Let’s talk about the non-bubble girls and boys on the NHL beat…the Puck Pontiff’s silence…baseball’s COVID-19 problem…anti-gay bile in boxing…and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s first pitch

A Tuesday morning smorgas-bored…and it’s 3 a.m. and I’m tired, so I think I’ll try to get some shuteye…

The other day I mentioned how ironic it is that numerous jock essayists have been giving the National Hockey League a stern tsk-tsking for its brazen, unapologetic bid to control the message.

Scribes hither and yon have been beating that drum like John Bonham gone bonkers and, officially, there are now more noses out of joint on press row than you’ll see at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. Or any other boxing gym for that matter.

The scribes’ squawk can be summed up in eight words: Commissioner Gary Bettman is a dirty, rotten scoundrel.

Gary Bettman

Emperor Gary, you see, has decreed that only house organs (read: scribes on NHL or member team payrolls) shall be permitted inside the Edmonton and Republic of Tranna player bubbles during the Stanley Cup runoff. All others, sorry, but they won’t get any closer to an actual hockey player than heaven is to hell. They’ll have to be satisfied with pressing their noses against a window and squinting in.

Oh, sure, the girls and boys on the beat are allowed to attend matches and perch themselves in the press box, located way up there where noses begin to bleed, but that doesn’t cut it. They want more. They asked for more, but Emperor Gary turned them down in less time than it takes to stick a swab up their nose.

As a consequence, the mainstream media mob insists the playing surface isn’t level. NHL-approved news snoops will be privy to activity and conversation that isn’t available to them. And that, in turn, will result in “sanitized” coverage of the 24-team tournament because, as many have emphasized in their critiques, the various house organs aren’t allowed to mention things like concussions or fisticuffs in their copy.

“If anything unusual, untoward, troublesome, or remotely negative happens in the bubble, will we ever hear about it?” asks Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun. “Likely not. That’s a shame.”

Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab provides the backup vocals, writing: “If a star goes down in a heap during a drill and has to be carried off the ice, there’s a good chance you won’t hear about it beyond the coach eventually identifying them as being ‘unfit to play’ when they’re not on the ice at puck drop. If teammates get into a dust-up during practice—remember when Winnipeg Jets captain Blake Wheeler and Ben Chiarot dropped the gloves a couple of years ago?—you can bet you won’t hear a peep.”

Doesn’t say much for their reporting skills if they need to see it to know about it, does it? Whatever became of inside contacts?

Look, I totally get it. Mainstream jock journos want equal access so they can deliver unfettered, unpolished dispatches during the risky business of conducting a major sporting event while the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to kill people and send others to the infirmary. That’s a fair ask. But when they trot out the “control the message” argument, as Mad Mike did (the NHL will be “drunk with power in this situation”), they lose me.

I mean, there’s the irony I wrote about the other day. They’re bellyaching because the NHL insists on controlling the message, yet that’s exactly what newspapers do 24/7, 365 days of the year (minus holidays).

When was the last time anyone from either the Winnipeg Sun or Drab Slab asked you what you wanted to see on the sports front? Or the front page, for that matter? When was the last time either Wyman or Mad Mike asked you for a column idea, then wrote it? When was the last time someone at Postmedia asked if you want all that copy from the Republic of Tranna in the Winnipeg Sun sports section? When was the last time you were invited to a daily newsroom meeting? When was the last time an editor-in-chief asked you what slant to put on a story?

They don’t ask because they don’t want you controlling their message. You might say, they’re drunk with power.

Interesting that both Wyman and Mad Mike concede that the rabble likely view their gripe as “whining.” There’s a reason for that: It is whining.

Mad Mike’s essay was approximately 1,000 words, most of it condemning the NHL, but here’s how he sums up: “Here in Edmonton, it will be business as usual for me, even if the situation itself is anything but usual. It’s not ideal, but it won’t hamper my ability to bring you compelling daily stories, features and columns from the hub and document an event we’re all going to remember for the rest of our lives. And I will happily do it from outside the bubble.” If that’s the case, why the 1,000-word whinge about the horrors of not being in the bubble? I’m sorry, but that’s just stupid.

Similarly, but not as dense, Wyman writes this: “As a member of the independent media, representing readers who want original stories, columns and features that are not league presentations, I say what the NHL is doing is wrong.” But here’s the deal: No one is preventing him from scribbling those original stories, columns and features. And therein lies the challenge. He must come up with something that Mad Mike and the in-house scribes aren’t doing. He has to be creative. Inventive. He has to offer his readers something we can only find in the Sun. I’m sure he’s up to the task.

Would I think differently were I still in mainstream media? No. You deal with what’s in front of you.

The Puck Pontiff

There was one interesting nugget of information in Mad Mike’s piece: He hasn’t had a chin-wag with the Puck Pontiff, Mark Chipman, in his four years on the beat. He’s asked for an audience, but the Winnipeg Jets co-bankroll or one of his minions has repeatedly declined. “Frankly, I don’t really care, nor am I losing any sleep over it,” Mad Mike scribbles. Nor should he.

I’d like to hear from the Puck Pontiff more often. I wouldn’t want him to be a Eugene Melnyk or a Humpty Harold Ballard type of owner, but an annual state-of-the-union would be nice, especially this year with the quirky Stanley Cup tournament that’s about to commence. I’d also really like to know if he’d consider operating a franchise in the National Women’s Hockey League.

The Miami Marlins have been shut down by COVID-19. The Philadelphia Phillies have been shut down. So how totally dumb does the Ontario government and its health authority look today? They were prepared to welcome the Marlins and other Major League Baseball outfits to the Republic of Tranna this summer, where they could wander about willy-nilly and spread their germs. Trudeau the Younger wouldn’t have any of it, though, and he instructed the Blue Jays to find another playground. Finally, something the PM doesn’t have to apologize for.

Just wondering how many COVID-19 positives it will take to shut down the NHL’s reboot.

A British boxer, James Hawley, has been dropped by his management team for spewing anti-gay/anti-transgender bile. But, hey, he can’t possibly be homophobic or transphobic. After all, he’s okay with lesbian sex and, more important, he has “friends who are gay and I have a cousin who is gay.” Sigh. And people wonder why most gay male athletes are stuck in the closet.

Dr. Fauci—D’oh!

And, finally, if you saw Dr. Anthony Fauci’s ceremonial first pitch last week in Washington, you’ll know it was grim. But there’s a reason. Seems the good doctor over-prepped for his moment in the sports spotlight, and he “completely miscalculated the distance from the mound.” According to the New York Times, Dr. Fauci had gone to a local school for a toss-around to get the feel of hurling a baseball again. “I pitched and pitched,” he said. “I threw my arm out. I hadn’t thrown a baseball literally in decades. After I practiced, my arm was hanging around my feet.” He also mis-measured. A Major League Baseball pitching rubber is 60 feet, six inches from home plate, but Dr. Fauci mistakenly hurled his practice pitches from 40 feet. Catcher Sean Doolittle “looked to me like he was like 500 feet away.” So now you know the rest of the story.