to what greeted Ricky Williams coming north in '06, says so much.
  
  Think about it. There was an outrage that the Argos signed Williams, who had flaked out on the Miami Dolphins and was an admitted pot smoker. He was also under NFL suspension, which Boston is not, fair enough. Some CFL loyalists acted like the Argos had signed the devil himself, even though it's hard to see how Williams could have been worse than Lawrence Phillips.
  
  Boston's dirty laundry includes more than a few roaches. He's failed a steroid test, entered a no-contest plea just last week to a charge of reckless driving and a domestic violence arrest last fall. (Boston's wife had objected to him leaving their one-month-old son unattended; an argument ensued.) He's not suspended by the league; Tampa Bay basically paid him off with an injury settlement last season.
  
  There would be no pro sports without badasses who would be in prison if not for their ability to perform a socially irrelevant act. However, it's odd that a drug cheat who has bullied women and put people at risk by driving when he wasn't in a the right state of mind to being arouses indifference, while the same people got their knickers in a knot over Ricky Williams.
• That being said, the Vikings really, really close to landing Jared Allen, says the Daily Norseman. Apparently his granddaddy talked some sense into him after his drunk-driving arrest last year. (Not completely, though: Allen wants to try MMA.)
• From the "Why everyone hates Duke University" files. Their baseball team fell behind in extra innings of a crucial game on Sunday. Suddenly, a school official emerged and stopped the game due to supposed lightning activity in the area, even though it wasn't even raining. No one put a tarp on the field; they just stalled and waited for rain so the game could be declared a tie. Now do you understand why college basketball fans hate the Blue Devils so, so much?
• Ottawa Fury striker Alex Valerio playing internationally for Portugal, rather than play international soccer for Canada, has stirred up quite a debate.
• Frequent commenter Tyler King is starting an online baseball sim league. There's already 12 owners for the inaugural season of the Ted Rogers Baseball League -- that's a lot of people who'll be looking up at the future champions, the Portland Ballsheviks, who will by flying a fictitious pennant at the fictitious Sagar-Sager Stadium.

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

WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY OF T.J. FORD FORCING UP BAD SHOTS?

A later links package than usual. Sorry, but someone was tired and that King of The Hill where Hank and Peggy play on the same softball team was on last night.

• That R.E.M. line about how, "Withdrawal in disgust is not apathy," applied to watching the Raptors against the Orlando Magic in their playoff opener yesterday.
  
  Less than five minutes in, Orlando was shooting 7-for-7 and had opened a 10-point lead. T.J. Ford had already belched up a couple of bricks. There was no point in watching much more. There's always next season.


• Did Tim McCarver really draw a parellel between a baseball manager and the Confederate generals from the Civil War? Yes, he did.
  
  Apologies for not getting to this sooner, but it did happen on the broadcast of a National League game, which isn't real baseball.
• Slate, which would argue with an echo, seems to have a winner with their 10 Dumbest Trends in Sports series. Neal Pollack's passionate plea to "please stop the meaningless sports rankings, power polls and 'MVP races' " is a tough act to follow.
  

  The Internet demands frequently updated content, and lists and rankings are incredibly easy to put together and require no original thought. There's no need to come up with a new idea every week: Just shuffle a few teams or players around, write a one-sentence caption, and you're ready to publish. Maybe people really care about this stuff, and sports sites are simply fulfilling our desire to assign rankings ... I'd prefer to think we're getting our sports fix from these columns because nobody bothers to writes about anything else.

• Cracked's "How To Make Your Own Judd Apatow Movie" is worth a read. It doesn't take away from the enjoyment of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
  
  Kristin Bell's titular character would have easily fit in among the females at a certain upper-crust Ontario university.

• The NHL trying to squelch the Detroit Red Wings' octopus tradition. It's a total about-face from last year, when the New York Times did a light-hearted feature story on Al Sobotka, the designated octopi picker-upper.
  

  "The N.H.L. has hardly considered penalizing Sobotka.
  
  "Frank Brown, the league's vice president for media relations, said: 'Every so often, an octopus slips out of someone's hands, and Al is right there to take care of the matter. And he cannot be blamed if, as it tries to break free from Al's grasp, the octopus lifts Al's arm and twirls itself in the air.”

  The Times went to town on the NHL for its ignorance, especially that claptrap about matter flying off the octopi and sticking to the ice. (Who knows, maybe the NHL is trying to pander to the Red States where they've banned teaching science.)


• There's been a post percolating for weeks about one of the great Canadian sports conundrums.
  
  Tons of hockey-loving, hoops-indifferent sports fans go gaga for March Madness. They get on the bandwagon when a team such as Davidson goes deep into the tournament. The same folks, however, completely check out of following major junior hockey once the local team is knocked out.
  
  It's pretty much the same vibe -- young players, full of piss and vinegar, laying it all on the line. They don't seem tainted by commercialism, since precious little of the proceeds of that commercialism gets shared with them. Yet no one in hockey-mad Canada cares much outside of the communities whose teams are still alive. You'd have to hunt around on the three sports networks' websites to find anything about the playoffs in the Ontario, Quebec and Western leagues.
  
  The small thinkers who run the major junior leagues, though, probably believe there's they need to play four best-of-seven series to determine a league champion. That's when teams make their money and that's what the NHL does.
  
  The Belleville Bulls are up 2-0 in their OHL semi-final series vs. John Tavares and Oshawa with Game 3 tonight. There's plenty of 613 rooting interest -- Kingston native Josh Godfrey on the Soo Greyhounds; Ben Shutron of Orleans with the Kitchener Rangers -- but see how far a conversation about the OHL playoffs goes with anyone.
• Taylor Hall is awesome.
• Entertainment Weekly included Friday Night Lights' Dillon High School among the best fictional high schools. Where's the Degrassi love?

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

UP AT 6: THE WORST SACKING IN WASHINGTON SINCE L.T. ON THEISMAN

As you were absorbing the meaing of "shorn't."

• The best-case scenario is that Matt Tunison outing himself and getting fired from his Washington Post reporting gig actually ends up being a great career move.
  
  Tunison, AKA Christmas Ape of Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber fame, got sacked over his blogging exploits. Yahoo! Sports recently hired on Greg Wyshynski, who had been contributing to Deadspin, to write about hockey, so perhaps they snap up Tunison.
  
  Like the great philosopher Peter Peart once said of himself as a younger man, "That was the end of my upward mobility ... and it was the best thing that ever happened to me."
  
  Stay strong, Matt. All of the frustrated wordsmiths who balancing having one foot in the blog realm and one in the newspaper game are with you in solitarity. Silly Post, not realizing a guy who was part of a great blog might be a great asset to them -- don't poachers also make the best game wardens?
• Good read in the N.Y. Times about a sports pioneer who's largely unknown -- Jackie Walker, a Tennessee Volunteers linebacker and one of the school's first African-American players, who was held out of a spot in his hometown's sports hall of fame while he was alive since he was gay. The oversight is finally being rectified.
• The Vikings possibly trading for Jared Allen, a premier pass rusher? Too good to be true. He led the NFL in sacks last season and unlike some rush ends, he wasn't on roller skates when on running plays to his side (check the Kansas City Chiefs' D-line stats on runs over left tackle).

Plans today are to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel plays a guy who gets over a woman -- clearly, this is science fiction.

UP AT 6: BRIAN'S SONG, SOON TO BEGIN

As you were awestruck to learn that Zooey Deschanel sings, too ...

• The Anaheim Ducks need to bow out of the playoffs as soon as possible (they won last night to avoid the ignominy of a sweep). For one, they have to be out before Scott Niedermayer can grow out his playoff beard; two, the Toronto media have to start beating the Brian Burke drum. (Actually, they're well underway.)
  
• The good news for Boston Bruins fans: Montreal Canadiens fans will never get away with taking over your arena again. The bad news: They won't get a chance to again this spring.
• Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the line-of-camera board advertising at NHL arenas in the U.S. comes from Canadian companies?
  
  There were ads for a Montreal radio station, CKAC 730 AM, on the boards in Boston during the past two Canadiens-Bruins games. Boston is the 11th-largest metropolis in the U.S. and it's a regional economic hub, yet it ends up having to sell signage to an out-of-town radio station? It does raise questions about where the NHL is headed in the States.
  
  It's bad enough the Canadian NHL teams' revenues are keeping the league afloat, but Canadian companies too? (If that is the case.)
  
• Ratings for the Raptors are up; interest in the term is up, so taking Jack Armstrong off the airwaves in Canada makes total sense. As requested by a couple friends, here's the link where you can tell MLSE how shortsighted it is to not retain The Coach on Raptors NBA TV next season. (The Star's Doug Smith had more on his blog yesterday.)
  
  Armstrong would presumably also be SOL since Sportsnet dropped its NBA package even though it had the largest increase for its Raptors ratings among the three Canadian sports networks.
• You might remember the story from a while back about the all-boys school in Kansas that forfeited a basketball game rather than have a woman referee. They might have trouble doing that again without really screwing up the boys' sports experience.
• Last, but not least: The recent news with Carl Eller (got in a scuffle with the cops) and Herschel Walker (had several personalities, but could only run out of the I-formation)begs the question of whether anyone well-adjusted has actually played for the Minnesota Vikings.
  
  Alan Page. There's one.

(Thanks to John Bower for the tip on the board ads.)

IT'S BILL JAMES' WORLD ...

Some will sink, but we will float / grab your coat / and let's get out of here...

• It figures that Bill James' formula for when a NCAA basketball game is out of reach would come into a play during a final in which his beloved Kansas Jayhawks made an improbable comeback to beat Memphis.
  
  A nine-point lead with 2:12 left in the game is 23% safe if the trailing team has the ball, 32% safe if the leading team has the ball, according to James' calculator. Let's say this was about 70-30 in favour of Kansas rallying -- Darrell Arthur made a couple big shots -- and Memphis spitting the bit.
  
  Those on the Fundamentals side of basketball's culture war will crow for a long time about Memphis' missed free throws in the endgame.
• Does anyone have a good idea what to call the nightly Stanley Cup playoffs posts that I'll be writing for Epic Carnival?
  
  The front-runner, at this writing, is "Playoff Beard."
• A hearty best wishes goes out to former Ottawa Lynx PR man Riley Denver, who's taken a job with the Canadian Olympic Committee based in Toronto. Carl Kiiffner has details.
• Making a running joke out of the struggles of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (né Ottawa Lynx) is tempting -- easy, too -- although it's not fair. Ottawa gave the team a Viking funeral, so it's sporting to wish Allentown, Pa., all the joy of Triple-A baseball.
  
  Nevertheless ... anyone who picked up a morning paper that runs the International League standings might notice that the recast IronPigs are 0-5. The batting averages for seven of the nine players who started last night in Pawtucket were .167, .154, .158, .143, .143 again, .077 and .067.
  
  It will get better. Hey, the IronPigs are playing a day game today; now that someone's snarked off, they'll probably get their first win; here's hoping they do.

HOW SWEDE IT MIGHT BE FOR ALFIE, MATS

Some morning tidbits to tide us all over; someone has travel plans today...

• It's impossible to abide The Canadian Press' Pierre LeBrun saying QMJHL goalie Bobby Nadeau acted like a "Nancy Boy" in a column for sportsnet.ca.
  
  

  Cripes, if anyone should be criticized it should be Chicoutimi goalie Bobby Nadeau for standing there like a Nancy Boy and not trying to defend himself when (Jonathan) Roy came after him?
  -- March 26, 2008

  The Tao of Stieb called it "creepy" that LeBrun, for all his virtues as a journalist, is arguing for 19-year-olds whaling on each other.
  
  (Granted, on-ice violence in hockey never, ever spills over into how a minority of fans behave in normal society. (Tell that to the guy in the Oilers sweater who received a 5-on-1 beatdown in Calgary last Saturday while he's convalescing from his broken nose).
  
  "Nancy Boy" should never get to the webpage when it's used in such a derogatory way. The term implies someone is gay or, short of that, that being gay is a lesser form of humanity. One reason LeBrun has skated on demeaning Nadeau is that sportsnet.ca might not get a lot of traffic from Chicoutimi, in the virtually 100% French-speaking Saguenay.
  
  LeBrun's job doesn't require him to be a "tree-hugger." (His term from the same article.) No doubt he didn't mean it that way. That's not an excuse. It's like that episode of The Office when Michael Scott, Steve Carell's character, gets in trouble for saying "faggy" in front of Oscar, a salesman who is gay. This is not funny -- it's a little funny -- and it's not a firing offence, but LeBrun and sportsnet.ca should know better.
  
• The joke's on Ottawa Senators management that the all-important Sens-Leafs match tonight is a pay-per-view game.
  
  The first reaction back in August when the team's broadcast schedule came out was, "Why in the hell are they putting that on pay-per-view -- it's probably going to be a nothing game because the Sens will have clinched and the Leafs will be out of it."
  
  It turns out it might be found money for Sens management. This presumes Sens fans pony up instead of sticking with the radio. Agonizing over a sports event which you cannot see is a much better way to stress-test vital organs, after all.
  
  Thing is, the Sens organization can't make too big a deal of their windfall, since it would look like they're revelling in rolling in dough while the team goes down the tubes. That's really more of a MLSEL thing.
  
  It's most likely Ottawa gets in by virtue of beating the Leafs without Mats Sundin and Nik Antropov, but who can be proud of that? Perhaps they back into the playoffs if the Flyers blow it and then there's a chance that they will complete the worst collapse in NHL history, and cause Leafs fans, a la Brent Leroy when the Corner Gas Guzzlers earned their first-ever tie, to taunt, "Ha-ha, you suck as much as us."
  
• It's good to see Daniel Alfredsson and Mats Sundin -- each among Sweden's greatest exports not have a name such as Ulrika or Malin --cross paths tonight. (Ignore for a second that Sundin is sitting out the Leafs-Sens game.)
  
  After all, Mats and Alfie, they're so busy and now it appears that they each might be free to lead Sweden at the World Championships in a couple weeks. Are they going to meet up in Ottawa and take a scenic drive down to Quebec City?
  
  That's the joke going around. Sundin refused to let the going-nowhere-fast Leafs trade him to the Canadiens because he really, really wanted to play for Sweden in the Worlds in his original home NHL city. Never mind that's the equivalent of a college basketball team skipping the NCAA Tournament to play in the NIT.
  
  (For the record, cheering for Sweden in hockey, as a Canadian, seemed like a reasonable thing to do two years ago -- before Deadspin's Will Leitch had a chapter in God Save The Fan about why it's American to root against the U.S. in the Olympics. The World Juniors get an exemption since our guys really seem to care about that event.)

A hockey post is up at Epic Carnival, by the way. That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

UP AT 6: CONTACT NUMBERS, DISAPPEARING

The closer I got, the more those feelings grew...

• Who made less solid contact last night? The Blue Jays batters or the Senators defencemen?
• Best Dave Schreiber-ism conveying the disgust of the Sens not-so-faithful: "Schubert didn't have a lane, but he shot it anyway."
• On the topic of the Jays are their runner-stranding ways, Mike Wilner has the hard evidence for anyone who still believes in sacrifice bunts (not that they'll listen).
• The Royal Canadian Air Farce got cancelled and Nickelback's Chad Kroeger got a DUI conviction, both on April Fools' day.
• It must be the withdrawal symptoms from being on vacation this week and not writing the regular Sun column -- have to pass along word that a standout basketball player from the Valley, 6-foot-5 Brendan King from Petawawa, has committed to play at Lakehead next season. Players from a school of 387 students (General Panet) don't get recruited every day.

(This was supposed to have been posted much earlier; computer problems and real life, you know.)

UP AT 6: GREENZO CATHEDRALS; A SMALLER CARBON FOOTPRINT IN THE BATTER'S BOX

The closer I got, the more those feelings grew...

• Sitting there in anticipation of Jays-Yankees game that was rained out planted a strange thought -- will there ever be a time when pro sports leagues, either for the sake of P.R. or due to political pressure, shorten their season on the vague pretense of helping the environment?
  
  Baseball has to get in a 162-game schedule in 182 days in order to get through three rounds of playoffs before it's too cold to play. That meant the "ludicrisosity," in Mike Wilner's made-up word, of scheduling baseball games in Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland and New York City on March 31. It was random chance that it rained (St. Louis' opener was wiped out), but don't miss the point.
  
  The push is on to start consuming less of everything. Why couldn't pro sports be a leader and be better off for it? It's two-fold with baseball. The crackdown on PEDs -- mainly amphetamines -- is probably going to have an adverse effect on the quality of play, since players need those to have the energy to get through the Long Season. A long time ago, Bill Lee suggested playing a shorter schedule with more time between games if MLB was really serious about getting rid of amphetamines.
  
  MLB could easily start the season on April 7, which is when it used to start. That's enough time to play a 140- or 150-game season in a 165-to-175-day timeframe. The players would get more rest, it's easy P.R., it's probably creates more demand to attend a particular game. Plus the players would have to take a hit on their salaries.
  
  The NFL could dial it back from 16 games to 14; neither hockey nor the NBA needs 82 to figure out who should be in the playoffs. The PGA can just shut down entirely, especially considering how many of those golfers have their own places burning jet fuel. Anyways, just a half-baked thought from a guy who got 65 in Grade 10 science.
  
• Man, people who work in radio really do have to get up early ... who were the two people, who soon as the Ottawa Sun sports poll went live at 3 a.m., actually voted "no" to the query, "Should the Senators' on-ice effort be questioned?"
  
  Looking at you, two of the Three Guys On The Radio. Well, who was it then? Mr. and Mrs. Mighty SOPO? Or did a couple of the subsection of the Sens Army who like to rant about how a team with a European captain will never win a Stanley Cup misunderstand the question?
• The captain of India's soccer team, Bhaichung Bhutia, is refusing to take part in the Olympic torch run in protest of China's crackdown in Tibet. Apologies in advance for being the cracker who saw this and conjured up an obvious Russell Peters joke: "We'll do anything to avoid physical exertion!"
  
  Seriously, though, Andrew Bucholtz has a post about boycotting Beijing without turning the athletes into pawns. It should get its own post here later on this week.
  
• There used to be a journeyman pitcher named A.J. Sager whose career was about as memorable as the journalism career of his namesake (so far). It turns out he was in rare company -- one of the very few players whose only career hit was a triple. And he hit it off Pedro Martinez! How about that?
  
• In the same self-absorbed, narcissistic way, that means hoping the Vikings do swing a trade for QB Sage Rosenfels -- as in Sage R., eh? The Vikes get the Monday Night Football treatment against the Packers in the season opener. The early line is Farve minus-27.5 for how many more times the announcers will mention the retired Packers QB than the actual Vikings quarterback, whoever it is that night. (The last part proves the point.)

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

YOUR FIRST OF MANY BEDARD POSTS IN 2008...

Erik Bedard's pitching line from his Mariners debut: one run on three over five innings, four walks and five strikeouts, 106 pitches, only 59 for strikes in an eventual 5-2 Seattle win.

A subtext to the Bedard story will be how he gets on with the media there, considering he's the new guy and he's living in a fishbowl. Geoff Baker blogged that Bedard "wasn't very forthcoming" after the game. Jerry Brewer, who's a fine writer, will have a column later today that should fill in more of the picture.

Bedard managed to get out of the fifth inning with a 1-1 tie intact.

Baker talked to some of the left-hander's childhood pals from Navan for an Opening Day Seattle Times feature. The Erik Bedard in that story seems pretty easy to relate to: Small-town guy, with a bit of a shy side, kind of a private person. Speaking from experience, that kind of reserve can often be taken for being aloof if people want to look for warts or aren't interested in getting to know you.

UP AT 6: CAN'T FORCE A TEAR OUT

As you were stocking up on flood pants...

• Justice delayed is justice denied and as any long-time Minnesota Vikings fan knows, there is no justice.
  
  Five years after that non-call on Nathan Poole's non-legal catch did the Vikings out of a NFC North title that was rightfully theirs (not that they hadn't done quite a bit to let it slip away), the NFL might eliminate the type of call that allowed that fluke touchdown on the final play of the 2003 season to stand.
  
  That's how it should be. Never mind that the NFL would have changed the rule right away if one of the TV networks' pet teams, like say the Brett Favre-led Green Bay Packers who ended going to the playoffs instead of the Vikes, had been the ones who got hosed by such a horseflop call. (Way back when, the NFL didn't waste any time after the Raiders, evil incarnate, won the Holy Roller game.)
  
  Saying that is bitter and petty and besides the point. It's for the best it's taken this long (and who knows, maybe the rule gets left alone). To quote Little Miss Sunshine, think about all the suffering that would have been missed out on if the refs had ruled no touchdown -- or if the Vikings had found a way to put away a 3-12 team in the first 59 minutes of that game. They probably would have gone on to lose to Seattle the next week anyways.
• And just where are people going to park when the CFL returns to Ottawa? A costly study to determine the most awkward solution is required.
• Did The Best Damn Sports Show really do a list of 50 most amazing catches without including Devon White's grab up against the centrefield fence in Game 3 of the 1992 World Series? Yes, yes it did.
• Mirtle has a link up to Gabe Desjardins' numbers on which players in the NHL are the best at drawing penalties. It's a good indication of what teams play with jam and have some good sandpaper guys. It takes a while before you encounter a Senators player (Mike Fisher is about 90th).
• The Leafs are officially done. It's good to get that out of the way.
• It's 3-5 weeks for Jays third baseman Scott Rolen. C'est la vie. Buck Coats is ready for his closeup.
• Fantasy baseball is way too philosophical.

UP AT 6: VIKES MAY MOVE MOUNTAIN

As you were trying to see things from the OmniTouch point of view...

• Daily Norseman ponders whether the Vikings would really cut off their nose to spite their face trade All-Pro left tackle Bryant McKinnie.
• A day in the life of people who produce pirated DVDs. Who knew there was another trick that involved poking a hole in the popcorn bag?
• It is possible to be ribald at a hockey game without making gay fans feel uncomfortable. New York Rangers fans ought to try joining the 21st century.
• Well, that was just dumb: Guy buys raffle ticket and put it's his neighbour's name; neighbour wins the car.
• Dave Zirin notes how Brett Favre embodied an archetype that was restricted to white athletes; that was written here a couple weeks ago, but it didn't seem like such an individious thing. How has Brett Favre-bashing not made it to Stuff White People Like?
• The inaugural Canadian Women's Hockey League championship goes today; the odds it gets a mention on Hockey Night in Canada? (Kingston's own Jayna Hefford is playing for Brampton in the final vs. Mississauga, so go Brampton.)

UP AT 6: HE MAKES MORE SENSE THAN COLIN CAMPBELL, YOU KNOW

So now there's no chance of an English Patient sequel, phew ... what, too soon?

• Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter ... now how long would you have suspended Chris Pronger?
  
  
  
• Ottawa's CFL revival in 2010 very well could be for real.
• Drunk Jays Fans has a good riff on Rogers applying for a baseball specialty channel: "I can't wait until the station is a year old and they start programming movies like Goodfellas just because in one scene Robert De Niro has a baseball bat in his hand." Wasn't that The Untouchables? "A man's gotta have his enthusiasms."
• UFC having Budweiser as an official sponsor, that's the perfect marriage of something that's barely of a sport and something that's barely of a beer.
• Speaking of which... be careful, Sault Ste. Marie city Coun. Frank Manzo, that you don't get sued for saying got "duped" by a certain someone. (The Soo is looking for a new title sponsor on the Steelback Centre.)
• Ask and ye shall receive, a Barry Bonds update.

UP AT 6: BONDS-LESS IN SEATTLE

As you were cocking your Tater Gun ...

• Pride goeth before the fall, but enough about T.J. Ford in the fourth quarter for the Raptors last night in Utah. Like Dinosty says, you don't want to "waste brainpower" on these guys, since they sure haven't lately.
  
  The sun will still come up tomorrow and they'll still have cap room in the summer.
• Right on time for the NCAA Tournament, Bill James reintroduces his equation for figuring out whether a college basketball game is over.
• Just sayin': Barry Bonds is unsigned and the Seattle Mariners, who have a clear run at the L.A. Angels in the AL West, are going with washed-up Jose Vidro at DH.
• Those Rogers kioskes at the Air Canada Centre, one imagines, are part of a nice little quid pro quo. Rogers Sportsnet has dropped their NBA package, which will make it that much harder for hoops junkies to resist getting Raptors NBA TV and lining MLSEL's pockets.
  
  Sportsnet will surely find some quality programming -- as soon as Fox Sports Net tells them what it will be.
• Sports Illustrated is introducing "a free online service called the SI Vault, a database consisting of all SI articles and pictures." So you can re-read Frank DeFord, Dan Jenkins or Gary Smith for nothing. Meantime, elsewhere it's expected people will pay for a three-week-old 425-word newspaper story.
  
  

UP AT 6: HAVING A BALL IN BEIJING

How did you get that motorcycle up there on the high dive, anyways?

• Twelve hours later, it's still stunning Canada qualified for the Olympics in baseball. Does it ever get tiresome pointing out that we did better in baseball in Athens that we did in Turin in men's hockey, especially considering the relative budgets for the two national associations?
  
  (Short answer: No, and yes, it's a bit unhealthy to always love the underdog.)
• John Brattain is just demented enough to believe that incident in the late '90s when Manny Ramirez hit a comebacker right off Josias Manzanillo's cup -- or would have if Manzanillo had been wearing one -- demands to be set off in verse.
• Another Rapids pitching signing: Left-hander Jason Pilkington, a former Northern Leaguer, is apparently close to signing here ... much obliged to the Guelph Mercury and Greg Layson.
• Never too early to start thinking about the March Madness south of the border: Is Florida going to miss the Tournament? (They were down 30-5 at one point last night to Alabama -- who way back in September, lost an exhibition game to Carleton.)

UP AT 6: WHO NEEDS FICTION, BESIDES LEAFS NATION

The stuff to get obsessive over, if only there was time ...

• The Toronto Maple Leafs won't go away. Mirtle figures it would take a 9-1 record to get in the post-season. That's where the discussion ought to end, no?
• Stephen Colbert portrays a hockey announcer in The Love Guru; but wouldn't he have trouble telling the teams apart because he doesn't see colour?
• Mike (Awesome) Wilner has some interesting stuff on the track record of pitchers coming back from a torn labrum in the wake of the news about the Jays' Casey Janssen. It's not encouraging.
• Stephen Brunt's tribute to J.I. Albrecht is a must-read.
• Quite the scandal in upstate New York: No, not Eliot Spitzer -- talking about Syracuse getting blown out by 19 points in the first round of the Big East tournament.

(Yes, it appears Up at 6 is back, after an absence of many months.)

UP AT 6.... YOU'VE MADE A FALSE IDOL OF THIS REX GROSSMAN

• To any Chicago Bears fans who saw their season go up in smoke last night, remember, you were warned.
• Something that should be kept in mind with regard to the New England Patriots: How much has playing three straight games in Prime Time (two Sunday nighters before this week's Monday nighter) tired them out? NFL teams are conditioned for 1 p.m. on Sunday and in many cases, being home and R&Ring by 6 or 7 that night. That hasn't happened.
• Must be hell being the oldest: Anthony Parker is the Raptors starting shooting guard and his sister Candace might be the best women's basketball player in the world. Their brother Marcus is merely going to be a doctor.

Much obliged to pal Trevor Stewart for the shout-out in his Sudbury Star blog yesterday -- not that N. Sager knows anything about blogging for the MSM.

(Expect light blogging this weekend... someone felt that a trip west would do him good, see some old friends, good for the soul.)

UP AT 6... "SCOLARIED" ... IN OTHER WORDS, RON BURGUNDY IS NO LONGER THE BALLS

Someone's been watching too many Entourage reruns...

• Seeing the teasers for Will Ferrell's upcoming comedy Semi-Pro and reading comments at Yahoo! Sports -- fairly typical sample is, "Oh, now he's the 1970s basketball player in Flint, and not the 1970s newscaster in San Diego? -- kind of begs the question if he's been Scolaried.
  
  Scolaried, as defined by the L.A. Times' J.A. Adande, is the state of being "left behind by someone considered an equal at one time."
  
  Judd Apatow will have three Ferrell-free hits on his hands by the end of this calendar year, since Walk Hard, starring Mike Honcho himself, John C. Reilly, looks like a sure bet. Amy Adams, who played Ferrell's love interest in Talladega Nights, just got catapulted into stardom thanks to Enchanted (should have been for Junebug, but oh well). Steve Carell and Seth Rogen are both bankables, although you'd only notice that Rogen was in Anchorman if you've seen it 35 or more times (uh, according to what a friend says).
• There's no point describing what goes on when Pierre McGuire and Gord Miller broadcast a game that Sidney Crosby is playing in: The Coming Crosby Backlash was already covered off almost a year ago.
• Housekeeping item: Good friend and regular contributor Neil Acharya is contributing to The Score Forecaster; his first post is up today.
• There's a primer on Tim Lincecum up at Hardball Times. It's nice, as a Jays fan, to picture him getting ground-ball outs off that changeup he developed last year.
  
  It's still damn hard to part with Alex Rios, though. He's a much better player than Delino DeShields was when the Expos swapped him for a young Pedro Martinez back in 1994.