You fret, wondering how many of your family and friends will disengage, and who among the rabble will whisper behind your back or, worse, climb atop a roof to shout out the news that you’re part of the LGBT(etc.) community, making you a target of every hate monger with a creepy and unnatural interest in your dating inclination.
You wonder how many among those hate mongers might lean toward violence.
You also give ponder to issues of employment, housing, medical care, schooling and your next trip to the bakery, hoping the cashier won’t look at you as if you grew a second head overnight or deny you service.
It’s a heavy load, and the weight of worry (some would accurately describe it as fear) seems to be particularly problematic for gay men, most notably professional athletes, and transgender individuals looking for the proper public pot to pee in, the women’s or the men’s.
I have described the coming-out process thus:
“Discovering yourself is the interesting part, accepting yourself is the hard part, revealing yourself is the frightening part that goes bump in the night.”
Fortunately, in our portion of the globe we are spared one scary bit: Prison.
Not so lucky are Moroccans, which is why an aborted natter between a BBC news snoop and national soccer side captain Ghizlane Chebbak at the FIFA Women’s World Cup was excessively dim-witted and exceedingly problematic. If you missed it, this was the exchange:
BBC: “In Morocco, it’s illegal to have a gay relationship. Do you have any gay players in your squad, and what is life like for them in Morocco?”
Moderator: “Sorry, this is a very political question. So we’ll just stick to questions relating to football.”
BBC: “It’s about people. It’s got nothing to do with politics. Please let her answer the question.”
End of discussion.
So give that man a red card!
Actually, make it two red cards, one for remarkable nitwit-ism and the other for being—to use tennis legend Martina Navratilova’s word—a “wanker.”
You can go to prison for being gay in Morocco, one of 68 countries on our big, blue orb in which homosexuality is a felony. It’s outlined in Penal Code 1962, Article 489 Unnatural Acts: “Any person who commits lewd or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex shall be punished with a term of imprisonment of between six months and three years and a fine of 120 to 1,000 dirhams, unless the facts of the case constitute aggravating circumstances.”
Armed with this knowledge, the BBC dude still expected Chebbak to out her LGBT(etc.) teammates, if not herself, whereupon they would be at risk of time behind bars. Perhaps he believes “Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go” would make for a boffo marketing campaign.
Good grief.
Maybe he’ll next grill the Nigerian captain, demanding a roll call of lesbians among that country’s 23 World Cuppers, even though outing them could lead to death by stoning.
Anything for a story, right?
Except that isn’t the story you chase, and not simply because it could lead to dire consequences. It isn’t the province of a news snoop to out anyone, let alone the principals on a global sporting stage.
Coming out is a difficult, delicate decision, and you don’t want some nameless goomer with a pen and notepad doing it for you, not unless it’s at your beckoning. It needs to be your call, on your timetable, just as it is for all in the LGBT(etc.) collective. Anything else is irresponsible journalism.
Fans, of course, can speculate, and they do. For example, one New York Post reader suggested that the players in Australia and New Zealand are “mostly a pack of lesbians,” as if that’s a bad thing. What, gay women shouldn’t be allowed to join a kick-about? Is the roller derby rink a more suitable environment? How about the UFC octagon?
The ill-informed musings of the rabble notwithstanding, we know there are 95 out LGBT(etc.) players on the pitch down Under (12.9 per cent of the 32 nation rosters), because they outed themselves on various platforms. And they’re at risk, even in North America.
For the first time ever, the Human Rights Campaign has declared “a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States.” It cites the alarming number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills being passed in state legislative houses (more than 500 introduced in 41 states this year) and says “our community is in danger.”
Three members of the American side Down Under are out LGBT(etc.). There might be others still in the closet. If so, I’m sure the BBC will be first to ferret them out. Sigh.
Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and the days are getting longer and so is this blog…
A “shambles.”
That’s the word Kendall Coyne Schofield used to describe the state of women’s hockey in 2019, and it was a harsh truth.
Kendall Coyne Schofield
The mostly ignored Canadian Women’s Hockey League had shuttered its doors permanently, giving rise to a group of malcontents demanding, among other things, a living wage, preferably from billionaire owners in the National Hockey League. Rather than sign on with National Women’s Hockey League outfits and form one super league, 150-200 orphaned players chose to participate in mostly ignored pickup games hither and yon, pose for photos with Billie Jean King, and trash talk the NWHL, which was wrestling with its own credibility demons in its fifth season.
“The women’s professional game is in shambles,” Coyne Schofield, the brightest star in the female shinny galaxy, told the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2019. “I dream of the day a young girl can dream of one day being a professional hockey player, and we’re nowhere near that.”
So, fast forward 15 months, and it’s fair to wonder if that dream is any nearer. Is Ponytail Puck any less in shambles?
Well, let’s take inventory:
The Isobell Cup champion Boston Pride.
The NWHL emerged from its COVID cocoon in January and assembled in Lake Placid for a two-week frolic meant to determine an Isobel Cup winner. Alas, the pandemic put the kibosh on that. The semifinals and final were aborted, but the NWHL returned to the freeze to complete its unfinished business on Friday and Saturday in Boston, declaring the Boston Pride as champions, and all three skirmishes were broadcast live on NBCSN.
Coyne Schofield and friends in the PWHPA, meanwhile, cranked up their second Dream Gap Tour last month, first strutting their stuff in a true sporting cathedral, Madison Square Garden in Gotham, then shifting their barnstorming showcase to the United Center in Chicago. Both friendlies were broadcast live on NBCSN, a first in the United States.
Finally, there’s loud chatter about the NWHL adding a seventh franchise, in Montreal, for its seventh season, and the planet’s elite are scheduled to gather in Nova Scotia for the 20th Women’s World Championship, May 6-16, and TSN will be all-in for the global showcase.
Thus, it sounds like the women are gaining traction. Or not.
As much as the national TV exposure is boffo, certain among the Dream Gappers can’t resist the urge to slag the NWHL, indicating that Ponytail Puck is as much a house divided as in late December 2019, when Coyne Schofield talked about an enterprise “in shambles.”
Cassie Campbell-Pascall
“I don’t think you’ll get the PWHPA and the NWHL together,” Cassie Campbell-Pascall informed Tim Micallef early this month on Sportsnet’s Tim & Friends.
The former Canadian Olympian and current Sportsnet squawk box suggested it would be “awesome” if the NWHL survives, and that it might one day be “a great league,” or grow up and become “a feeder system” to a Women’s NHL featuring Dream Gappers. But it’s “not the future of women’s hockey,” she harrumphed. So there.
“I think the PWHPA is gonna go down as that moment in women’s hockey, that group in women’s hockey, that really, truly made a difference in providing a professional women’s hockey league,” Campbell-Pascall tooted. So there again.
Dani Rylan Kearney
It should be pointed out that Campbell-Pascall is not a member of the PWHPA board. Nor is she an official adviser. But she’s thrown in fully with the Dream Gappers, and Sportsnet continues to provide a pulpit for her unchallenged propaganda. She uses her position for divisive dialogue, sometimes spewing inaccuracies about the NWHL, other times accusing former NWHL commissioner and founder Dani Rylan Kearney of “ulterior motives” without naming her and without introducing evidence.
Others among the Dream Gappers have shown an inclination toward schoolyard banter. Hilary Knight branded the NWHL a “glorified beer league” and former board member Liz Knox tsk-tsked the NWHL for having the (apparent) bad manners to add an expansion team during a sports-wide pandemic shutdown, even as every other jock operation was plotting strategy for a return to the playing fields.
“There is a lot of history there that is uncomfortable,” Tyler Tumminia acknowledged in a natter with Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman on their 31 Thoughts podcast three weeks ago.
Tyler Tumminia
Tumminia became a fresh voice in the discussion after stepping forward as interim NWHL commissioner last October. She earned her executive chops in the boardrooms of baseball (she’s named after Ty Cobb), and she’s attempting to apply lessons learned to Ponytail Puck. Not just the NWHL, understand. The big picture. Which explains her sweet tweet saluting the PWHPA for its landmark appearance at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 28.
“To me, (the tweet) was saying, ‘I value and I see you and I applaud what you guys are doing for the women’s game, for women’s hockey in particular.’” she said. “I shouldn’t be commissioner of a women’s hockey league if I didn’t applaud that. I’m not dismissing the fact that there’s some raw emotions around it. What I’m saying, is that, you know, some of that narrative is actually outdated now, so let’s sit at the table and have a true sense of what is actually going on here and how we can get to where everybody wants to get to. We all want to get to the same spot. So how can we get together. But, ya, I think that there needs to be some therapeutic conversation, and I’m open to that of course. Now, I don’t have much history there, but I’m open to having those conversations of what had happened but, mostly, what can we do going forward.”
The difference in tone between Tumminia and Campbell-Pascall is startling. One is reaching out with an olive branch, the other is swinging a wrecking ball.
Their views on the direction of Ponytail Puck are just as conflicting.
Here’s Campbell-Pascall: “I think the next step is an announcement, the NHL to step up and make an announcement. ‘This is what we’re gonna do, here’s how we’re gonna do it, and this is when we’re gonna do it.’ That’s the only logical step and the only thing in my opinion that makes sense. Ya, I’m putting pressure on the NHL, because I’ve sat in meetings and worked with them for a long time and talked and discussed this for a long time, and it is time. They know it’s time. They have the infrastructure. Obviously COVID has hit the league hard and they’re losing money as well. Obviously timing is not ideal, but the time is now. The time is now for them to step up and make an announcement about how they want to support women’s hockey.”
And now Tumminia: “I think it’s kinda unfair on the NHL’s part for me to say, ‘Hey, they should take it on themselves and, you know, help this all out.’ Meaning, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, everybody’s hurting financially. For them to take on the entire business model, I don’t know. I think that would be a little unfair at this time to ask them to do that. That’s a little bit tough to ask at this point. Now, in a couple years that might be a little bit different. Right now what I think it should look like, is you get a business model that’s strong in a league that goes past a couple of years, in combination with other parties involved and kinda go in the direction where it’s sustainable on its own. And at the time there’s market share, there’s viewership and there’s tribal fandom in these markets, and the markets are actually showing there’s growth and it’s sustainable and it’s fueling and funding revenue streams that are consistent. Then I think at that time, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s something they take on.”
We can only speculate what’s ahead for Ponytail Puck, but I submit the cause can use a lot less of Campbell-Pascall’s militant mutterings and a lot more of Tumminia’s reasoned rhetoric.
Let’s put it another way: I know which of the two women I’d choose to represent me in a boardroom. (Hint: It isn’t the one making demands of NHL owners who aren’t fishing for fresh ways to squander money.)
Here’s a reason the NWHL and PWHPA need to get their crap together: The English Women’s Super League just hit the mother lode, signing a three-year TV deal with BBC and Sky Sports. Total value: 24 million English pounds, which translates into $33M in U.S. greenbacks. The BBC will show 22 matches and there’ll be as many as 44 more on Sky. Our practitioners of Ponytail Puck will drool at those numbers. That’s where they want to be, visible and with substantial TV revenue. And if it’s doable in English soccer it ought to be doable for shinny in North America, especially in Canada. How do they arrive at that point? Simple: Follow Tumminia’s lead. Sit down and talk. Hash out differences. Clear up misconceptions. Grab an oar and row in the same direction. Campbell-Pascall has said more than once that “this isn’t about one league versus the other league,” but that’s exactly what the Dream Gappers have done to Ponytail Puck. They’ve turned it into a family feud. Now they have a chance to grab an olive branch. We’ll see.
Every time I see and hear Jennifer Botterill talk hockey on Sportsnet, I’m reminded what a local treasure she is and how the decision-makers got it right in making her the first female player inducted to the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame. One of the all-timers in local shinny lore, Jennifer is an Olympic champion, world champion, two-time winner of the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top player in NCAA women’s hockey, team captain at Harvard, CWHL scoring champion, CWHL all-star, and now a respected voice on hockey TV. It’s just too bad Jennifer had to leave home to do all that heavy lifting. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the final notation on her career read: Played professional hockey in Winnipeg?
Having said that, I wonder if the Puck Pontiff, Mark Chipman, harbors an appetite for bringing a women’s team under the True North umbrella. Has anyone asked the Winnipeg Jets co-bankroll about it? If not, why not?
This is an example of what Ponytail Puck is up against in terms of coverage in mainstream media: The Toronto Six met the Boston Pride in an Isobel Cup semifinal skirmish on Friday. Number of column inches devoted to the match in the Toronto Sun pre- and post-game, zero. But, hey, they managed to squeeze in a full-page Sunshine Girl. Meanwhile, both TSN and Sportsnet used the Boston-Minnesota Whitecaps championship joust as bottom-feeder filler on their highlight shows Saturday night/Sunday morning. The Isobel Cup final was a 52nd-minute afterthought on SportsCentre and a 47th-minute snippet on Sports Central, scant seconds in front of two NASCAR mud-racing pickup trucks.
Mike Tyson takes a chomp out of the champ’s right ear.
I note that cannibal boxer Mike Tyson, who once ate Evander Holyfield’s right ear for a late-night snack, won’t be fighting his former foe for a third time, thus losing out on a multi-million-dollar payday. Guess that means Iron Mike will have to find himself a new meal ticket.
Apparently negotiations between the greybeard boxers broke down when Tyson scared off Holyfield by arriving at one bargaining session with a knife and fork.
Here’s a transcript from the final Tyson-Holyfield verbal to-and-fro: Tyson: “We have an offer you can’t refuse, Evander.” Holyfield: “Talk to me, Mike…I’m all ears.” Tyson: “No you’re not.”
There was also a hangup over the marketing slogan for the proposed Tyson-Holyfield III at Hard Rock Stadium. The two sides agreed it should be something catchy like Rumble in the Jungle or Thrilla in Manila, but Holyfield balked when the Tyson camp insisted on Finger Lickin’ Fightin’ ‘n’ Late Night Munchies In Miami.
Chevy
The Winnipeg Jets lost Jacob Trouba, Tyler Myers and Ben Chiarot from their blueline in June/July 2019. Dustin Byfuglien disappeared in September that year. So we started discussing the pressing need for a top-four defenceman 18½ months ago. Question is, why are we still talking about it a year and a half after Big Buff and the boys bailed? What, general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff hasn’t noticed those four guys are missing? Of course he has. Yet we still await his next move. It’s official then: Chevy actually moves slower than the Arctic ice melt.
According to the 2021 World Happiness report, Finnish people are the happiest on the planet for the fourth straight year. Hmmm. Did anyone think to ask Patrik Laine about that?
There’s a large cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal and, after a week of failed attempts to free the vessel, the captain and crew are desperate to get out. You know, just like anyone who plays for the Buffalo Sabres.
Seems to me that the Ottawa Senators might become an NHL force once all their players are old enough to shave. Then, of course, Eugene Melnyk will sell them off like used tupperware containers at a yard sale.
Commish Randy
Go figure the Canadian Football League. One week commissioner Randy Ambrosie is talking tall about a budding bromance with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and his XFL, and the next week he’s pleading poverty (yes, again) and asking players to take an across-the-board hit at the pay window (yes, again). So let’s no longer wonder why Commish Randy and the Lords of Rouge Football would consider an iffy alliance with a fly-by operation south of the 49th, let’s instead wonder why The Rock would consider a partnership with a bunch of guys whose sole game plan appears to be begging. I don’t know if Commish Randy and his bosses are embarrassed, but they should be.
The CFL has become an arms race, and it has nothing to do with quarterbacks. It’s all about how many needles medics can poke into fans’ arms. Rouge Football isn’t doable without patrons in the pews, so what’s the over/under on the number of COVID-19 vaccine shots required before the faithful can flock into ball yards hither and yon? Is it 20 million? Twenty-five mill? Is Vegas offering odds?
And, finally, the other day I watched a replay of Secretariat’s gallop in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, and I must report that it remains the most gob-smacking, astonishing individual athletic performance I’ve ever witnessed. And that’s taking in a lot of turf, because I started watching sports in the mid-1950s. I suppose some folks might get emotional gazing upon the Mona Lisa or the Shroud of Turin, but I get teary-eyed watching Big Red romp to the wire in the Belmont. It’s very spiritual.
Another Sunday smorgas-bored from someone who’s never been too drunk to curl…
I cannot recall my curling baptism with any deep level of clarity.
I do, however, have foggy recollections of E.D. Smith jam pails filled with poured concrete awkwardly skimming along a bumpy sheet of ice in the far corner of the St. Alphonsus schoolyard, where we had been instructed to assemble for our first misadventures of the hurry-hard culture.
None of us were too drunk to curl that day. The Sisters of St. Joseph saw to that.
There was a lengthy list of things those strap-wielding nun/teachers frowned upon during my formative years, and Grades 1 and 2 sprigs getting blotto-faced before sliding from a makeshift hack on a makeshift curling rink surely was high on their registry of restrictions. Boozing it up wasn’t something a good Catholic kid did. At least not until Grade 8.
So, yes, all of us urchins were as sober as nuns that day as we bundled up and stepped outside into the Arctic-like embrace of an unyielding Winnipeg winter.
And let the record show this: It was the only day I ever curled without beer being involved.
Thus it was with wry amusement that I’ve read the reaction(s) to the booze-fueled shenanigans of our curlers last weekend in Red Deer, the Alberta burg caught between a rock (Calgary) and a hard place (Edmonton).
Ryan (Small) Fry
If you came in late, the World Curling Tour’s Red Deer Classic was chugging along smoothly when Jamie Koe, Ryan (Small) Fry, Chris Schille and DJ Kidby took a notion to occupy the down time between games by giving their elbows a strenuous bending. Thirty-to-40 bottles of wobbly pop and numerous shooters later, they were good and properly pie-eyed, with not a nun on cite to monitor their behaviour with a piercing frown or a firm rapping of the knuckles with a wooden yardstick. So they went out and curled. At least three of them did.
Koe, recognizing that something was missing (his legs), took a powder. Apparently more brown pops required his attention. Fry, Schille and Kidby gave it a go on the pebble sans their too-drunk-to-curl skip, but what ensued was “a gong show” according to the venue manager, Wade Thurber. There was broom-breaking (Fry shattered three). There was foul language (imagine that, a curler cussin’). Later, a changing room wall lost an argument to either a foot or a fist.
Barney, Homer and Moe talk curling.
These were no piddling hogline violations. The lads were punted from the event. Yup, kicked out, like Homer and his pal Barney Gumble after they’ve had one too many Duff at Moe’s.
In the ensuing days, headline writers and opinionists across the globe have had their way with our “drunken curlers.” Dispatches of the “drunken debacle” have stretched from Red Deer to the U.K., to Asia, to Down Under. CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated, the BBC, SkySports, The Independent, Business Insider, the New Zealand Herald, Eurosport, Deadspin, the Sydney Morning Herald, HuffPost UK, the Washington Post, the Korea Herald, Breitbart and The Guardian have all weighed in, basically advancing the same theme: Canadians are a bunch of party people who drunkenly slide around on ice nine months of the year.
Well, we know that to be untrue. We’re drunk 12 months of the year and the ice melts after seven months.
Scott Moir with Bob and Doug McKenzie: Beer, eh.
But here’s what has really surprised me in the fallout of the curling kerfuffle: Seemingly the link between Canadian sports and beer swilling is something the rest of the world has just now discovered. What, they weren’t paying attention to the Olympics last winter when our fancy skater Scott Moir was tossing back pints faster than Boris Yeltsin? Cripes, man, Grey Cup week is affectionately known as the Grand National Drunk. The Brier even has its own pub. At one point in history, the prize for winning the Canadian men’s curling championship was a beer stein the size of a backyard hot tub.
It wasn’t until a kid drowned in the thing that they got rid of it.
So you’ll have to excuse me if I refuse to get my knickers in a twist over a few of the boys going all hoser a la Bob and Doug McKenzie.
Besides, there’s good news in all this: The rest of the world has been so focused on our “drunken curlers” that they’ve forgotten we’re also responsible for Nickelback, the Biebs and Howie Mandel’s lame jokes and germaphobia.
Paul Gowsell
It’s not like Koe and Co. are the first curlers to feel their oats (and barley). I mean, some of us haven’t forgotten Paul Gowsell, long-haired rebel of the Pebble People. Never mind that the former world junior champion had a pizza delivered in the middle of a game during a bonspiel in Regina (“We were hungry.”), he once was flagged down by the gendarmes for drunk driving, possession of pot and illegal possession of liquor—while wheeling his way home from a banquet honoring him as Calgary’s athlete-of-the-year. Gowsell copped a guilty plea on the drunk driving and marijuana raps, and was fined $150 for each. He was not, however, charged for curling while under the influence of pepperoni, salami and extra cheese in Regina.
If nothing else, the Red Deer episode of the Lords of Rinks and Drinks has provided others cause to double down on their dumb stereotyping of the roaring game. My favorite comment was delivered by a Los Angeles Times reader who wrote: “Curling will never catch on as a popular sport in America because it all looks too much like tedious janitorial work that requires basic householding skills.” Why do you think curlers drink, dude?
Jeff Stoughton with the Tankard Trophy.
For the record, I knew just one curler who never allowed booze to pass his lips—legendary Manitoba skip Jeff Stoughton. There might have been other teetotalers among the Pebble People that I wrote about, but perhaps I spent too much time in the Brier Patch to notice. (Just kidding. I never once set foot in the Patch—I did my elbow bending in regular pubs. But only after filing my copy. Honest. I wrote sober. Or did I write drunk and edit sober, as Hemmingway suggested we do? Can’t remember. Must have killed too much grey matter.)
Okay, let’s move on to other stuff, like Patrik Laine. I turned on my flatscreen to watch a hockey game on Saturday and PlayStation broke out. Seriously, what Puck Finn did to the Blues in St. Loo—five shots, five goals in an 8-4 Winnipeg Jets win—was pure video game stuff. And, to think, a week ago this morning 41 National Hockey League players had more goals than the Finnish winger. Today there are zero. Usually when a guy climbs that high, that fast, he needs a Sherpa guide and oxygen. I don’t think Puck Finn had to hit the shower by the time he was done. Yes, he made it look that easy.
Puck Finn will be due a pay raiseat the end of this crusade. Can you say “Ka-ching!” kids?
Ron MacLean and Dave Hodge
I have one thing to say about Dave Hodge returning to Hockey Night in Canada (in a baby blue blazer, no less)—flipping brilliant. And if you’re of a certain vintage, you’ll know what I mean when I say “flipping.”
Sad to hear about the death of Dan Maloney, former coach of the Winnipeg Jets. Like all Jets bench jockeys, Satch wasn’t there for a long time (1986-89), but there were good times, most notably a playoff series victory over the Calgary Flames. Satch was a good, sincere, soft-spoken man. I always enjoyed dealing with him while wandering the continent with Winnipeg HC.
I can’t say for certain, but I doubt there’s ever been a tougher head coach-GM tag team in NHL history than Satch and John Bowie Ferguson. If their teams couldn’t beat ’em on the ice, Satch and Fergy sure as hell could whup the other team’s management in any UFC octagon.
Going into tonight’s game between the Edmonton McDavids and the Kings in Tinseltown, Milan Lucic has scored one goal more than me. And I’ll make $5,981,000 less than the Looch this year.
What’s up with Canadian Football League Players Association members? You’d think the large lads in pads would know better than news snoops on the beat when it comes to quality performance. But no. They’re “D’oh!” boys. Evidence of this is found in the CFLPA collection of all-stars that does not include the league’s most outstanding player, Bo Levi Mitchell, the league’s most outstanding defensive player, Beastmo Bighill, the league’s most outstanding O-lineman, Stanley Bryant, and the league’s leading ground gainer, Andrew Harris. Oh, and let’s not forget they anointed June Jones of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats the top sideline steward. That despite the fact six of nine head coaches compiled superior records. All of which can mean just one thing: Curlers aren’t the only athletes who drink too much.
The Mea Culpa Man
I can’t decide if Dave Dickenson is a football coach or a conspiracy theorist, but I do know the Calgary Stampeders head knock has established a Grey Cup record for apologies.
Double D doubled down on mea culpas during Grey Cup week in Edmonton, first apologizing for his gutteral description of Mike O’Shea and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ homebrew braintrust as an effing Canadian Mafia, then for his ‘oh, woe are we’ suggestion that the entire nation will be root, root, rooting against his tribe in today’s CFL championship skirmish.
“Sometimes you just talk to much,” the Mea Culpa Man mused. “Maybe I fabricated my own little storyline. Maybe I should have kept those comments to myself.”
No, no, no. A thousand times no, Dave. Keep yapping like an annoying little lap dog. And the dumber the better.
Apparently Bytown RedBlacks O-lineman Jon Gott has a chip on his shoulder any time he plays against the Stampeders, his former outfit. And here I thought that thing on his shoulder was a can of beer.
I’m liking the RedBlacks to haul the Grey Cup back to the nation’s capital with a three-point victory over the Stamps this afternoon/evening in E-Town. Final score: 28-25. Game MVP: Trevor Harris.
And, finally, just wondering: Did anyone actually watch the Tiger Woods-Lefty Mickelson con job?
I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…
Jill Officer has yet to utter the R-word. Retirement. She insists she’s just taking “a step back.”
Well, okay. If she says so.
I mean, Officer can define her retreat from elite curling with the terminology of her choosing, but she wept openly last month after going public with her decision. You don’t cry if you’re staying. You cry when you’re leaving.
Thus, there’s no escaping the fact that we have arrived at the end of an era. An unparalleled era.
Thelma and Louise
Officer, of course, has been playing Thelma to Jennifer Jones’s Louise since…well, since about the same time the fictional Thelma and Louise were on the lam, leading cops on a catch-us-if-you-can romp across America. That classic chick flick arrived on the big screen in May 1991. Curling’s two J Girls united shortly thereafter, and foes and friends have been chasing them ever since.
A quarter century. Who stays together that long? The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Homer and Marge. Mick and Keith. Fish and chips. That’s about it.
Here’s some time perspective: One of the J Girls’ teammates on the Canadian rep at the world women’s championship in North Bay the past week, fifth Shannon Birchard, wasn’t even in her mama’s womb when Officer and Jones first joined forces. The outfit’s third, Kaitlyn Lawes, had yet to begin grade school.
Jennifer Jones and Jill Officer
And it’s been quite the trip that skip Jen and second Jill have taken us on since that day in the early ’90s when the teenage Jones pulled the teenage Officer aside for a chit-chat by a Coke machine at the Highlander Curling Club in Winnipeg, whereupon they forged a partnership that has produced provincial (nine), Canadian (seven), Grand Slam (15), world (two) and Olympic titles. (Did I mention it was an unparalleled era among Manitoba curlers?)
Following Canada’s drama-drenched 7-6, extra-end victory over Sweden (brilliant game) on Sunday, there’ll be two curtain calls for the 42-year-old Officer in Grand Slam of Curling competition, then she’ll ease away, making only cameo appearances for the world-champion Jones team, which includes lead Dawn McEwen and will add Jocelyn Peterman to throw second stones next season.
This world title was the ideal, also appropriate, way for Officer to leave the big stage. One final run for glory. One final crown. And a perfect (14-0) storybook ending.
It was a beautiful thing.
Vic Peters
Terrific Jill Officer story from Paul Wiecek, longtime curling scribe and now columnist with the Winnipeg Free Press: “For the longest time, she would come to every major curling event the Jones team was competing in with these little chocolate curling rocks she’d buy at Morden’s in Winnipeg before she left. She’d tie a little ribbon around those chocolate rocks and attach a thank you card. And then, win or lose, Officer, who was a TV reporter back in the day, would come up to the media bench at the end of those curling events and hand those cards and chocolates to the reporters who’d been covering her team, just to thank us for the coverage. You know who else I covered over the last three decades who gave me a thank you card? Nobody.” I can relate. After covering the 1997 Brier in Calgary, I received a thank you card in the mail. It was from the late, great Vic Peters, his bride Deb, and their kids, Elisabeth, Kassie and Daley. That card sits atop my bookcase, 21 years after the fact. Curlers are wonderful and Peters, who left us almost exactly two years ago to this very day, was a total treat.
Doug Flutie
This is an equal-opportunity blog, folks. That is, any and all who do, say or write something stupid in sports are fair game for scorn, ridicule, rude laughter and no-insults-barred cheap shots. No exceptions. Sacred cows do not exist. Unless, of course, I harbor a special fondness for someone (hello, Tessa Virtue), in which case nary a discouraging word shall be written.
With that in mind, it’s only fair that I direct your attention to an analysis delivered prior to the first puck drop of the Winnipeg Jets current National Hockey League crusade. To wit:
“It appears that the Western Conference road to the Stanley Cup is likely to go through Northern Alberta. If not, it’ll be Southern Alberta, where the Calgary Flames are shaping up to be a force. The trouble with the Jets—aside from the people behind the bench—is geography. Until they prove otherwise, they’re still the third best outfit on the Canadian Prairies.”
And what goomer wrote that tripe? Guilty, yer honor. Yup, it was little ol’ moi. D’oh! D’oh! D’oh!
But, hey, it’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever scribbled. I once referred to the Major League Baseball all-star game as the “annual Fall Classic,” even though it’s played in July. And, of course, there was the time I mentioned something about Doug Flutie being nothing more than a fair-weather quarterback, only to then watch him win a Grey Cup game in a blizzard.
So, ya, Brain Cramps ‘R’ Me.
Connor McDavid
I find little or no consolation in the knowledge that the Edmonton McDavids and Flames fooled the majority of those who observe the goings-on of the NHL. I mean, seven of 16 “experts” at Sportsnet picked the McDavids to win the West. Fifteen of 16 forecast either the McDavids or Flames to finish with the highest points total among the seven Canadian clubs. Over at USA Today, the boys and girls on the beat had the McDavids finishing first in the Pacific Division, with Calgary in third. Yet, once the Stanley Cup tournament commences next month, the McDavids and Flames will have their noses pressed to the window, watching the fun from the outside. Sigh. The difference between me and the scribes/talking heads at Sportsnet and USA Today? They get paid to be dumb. I don’t. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.
This week’s Steve-ism from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna dates back to a Dec. 12 tweet, in which he wrote: “With four points tonight, @cmcdavid97 moves into 3rd in NHL scoring behind Steve Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov. McDavid be back in the scoring lead within 10 days, I figure, maybe sooner.” Connor McDavid moved atop the scoring chart on Saturday night, meaning Simmons missed the mark by 92 days, or three months. Yup, another guy getting paid to be dumb.
Kyle Connor
Going from dumb to dumber, we give you this headline from the Winnipeg Sun last week: “Jets Connor for Calder?” Oh, shut the front door! I like Kyle Connor. He’s been the second-best contributor named Connor on the Jets roster this crusade. So, I agree, the kid’s boffo. But the NHL’s leading freshman? As if. Donald Trump will give up golf, Playmates and porn stars before that happens. Mathew Barzal of the New York Islanders is your top frosh. No debate. After that, it’s Brock Boeser and the rest. And it won’t have anything to do with Connor doing his thing in out-of-the-way Winnipeg. “Everything goes under the radar when you play in Winnipeg,” says Jets captain Blake Wheeler. Road apples! Dale Hawerchuk didn’t go under the radar. Teemu Selanne didn’t go under the radar. Barzal will win because he’s had the better rookie season, to date by 29 points.
Sweeney Odd
Lest we forget, the Jets have Don Sweeney to thank for Connor’s 28 goals, because the Boston Bruins general manager passed on the University of Michigan winger on three consecutive shout-outs during the first round of the 2015 NHL entry draft. Odd bit of business, that. Sweeney Odd, we hasten to add, also overlooked Barzal and Brock Boeser to instead claim Jake DeBrusk, Jakub Zboril and Zachary Senyshyn. So let’s do the math: The trio of Connor, Barzal and Boeser have combined for 77 goals and 178 points this season. The three guys the Boston GM swooped in on have contributed 14 goals and 39 points to the Bruins’ cause. Difference: 63 goals, 139 points. Sweeney Odd gets to keep his day job, though, because his club is already selling playoff tickets.
Humpty Harold Ballard
So, it only took the Professional Hockey Writers Association half a century to do what they’ve been demanding of everyone from Clarence Campbell to Harold Ballard’s parole officer since forever—full disclosure. Oh, yes, in recent balloting, 81.3 per cent of the jewels of puck journalism agreed that voting on the NHL’s annual year-end trinkets ought to be made public. PHWA vice-president Frank Seravalli of TSN declared this “a big moment.” I hope he didn’t pull a muscle patting himself on the back. I mean, if 81.3 per cent were in favor of complete transparency, 18.7 per cent still prefer the process be kept hush-hush. In other words, they don’t have the balls to defend their choices for the Hart, Norris, Lady Byng, Masterton, Calder, Selke and Smythe nick-nacks. If ever there was a vote that should have been unanimous, that was it.
Best lip service of the week comes from Tranna Blue Jays manager John Gibbons: “My experience in this game is that sometimes it’s better to be smart than stupid.” Sometimes? You only want to be unstupid sometimes? Tells me it’s gonna be another long baseball season for the Tranna Nine.
Rory McIlroy
If Rory McIlroy had his druthers, the ‘P’ in PGA Tour would stand for Prohibition. Yup, McIlroar wants them to turn off the taps at golf tournaments. “I think they need to limit alcohol sales on the course,” he said after the third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational last weekend. Imagine that. An Irishman calling for a ban on booze. St. Patty is spinning. But McIlroar is serious. By his measure, too man fans are getting banjo’d, Magooed, gee-eyed and jarred at PGA events. “It used to be you bring beers on the course, but not liquor,” he went on. “And now it seems like everyone is walking around with a cocktail. So I don’t know if it’s just people walking around with beers in their hand, that’s fine.” Ya, we all know that no guy drinking beer has ever gotten loud, obnoxious and blethered. Slainte, Rory.
Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe
So, Martina Navratilova is having herself a proper, little hissy fit after learning how much the BBC stuffs into John McEnroe’s pay envelope ($210,000-$280,000) for flapping his gums during the Wimbledon fortnight. The tennis legend is “not happy” and “it’s shocking” that Johnny Mac earns 10 times the $27,000 she collects. “It’s still the good old boys’ network,” she says. “The bottom line is that male voices are valued more than women’s voices.” Get a grip, girl. You’re both getting paid by the word, and McEnroe never shuts the hell up.
Seriously, although the BBC is guilty of gender pay inequity, the McEnroe-Navratilova situation isn’t a he-she thing. It’s a talent thing. He’s the best tennis talker. Is he 10 times better than her? That can’t be measured, but I’ll submit he’s superior by a considerable margin. His work load is also considerably heavier. Look, Al Michaels reportedly earns $5 million per year to talk football on NBC. His sidekick, Cris Collinsworth, collects $1 million, or thereabouts. They sit in the same broadcast booth, for the same length of time; they watch the same players and the same game. Yet one hauls in $5 mill and the other $1 mill. It’s the same 5-1 ratio with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman over at Fox Sports. Nothing to do with gender.
And, finally, I’ve heard little quarrel about the Canadian Football Hall of Fame class of 2018—Hank Ilesic, Scott Flory, Baron Miles, Brent Johnson, Frank Cosentino, Paul Brule and Tom Hugo.
One dissenting voice, however, comes from Steve Simmons (I know, what a surprise). He wonders why Tricky Dick Thornton, the all-purpose player with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Tranna Argonauts in the 1960s and early ’70s, and Leo (The Lip) Cahill, former head coach and general manager of the Boatmen, continue to be snubbed.
“It’s a shame and overdue because both were significant to the success of the Canadian Football League and for reasons I’ve never ascertained, have been pushed aside on an annual basis,” he writes.
I agree with Simmons on Thornton. Makes no sense. Ya, sure, he was a non-conformist. He wore his hair long, he wore an earring, he had a Fu Manchu mustache, he wrote poetry and sucked up to the media. But he also played every position but percussion in the symphony orchestra. And played them all exceptionally well.
As for Cahill, he was a charming, colorful character but a career .500 head coach. He never won the Grey Cup.
I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…
Grrrl power and goddesses.
Quiz me this, Sexism Police: If a writer uses the word “goddesses” to describe a female athlete, is that sexist or not? Or does it depend on the gender of the scribe?
I ask this because one wordsmith has bestowed the loft of “goddesses” upon the women who are responsible for the entirety of Canada’s medal haul at the Summer Olympic Games in Brazil. Given the sensitivities of the day, such a descriptive might be expected to inspire howls of protest because the word “goddess” is very much about female physical beauty.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a goddess is “a female deity” or “a woman who is greatly admired, especially for her beauty.” Merriam-Webster defines goddess as “a female god,” or “a women whose great charm or beauty arouses adoration.”
So, you need to be female and you need to be beautiful in appearance. All others need not apply.
Sounds sexist to me.
Actually, much of the column written by Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star could be considered sexist, to the point of being an exercise in the gender-shaming of men. I mean, it’s appropriate to laud the ladies for their achievements at Rio de Janeiro with catchy phrases like “Grrrrl power in the pool.” But Ramblin’ Rosie shifts into an us-vs.-them mode. The women vs. the men. It’s XII medals for the XX side. And the XY side? Zip. Zilch. The men have provided no yang to the women’s yin.
Still, I don’t think DiManno was being sexist in her use of the term “goddesses” or her emphasis on the lack of success, to date, by Canada’s male Olympians. (Stooping to the branding of certain scribes/broadcasters as “chauvinistic troglodytes” is another matter.)
I just find it interesting that she can use a word, the meaning of which speaks directly to a women’s physical beauty, and it goes unchallenged. I’m not sure a guy would get away with that. Not in today’s politically correct climate. Surely someone would be offended. Which might explain why, in a similarly themed column, Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press took the safe route and described our women as “fierce female warriors.”
Hope Solo: An ugly American in Rio.
The gold medal for Ugly American in Rio goes to Hope Solo, goalkeeper with the United States women’s soccer side. Her gamesmanship, whereby she demanded a new pair of gloves prior to the final kick in a shootout loss to Sweden, was pathetic theatrics, but calling the victors a “bunch of cowards” went beyond the pale. According to Solo, those pesky Swedes displayed extremely bad manners in refusing to join the Americans in a game of run-and-gun football. How dare they sit back and defend? Dirty, rotten “cowards.” And, to think, some Americans wonder why the world cheers against them.
Hard to imagine that the now-retired Alex Rodriguez is on the New York Yankees’ payroll as an adviser. What pearls of wisdom will he dispense to young players with Major League Baseball’s most-storied franchise? In which butt cheek to inject the needle?
I don’t know what is worthy of more yuks, the Saskatchewan Roughriders being found guilty of cheating and still sporting a woeful 1-6 record for this Canadian Football League season or former genius Chris Jones insisting that all fans wishing to attend Gang Green workouts must first produce photo identification and sign in. Perhaps Jones shouldn’t just ask fans to sign in. Let ’em on the field. One or two of them might be able to do something most of the Riders are incapable of. You know, like catch a football.
I’m all for chasing dreams, so I won’t be joining the chorus of rude laughter that has accompanied football washout Tim Tebow since he expressed a desire to play professional baseball. Just one piece of advice for Tim, though: Play first base, because you rarely have to throw the ball.
That was quite the pity party Henry Burris had last week. Smilin’ Hank was snarlin’ Hank, most of his venom directed at the talking heads on the TSN football panel, who might or might not have been critical of him. Chris Schultz called the Burris rant an “overreaction,” while Matt Dunigan was “disappointed” and submitted Snarlin’ Hank’s “focus is all out of whack.” Milt Stegall got more personal, saying, “You sound like a baby right now, that’s exactly what you sound like.” You got it, Milt, just call Hank the Otta-whine RedBlacks quarterback.
Alex Rodriguez: Liar, liar, pants on fire.
I have a theory about the outpouring of support for Elliotte Friedman from his brethren in the Fourth Estate—he apologized. Jock journalists, you see, are not accustomed to hearing mea culpas. They expect lies and denial (hello, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, A-Rod, Roger Clemens, Alan Eagleson, Roger Goodell, Russia, Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa et al). Thus, when Friedman apologized for his mega-mistake in the Olympic men’s 200-meter individual medley final, the boys and girls rallied ’round him, not simply because they don’t eat their own, but for his honesty. It’s in short supply in sports.
Not in short supply is casual homophobia. BBC commentator Paul Hand had this to say as a kiss-cam scanned the audience during a women’s tennis match in Rio: “Let’s hope they don’t go on to two blokes sat next to each other.” No Paul. The sight of gay people kissing is not the problem. The problem is people like you who have a problem watching gay people kiss.
A fun BBC thing is the site Who is Your Olympic Body Match?You type in your height, weight and age and you’re given the names of Olympic athletes who most closely resemble you. Mine are Barbora Strykova, a Czech tennis player, Natalia Alfaro, a Costa Rican beach volleyball player, and Wai Sze Lee, a Hong Kong track cyclist. I can handle playing tennis and riding a bike, but you’ll never catch me wearing one of those skimpy beach volleyball bikinis. For which we all can be thankful.
Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.
The River City Renegade 
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