Football: A new favourite player, Ellis Lankster

Nothing can be finer than tearing someone a new one today when you never heard of her/him prior to yesterday.

Only a true NFL obsessive knew that Ellis Lankster was a rookie cornerback for the Buffalo Bills before the clip below started to spread virally.



There should be some empathy for Lankster. He seems to have a speech impediment. He would not be the first person who had problems communication which belied his intelligence and value. Who knows, given the way NFL teams overanalyze every bit of minutia about a prospective player, perhaps it caused him to fall to the seventh round in the draft.

Anyway, sorry, but a football player stuttering is not funny. As for the Bills' offence sputtering ...

Related:
Leave Ellis Lankster Alone (Pro Football Talk)
Poor Ellis Lankster (OTR)

The laughter seemed exceptionally forced

There is no truth that Matt Vasgersian's producer hides his eyes when he's on the air, the way people used to when Mitch Williams pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies. But they might want to:



Long story short, MLB Network had just shown Colorado outfielder Brad Hawpe being taken off the field after being struck in the neck by the ball while sliding into second base. Vasgersian, God love him, noticed one of the attending medical personnel was African-American and a bit on the stout side, so ...

Vasgersian: "Can you guys go back to that, uh, I thought I recognized somebody in that shot that I'd like to take another look when they were putting Ryan — I mean Brad Hawpe — on the cart there. Is that Donovan McNabb right there?"
Mitch Williams: "Dude!"
Vasgersian: "I thought he was on the field as an EMT."
Third MLB Network dude: "In Colorado?"

Eventually, everyone slips up since the on-air talent is under such pressure to be hip and edgy, but that probably wasn't the time for a joke about the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback.

It used to be taboo in the media to joke that two African-Americans looked alike, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. It's not racist, it's definitely not a hanging offence. It's more like something Don Cherry once said to Ron MacLean, "A million comedians starvin' to death, and you're trying to be one!" Snark is for amateurs, indeed.

(Clip via Babes Love Baseball.)

Snark break ...

Anyone who made a joke about Muntadhar al-Zaidi -- his name's not Shoe Thrower -- being signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates as a pitcher or by the Detroit Lions as a quarterback is officially worthless and weak. Making fun of the Lions got old weeks ago, making fun of the Pirates got old years ago, plus there is the whole issue about making light of a genocide.

Someone, please, should try to figure out what makes hockey people so obsessed about what athletes wear. Don Cherry goes on about the Sennies' Mike Fisher looking like a "thug," which he repeated it on The Hour last night. John Buccigross, who writes about hockey for ESPN.com, attacked Terrell Owens for his "Hogan’s Heroes jacket and his Fat Albert hat," and no, that's not the least bit disturbing.

Look at what's in someone's heart, not on someone's body, is that so hard?

Shorter version of TSN's quarterly report: "After school, you're dead, Sportsnet."

The Raptors are making people less angry about the Rogers/TSN2 standoff. It was a blessing to not watch that fourth quarter against New Jersey last night where "(Chris) Bosh and (Jermaine) O'Neal were dominated by a frontcourt of Brook Lopez, Ryan Anderson and Josh Boone" (to quote The Passion That Frustrates Us All).

This post was worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• Jim Kelley at sportsnet.ca is the latest to start soap-boxing over violence in hockey.
• Steve Sullivan -- 11 years later, people still haven't shut up about the Leafs dropping him -- is back skating with the Nashville Predators. He had a serious back injury two years ago.

The truth shall set you free

Paging William Houston at the Globe & Mail: It is 99.9% certain there is a serial plagiazer in the Canadian media, and it's not clear where the point-one is coming from.

True, there are bigger fish to fry, and sporting topics of broader interest. Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio has done the digging with regard to sportsnet.ca's Chris Landry, and been on this over the past few days. It's especially rich, especially considering that Landry once wrote a piece about Bill Belichick titled "Above the Law" where he related to readers how, in his days as an NFL scout, he opted for the moral high ground when he worked for Coach Hoodie, saying, "I would not steal (competitors') information. I could beat them fair and square and often did so. I could also look myself in the mirror and sleep well at night, something I could not have done if I had cheated them."

Sportsnet is a distant No. 2 behind TSN, but it is mind-boggling that Houston or the CBC has not called shenanigans. We all look bush-league if this is allowed to slide. Plagiarism is a firing offence at any reputable news outlet. ask Scott Taylor in Winnipeg or David Pratt in Vancouver.

(Update, Dec. 4, 2 p.m.: Pro Football Talk is reporting that Landry will "remain off air for now." theScore.com Blog picked up on it this morning.)

The Reader's Digest timeline, of PFT's digging, which includes direct accusations from two writers affected, Andrew Brandt and Michael Lombardi, that they were ripped off, seems pretty damning. PFT has dedicated multiple posts to this, so rather than having a post that's nothing but hyperlinks, here's a summary"

• As "the result of a long-time league executive pointing out the similarities to us," PFT finds that, "In nine different instances, the words in (Landry's Dec. 1) column were virtually identical to the words in the other one (by Lombardi of National Football Post).
• Quoth PFT, "Landry responded with a general denial and a vague allegation that it was his work that had been plagiarized."
• On Wednesday, NFP posts a message, "The National Football Post became aware yesterday that Chris Landry copied certain segments of our content and published it on sportsnet.ca without our permission and without credit being given to our writers. We thank ProFootballTalk.com for bringing the issue to our attention."
• Brandt points out that Lombardi's Nov. 17 column and Landry's Nov. 21 column are remarkably similar. (Apparently Landry once worked for Lombardi in Cleveland.)
• NFP commenters note that Landry's archive at sportsnet.ca shows nothing written after Jan. 28, but links to work done since Jan. 28 still work (as, at this writing, it does for the Nov. 21 column -- I checked).
• PFT says neither Landry or anyone from Rogers Sportsnet has taken them up on an offer to go on the record and tell their side of the story. But they, as Florio notes, it's odd that a portion of his archive would suddenly vanish right after allegations of plagiarism have been levelled.

There is a modicum of sympathy for all the writers these days, and god knows the temptation to scalp or cut corners must be overwhelming. There's far more for those who see someone else nicking their stuff without attribution or permission.

Related:
Smoking Gun Emerges In Landry Situation (Pro Football Talk)

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

Someone almost became a personal hero, too bad he/she's so shy...

The gauntlet has been thrown down for the Anonymous Commenters Hall of Fame.

This one is the total package of...

• Having an ax to grind about a single issue, long after everyone else has made their peace.
• Coming off as holier-than-thou.
• Making unsupported, ya-sure-you-are claims of social or professional status.
  
  (One would think a self-proclaimed Rapidz "insider" who claims a man's "wife probably has cancer from all of his second hand smoke and just the basic stress of living with a control freak" would at least nut up and put a name behind it.)
• Dehumanizing someone with an unflattering nickname.
• Run-on sentences that don't give a reader a chance to come up for air.
  
  See that key right above the spacebar? The one right below the the L, between the M and the period? It's a comma and it's wonderful.
• Statements that would get anyone using his real name sued for libel and defamation.

That's enough of an intro. The man who was the target of this attack deserves so, so much better.

I think the firing of The Bottle(Ed's nickname throughout baseball) was too late and if you are an insider with the team then you would know that Bottle was the seventh or eighth choice for manager. The team was thrown together in three weeks and the win loss record shows that. Bottle was a dictator that would not stop polluting his players lungs with toxic fumes on a daily basis and even on the road bus. The smoking police were notified and Bottle was given a choice. It sounds like some of Bottles Alcoholic friends from Liam's are upset to loose their drinking buddy. I've got news for all of you pro Bottle people. The guy was a self proclaimed alcoholic that only cared about how much attention he could get. But no one cared about him in Ottawa just like every other place he has ever coached. Bottle has one of the worst reputations in the "Bush leagues" as he calls them. He is only negative and a proven looser. His wife probably has cancer from all of his second hand smoke and just the basic stress of living with a control freak. Baseball was a Bottle had left in life and all he cared about but not for any positive reasons. His reasons for loving baseball were and are purely selfish because the only reason he is involved is to control people and feel as though his life and opinions matter which they clearly do not. This was Bottle's last job in baseball and no one else wants anything to do with him. He has burned every bridge he has ever crossed and now even a bridge to Canada. He insulted Canadian beer on a regular basis because he said it was too expensive. I think it was because he could'nt handle the punch compared to his watered down American crap beer. Just another reason why Bottle is a looser. I personally hope he lives the rest of his days a sorry old man who blew every chance in life he was ever given. If he did'nt loose his mortgage trying to finance his singing career maybe he would have a house to live in but now I think he may be checking into the cheapest old folks home the U.S. has to offer. I hope his liver shrivles up and fails. I hate the Bottle!!!!

Some would just delete that post-haste, especially given the case law in Canada with respect to third parties in cases of libel or defamation. Against better judgment (presuming it's not a trap set by a troll), it's going to stay up there. Consider this to be just like the scene from Fast Times At Ridgemont High when Spicoli said, "I don't know" and Mr. Hand wrote it on the chalkboard for posterity for all of his classes to ponder.

Who knows what possesses fully functioning adults to something like that about a 69-year-old man. Who knows who said it, and who knows what it says about the people running the Rapidz if it did spew from the mouth (or some other orifice) of someone of their acquaintance. Let's hope not.

Menatime, let it stand, as a monument to ignorance and that, oh, because's you're only venting on the Internet, that doesn't mean that you're actually a solipsistic little twit.

Your Legends Reno-Tahoe Open preview

Beating up on Michelle Wie shouldn’t make anyone feel good about themselves. The 18-year-old is the definition of an easy target. But she—or more likely her parents—continue to set her up for failure and ridicule.

And so it goes, with Wie skipping the women’s British Open—a major on the women’s tour—to play some relatively minor men’s event in Reno, Nevada. The fact that Wie has never been a factor on the women’s tour and has often embarrassingly failed at the men’s events she attends doesn’t seem to have an impact on Wie Inc.

As stated, it’s easy to go off on Wie and her idiot parents for their continued stupidity. But, doing so exclusively ignores their complicit partners in this mess—the cynical, idiot organizers of men’s events that keep inviting her in a misguided attempt to see three more tickets sold to their B list tournament.

Any female athlete in any sport has every right to play against men. Period. Sensibly arguing otherwise is impossible. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s always or even occasionally a good idea. In case you missed grade 9 health, women’s bodies are different than men’s. That’s why they have their own classification. It only makes sense for a woman to step outside of that classification if she is so dominate against other women that she needs to play against men to be further challenged.

Wie is barely competitive on the women’s tour.

Yet the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open at Reno seems to think that she is worthy of a sponsor’s exception to play this week. They are likely making it worth her while too -- suggesting that maybe Wie and her parents aren’t so much idiots as they are good business people.

Good business people that are willing to use their daughter as a piece of meat to make a quick buck.

Ugly, ugly, ugly —- there ain’t no other way to spin the depressing tale of Michelle Wie.

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.

Stuff other blogs are going to beat to death

I'm sure I could think of a great one liner if I had the energy or inclination. But, instead I'll just say this:

Get. This. Crap. Out. Of. The. Sports. Section.

Hank Kissinger, didn't he catch for the Braves?

Time was -- talking about way back in 2005 or '06 -- there would have been great glee at seeing an out-of-town NHL writer call an Ottawa hockey writer a "gas bag" and a top hockey blog issue a similar smackdown.

(For readers in the capital ... three guesses which hockey writer at which paper -- don't click through before you guess!)

There's just a little glee, the kind that comes from the self-satisfaction one only gets from dutifully passing along links to the audience and then trying to act all aloof and above the fray. Seriously, though, reading that just does lend proof that to the Boston Phoenix's theory that, paraphrasing Hank Kissinger, the reason there's so much mudslinging in the sports media is because stakes are so low.

Not that anyone needs another navel-gazey piece about the sports media, but the Phoenix piece is worth a read. Bill Simmons sounds like a sage compared to Buzz Bissinger.

Related:
Bad sports; While old and new media are mending many fences, they’re still squaring off in jockland (Adam Reilly, The Boston Phoenix)
The Garrioch Effect (KuklasKorner)
Keep your Malkin jersey (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

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)