John McEnroe – Page 2 – The River City Renegade

About therapy for the Tranna Maple Leafs jugger-not…the price ain’t right for Willy…boneheaded coaching in the CFL…Johnny’s still rotten and having a hissy fit…CFL power rankings down the stretch…Johnny Miller pulling the plug…Johnny Mo bidding adios…RiRi keeping her clothes on…and other things on my mind

Monday morning coming down in three, two, one…

The bloom is off the petunia in the Republic of Tranna.

We know this to be so because it finally has occurred to easily swayed news snoops in The ROT that Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr don’t actually skate with the Maple Leafs.

Turns out it was a case of mistaken identity. Auston Matthews is actually Auston Matthews, not No. 99. Morgan Rielly is actually Morgan Rielly, not No. 4. Les Leafs are actually a work in progress, not the 1980s Edmonton Oilers. Pond hockey is fun to watch but not actually sustainable. The juggernaut is actually a jugger-not! Who knew?

Certainly not the scribes and natterbugs in The ROT who’d been howling hosannas about Matthews and Rielly at a deafening and, yes, annoying volume. It was as if the two youthful Leafs had invented vulcanized rubber, the Zamboni and Coach’s Corner.

Alas, troubled times have arrived.

Les Leafs seemingly became National Hockey League d’oh! boys overnight. There were zero goals in a stumble against the Pittsburgh Penguins. There was one score in a faceplant vs. the St. Louis Blues.

In an attempt to dig to the root of these missteps, les Leafs, normally off duty on the Sabbath, were summoned and assembled yesterday. Not for a practice, though. This was what multi-millionaire head coach Mike Babcock described as a “reality therapy meeting.”

No word if Dr. Phil was brought in as a guest coach, or if Oprah was on standby with her couch.

So when les Leafs arrive at The Little Hockey House On The Prairie for their Wednesday night skirmish with the Winnipeg Jets, be gentle with them, kids. They’re in therapy, don’t you know.

Les Leafs, of course, come to town sans gifted forward William Nylander, who remains back home in Europe awaiting a contract offer he can’t refuse. I hope he isn’t holding his breath. I mean, let’s say, for the sake of discussion, that reports of the unsigned restricted free agent’s asking price are accurate. Hmmm, $8.5 million. That’s Leon Draisaitl money. Well, just because the Edmonton Oilers are stupid doesn’t mean the Maple Leafs have to be.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight: The Montreal Alouettes were down to their final play on Saturday afternoon, scrimmaging on the Tranna Argonauts’ 48-yard stripe, thus it was Hail Mary time in a 26-22 game. And what does Larks head coach Mike Sherman do? He yanks his starting quarterback, Johnny Manziel, and inserts a cold Antonio Pipkin behind centre because he had “fresh legs.” What exactly did Sherman expect Pipkin to do? Toss the football with his feet? Unless Johnny Rotten is incapable of flinging a football 50 yards, Sherman’s reasoning makes no sense at all. It was boneheaded coaching.

Manziel showed us what he’s all about when he dashed away in a huff the moment Pipkin’s fresh legs failed to avoid the Argos’ pass rush and he was sacked on the final play in the Larks’ loss. No mingling with the boys on the field after the fact. No hand shakes or job-well-done words for his mates and foes. Just sprint and pout (his legs look real “fresh” as he ran away). Hey, I don’t blame the guy for being PO’d, but scurrying off in a hissy fit is a bad, spoiled-brat optic. And it confirms that Johnny Rotten is all about Johnny Rotten.

An unidentified Canadian Football league coach or GM delivered this gem to Kirk Penton of The Athletic: “Manziel’s better than you think. No quarterback can win with that group of offensive linemen Montreal is putting out there.” Not true. Pipkin won two of four starts with the O-lineman that the Alouettes are “putting out there.” It’s just the 0-6 Johnny Rotten who can’t win with them.

Why is the CFL keeping the head count for the Als-Argos skirmish at BMO Field a secret? I mean, so what if you see more people at Chris Walby’s backyard BBQ? Give us the attendance figure already.

This week’s CFL power rankings…
1. Calgary (12-4): Still the team to beat.
2. Saskatchewan (11-6): Where did that offence come from?
3. Winnipeg (9-7): Back to work this week.
4. B.C. (9-7): Winning for Wally.
5. Ottawa (9-7): A playoff bye for Bytown?
6. Hamilton (8-8): Losing Speedy B is huge.
7. Edmonton (8-9): Wholesale changes are a-coming.
8. Toronto (4-12): Blah, blah, blah.
9. Montreal (3-13): Yadda, yadda, yadda.

If you’re a parent with a child playing football, you might want to take a peek at the latest issue of The Manitoba Teacher, where you’ll find an excellent feature by one of my favorite people and former colleague Judy Owen. She gets into the safety measures local leagues are taking in an attempt to curb injuries, and Winnipeg Blue Bombers greats Chris Walby and Troy Westwood offer input. It’s good stuff.

Still no freshly minted sports columnist to replace the departed Paul Wiecek at the Winnipeg Free Press. I thought they’d have had someone in place the moment Wiecek walked out the door, because a sports section without a columnist is like a church without prayer. A pub without pints. Sinatra without a song. As good as the Drab Slab’s foot soldiers are in the toy department—and they are good—the section needs a lead voice. Someone to arouse the rabble. And I need someone to critique.

So, Johnny Miller plans to pull the plug on his golf analyst gig with NBC Sports after the Phoenix Open in early February next year. Shame. Although pompous, Miller is blunt and goes directly to the point. He’s never been afraid to ruffle feathers. He and tennis great John McEnroe are the two most honest game analysts/color commentators on sports TV. Apparently Paul Azinger will move into Miller’s seat at NBC. He’s good, but he’s going to hear a lot of “He’s no Johnny Miller” when he cushions his comments.

John Morris tells Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun that his hurry-hard days in men’s curling are done, and he’ll now focus on mixed doubles. That’s one of those good news, bad news things. It’s good that Johnny Mo will continue to curl, because he’s a colorful guy who knows how to fill news snoops’ notebooks and deliver quality sound bites. But, since mixed doubles is still in its infancy and sits on the periphery of the game, he won’t be as visible. So file that part of his decision under not so good.

The low-key, subdued farewell is among the quirks of world-class curling. Johnny Mo steps away from the men’s game and there’s no fanfare, even though he is among the most-decorated Pebble People of all time. Intense (sometimes to a fault) and combative, Johnny Mo did it all on the pebble. This is a hall of fame curler. His resumé includes multiple Olympic, world and Canadian championships and, of course, he collaborated with Kaitlyn Lawes to reach the top step of the podium in the inaugural mixed doubles event at the Winter Games in South Korea last February. But there will be no teary-eyed press gathering like we see when a hockey, football, baseball or hoops great bids adios. Legends like Morris, Kevin Martin, Jeff Stoughton, Elisabet Gustafson, Colleen Jones, Dugie et al go quietly into the night. Or to the broadcast booth. It’s the curler’s way.

And, finally, Rihanna apparently rejected an offer to headline the halftime show at next year’s Super Bowl, so we’re stuck with Adam Levine and Maroon 5. Personally, I’m not into either performer’s music, but I know whose wardrobe I’d like to see malfunction.

About Josh Morrissey doing a Jacob Trouba…the fashion police weigh in on Winnipeg Jets third uni…the hair on hockey players’ chinny-chin-chins…pants on fire in Montreal…Johnny Rotten’s bruised ego…fighting fossils…tennis brats…and other things on my mind

It occurs to me…

Now that Josh Morrissey is back on board, here’s what I’m curious about: Will the rabble—and at least one prominent jock journo—speak and write the same evil about him as they did Jacob Trouba during the past two years?

Trouba, you’ll recall, failed to surface for Winnipeg Jets training exercises in 2016 and he’s been Darth Skater ever since. It’s as if he’s responsible for all that raw sewage pouring into the city’s river system.

Morrissey was MIA for the first three days of Camp PoMo. Does that make him Darth Skater Lite?

I mean, from what I can determine there’s just one difference between the two young National Hockey League defenders: Trouba declared a desire to get out of Dodge prior to his contract impasse, which stretched into November of ’16, and his hankering for a new postal/zip code became a matter of public record. Morrissey, meanwhile, has expressed no such yearning. The only comments he delivered for public consumption during his prolonged contract discussions sounded like a 1960s love-in: Love the Jets. Love my teammates. Love River City. Want to be on board for the long haul. We’ll get a deal done.

Well, now that the deal is done (two years, $6.3 million), I’m hoping that Morrissey will be spared the unharnessed hostility heaped upon his blueline accomplice, and that’s as it should be.

Like Trouba before him, Morrissey has done nothing wrong.

“You make your decision and you stand up for what you believe in and I wouldn’t expect him to take anything less that what he feels he’s worth,” Trouba was saying the other day, not long after the local lads had assembled for their initial pre-season frolic.

Exactly.

The notion that these players should happily lap up whatever Kool-Aid that Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and his main bidder, Kevin Cheveldayoff, are serving is absurd.

Let’s be clear: Morrissey and les Jets had agreed to disagree until Sunday. That doesn’t make him a malcontent or a bad guy.

Mark Scheifele in Jets beer league jersey.

Here’s my thought on those third jerseys les Jets unveiled on Friday: That’s the biggest swing and a miss since mighty Casey struck out for the Mudville Nine. Seriously. Has a beer league team reported a set of stolen sweaters?

Here’s my thought on Tyler Myers playing on the left side of les Jets defence: Egads.

Much has been made of the fact that Jets goal-scoring maestro Puck Finn shed 14 pounds and the worst set of chin whiskers in hockey history during the summer. Here’s betting that if the puck isn’t going in early and often for Patrik Laine, the bread-butter-and-eggman beard grows back.

Speaking of facial foliage, I note that the Tranna Maple Leafs have scrapped their ban on beards. Yup, players can now sprout chin whiskers. Most excited about the new directive is forward Mitch Marner. It gives him something to look forward to when he finally reaches puberty.

I find it interesting that les Leafs and Air Canada would lift their respective restrictions on beards at the same time. As for extra baggage, Air Canada is still charging a fee and Ron Hainsey is still with the Leafs.

It’s a given that everyone in sports lives on Planet Pinocchio, which is to say they tell fibs. It’s part of their DNA. But it’s difficult to determine whose pants were on fire in Montreal recently, when les Canadiens ownership/management and former captain Max Pacioretty engaged in a “he said/he said/no I didn’t” peeing contest.

Geoff Molson, team bankroll: “We’re just going to focus on telling the truth, and that’s that a (trade) request was made. When the request was made to look at making a trade, we started to actively go after that.”

Marc Bergevin, general manager: “Last season, he asked for a trade. I will not go into details. But that’s a fact.”

Pacioretty: “There’s no truth to that. And I can confidently say that.”

Pacioretty is now with the Vegas Golden Knights. No one is denying it.

If you’re looking for some good reading (and you know you won’t find it here), check out Dan Myers’ nhl.com piece on Minnesota Wild head coach Bruce Broudreau and the 9/11 tragedy, and New York Islander goaltender Robin Lehner’s first-person account in The Athletic on his winning battle with the bottle, depression and suicidal notions. As my first sports editor, Jack Matheson, would tell us whenever we wrote something that caught his fancy, it’s “damn good” stuff. Very powerful.

Is it mere coincidence that Antonio Pipkin had his worst day at the office scant hours after TSN’s favorite lousy quarterback, Johnny Manziel, shot off at the mouth about losing his job as the Montreal Alouettes starter?

Pipkin was beyond dismal in the Larks’ 32-14 loss to the B.C. Lions on Friday night, throwing for less than 100 yards and four interceptions, including a pair of late Pick Sixes. What I found myself wondering while watching the carnage was whether or not Johnny Rotten’s rant during the leadup to the skirmish impacted on Pipkin’s performance.

“They traded half of an organization I feel like in terms of what they gave up to get me here,” Manziel had told news snoops. “I would think I would get a chance to come in and still play. That’s where maybe it’s a little bit lost on me. Missing the game because of the concussion and then not getting to play once I was back, it’s been frustrating for sure. Because I felt like there was a lot of hope and a lot of faith in me being the guy here and how quickly that’s changed in two weeks is tough.”

Sounds to me like the bleating of an entitled, me-first rich kid.

To recap, Manziel started two games behind centre for Montreal. He was gawdawful in his Canadian Football League debut, and only marginally better the next time out, when he suffered a concussion. He was 0-2. In his absence, Pipkin won two of three assignments, pumping oxygen into the lifeless Larks and establishing himself as the No. 1. Apparently, none of that registered with Johnny College. Despite missing three days of practice with the flu, he’s convinced he should have been at the wheel vs. B.C.

It’s believe he’ll miss the next month of the season due to hurt feelings.

Oh, joy, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are going to exchange punches again for a gazillion dollars in December. How will they bill the fist fight between the two boxing fossils, The Wife Beater vs. The Homophobe? And how many suckers will actually pay to watch it?

The is too funny: Last week, Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna wrote, “I really hope the Maple Leafs pick a captain soon—so everybody can just shut up about it. The captain stuff: Relatively meaningless.” So what’s the first snippet in Simmons’ latest notes column about? You guessed it. The Leafs “relatively meaningless” captaincy. Does he even read his own stuff before hitting the send button?

I began covering tennis in 1971, when the premier players in the country made the first of their annual summer pilgrimages to the har-tru courts of the Winnipeg Canoe Club for the Canadian National tournament. In the ensuing years, I witnessed no small amount of brattish behaviour, perhaps the most memorable being a classic hissy fit from the tightly strung Dale Power, who, after an unexpected loss, hucked all his racquets and other paraphernalia into an open construction pit that was to become the badminton wing of WCC. In tennis, the men were the divas (hello John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ilie Nastase). McEnroe became a pathetic caricature of himself. Connors was a narcissistic boor. Nastase was a lewd, crude oinker. So where does the great self-promoting female crusader Serena Williams fit in with the bad-ass boys? I’d say she’s a combination of McEnroe and Connors—a narcissistic caricature.

And, finally, chair umpire Carlos Ramos, he of the Serena Williams foofaraw at the U.S. Open, dinged Marin Cilic of Croatia with a code violation for racquet abuse in his Davis Cup match vs. Sam Querrey of the U.S. today. Cilic did not call Ramos a “liar” or a “thief,” nor did he mention anything about parenting or fighting for equal rights. Apparently, he simply played on. What a concept.

About Philadelphia North…what QB controversy?…the stuff hitting the fan in Bomberville…the Banjo Bowl revisited…Colin Kaepernik’s “sacrifice”…the anti-Nike slogan: Just Burn It…no C in the Republic of Tranna…political noses out of joint over Genie’s tax escape…creative broadcasting…Serena’s ugly hissy fit…and a gay guy in the hoops hall

It occurs to me…

You know you aren’t teacher’s pet when you appear in a public service announcement about the evils of drinking and driving and the rabble boos.

What did Winnipeg Blue Bombers fans do after Saturday’s football game? Go to the airport and boo bad landings?

I mean, welcome to Philadelphia North, kids.

I don’t know if Matt Nichols is a drinking man, but what transpired at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry on Saturday afternoon might be enough to drive him to it. The guy had a bad day at the office and it’s like he kicked a Girl Guide off his front porch. After stealing her cookies.

But this is what happens when you’re the starting quarterback for the Blue Bombers and you keep throwing the football to the wrong people, which Nichols did early and often in Winnipeg FC’s latest face plant, a 32-27 loss to a Saskatchewan Roughriders outfit that failed to find the end zone on offence.

You normally win in the Canadian Football League if you limit the other guys to field goals, which the Bombers defensive dozen did in this annual renewal of the Banjo Bowl. It was a job well done.

Alas, Nichols was so inept that even his biggest booster finally noticed. That would be head coach Mike O’Shea, who’d rather pull out his back teeth with a pair of rusty pliers than pull his starting QB. This day, however, the coach had seen enough of Nichols by the time the large lads broke for recess, so he instructed him to stand on the sideline and observe while understudy Chris Streveler attempted to undo the mess he’d created.

Shortly thereafter, the drinking-and-driving PSA popped up on the big screen at Football Follies Field and down rained the boos on Nichols.

He couldn’t be less popular if he made rabbit stew out of the Easter Bunny.

But seriously. Booing a guy during a PSA for drunk driving? Get a grip, people.

Here’s the deal: There is no quarterback controversy in the Bombers coaching bunker. Unless there’s intervention from on high (hello, Wade Miller), Nichols, not Streveler, will be behind centre when Winnipeg FC returns to the fray against the Montreal Alouttes two weeks hence.

“Matt deserves another chance to play and lead this team to victory because he’s done it so many times. Matt’s won a helluva lot of games for us,” O’Shea said, not long after watching Nichols implode with five first-half interceptions (two were nullified due to Saskatchewan infractions) that included a pair of Pick Sixes.

He also mumbled something about reviewing film and allowing the sour taste of a fourth straight misstep to disappear before making a “rash” decision because “that wouldn’t be good for anybody.”

The thing is, what’s good for O’Shea might not be good for Miller, chief cook and bottle washer with Winnipeg FC.

It’s worth noting a comment a CFL coach or general manager delivered recently to Kirk Penton of The Athletic: “I wouldn’t want to be around Wade Miller if the Bombers lose on Saturday. He’s a guy who loves the Bombers, wants to win a championship and when he isn’t happy everyone (bleeping) knows it. Heads are going to roll over there if things don’t change fast. Wade’s not going to put up with bull shit excuses.”

Just curious: Did Andrew Harris actually play in Saturday’s skirmish? The official stats sheet indicates the Bombers running back had 10 carries and one reception. I must have been making lunch at the time.

Old friend Troy Westwood started it all when, as the left foot of the Bombers in 2004, he called our prairie neighbors “a bunch of banjo-pickin’ inbreds.” Thus, the Banjo Bowl was born. Seemed like good-natured, harmless banter at the time, but what about today? Well, Roughriders radio gab guy Rod Pedersen asked this on Twitter: “Are you offended by the term Banjo Bowl?”

Results: 3,451 votes;
92 per cent “No;”
8 per cent “Yes.”

Wow. Eight per cent offended by the term Banjo Bowl. Guess that shoots down the theory that everyone in Saskatchewan dances to Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys the day they marry their cousins.

I’ve always been on Colin Kaepernick’s side in the Great American Kneeling Debate, but the slogan for the 30th anniversary of Nike’s Just Do It campaign baffles me a bit: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Are they telling us Kaepernick sacrificed “everything” by taking a knee during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner at National Football League games? Okay, he’s been blackballed by NFL team owners, but, according to Business Insider, the now-out-of-work quarterback collected $39.4 million on the three-year contract he signed with the San Francisco 49ers in 2014. Overall in a short NFL career, he made in excess of $43 million. Numerous sources place his net worth at $20 million or more. He bought a New York City condo for $3.21 million in 2016. He sold his home in San Jose last year for $3.075 million. And you know Nike isn’t paying him mice nuts to be its pitch man. Try eight figures. This is not a man who sacrificed “everything” and is getting by on food stamps and whatever spare change he can collect on a Manhattan street corner.

I don’t own any Nike sports gear or clothing, so I won’t be joining the Just Burn It protest of Nike apparel for the sweat shop giant’s new ad campaign featuring Kaepernick, who’s brought more people to their knees than the Pope. But I wouldn’t put a match to it if I did. If I’m going to light something on fire, it’ll be the Blue Bombers playbook, not the Nike swoosh.

The Tranna Maple Leafs plan to enter their 2018-19 National Hockey League crusade sans the letter C stitched on any player’s sweater. Officially, which is to say according to general manager Kyle Dubas, that’s because they’ve yet to determine who’s “best suited to handle” the heft that comes with wearing a patch of cloth that weighs about an ouce. Unofficially, it’s because they don’t want to put John Tavares’s nose out of joint. Ditto Auston Matthews’ beak.

Speaking of noses out of joint, some Quebec politicos are having a proper hissy fit now that tennis diva Genie Bouchard has become an official resident of the Bahamas, where she won’t be taxed on all that money she collects for losing tennis tournaments and posing half naked in fashion mags and Sports Illustrated. “I think we should live where we were born, where we learned to play tennis and pay taxes in our country,” whinges Francois Legault, leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec. Well, let me say this about that: I was born and learned to play tennis in Winnipeg. If it’s all the same to Mssr. Legault, I’ll stay in Victoria, which is not a haven from taxes but a haven from Winnipeg winters.

So, Blake Wheeler signs and extension with the Winnipeg Jets and TSN props up Dave Poulin to tell us what it means. Why do they insist on trotting Poulin out as a hockey expert/analyst when he was among seven people who didn’t believe Connor McDavid was the NHL’s top centre-ice man last season. The Edmonton Oilers captain was the scoring champion for cripes sake. His peers awarded him the Ted Lindsay Award as the game’s premier player. Yet Poulin saw something different. He voted McDavid off the island and listed Nathan MacKinnon, Anze Kopitar and Evgeni Malkin on his all-star ballot. It’s believed he also voted Mrs. Howell as the hottest babe on Gilligan’s Island, ahead of both Ginger and Mary Ann.

This from Kate Beirness of TSN on Steve Nash, inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday: “A playmaker who was more creative on the floor than anyone we had seen before.” Anyone? She would know this how? I mean, she’s 34 years old. Why do these young people insist on talking like they were there back in the day? It’s irksome. She never saw Bob Cousy. Oscar Robertson. If she saw Magic in his prime, it was from her crib or playpen. It’s fair for Beirness to talk about the traffic in her lane, but don’t talk about the traffic in my lane.

Serena Williams went all John McEnroe on chair umpire Carlos Ramos in the U.S. Open women’s final on Saturday in Gotham, and it was ugly. She was ugly. Williams turned her 6-2, 6-4 loss to Naomi Osaka into an unhinged crusade for motherhood (“I have a daughter and I stand what’s right for her!”) and women’s rights. Ramos is “sexist” (also a thief for giving her two code violations and penalizing her a game). “This is not fair,” she whinged. “This has happened to me too many times. This is not fair. This is not fair. It’s not fair, it’s really not. Do you know how many other men do things, that do much worse than that? It’s just not fair.” Williams’ pity party hijacked what should have been a night of celebration for Osaka, a first-time tennis grand slam champion. Osaka was full of grace. Williams was a complete disgrace.

And, finally, something you never thought you’d see: An openly gay man referencing his partner in a hoops hall of fame induction speech. That would be Rick Welts, chief operating officer of the Golden State Warriors, who spoke lovingly of his partner, Todd Gage, on Friday night. It was a beautiful thing.

About an Officer and a world champion…thank you notes from Jill Officer and Vic Peters…dumb hockey prophets…no Calder for Connor…transparency from hockey scribes…an Irishman and booze…Mac and Martina…what about Tricky Dick and Leo the Lip?…and other things on my mind

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

About my favorite athletes…Mike O’Shea and brown tap water…no more hanky-panky from CFL coaches…scuzzy Pete Rose…Usain Bolt losing to a drug cheat…and another gay slur

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

From the top: Wilma Rudolph, Sandy Koufax and Arnold Palmer, Martina Navratilova, Rafa Nadal and Bjorn Borg.

Came across an interesting item on social media the other day, whereby folks were listing their all-time favorite athletes. Not a greatest athlete list, understand. A fave list. Here’s mine:

Wilma Rudolph: So sleek, so elegant. Such regal bearing. The Italians called her La Gazzella Negra and, to the French, she was La Perle Noir. I adored the American sprinter who blossomed from sickly child (polio, double pneumonia, scarlet fever) into an Olympic champion sprinter. She wowed the world at the 1960 Games in Rome, skedaddling to three gold medals. Once back home in Clarksville, Tenn., she insisted that a parade/gala in her honor include all townsfolk, and history records it as the first fully integrated municipal event in town history.

Martina Navratilova: When the tennis legend defected from the former Czechoslovakia in 1975, she was a high school kid with everything going against her. English was not her first language. Family and friends were on the other side of the world. Fear of being seized and hauled back to her homeland by thugs in trench coats was ever-present. She had a fondness for Big Macs and large fries. And, as we discovered a few years later, she was a lesbian, which was a lot less cool then than it is now. But, as she was to tell news snoops in early September of ’75, “I wanted my freedom.” Once untethered from the leash of communist state suppression, Navratilova became the greatest player of her generation. To some, the greatest ever. And she’s long been a leading voice in the LGBT community.

Sandy Koufax: I should have been mad at Koufax on Oct. 6, 1965. The Los Angeles Dodgers—my team—were in Minneapolis to engage a hefty-hitting Minnesota Twins batting lineup in Game 1 of the World Series. Koufax, the premier pitcher in Major League Baseball, should have been on the mound. Instead, it was Don Drysdale, who, although no slouch on the hill, was no Koufax. But I couldn’t get mad at the great lefthander because his reason for taking the day off was unassailable—it was Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Sandy Koufax was my favorite player long before he deferred to his faith by declining to start Game 1, but his decision still resonates with me, much more than any of the other-wordly numbers that he posted during the 1960s. It was a shining life lesson, even for a Roman Catholic kid. (p.s. The Dodgers won the Series, with Koufax pitching successive shutouts in Games 5 and 7, the latter on only two days rest.)

Bjorn Borg: He was the anti-Johnny Mac. While John McEnroe would disrupt matches with volcanic eruptions of petulance, Borg played tennis with a Zen-like calm, utilizing an assortment of two-fisted, cross-court backhands and top-spinning forehands to disassemble foes en route to 11 Grand Slam championships, including five successive Wimbledon titles. I admired the Swede’s calm amidst chaos, his unflappable resolve, and his quiet intensity—all wrapped in a cloak of mystery—as much as I did his groundstrokes. To this day, I wonder what made Borg tick.

Arnold Palmer/Rafael Nadal: Okay, this is cheating. But I couldn’t decide between Rafa, the king of clay court tennis, and Arnie, the king of golf. Arnie and Sandy Koufax were my go-to guys as a kid, Rafa is my go-to guy in my dotage. Arnie was a swashbuckler, daring and charismatic, and universally respected and admired as a sportsman and, more important, as a person. Rafa arrived on the tennis scene with bulging biceps, sleeveless tops and pirate pants. “Different,” I thought upon seeing him for the first time. Well, vive la difference! Rafa adorns himself in regular tennis togs now, but there’s never been anything regular about his game. Especially on clay. And the Spaniard seems like such a nice, young man.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers offed the RedBlacks, 33-30, in Ottawa on Friday night, in large part because Mike O’Shea managed to stay out of his own way. I guess that means the natterbugs will have to squawk about something other than the head coach’s short pants this week. Maybe they can blame him for that scuzzy brown tap water in River City.

Upon further review, further review was ruining the game, so bravo to commish Randy Ambrosie and Canadian Football League team poobahs for taking away every head coach’s favorite toy—the challenge flag. Well, okay, the sideline stewards aren’t exactly hanky-free. Each coach is still allowed to toss one yellow hanky each game, but that beats a total of six potential challenges per match.

In the world according to Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press, changing the coach’s challenge rule this deep into the season makes the CFL head office a “clown show.” It’s “amateur hour.” Actually, it’s quite the opposite. The real “clown show” was coaches using frivolous challenges to challenge nothing but the integrity of the game and spirit of the rule, which is to “get it right.” I watched all four games last week and that “clown show” is definitely over. No more hanky-panky from the coaches.

Oh boy. Some people just don’t pay attention. We’re only at the front end of August and already Freep sports editor and Wiecek’s Grumpet twin, Steve Lyons, is promoting folly. “Best place to finish might be fourth in the West” for the Bombers, he advises us. That way, they’d earn a crossover post-season berth and play the patsies in Eastern Canada. Repeat after me, Mr. Lyons: No, no, no, no, no…nine times no. No West outfit has successfully navigated the eastern route to the Grey Cup game. Never. Ever. In nine tries. And you think it’ll work for the Bombers? Ya, just like attempting a 61-yard field goal worked at B.C. Place last November.

So, champion sprinter Usain Bolt lost some of the lickety-split in his long legs and was beaten to the finish line in his final individual race at the world track and field championships in London. No big deal. Sandy Koufax lost the final game he ever pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Muhammad Ali lost his final fight (badly). Babe Ruth grounded out in his final at-bat. Hey, stuff happens. I just wish Bolt hadn’t lost to a guy, Justin Gatlin, who’s twice been told to go away for failed drug tests.

Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hit leader, has been holding his own poor Petey pity party since being banned for betting on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds, and the one-time jailbird has actually found sympathetic ears. In an ESPN sports poll conducted by Luker on Trends between November 2016 and last February, Rose was No. 50 on a list of most popular athletes in the U.S., active or retired. Only two ballplayers—Derek Jeter at No. 13 and Babe Ruth, No. 30—finished ahead of him in voting by 6,000 people 12 and over. I wonder what the Rose-ites have to say now that their hero has confessed to having had sex with a 16-year-old girl while he was in his 30s, married and a father of two. The man is a scuzzy as the brown tap water in Winnipeg.

Outfielder Matt Joyce of the Oakland Athletics is “beyond sorry” for using a gay slur during a hissing contest with a fan in Anaheim on Friday night. I’m sorry, but it’s “beyond sorry” that male pro athletes are still using homophobic language as their go-to slurs in 2017.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.

About P.K. Snub-ban…wife-beating Russians…playoff beards…John McEnroe…and Mike O’Shea has to watch another film

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

P.K. Subban didn't get the call. — P.K. Subban didn’t get the call.

Snub-a-dubba-do.

Corey Perry was snubbed. P.K. Subban was snubbed. Taylor Hall was snubbed. Phil Kessel was snubbed. Kris Letang was snubbed. Tyler Johnson was snubbed. Ilya Kovalchuk was snubbed. Nikolaj Ehlers was snubbed. Mikael Backlund was snubbed. Here a snub, there a snub, everywhere a snub-snub.

And you expected something different?

I mean, do the math. There are only 23 sweaters to fill per team for the World Cup of Hockey gala next September in the Republic of Tranna. It’s a given, therefore, that high-end skill will fail to make the final roll call, especially in a country with a talent-glut. Like Canada.

Oh woe is the man tasked with the chore of assembling a shinny side comprised of the ‘best’ Canada has available. He leaves himself exposed to second, third, fourth and fifth guessing from armchair general managers from sea to sea to sea, many of whom don’t know a puck from pasta. And it isn’t always a numbers game at play. Sometimes it’s in-house politicking. Other times, it’s just plain dumb.

Bob Clarke, for example, became a certified nutbar in 1998 when, in assembling our Olympic outfit, he insisted on making room for the legendary Rob Zamuner rather than grant a roster spot to Mark Messier. D’oh! At the 1991 Canada Cup, Steve Yzerman was out and Dirk Graham was in. Go figure.

Flash all the way back to the 1972 Summit Series between the Great White North and the Red Menace from the Soviet Union. Can you say Bobby Hull, Dave Keon, J.C. Tremblay, Gordie Howe and Gerry Cheevers, kids? All were all-stars. All were Stanley Cup champions. And all were on the outside looking in because they had the bad manners (according to the National Hockey League) to defect to the World Hockey Association or, in Howe’s case, had the bad manners to retire.

Here’s what Phil Esposito said about the selection process in ’72:

“There were some guys that got there because they were (Alan) Eagleson’s clients, no doubt about it. I never thought that lineup was unbeatable at all. I felt that if we had Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr (injured) in that lineup, they wouldn’t have beat us one iota. I was disappointed by some selections.”

Now lend an ear to Peter Mahovlich, also a member of the ’72 side:

“This wasn’t all of Team Canada. This was team NHL. Right off the bat, that excluded Bobby Hull, Dave Keon and Gerry Cheevers in net. If we had Bobby and Dave, I don’t see myself making the roster.”

So, P.K. Subban and others being snubbed? Nothing to see here, kids. Let’s move on.

Just wondering: If Team Canada bench boss Mike Babcock had coached Bobby Orr in his prime, would he have ordered him to play left defence because he shot left? Or would he have left the greatest player in the history of the game alone?

Interesting that Russia included wife-beating defenceman Slava Voynov on its WCH final roster. I’d say there’s about as much chance of Voynov joining the comrades in the Republic of Tranna as their is of Donald Trump choosing me as his presidential running mate.

Brad Marchand: We get to cheer for the rat for a month.

Here’s the beauty of the Word Cup of Hockey: We all get to cheer for that little rat Brad Marchand while he’s wearing the Maple Leaf on his chest, then we resume regularly scheduled dissing once he’s adorned in Boston Bruins linen again.

Is it unCanadian of me if I really don’t care to talk about the World Cup of Hockey again until September? I don’t believe so. If, on the other hand, I still don’t wish to talk about it once the frost is on the pumpkin, feel free to take away my maple syrup, my back bacon and my Don Cherry voodoo doll.

Midway through this current NHL crusade, I sat in my local watering hold and advised the Lord of the Beer Pit that the Eastern Conference champs would win the Stanley Cup. I assumed that team would be the Washington Capitals. Instead, we have the Pittsburgh Penguins. I say Pitt in seven.

Joe Thornton: That beard is thicker than rough at the U.S. Open.

Once the Stanley Cup tournament is a matter for hockey historians to discuss and either the Penguins or San Jose Sharks are hailed as rulers of all they survey, players shall reach for their razor blades and perform some serious spring pruning of facial foliage. There is no truth to the rumor, however, that Professional Golf Association Tour officials will collect Brent Burns’s and Joe Thornton’s beards and use them for rough at the U.S. Open.

If you’re keeping score at home, it took Mike O’Shea exactly one practice to deliver his first “I’ll have to watch the film” sound bite of the Canadian Football League season. After observing his troops on Sunday, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach said, “They flew around pretty well. I’ll have to watch the film and count the number of errors, but I thought it was a very clean practice…” Las Vegas bookies have listed the over/under on O’Shea’s “film” quotes this season at 3,492.

Wonderful start to the Milos Raonic-John McEnroe partnership. McEnroe is hired as a grass-courts consultant for Raonic, he shows up for one practice session, and the Canadian is promptly ousted from the French Open by 55th-ranked Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain the very next day. Clearly, McEnroe has yet to work his magic with Raonic. Not to worry, though, the Mouth that Roared guarantees us that Raonic will have perfected the fine art of the tennis temper tantrum by the time they arrive at Wimbledon.

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.

Sports Illustrated editors are horses’ asses for naming Serena Williams Sportsperson of the Year

Okay, who’s the horse’s ass? Or horses’ asses?

I mean, the deep thinkers at Sports Illustrated have anointed Serena Williams as their Sportsperson of the Year for 2015, and I want names. I want rank. I want serial numbers. I want to feret out the scoundrels who delivered this decree, a decision that has spurred debate to a gallop and sired a level of rancor not seen since…well, not since the needle on Donald Trump’s hate-seeking compass moved his attention and direction from Mexicans to Muslims.

It’s positively scandalous, this coronation of Williams, who, as one side of the argument hastens to emphasize, did not win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness or the Belmont Stakes this year. That, of course, was the province of American Pharoah, who spent the past spring, summer and autumn showing all other race horses his ass, becoming the first thoroughbred in 37 years to lickety-split his way to victory in all three Triple Crown romps and first ever to add the Breeder’s Cup Classic to that collection.

Surely, that trumps anything Williams accomplished on the tennis court.

And, no, it matters not to the pro-equine lot that Williams uses a knife and fork while dining and Pharoah eats from a bucket in a barn. American Pharoah is a person if SI says he is a person, and the mag said as much by including him in a poll asking readers their choice for Sportsperson of the Year. Apparently, his two extra legs did not disqualify him from being short-listed. Table manners and leg count be damned.

We ought not be surprised that Pharoah fell short of the wire in this sprint, though, because the SI salute has never been bestowed on any creature with a lip tattoo, although we still aren’t sure about Terry Bradshaw. And let’s face it, if Secretariat doesn’t qualify as Sportsperson of the Year (he lost to race car driver Jackie Stewart in 1973), neither does Pharoah.

Still, the giddyup community and the faithful who fawn over Pharoah went into a tizzy and the language became racist and rather unseemly, with gusts up to deplorable, on Twitter.

Well, truth is, the pony people were right about one thing: The tall foreheads at SI got it wrong. But they didn’t get it wrong because they chose Serena Williams over a race horse. They didn’t get it wrong because they featured Williams splay-legged and in black stilletos for a cover shot that the prudish might tsk-tsk as a tad tawdry (you’d never catch Pharoah in such a provocative pose). No, they got it wrong because they chose the wrong tennis player.

Serena Williams wasn’t the best tennis player on the planet this year, let alone the top sportsperson. That would be Novak Djokovic, the sometimes sombre Serb who likely would have gotten the nod had he been born in Bakersfield, Calif., rather than Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Why Djokovic over Williams? Let me count the ways…

Djokovic: Three Grand Slam titles, four finals. Williams: Three Grand Slam titles, one semifinal.
Djokovic: Won 11 tournaments. Williams: Won five tournaments.
Djokovic: 82-6 overall. Williams: 53-3 overall.

You want more? Well, Djokovic was beaten in his first tournament of the year, a tuneup for the Australian Open, then reached the final in his ensuing 15 events. In the open era of tennis, only Roger Federer (92-5 in 2006), John McEnroe (82-3 in 1984) and Jimmy Connors (93-4 in ’74) have carved out a better winning percentage than Djokovic. Finally, while Williams shut down her season after stumbling against a spare part named Roberta Vinci in the U.S. Open, Djokovic soldiered on, leaving the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, N.Y., to play another 20 matches, winning 19 and the Association of Tennis Professionals title.

But, like I said, Djokovic had the bad manners to be born in Belgrade, not Bakersfield or Bemidji, so he was snubbed.

And that’s why the editors at Sports Illustrated are horses’ asses.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for more than 40 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 to her 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.

Weekend Wrap, Vol. 5: All about the 2019 Stanley Cup champions, tennis rivalries and quality curling coverage

A little bit of this, a little bit of that and a whole lot of opinion in a weekend wrap…

I’m not sure what is more giggle-worthy, the puck prophets at The Hockey News reading tea leaves that tell them the Winnipeg Jets will be rulers of all they survey in 2019 or Jets Nation getting all giddy about a magazine designed to do nothing more than spike sales.

If you missed it, there shall be a Stanley Cup cavalcade on the streets of downtown River City in June 2019. The Hockey News says it will be so in their Future Watch issue, and who can we trust if not the Bible of Hockey? I mean, according to David Larkins of the Winnipeg Sun, THN is the “trusted periodical on all things hockey.” So there. If those wild-and-whacky puck prophets at THN tell us to plan a parade route, then that’s what we must do. Plan a parade route. For June. 2019.

Ignore the fact that those same shinny swamis pegged Team Peg to finish dead last in the Central Division of the National Hockey League this season. Hey, sometimes the tea leaves are tough to read. So cut ’em some slack.

Just know this, Jets Nation: A Stanley Cup parade is coming to a downtown intersection near you—assuming you live in the vicinity of Portage and Main—because your Winnipeg Jets are bringing hockey’s holy grail to good, ol’ Home Town. In June. 2019. Book off work. Skip school. Strike up the band.

This is big. This is colossal. I mean, it’s been a quarter century since River City last held a downtown parade that didn’t include Santa Claus. Or a bevy of Ru Paul wannabes.

What I like best is that THN has given us advance notice. Four years worth. That’s plenty of time to put some spit and shine on our ol’ girl, Peg. Why, once we’ve scraped all the hobos off the streets and shuttered them away in the background so as not to ruin the optics we’ll be sending out to all those losers in locales like the Republic of Tranna, we can have ol’ Peg looking like a million bucks.

Oh, what fun this will be for the kids. For the entire family.

We wish we could give you an exact date for the parade, also a route, but the THN shinny swamis didn’t have the good manners to tell us if our local hockey heroes would be winning the Stanley Cup final in four, five, six or seven games in June 2019. Doesn’t matter. We can work out the details later. For now, they assure us that the Jets shall be NHL champeens. In June. 2019.

Be there.

WHO’S IN, WHO’S OUT? Watching good, ol’ Home Team dismantle the Nashville Predators in Music City on Saturday night, I couldn’t help but wonder who among the current crop of Jets will be part of the large celebration. In June. 2019.

I mean, you think Lee Stempniak is going to be riding in a convertible when the Stanley Cup motorcade lurches toward Portage and Main in late June 2019? Jiri Tlusty? Jay Harrison? Mark Stuart? Drew Stafford? Anthony Peluso? Ondrej Pavelec? Jim Slater? Michael Hutchinson? Chris Thorburn?

Well, okay, maybe Thorburn will be part of the parade. Apparently he has dicey pics. Thus, the Jets no doubt will double down on his existing pact between now and Nirvana. Or just grant him a contract for life. But those other guys? Not so much. They’ll probably be playing their hockey for the woeful Las Vegas Crap Shoots. The parade will pass them by.

HITHER ‘N’ YAWN: Interesting that True North Sports & Entertainment plans to bring its American Hockey League affiliate home to Winnipeg. Can’t see much fan lure there, other than affordability compared to the tariff for Jets matches. Seems to me a Western Hockey League outfit would be an easier sell…Don Cherry has become so irrelevant that I didn’t even notice what he was wearing during his Curmudgeon’s Corner rory1 gig on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday night…So quiz me this: When Tiger Woods has a hissy-fit on a golf course and swears or spits or slams a club into the ground, it’s boorish behavior. It’s deplorable. Entire forests are plowed to the ground in order to provide enough newsprint to satisfy the needs of sports scribes who spend the next month cutting Woods a new one. Yet, when Rory McIlroy has a hissy-fit, hurling his 3-iron into a water hazard at Doral, it’s greeted with a shrug and a ho-hum. Why the double standard?…Couldn’t believe what I heard tripping off Hazel Mae’s tongue late last week when the Sportsnet talking head previewed the Davis Cup tie between Canada and Japan. She actually compared the rivalry between Milos Raonic and Kei Nishikori to those of tennis legends Bjorn Borg-John McEnroe, Andre Agassi-Pete Sampras, among others. Good grief. Apparently, research is an option Hazel doesn’t exercise…When it comes to tennis rivalries, there has been none greater—ever—than that produced by Martina Navratilova and Chrissie Evert. Between 1973 and ’88, they met 80 times. More than 25 per cent of those matches (22) came in Grand Slam events and 14 were Grand Slam finals. Nothing compares to that. For the record, Navratilova held a slight edge overall, 43-37.

CUE THE CURLING: Totally selfless act by John Morris to demote himself from skip to third on the Team Canada outfit that won the Brier on Sunday. Can’t imagine many curlers doing that…Although the Johnny Mo team was wearing the Maple Leaf at the Saddledome in Calgary, let’s not lose sight of the reality that another Alberta squad has won the Canadian men’s curling championship. They play out of the Glencoe Club in Cowtown, so Wild Rose Country teams have now won nine Briers this century…Department of Better Late than Never: Melissa Martin of the Winnipeg Free Press killed it at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Moose Jaw last month. When a scribe is on assignment out of town, I want her or him to take me to their locale. I don’t want to simply read the final score and a stream of quotes. I want to see and feel what the writer sees and feels. What the fans see and feel. Martin delivered. She took me to Moose Jaw with some wonderful anecdotal insight and spot-on reporting that allowed me to join Jennifer Jones and her Buffalo Girls for every step to the Scotties title, a fifth for Jones. It was boffo work…It pains me to say the Winnipeg Sun wasn’t served as well as the Freep at either the Scotties or Brier. They never had one of their own on the scene. Don’t blame sports editor Ted Wyman, though. That had to be a corporate call. But a Winnipeg daily should always, always, always have their own scribe at the two main bonspiels on the curling calendar…

Interesting take by Freep scribe Paul Wiecek on Reid Carruthers’ wonky, unManitoba-like record (4-7) at the Brier. “The job description as the curling writer for a paper that has covered every Brier since the first one in 1927 says I’m supposed to rip Carruthers in this space today,” he writes. “He let down his team, he let down the province etc. But my heart’s not in it. Carruthers knows better than anyone what went wrong this week. And no one feels worse about it than he does. He’s a good guy, who had a very bad week. I’m giving him a pass. You should too.” Good for Wiecek…Now that Jeff Stoughton has retired, I suppose it’s time to confirm his status as the greatest curler ever produced in the Keystone province. Who else could it possibly be? Here’s my top-five list (since I began watching and writing about curling in the very early 1970s): 1. Stoughton; 2. Jennifer Jones; 3. Don Duguid; 4. Kerry Burtnyk; 5. Connie Laliberte; Honorable Mention: Vic Peters.

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