Blog blast past: Requiem for the released, Russ Adams

The Blue Jays have given former first-round draft choice Russ Adams the dreaded DFA, designated ... for ... assignment. It might sound bad, but Quad-A ballplayers take it in stride. From Aug. 7, 2008, here's a tribute to a human footnote.

Russ Adams is best known for not being something.

Let's think about what that says about us, rather than what it says about the first-round pick who was once the answer to the Jays' shortstop situation. Being a sports fan and cheering for a bunch of jocks employed by a multinational corporation, because it's your team, is an ultimate act of naive sentiment. It's odd how it's rare that any of that is saved for a bright hope who fell flat on his face.

Maybe it's an offshoot of the self-loathing that builds up from having spent your waking hours worrying about the outcome of games you cannot control. To think I believed in Russ Adams?! He's dead to me.

There's names for the exemplars of this phenomenon -- bust, flop, fizzle, dud, Ryan Leaf. It might be the worst ignominy to own in sports, on par with being a cheater. People will let an athlete off the hook for being an out-and-out rat bastard, but not for failing like Russ Adams has as a major-leaguer.

"I don't see playing baseball professionally, playing over two years in the majors, if someone thinks that's failing, I don't know what planet they live on. I'm not going to be sitting at home at 40 and think I'm a failure in life because I didn't play 20 years in the big leagues. That won't dictate my happiness." -- Syracuse Post-Standard

Hands up, everyone whose knee-jerk reaction was something along the lines, "Oh, go cry me a river." It might create the mental picture of Adams, barring some near-miraculous turnaround, spending the next 20 years dreaming of a parallel universe where he was the American League's answer to Chase Utley.

A lot of sports fans probably look it that way. It's not clear that the ballplayers actually do.

It's undeniable what springs to mind after seeing that quote from Adams, whose Triple-A rate stats in Syracuse this summer (.232/.322/.378) scream, "quintessential Quadruple-A player." This, of course, is from someone who as every Jays fan must know by now, was drafted ahead of Scott Kazmir, Nick Swisher and Joey Votto (not just a Toronto boy, but a paisano of J.P. Ricciardi).

It's actually straight of out of the novel North Dallas Forty. There's a scene where the antihero Phil Elliott (Nick Nolte played him in the movie) recalls commiserating with a player who had been traded, dumped by a team that had publicly proclaimed he would be brilliant:

"He seemed like the only survivor of a ten-car collison who was trying to explain how it happened. Several times during the course of our conversation he had stopped to stare off into his disastrous past, thinking of all those glories he had only tasted slightly."

There's a double-edge to that analogy. It could seem empathetic or just downright cruel. But it's c'est la vie for a human footnote.

For anyone who needs a refresher, the Jays advanced Adams quickly through the minors after he was drafted in 2002 (Matt Cain and Cole Hamels, both now top-flight starters in the NL, were also available when Ricciardi made the 14th overall selection).

In 2005, he put up a decent enough first season as a rookie shortstop. According to his Baseball-Reference.com page, his age-24 season compared pretty favourably with that of Orlando Cabrera, who's been an adequate, sometimes all-star shortstop for a decade.

He had the throwing yips in '06. You can't presume to know what's in a player's mind, but the stats make it look like he was taking his defensive problems up to bat with him. The Jays eventually had to send him to Syracuse to learn how to play second base, which was a give-up play.

Inside of two years, the Shortstop of the Future has become one of among the couple hundred Triple-A veterans -- roster flotsam who move about the minors, their names known only to the most hardcore baseball fans. They're valued by MLB organizations for what might be called their overdeveloped flexibility. Most of them, almost as a survival skill, have learned to play several positions (good for when the big club is shuffling players around). They've been around long enough that they don't need to be babysat by their manager. They're also fully comfortable with the hard reality that they can traded, demoted, promoted, or released at any time.

Who knows why it didn't work out for Adams. One historical note is that left-handed hitting shortstops are a rarity. (Stephen Drew of the Arizona Diamondbacks is the only everyday SS in the majors who bats lefty.)

The thing is, though, is that most fans don't fully appreciate that it does take exceptional skill, the kind not found in 99% of the population, to even be a career minor leaguer. People also don't get, or don't care, that's it debatable whether failing as an everyday shortstop actually hurt Russ Adams as a person. He got far enough to get all his illusions about playing baseball shattered, but a lot of men never will.

Some day in the not too distant future, the Jays will probably waive him. Drunk Jays Fans and the like will write a blog post for shits and giggles. Maybe someone will do up a Top 10 list of Toronto sports busts, slotting Adams in with Rafael Araujo and Ricky Williams, but Russ Adams will just go on living his life. The wicked burn won't be on him.

Stepping to the plate, Greg Layson

We've brought in a ringer: Greg Layson, of the Guelph Mercury, has signed on to be a contributor with Out of Left Field and its sister site, cisblog.ca.

Greg's bona fides as a chronicler of CIS sports, particularly OUA West basketball and OUA football, are well-established through his work at the Merc, at Big Man on Campus and through his former CIS radio show. He's also a damn funny guy who gets it with the whole bloggin' game and it's flattering to have a real pro join us.

A post reminding everyone who we are, probably set to the tune of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show's Cover of the Rolling Stone ("we blog about beauty and we blog about truth, with hardly any dollars to show") is probably due at some point.

It's great having Greg come aboard. Hopefully, this will be as comical but have a better end result than the Cheers episode when Sam brought in Kevin McHale from the Boston Celtics to play in a 3-on-3 game against Gary's Old Towne Tavern (which had hired a couple 6-foot-10 kids as bartenders) with a $5,000 bet at stake. Cheers rolls to victory, but McHale tweaks his ankle and Gary, using an x-ray which purports to show that the Celtics star has suffered a career-threatening injury, blackmails Sam into signing over his winnings to charity. Of course, only after that does it turn out the x-ray was taken from an adult male gorilla.

Anywhere, we're glad to have Greg here, where everybody knows his name.

Two more years; enough time for Riggins to finally graduate

The word is Friday Night Lights could get two more seasons:

"The one possible complication? The show's behind-the-scenes quarterback, Jason Katims, is attached to NBC's buzzy Parenthood pilot. If it's picked up, he would either do double duty or be forced to make a choice. Similarly, the show's go-to director, Jeffrey Reiner, is helming NBC's Trauma pilot. FNL might be able to carry on without one of its MVPs, but both? Hmm..." — Entertainment Weekly

The show has survived on the ability to make trade-offs ... everyone who's more technically adroit got to watch the new ones four months before I did, it's still good, it's still good ... the Landry-Tyra murder plot in Season 2 was just a little heavy-handed, it's still good, it's still good ... how are Riggins and Lyla still seniors in Season 3, it's still good, it's still good.

Two more seasons? That is beyond good news. It's enough time for Eric Taylor to build the team at East Dillon into a contender for State.

(Don't try to be smart and point out Tim Riggins/Taylor Kitsch's storyline involves him going to college next season. It's just that how was he best friends forever with Jason Street (Scott Porter), who was a senior in the first season? It was bad enough we're supposed to believe that Lyla Garrity, the siren played by the Jeter-tainted Minka Kelly, could have been head cheerleader as a sophomore.

Related:

'Friday Night Lights' close to scoring a renewal? (Michael Ausiello, Entertainment Weekly)

The Carney Consequence: The heck do ya mean?

Now you know the rest of the story about why you give less and less a flying fadoo about the Academy Awards (Slumdog Millionaire's big night notwithstanding).

It's The Carney Consequence. Commit the phrase to memory.

Just as popular music has been on the wane since 1974, the year of the first Bad Company release (Mark McKinney said it once in a Kids In The Hall sketch, ergo it is true), so too have the Oscars ever since Norton from The Honeymooners beat out Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Albert Finney.

Cripes, for someone who wasn't alive in 1974, it's mind-blowing enough to find out that the actor who played Ed Norton has won an Oscar, unlike the actor named Ed Norton (two nominations in the late '90s, but no dice). Full credit goes to a Gelf Magazine writer named Joe Horton for pinpointing the exact moment, April 2, 1974:

"As the winner is announced — back when presenters said 'and the winner is…' before that was deemed too emotionally damaging for insecure actors to hear that they were losers and was changed to 'and the Oscar goes to…' — an audible gasp runs through the Chandler crowd when Carney's name is called and he literally jumps and skips up to the stage to accept his prize. At this moment, Carney becomes the first link of an irrevocable chain of events that will forever influence the Academy Awards.

The other men in this category would go on to collect 33 nominations and seven wins. Hoffman and Nicholson would become two of the eight male actors to ever win two Best Actor statuettes. But in 1974, the playing field was level — none of these acting luminaries had yet tasted Oscar gold — and after Carney scored the stunning upset in his only nomination, the Academy was forced to play catch-up.

Small wonder that 35 years later, it seems like you could not even have a telecast, since everyone can armchair-quarterback and ballpark-figure who's going to win, even if they haven't seen many of the movies. Last night, Penélope Cruz, who wait for it, was born in 1974, seemed like a good example: She's glamourous, she hasn't won yet, so why not her?

(Frankly, it would have been good karma if it had gone to Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler, considering the urban legend that Jack Palance read the wrong name in 1993. However, please keep in mind an actress can only win for a role that involves nudity if she is European or a person of a colour, because otherwise it's just titillation.)

Anyway, the Carney Consquence brings it all home, along with Jamie Lee Curtis' searing denunciation of the whole exercise. Horton notes it is pretty much foreordained that Robert Downey Jr. will win one of those handsome statues sooner rather than later, probably sooner thanMickey Rourke ("a pretty decent, albeit mildly f---ed-up guy," at least according to Deus Ex Malcontent, who crossed his path once upon a time).

Meantime, now that we've been brought to speed, this does bode well for Ed Norton and William H. Macy one of these years. Both were up for Best Supporting Actor in 1997 (Norton for Primal Fear, Macy for Fargo) when Cuba Gooding Jr. won for Jerry Maguire, a fact which has the air of you had to be there, but should be glad if you weren't. Remember, that movie made Renée Zellweger bankable, and she eventually got an Oscar (thank you, Tao), just because, well, you know.

You should all find Joe Horton and thank him for giving us a chilling vision of things to come.

(Incidentally, if time travel is invented, Kinger and myself will be travelling back to 1974.

Sagsy: "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like."
Kinger: "What?"
Sagsy: "It's a line from Die Hard. Hasn't been written yet. We could write it, Tyler. We could write it.")

Related:
The Carney Consequence; A poor Oscar choice for Best Actor in 1974 set in motion a ripple effect of makeup awards by the Academy that is still being felt today (Joe Horton, Gelf Magazine; via JonahKeri.com
A Fish Called Denial (Jamie Lee Curtis, Huffington Post, Feb. 21)

Zen Dayley: A skipper named Schneider will play it 'one day at time'

Who says there are no positive stories emanating from 1 Blue Jays Way these days.

The Jays will have the youngest manager in affilated baseball in 29-year-old John Schneider, who's been hired to manage the GCL Blue Jays. Some will say that latching on to a hire involving a team in a short-season rookie league for first-year pros is pretty thin gruel next to say, signing any free agents of consequence, never mind Manny Ramirez, but hey, when you're a Canadian baseball fan staring at a long winter, you take whatever you can get. If you're going to be cooped up inside until next March, you better figure out how to subliminate your anger.

Hints have been dropped about "what's to come when the Rogers bean-counters shut off the spigot after this season" (a month ago and as far back as June 10.) Ted Rogers, as Baseball Prospectus 2008 cannily anticipated in its chapter at the Jays, is basically wondering, "What am I paying for?"

The M.O. here is to leave J.P. Ricciardi to hang out there as a straw man for all the Blue Jays bashers, probably for one more year, as John Brattain noted in a Hardball Times piece Thursday.

The Jays have some prospects coming through the season, meaning from an optics perspective, the timing will be right to tie the can to J.P. and bring in a new GM and try to sell hope. Ricciardi wouldn't know how to be the triggerman even if he had the authority to pull the trigger.

There is little else to say as a diehard fan who will follow the team through a blue-tinted lens probably no matter what happens (it could be worse -- see Mariners, Seattle or Royals, Kansas City, and those SOBs don't play in the AL East).

The Tao has laid out a list of possible middle-of-the-order meat. The biggest takeaway is that free agent Milton Bradley, of the .999 OPS, has never hit well against the American League East. Knowing Ricciardi's fetishization of modest talent, the Jays' choice of a lefty bat is more likely to run toward someone on par with former Minnesota Twin Jacque Jones, last seen putting up an everyone-saw-that-coming .446 OPS in a cameo with the Tigers last season. (Hey! he's hitting .314/.349/.449 in the Mexican League, his customary good batting average with little power and less plate discipline and ESPN.com is reporting that he is apparently going to have a laser eye surgery, so someone will invite him to spring training.)

That's really the way it looks from here, to a guy who doesn't have to fill a news-hole speculating about an offer for A.J. Burnett or a big bat for the middle of the order. The most glass-half-full thing which can be said about Ricciardi is that is that -- big maybe -- he is just a analog of Ed Wade. The Philadelphia Phillies started putting pieces in places for their championship team on Wade's watch, but he wasn't around for the champagne baths, since he was fired in 2005 and replaced by Pat Gillick. Who knows, if the Jays were not in the AL East playing 57 games against the triple-threat hegemony of the Rays, Red Sox and Yankees, you'd say maybe history repeats itself.

(One wishes this John Schneider all the best. He is too young to remember when his acting namesake was at the peak of his fame when The Dukes of Hazzard was the anchor in CBS' prime-time lineup, or when Schneider was getting the canned laughs on One Day At A Time.)

Other business

• Tim Raines is going to be managing in the Atlantic League with the Newark Bears, where his opponent will include fellow Expos great Gary Carter. Whoever wins the season series can manage the Jays when Cito Gaston retires.
• It has never been clear why the Jays have never been players for free agents from the Pacific Rim. NPB Tracker is a great source for those of you who are trying to keep up with Japanese free agents, but you knew that already.
• FanGraphs kicked up a fuss with a provocative post about fielding in centrefield vs. the corner outfield spots. The guys in right and left get a lot of balls hit to them, too. It does matter.

CIS Corner: Ravens likely to get No. 1 spot back

Notes on our athletes/teams of interest From The 613...

HOOPS

Ravens: Carleton, with a pair of 20-plus-point wins at home this weekend, could return to No. 1 in the CIS Top Ten since UBC No. 1 UBC was upset 76-73 by an unheralded Regina team in what Leader-Post scribe Tim Switzer called, "probably the most entertaining basketball game I have ever seen live."

It is just a number. Carleton, by its standards, is not all there yet, but it put McMaster away early with a savvy veteran performance by the law firm of Doornekamp, Turnbull, McCleery and Saunders. It easily could have been a bigger spread than 25 points (74-49). Aaron Doornekamp had 19 points and 11 rebounds; Rob Saunders (12 points, all off threes, and nine boards) was one board away from one of the stealthiest double-doubles in modern stat-keeping history.

There is a soft spot for the Ravens women's team, which after Saturday's 49-48 loss to McMaster, has lost three games by a total of nine points. (Their two wins were by a total of three.) The nature of their team seems to dictate that every game is going to be a grind.

Gee-Gees: The U of O, a fun team to watch, won both its games. A worrisome note was that Nemanja Baletic left the game vs. Lakehead after getting poked in the eye (one hopes it was just a precaution). Only five other players (presumably all five starters) scored in the 80-67 win over Lakehead.

Golden Gaels: It ended up being a split (win over Guelph, loss at Brock, which is 8-0 vs. CIS foes despite losing everything from the national championship team except Owen White and their lucky tub of garlic).

Mitch Leger had a 25-point night vs. Brock. Queen's (2-2 in the OUA) finishes out the pre-Christmas sked with a McMaster-Lakehead road trip and a Western-Windsor homestand. It would be nice to see them be 5-3 at the break.

HOCKEY

Our own Andrew Bucholtz did a liveblog of Queen's 3-0 loss to McGill, its second to the Red guys in eight days. Here's a quick rundown of the conference standings, games played and point totals:

1. UTQR: 22 (12)
2. Toronto: 12 (11)
3. Carleton: 13 (9)
4. Ottawa 12 (11)
5. Queen's 12 (13)
6. Concordia 11 (11)
7. RMC 8 (12)
8. McGill 7 (8)
9. Ryerson 5 (10)

Queen's is not in an enviable position since everyone else in the East has games in hand.

Carleton, in contrast, plays one of its games in hand today against McGill (3 p.m., ssncanada.ca).

That is all for now. Please visit The CIS Blog during Semi-Final Sunday.

Fronts: Out shooting the Bull, while Belleville wins 7-0 while getting outshot

Alternate title: "Who h'own da Fronts? Don't remind me."

It's said that you learn to say hello when you should be saying goodbye. In the spirit of that, one should welcome this new side that Frontenacs GM-for-life Larry Mavety has shown this week.

Mr. Mavety -- Royal Mavesty jokes are out after a 7-0 loss in Belleville tonight -- has turned storyteller. Seriously, he's been more open and accommodating than the low slot in front of the Fronts' net during a penalty kill. In the past few days, Mavety has regaled us with stories of his work as an extra in Slap Shot. He told The Canadian Press about his days with the Toronto Toros in the crazy, shaggy days of the World Hockey Association.

Mav even showed his flair for light comedy during the leadup to tonight's game. He joked ith the Bellevegan broadsheet about whether the game could be postponed since the Bulls scored a pile goals during their first two Wednesday night home fixtures. Only one of those games was against the Frontenacs, making the feat even more impressive.

Ours is not to question why. It is not all that odd why he would be doing so much reminiscing, seeing as some say his style of hockey dates from the period when the the Little River Band last had songs on the charts.

Enjoy it for what it is, OK? It is refreshing to see Mavety is not the crusty, cards-close-to-his-chest hockey guy who keeps it "in the room," as they say. Please don't jump to the conclusion, as as Jerry did on Seinfeld when his dentist converted to Judiasm, that Fronts owner Doug Springer might be keeping Mavety on "for the jokes."

No one wants to be branded as a rabid anti-Mavite. It's all on the up-and-up. It would take a real rat bastard to twist his line bout his WHA days – "You knew by crowds and everything else the Leafs were the team of choice, which is rightly so anyway" – and say that on a Kingston-sized scale, it's pretty much the situation these days with the Queen's Golden Gaels football team vis-à-vis the Frontenacs.

One should hope it doesn't get into Grampa Simpson country, this spinning of stories that don't go anywhere, not unlike like the Frontenacs power play. Now, someone please give Mavety five bees for a quarter, so he can call another GM and swing a trade for a forward who is not allergic to going in the corners. The only talk of "bangers" tonight was due to the fact a British pub is a major sponsor of the Fronts radio broadcasts.

The Fronts outshot them, you say? Go tell it to the Bulls out back who are celebrating getting an easy two points on a night despite missing their No. 1 defenceman, P.K. Subban.

Don't get mad. We're just trying to capture the spirit of the thing.

Related:
Don’t bother asking Mavety where he appears in Slap Shot (Oshawa Express)

Snark break ...

As you were getting ready for the big derby between the Manchester I Don't Give a Craps and the London Not A Real Sports.*

David Shoalts is reporting that the NHL would give Jim Balsillie an expansion team in Toronto. Richard Peddie is quoted the Leafs board would do what's best for hockey, which raises the question of which tropical island they all plan to move to.

(If the team can be called the Toronto Toros, even better.)

You know how guys who work in construction get the winter months off? It's looking like that will be the case for Barry Melrose (you're surprised, why?).

A fan in full Vikings regalia congratulating Randy Moss for a scoring a touchdown for the New England Patriots ... it makes Brad Childress' coaching seem almost tolerable.

More great headlines that can never be written: "Anaheim Dick takes on Toronto."

One benefit to the National League refusing to play by modern baseball rules ... getting a kick from reading that Padres ace Jake Peavy, who is going to be traded, doesn't want to switch leagues because "he is a pretty good hitter, and he views that as an advantage."

Peavy's career average is .243. Not batting average -- slugging average. Leave the hitting to the professionals, Jake.

Mike Singletary, the newly installed 49ers coach, will probably be asking LensCrafters to make him a set of blinders after he sees J.T. Sullivan's efforts.



Last but not least, Minka Kelly has the sickly taint of the Jeter.

(For the future of humanity, Ms. Kelly ... as one of North America's sexiest southpaws, you should be dating David Price. Two left-handed parents have a 4-in-10 chance of southpaw offspring.)

Twenty people died for this joke ... and it's not even that good. A man writes a letter to Health Canada, "A while ago, the Stanley Cup came to my town and I kissed it ... I just want to know if this means there's any chance I could get listeriosis?" ... "No, the Cup has not come in contact with any Maple Leaf products since 1967."

You're all sick, you know that?

This post is worth nothing, this is worth noting:

• Our man at the Merc, Greg Layson, is reporting he has it on "very good authority" that Mike Morencie is out as head football coach of the Windsor Lancers. Whether it is university football or major junior hockey, it's about the wins and losses — well, except with the Kingston Frontenacs.

Snark break ...

The AHL's Syracuse Crunch is paying tribute to Paul Newman by raising Reggie Dunlop's No. 7 to the rafters at the Syracuse War Memorial, where part of Slap Shot was filmed. Any chance they will invite the actor who played Tim McCracken, the head coach and chief punk on that Syracuse team?

You are forgiven for thinking the A on Chris Pronger's sweater stands for something other than "alternate captain." Everyone had that same thought.

There's still a desire to see The Express, but evidently the film depicts West Virginia fans heaping racial abuse on Ernie Davis in 1959, even though Syracuse didn't play them that season. (Why pick on people from West Virginia, Hollywood? Because you can.)

More great headlines that can never be written: "Carpentier getting the f--k out of Dodge."

Patrick Carpentier will probably be fine, so please don't joke that he'll end up in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, which is a lateral move from driving a tour bus. By the way, is it true the drivers' purses on that circuit are paid out in Canadian Tire money?

(A Francophone driver in NASCAR? That should have been the premise for a summer comedy.)

Thank god that Ottawa teen hockey phenom Ryan Spooner was drafted by the Peterborough Petes instead of the Kingston Frontenacs, who chose one pick earlier. If he'd gone to the Fronts, there would be no NHL superstars to compare him with.

(Erik Gudbranson will be the first. Pinky swear it.)

Yes, not-so-presidential John McCain did refer to Senator Barack Obama as "that one" during the presidential debate.

Time for a game of, "Who is this?" Two years ago, you couldn't turn on a TV without seeing his face or hearing his nails-on-a-chalkboard croooning. Last week, he put out a press release touting his triumphant return to "singing and raising money for breast cancer research," but no serious news outlet paid any attention.

Not that anyone asked, but: It's quite simple why this site has never made a Jägerbombs/Sagerbombs joke. No one wants to be associated with a drink favoured by bitchy bachelorette parties, moronic millennials, fauxhawked fancyboys, overstressed and undersexed office workers and myriad others who have to be seen having a good time.

Shame on anyone for making a joke that panders to those types. A man worthwhile is good with Jack and coke. If it's consumed alone, even better.

On the plus side, the Jäger/Sager connection might put an end to the pain of being of a Sager and forever hearing your last name pronounced Seger. That hasn't been cool since 1978.



This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Michael Lewis of Moneyball and The Blind Side fame (and other books which were also not really about sports) is going to be writing for Vanity Fair.
• Do yourself a favour. Buy Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl. It's the first book I've read in a long while where I only laughed a half-hour straight after getting to the end.
• Please add Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician to your Google Reader, even if you don't follow the Syracuse Orange teams. This might be the greatest bad roommate story ever told.
• Ottawa's Tyler Holmes, who is starting at left tackle for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane as a freshman, could end up playing in the Liberty Bowl.

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.)

So much for catching the afterglow of Blue Monday

Having to leave before the game is over is a reality in the sports media.

Far be it, then, to say that on Blue Monday, at least one Canadian media outlet was Steve and Eydie playing a concert in upstate New York while Woodstock was happening less than a mile away:

"I was sent a note that Rogers Sportsnet was there early to get some footage, but left before the game ended. Then, they called frantically looking for footage of the end of the game. I watched Sportsnet and TSN this morning and there was no video evidence of the win. Both made mention of it." -- Big Man on Campus

Here's hoping this and this, shot by one of Out of Left Field's contributors, Mike (it's just the one name, like Cher), turns up on Sportsnet Connected's Inbox feature.

One more time, let's see the celebration, after the jump:



It's hard not to love We're Not Worthy Guy salaaming on the midfield logo. He's partying like it was 1992.

Again, and this can't be stressed enough, it's standard for videographers and newspaper photographers to leave early so they can edit and file their images. That being said, it doesn't take a Minnesota Vikings fan, though, to know that 17 points is never enough, no matter how hapless your opponent.

Rob Pettapiece, whose Waterloo Warriors were on the wrong side of OUA football history, had a great reaction to the use of the closing scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin: "Well, at least Waterloo gets to play the part of Catherine Keener."

If that's the case, then Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin isn't the only hot granny in the news this week!

(That's obviously meant to satirize the viewpoint that anyone's attractiveness, female or male, has anything to do with whether he/she is qualified to a do a job. I apologize for not making this clearer and showing a little more class.)