Rafa Nadal – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about Howie Meeker and raccoon droppings for $2,000, Alex…fake news and Leavenworth…Vlad the Gifted and Ball Park Franks…Sid and Connor say it’s okay to be gay…and other things on my mind

A Monday morning smorgas-bored…and I never realized how little I knew until Alex Trebek showed up on TV…

In honor of Canadian TV icon Alex Trebek, who left us at age 80 on Sunday, let’s play Jeopardy!

CLUE: Golly gee and Jiminy Crickets, this man was a National Hockey League rookie-of-the-year who scored five goals in one game, a four-times Stanley Cup champion, an all-star, a Member of Parliament, and a broadcasting icon on Hockey Night in Canada.

ANSWER: Who is Howie Meeker?

CLUE: Howie died at the age of 97 on Sunday, meaning this man is now the oldest living Toronto Maple Leaf.

ANSWER: Who is Joe Thornton?

I remember sitting in the media room of the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver one night many winters ago, gnoshing on a plate of free food while having a pre-game natter with either Friar Nicolson or Sod Keilback.

Actually, it might have been both of the Winnipeg Jets radio guys. No matter.

At some point, Meeker joined us at our table and the chin-wag focused on Dale Hawerchuk, the captain and centrepiece of a decent Jets outfit. I suggested that Ducky had been off his game a bit, but Howie would have none of it.

“Ah, you don’t know a hockey puck from a pinch of coon shit,” he informed me.

I’m not sure why, but hearing Howie Meeker pooh-pooh my hockey know-how somehow made me feel good. I mean, the Squeaker was already a legend of the Hockey Night in Canada blurt box by then, so it was an absolute honor to have him break bread with a stray scribe from the flatlands and, at the same time, confirm that my grasp of the game was no better than a pinch of raccoon droppings. Never before had someone so famous told me I was full of crap.

I thought perhaps Howie was going to pull out his telestrator and draw some squiggly lines to emphasize his point, or maybe even whack me upside the head with the thing.

But no. Howie wasn’t being mean. He was being Howie. Blunt.

That was my only inter-action with Meeker, so I never got to know him in any depth. But, like so many others, I knew him from his HNIC gig, where he’d break down a play and instruct one of the boys in the truck to “Stop it right there!” or to “Back it up!” or, when a defenceman was beaten badly, he’d show the replay and, in a scolding tone, squawk, “What’s he doing down on his knees looking for nickels?”

Howie wasn’t into tap dancing, and his tell-it-like-it-isms surely livened up HNIC intermissions. He gave the show juice and made it fun.

My mom, mind you, thought Howie to be quite the noisy and annoying know-it-all, and I’m sure she would have been horrified by his table manners. But I got a kick out of the guy, coon droppings and all.

Speaking of former HNIC squawkers, Dave Hodge made me giggle with this tweet after jock legends Bobby Orr, Jack Nicklaus and Brett Favre had raised their voices in support of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election: “Thanks to Orr, Nicklaus and Favre, Donald Trump says the only channel that doesn’t broadcast fake news is ESPN.”

Damien Cox of the Toronto Star describes Trump as a “distinctly unpopular politician.” Ya, he’s so unpopular that only 70,903,094 Americans voted for him. That’s more than Barack Obama tallied in 2008 and ’12. It beats Hilary Clinton’s total in 2016. It’s more than double what JFK received in 1960. We should all be so “distinctly unpopular.”

The Washington Nationals want president-elect Joe Biden to toss the ceremonial first pitch at their Major League Baseball home opener in 2021. To which former broadcaster Peter Young tweets: “Trump counters with claim he’ll throw out the first pitch at Leavenworth.” That made me laugh.

Just wondering: Does Trump’s election loss mean Mexico doesn’t have to pay for his invisible wall?

Speaking of money, I read something the other day about Microsoft dude Bill Gates saying his three children would inherit only $10 million each from his $100 billion-plus fortune, because giving them “massive amounts of money is not a favor to them.” Excuse me? Ten million bucks isn’t a massive amount of money? C’mon, man, that’s like saying Babe Ruth was a singles hitter.

In the past MLB season, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. couldn’t hit his own weight. Literally. He arrived at Summer Camp a whopping 282 pounds, was promptly shifted from third to first base, and hit .262. But word out of Toronto Blue Jays Nation is that Vlad the Gifted is no longer Vlad the Bloated. That’s right, Vladdy’s lost 32 pounds of blubber and now tips the Toledo at 250, give or take a side order of Nathan’s Ball Park Franks. He also wants his old job back with the Tranna Nine, at third base. That would be quite a trip: From the hot dog stand to the hot corner.

I’m not convinced that the outing of player agent Bayne Pettinger moves the needle toward acceptance of an openly gay performer in the National Hockey League, but the enthusiastic support from Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid might carry some sway with a young, closeted gay kid who’s thinking of quitting the game. Both Crosby and McDavid are fully behind Pettinger, a former Hockey Canada operations manager now with CAA Hockey, and if the game’s greatest players say it’s okay to be gay, then it’s okay.

If the day dawns when an NHL player chooses to come out, he’d be wise to follow the Pettinger blueprint: Find a trusted news snoop to tell the story, which Pettinger did in Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic, and do it during down time, which is to say the off-season. That way, the fuss and muss and circus is dispensed with long before training exercises commence, and he can simply get on with getting on.

Like most newspaper sports editors, Steve Lyons of the Drab Slab is expected to find room in his section for female sports. “It’s not always easy,” he wrote on Nov. 5. “The reality is there are less women participating in sports and there are less women’s pro leagues. That adds up—or I guess doesn’t add up to an equal number of stories to be written and published. We can’t control how many wire stories we get each day on women’s sports, so our solution to moving the needle in this area has always been to focus on being as equitable as possible on local sports. While I did once win a national award for a series on gender equity in sports, I’m a guy—and slow sometimes—so, I admit to needing to be poked and kept aware on this subject.” Toward that end, Lyons is bringing Andrea Katz on board, and she’ll be writing about the distaff side of the playground “once or twice a month.” That’s a good thing.

Rafael Nadal didn’t triumph at the Paris Masters tennis tournament, but much was made of the fact Rafa joined the 1,000-win club and trails only Jimmy Connors (1,274), Roger Federer (1,242) and Ivan Lendl (1068) in career singles victories during the Open Era. Not true. Rafa and everyone else is still chasing the great Martina Navratilova and her 1,442 singles match victories. And before they catch Martina, they have to catch Chrissie Evert (1,309 Ws). Just saying.

And, finally, another example of the shameful Torontofication of the Winnipeg Sun could be found on the sports front Nov. 3. It was a piece on Jeffrey Knox Jr., and don’t feel bad if you’re not familiar with the name. A vagabond football player last seen in frolic with the Ottawa RedBlacks, Knox Jr. signed to join the Toronto Argos for a 2020 Canadian Football League crusade that never happened, and now he’s facing an attempted homicide rap, among other things, in the U.S. He never played in Winnipeg for the Blue Bombers. Yet one of the geniuses on the Postmedia sports desk decided that his tale of woe was what sports fans in Good Ol’ Hometown wanted to read first and foremost on Nov. 3, rather than Ted Wyman’s real-news piece on local sports facilities and rec leagues going dark for two weeks due to COVID-19. They tucked Ted’s article on Page 4. Sigh.

Let’s talk about Burkie being Burkie…the watered-down U.S. Open…an openly gay hockey player…a sports editor who doesn’t watch sports…no women’s golf on TV…and here’s smoke in your eyes

A Monday morning smorgas-bored..and we should hear about Connor Hellebuyck and the Vezina Trophy any day now…

Brian Burke has spoken and many knickers are in many knots.

This is nothing new, of course, because much of what Burkie spews on Sportnet and Hockey Night in Canada is highly offensive to the many easily bruised psyches on Planet Puckhead.

Seriously, the man has been up more noses than a COVID tester.

So you had to know that his pot-stirring tete-a-tete with David Amber on Saturday night would set gums to flapping, even before his own gums went into motion.

The question asked and answered was this: Which Canadian-based outfit is most likely to end a Stanley Cup drought that dates back to 1993? A nation turned its lonely eyes to Burkie, and here’s what he had to say:

1. Toronto Maple Leafs
2. Edmonton Oilers.
3. Vancouver Canucks.
4. Calgary Flames/Winnipeg Jets.
5. Montreal Canadiens.
6. Ottawa Senators.

Cue the outrage.

How dare he lump the Jets in with the Flames. The Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup? Ya, talk to me about it in another 53 years. The Oilers? Only if Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl can play up front, on the blueline and in goal—at the same time.

So let me say this about that: I can think of more important things to talk about, like the burning in my eyes and throat from wildfires in Washington state.

I mean, on the silly metre, the Amber-Burke natter rates a 10.

The Jets he’s talking about won’t be the Jets in December, or whenever it is that the National Hockey League decides to drop the puck on a 2020-21 crusade. The Oilers of today won’t be the Oilers of tomorrow. The Canucks won’t be the Canucks who made an admirable run in the current Stanley Cup runoff. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

There’s swapping to be done. There’s the annual auction of freshly scrubbed teenagers yet to come. There’s free agent frenzy, with or without Bob McKenzie on TSN.

As it stands, only three defencemen who skated with the Jets in their qualifying go-round last month v. Calgary—Josh Morrissey, Neal Pionk, Tucker Poolman—are under contract. They have one goaltender, Connor Hellebuyck. They have dead weight up front to be replaced—Matty Perreault and the most unfortunate Bryan Little.

The current lineup couldn’t win a dinky-toy-sized Stanley Cup in a table hockey tournament, let alone the real thing.

So, let’s face it, Burke was spitballing, and he knows it.

It’s a dumb discussion and you shouldn’t get sucked into it. Let’s see how Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff plays his dominos in the next two month, then we’ll talk.

For the record, here’s how Burke assessed the Jets: “They’ve gotta solve a goaltending problem, the No. 2 goaltender. They’ve got a great No. 1. They’ve gotta rebuild their defence. Most of their defence are unrestricted free agents. They’re gonna have to rebuild their defence, same as Calgary. I think Travis Hamonic might end up in Winnipeg. He’s a Winnipeg boy, but they’ve got to upgrade their defence is No. 1, and they don’t have enough secondary scoring.” I’d say he’s spot on.

Interesting men’s final at the U.S. Open on Sunday. Interesting, but certainly not high quality tennis. Dominic Thiem, the winner in five sets, and Alexander Zverev took turns self-destructing in the four-hour match, and it was only gripping theatre at the end because there appeared to be a very real danger of Thiem collapsing from leg cramping. The guy’s a gamer, I’ll give him that, but no way he beats Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic with the level of tennis he played v. Zverev.

Kind of surprised to see Thiem and Zverev shake hands and hug at the conclusion of their match, because it’s considered a no-no during the COVID pandemic, but it was a nice touch. Gave me the warm-and-fuzzies.

Natually, the squawkers on ESPN tried to convince us that it would have been a Thiem-Zverev championship match, even had Nadal and Federer been in the draw and Djokovic hadn’t been defaulted. “There’s no asterisk on this tournament, none whatsover,” Brad Gilbert said pre-match. “If everybody was here, (Thiem) would probably still be (in the final).” Chris Evert said the same thing about the women’s draw, which was minus six of the world’s top eight players. Even the normally blunt John McEnroe fudged on the notion of an asterisk earlier in the tournament, suggesting it would be a “positive” asterisk. Such tripe. It was a watered-down event, on both sides of the draw.

I’ll be watching the progress of Yanic Duplessis with considerable interest, now that the 17-year-old from New Brunswick has come out as gay. Young Yanic was drafted by Drummondville Voltigeurs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and I just hope they look past his sexual identity and provide him equal opportunity. After all, hockey is for everyone. Well, isn’t it?

I note that the Drab Slab will be dispatching Mad Mike McIntyre back to the Edmonton bubble for what’s left of the Stanley Cup tournament. One question: Why? Well, okay, if Dallas Stars advance to the final, he has two built-in stories—good guy head coach Rick Bowness and good guy GM Jim Nill, both of whom have strong ties to Jets 1.0. But, unless Mad Mike is a super sleuth, he’ll only have Zoom access to them, same as every other news snoop with feet on the ground. If he’s being sent to E-Town just to say the Drab Slab is there, that’s as silly as the David Amber-Brian Burke natter.

Quiz me this, kids: Should the sports editor of a major daily newspaper watch sports? I ask that because SE Steve Lyons of the Drab Slab made this confession in his daily Playbook last week: “I have not watched a single moment of sports since Aug. 6. The closest thing to athletics I’ve watch was Eco-Challenge Fiji on Amazon Prime. I keep up to speed by reading about sports, watching video highlights on a couple of apps and chatting with Mike McIntyre every week during our Jetcetera podcast.” Interesting. I read the Drab Slab before the actual paper lands on doorsteps every morning, and I can’t say that the product suffers because Steve pulled the plug on TV sports viewing. In general, he has the right stories in the appropriate places. That being said, I can’t help but wonder what storylines he might be missing by cutting off TV sports cold turkey.

Hey, I can relate to what Lyons is talking about. My time watching sports on the flatscreen has been greatly reduced. Difference is, I do this blogger thing as a hobby and I’ve only got five or six readers, not fifty or sixty thousand.

I sure wish TSN or Sportsnet would arrange to broadcast LPGA Tour events, at least the majors. Sure would have been nice to watch our Brooke Henderson in the ANA Inspiration tournament on the weekend, even if she did come up one swing shy of a win.

Looking for a good read? Check out young Eddie Tait’s piece on the oral history of the Banjo Bowl. It’s boffo stuff.

And, finally, the only parts of the West Coast of North America that aren’t on fire are under a thick shroud of smoke, and I can report that it isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. It’s very apocalyptic and I’m having trouble breathing.

Let’s talk about the Jets and Canucks…craziness with the Yotes…another reason for Chris Streveler to celebrate…Ducky makes a kid’s day…sinking ships…a new kid on the MJHL block…the Joker goes wild at U.S. Open…Journalism 101…and other things on my mind

A bonus, Labor Day smorgas-bored…and it’s mostly short snappers because there’s tennis to watch and maybe some golf if Dustin Johnson hasn’t lapped the field…

Stop me if you’ve heard this before from two noted hockey observers:

“There’s a lot to be excited about.”

“This team is going to be a force for awhile in the West. Great young players.”

Sounds like they’re talking about the Winnipeg Jets, circa spring 2018, doesn’t it?

But, no. Brian Burke and John Shannon were directing their hosannas toward the Vancouver Canucks, who recently vacated the National Hockey League bubble in Edmonton after coming up one shot/save short in a Stanley Cup skirmish v. the Dallas Stars.

And, sure enough, there’s reason for the jar-half-full gushing. The Canucks look to be an outfit on a favorable trajectory. You know, just like two years ago when the local hockey heroes went deep, advancing to the Western Conference final before receiving a paddywhacking from the upstart Vegas Golden Knights. The Jets haven’t been the same since, in large part due to the mismanagement of assets and a cap crunch that squeezed general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff into a corner.

Chevy lost half his blueline (Jacob Trouba, Tyler Myers, Ben Chiarot, Dustin Byfuglien) in one foul swoop, and only the retreat of Big Buff was not of his own authorship. He also couldn’t or wouldn’t keep rent-a-centres Paul Stastny or Kevin Hayes, either of whom would have been more than adequate playing second fiddle to Mark Scheifele.

So that’s the cautionary tale for GM Jim Benning in Lotus Land. It can unravel very rapidly.

Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson and Alex Edler will be looking for new deals whenever the next NHL crusade ends and, as Burke emphasized on Hockey Night in Canada, “they’re gonna need a math professor from Harvard to figure this out.”

Chevy hasn’t been able to figure it out in Good Ol’ Hometown. The hope on the Left Flank has to be that Benning has better bean counters.

I’ve long wondered what it would take to pry Jets 1.0 out of the Arizona desert, and anointing Pierre McGuire GM of the Coyotes just might be the thing to do it. If we’re to believe Chris Johnston of Sportsnet, Yotes ownership has been pitching woo to Pierre as a replacement for defrocked GM John Chayka, and that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Pierre has spent the past 20 years rinkside or in the studio for TSN and NBC, and I can’t see how sucking up to players and mansplaining the game to Kendall Coyne Schofield makes him GM worthy.

So, another year without a Stanley Cup champion for the True North, and did you know that’s “humiliating?” That, at least, is Cathal Kelly’s take on Canada’s drought, which dates back to the spring of 1993. “The hockey of Canadian hockey? That is not working out so well,” he writes in the Globe and Mail. “It’s beginning to seem as though the building of an NHL winner is planting it somewhere in the United States where no one cares. Then you have happy employees and the luxury of a free hand to shuffle them around.” Ya, that’s worked out soooo well for the Winnipeg Jets-cum-Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes.

Speaking of Arizona, I note that Chris Streveler has survived final cuts with the Arizona Cardinals. The former Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback and party boy is listed third on the depth chart, so Lord help them if they win the Super Bowl. There won’t be enough beer in the entire state to handle that celebration.

Just wondering: What was the first thing Alain Vigneault read or watched after his Philly Flyers were ushered out of the NHL bubble in the Republic of Tranna? Do you think he knows that Black Lives Matter yet?

Did you know that it takes eight to 10 hours to deep clean each hotel room once they’ve been vacated in the Edmonton and ROT bubbles? Hmmm. Wonder how long it will take Randy Ambrosie to clean up the mess he’s made.

The Montreal Canadiens now have $15 million tied up in two goaltenders, Carey Price and Jake Allen. Hmmm. That would pay for half a Canadian Football League shortened-season.

Enjoyed this tweet from Terry Jones of Postmedia E-Town: “If I ever own a race horse I might name him ‘Pink Fred’. That’s what Hugh Campbell called Pink Floyd when he announced a change in the Edmonton EE schedule to accommodate the then very hot act.”

Coolest recent tweet was delivered by Rob Vanstone of Postmedia Flatlands: “How amazing was Dale Hawerchuk? I wrote to him c/o Winnipeg Jets in 1982, requesting an autograph. Yes, I got the autograph—and so much more! He must have been deluged with fan mail, but he still made time to go above and beyond.” What made the tweet so special was the pic that Rob attached. It helps explain why there were so many long faces the day Ducky died.

Rob’s tweet brought to mind my first experience as an autograph seeker. I was a sprig of no more than 10 years, living on Melbourne Avenue in Good Ol’ Hometown. One day I took pic of broadcasting pioneer Foster Hewitt from a hockey magazine and mailed it to his radio station in the Repblic of Tranna, asking for a signature. Two weeks later, a brown envelope arrive in the mail box, and there it was…Foster Hewitt’s autograph. He called me “a real hockey fan.” I don’t know what became of that autographed pic, but Foster’s gesture made me want to get into sports journalism.

Mark Spector of Sportsnet E-Town is confused: “It’s official: the term ‘learning lesson’ has replaced ‘irregardless’ as my pet peeve,” he tweets. “Can someone define a ‘lesson’ from which the recipient did NOT ‘learn?’ Are their ‘non-learning lessons’ out there?” Yo! Mark! As the venerable Zen master Dalai Jocklama tells us, “A lesson taught is not always a lesson learned.” As my mom was wont to say, I hope you’ve learned your lesson.

According to Donald Trump, canned soup is now the weapon of choice for bad guys because bricks are too heavy to throw. I can just hear it next time I’m in my local market: “Clean up on the ammunition aisle! Clean up on the ammunition aisle!”.

They held a Lake Travis Trump Boat Parade off the shore of Auston, Texas, the other day and at least four craft went glub, glub, glub to a watery grave. There’s no truth to the rumor that the Milwaukee Bucks were among the sunken ships, but they have sent out a Mayday signal.

Cathal Kelly likes to write about tennis, but I’m not sure how much tennis he actually watches. I mean, he claims that our guy Felix Auger-Aliassime put “an end to the whole idea of the Big Four in men’s tennis” when he whupped Andy Murray at the U.S. Open last week. Apparently, Kelly hadn’t noticed that there’s only been a Big Three—Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic—for the past three years. Andy Murray last won a Grand Slam tournament in 2016. He hasn’t been a top-10 player since 2017, when he was world No. 3 in October. He hasn’t been in the top 100 for more than two years. He’s beaten just one top-10 player since 2017. He’s part of a Big Four like Miley Cyrus is one of the Beatles. What part of all that does Kelly not understand? Furthermore, he listed Djokovic as the “reigning champion” at Flushing Meadows. That will come as news to Rafa Nadal.

A wounded lines judge gives Novak Djokovic the stink eye.

Djokovic’s departure from the U.S. Open on Sunday was sudden and deserved. Tennis players can be a right petulant lot, few more so than the Serb. He’s long been prone to bouts of pique, and it caught up to him when, in another hissy fit, he whacked a ball that struck a female line judge in the throat. Automatic ouster. Even if it wasn’t deliberate. Why it took officials 10 minutes to convince Djokovic that he wouldn’t be allowed to play on is a mystery, but I’m sure he’ll put his tin foil hat back on and figure it out in time for the French Open later this month.

ESPN certainly had the perfect guy in the blurt box to talk about poor on-court manners Sunday—John McEnroe. The one-time brat of tennis called Djovik’s hissy fit “bone-headed,” and Johnny Mac ought to know more about that than most.

Hey, there’s a new kid in town. The Manitoba Junior Hockey League has added a second Winnipeg-based franchise for its 2020-21 crusade, and that’s interesting news for those of us who can remember an MJHL that included four outfits in Good Ol’ Hometown. 50 Below Sports + Entertainment is the money behind the freshly minted outfit, to be dubbed the Freeze according to Mike Sawatzky of the Drab Slab, and I can only hope they aren’t hitting parents with a $12,000 tab to have their kids play Junior shinny.

The appointment of Steve Nash as head coach of the Brooklyn Nets stirred up considerable controversy, given that his experience as a bossman totals zip and, significantly, he’s a White man in the very Black National Basketball Association. “Two words that never, ever, should be attached to Steve Nash: White privilege,” Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna harrumphed in his always-pompous weekly alphabet soup column of odds and ends. “But there they were, the screamers of black and white, somehow insisting that Nash’s surprising hiring as coach of the Brooklyn Nets was yet another example of white privilege in North American professional sports.” What that is, folks, is “another example” of shoddy journalism. Simmons failed to identify the “screamers of black and white,” nor did he tell us what they said or what they’re saying. We’re talking Journalism 101 here, folks: Who, what, when, where and why. Apparently that doesn’t apply to big-shot columnists who refuse to burden themselves with the pesky details.

I have often lamented the lack of lower-level local sports coverage in the two Winnipeg dailies, most notably the Sun, which has been ransacked by Postmedia. To underscore how woeful it has become, I monitored the amount of ink devoted to outfits not named Jets, Blue Bombers, Moose, Goldeyes and Valour FC in August. The results are discouraging, but not surprising:
Drab Slab (31 editions)—32 articles, 6 briefs (Assiniboia Downs, amateur hockey, junior hockey, amateur golf, university volleyball, curling, junior football, junior baseball, tennis, sports books).
Winnipeg Sun (30 editions)—1 article (junior football).

At least sports editor Steve Lyons and his boys on the beat at the Drab Slab are trying, but the Sun surrendered to the whims and dictates of Postmedia suits in the Republic of Tranna long ago. I mean, one local story in an entire month? That isn’t just sad, it’s wrong. Amateur Sports Matters, dammit.

And, finally, I’ll conclude this holiday edition of the RCR with a Matty-ism from my first sports editor Jack Matheson: “You don’t have to be strange to live in B.C., but it helps.” Hey, I resemble that remark.

About dumb stuff from “D’oh!” boys in the press box…Peter Chiarelli’s grey matter…this girl’s got game…Blue Bombers boss lady Dayna Spiring…Naomi Osaka gets to celebrate Aussie title…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and I’m no all-star so I won’t be taking an all-star break…

This past week in jock journalism was brought to us by the word “D’oh!”

Seriously. News snoops must have been passing the Homer Simpson stupid pills around the press box and the newsroom, because much of what I read and heard was really, really dumb.

Examples:

* The struggling Tranna Maple Leafs got the best of the struggling Washington Capitals on Wednesday night, winning 6-3. Nazem Kadri tallied three times and added an assist. His linemates, Willy Boy Nylander and Connor Brown, contributed three and two assists, respectively. That’s nine points total from that troika. Yet this was the main headline on the Leafs blog known as Sportsnet:

“Matthews-Marner combo pays immediate dividends for Maple Leafs.”

Say what? Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner contributed a goal apiece, one on the powerplay and one into an empty net. The “combo” collaborated on zero scores.

So that headline is really, really dumb.

* Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab went off on Professional Hockey Writers Association midseason polling, whereby more than 125 scribes determined the top three leading candidates to collect National Hockey League year-end trinkets.

The freshly minted sports columnist described Winnipeg Jets capitano Blake Wheeler as the club’s “heart and soul,” which is fine. Also accurate. But wait. He then confessed that, if allowed to vote for more than three people in each category, he would have “given Mark Scheifele some Hart Trophy consideration as most valuable to his team.” So Wheeler is the “heart and soul” of les Jets, but his linemate Rink Rat Scheifele is more valuable?

That’s really, really dumb.

* John Shannon, the sometimes smug gab guy on Sportsnet, delivered what was labeled his Power 25—the top movers and shakers in the NHL—and he listed wet-eared Elias Pettersson of the Vancouver Canucks the sixth most-powerful person.

What Shannon failed to do was explain exactly what makes Pettersson more of a power broker than, say, Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman, co-bankroll and governor of les Jets and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee. Perhaps Shannon will also tell us that a parish priest in Moose Jaw holds more sway with Catholics than the Pope. Or that Adam Sandler makes better movies than Steven Spielberg.

That’s really, really dumb.

* Luke Fox (Sportsnet seems to have an over-abundance of ”D’oh!” boys) wrote: “(Nikita) Kucherov is running away with the (NHL) scoring race.”

Hmmm. Last time I looked, Kucherov was four points ahead of Mikka Rantanen. Johnny Gaudreau and Connor McDavid are a mere five in arrears. Any one of those guys could erase that deficit in 20 minutes of hockey. That’s a runaway like Lady Gaga is a lumberjack.

So that’s really, really dumb.

* Apparently Ken Campbell was napping during Bobby Orr’s career. I say that because of this click-bait the senior writer at The Hockey News posted on Twitter:

“Former NHLer Mathieu Schneider, now with the NHLPA just referred to Nicklas Lidstrom ‘as the greatest defenceman of all time.’ Bold statement. And it’s a worthy debate.”

Sure, and maybe Campbell would also have us debate who’s taller, Zdeno Chara or Johnny Gaudreau. Or what’s whiter, freshly fallen snow or coal.

That’s really, really dumb.

Okay, that’s enough dumbing down for one day. But staying on the subject of grey matter, best comment in the wake of Peter Chiarelli’s dismissal as general manager of the Edmonton Oilers was delivered by Brian Burke of Sportsnet: “He didn’t become terminally stupid overnight.” Actually, he did. Chiarelli went to bed one night, then woke up the next morning and signed Milan Lucic to a seven-year, $42-million contract.

Hey, the Oilers have finally found someone who can keep up with Connor McDavid—Kendall Coyne Schofield, the young lass who dropped jaws with her dash in the fastest skater segment of the NHL all-star skills competition in San Jose. There is, however, no truth to the rumor that Kendell will replace Lucic in the Oil lineup.

Coyne Schofield was a revelation. Her long, blonde ponytail flapping and her short legs (she’s 5-feet-2) churning like pistons, she finished her lap in 14.346 seconds, a heartbeat behind McDavid’s winning lickety-split of 13.378 and a blink-of-an-eye better than Clayton Keller of the Arizona Coyotes. It was the “wow” moment of the all-star hijinx, and here’s what I’m wondering: Will people (read: media/men) now view women’s hockey in a more favorable light? I doubt it. It’ll be same old, same old. News snoops will continue to ignore the women except in Olympic years.

Leave it to smarmy Damien Cox of the Toronto Star to make an ass-clown comment about Coyne Schofield’s performance. “The only surprise is so many men didn’t realize female hockey players are great skaters. Geez, people, it’s 2019,” he tweeted. Apparently Cox believes he’s the only penis person on the planet who has the skinny on women’s shinny. He saw this coming, don’t you know. The rest of you guys, including the NHL all-stars who were totally gobsmacked by Kendall’s giddyup? Ignorant louts. Cox truly is a doofus.

Boys being oinkers, do you think the boys will let Keller forget about the night he “got beat by a girl?” No. Not ever, ever, ever.

On the subject of women doing wonderful things, Dayna Spiring is the freshly minted chair of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers board of directors, and it seems to me that both the Winnipeg Sun and the Drab Slab were out to lunch on her story. Becoming the first female chair in the club’s 89-year history is worth more than a few paragraphs that read like a boring club press release. I’d like to know Dayna’s thoughts on Winnipeg FC. On the Canadian Football League. On Commish Randy. On breaking into the old boys’ club. Is it too much to ask a news snoop at either of the River City rags to pick up a phone and have a chat with the Bombers boss lady?

Will someone please give me a wakeup call when men’s tennis becomes interesting again? I mean, where are all those hot-shot, Next Gen players who were supposed to shove Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer to the curb? MIA. All of them. Mind you, Nadal was also MIA in the Australian Open championship match vs. Djokovic on Sunday. Can you say complete dud, kids?

The best part of Naomi Osaka’s win in the women’s singles final Down Under? Poor sport Serena Williams wasn’t there to soil the moment with her brattish behavior. Osaka seems like a delightful, humble young woman who, at age 21, is already halfway to a career Grand Slam. Now the world No. 1, her emergence speaks favorably for the quality and intrigue of the women’s game, which has produced eight different champions in the past nine Grand Slam events. On the men’s side, there hasn’t been a Slam winner not named Nadal, Federer or Djokovic since 2016.

I don’t know what you make of the PHWA midseason NHL awards polling, but it seems to me that it’s very self-serving. That is, news snoops give themselves something to write and gab about during the all-star lull, but in reality it’s a non-story. It doesn’t even tell us which way the wind is blowing, because last year half of the midway leaders failed to pick up a trinket at the awards gala in June. So, I’m sorry, but I fail to see the purpose of the exercise.

And, finally, I think if I was a kid today, my favorite NHL player would be Mitch Marner. Always liked the small, zippity-do-da, water bug guys.

About the Three Lions…Winnipeg Blue Bombers taking a hit at the box office…that empty feeling at BMO Field…the Neymar dive-writhe-and-roll…Tiger vs. Lefty…Shapo vs. Milos…the Nayl Gun does Johnny Rotten…CFL power rankings…and other things on my mind

Bacon, eggs, toast, but no bangers or beans, and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…

I have Irish blood pumping through my veins—or so I’ve been told—and I know the Irish and British have had their squabbles through the centuries, but I’ve got no quarrel with them, so I’m root, root, rooting for England in the World Cup? Go Harry Kane and all you Three Lions!

In the good news-bad news department, I present the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

First the glad tidings: The local lads delivered a proper paddywhacking to the B.C. Lions on Saturday evening, a result that leveled their performance sheet at 2-2 and puts them on equal footing with the Edmonton Eskimos and Saskatchewan Roughriders in the mosh pit that is the West Division of the Canadian Football League.

Now for the bad tidings: The head count at Football Follies Field was 26,567. Measured against any franchise in the eastern precinct of the land, that’s a boffo bit of business. Measured against their own bottom line, not so much.

Winnipeg FC has attracted 52,025 to its fancy digs in Fort Garry for the first two home skirmishes of this Grey Cup crusade, down 3,225 from Games 1-2 a year ago. That’s a minimum of $90,000 in lost ticket revenue (based on a $28 ticket), and only the club bean counters and Wade Miller know how much of a hit they’ve taken in concessions and merchandise. Do the math and the Bombers are staring at a dip of $405,000 (minimum) in ticket sales for their nine home dates unless there’s a sharp reversal. Ouch.

It could always be worse, of course. In the Republic of Tranna, home of the Grey Cup champion Argonauts, only 12,196 souls were coerced into spending Saturday afternoon at BMO Field, where quarterback James Franklin put up a surprising W in his first start in Ricky Ray’s stead. Total for two home dates in TROT: 28,656. Seriously, how long can the Argos stay in business? And should those of us in the colonies care?

It’s 11 a.m., does Senators Nation know where Erik Karlsson is?

Aside to any National Hockey League outfit that might be contemplating a contract offer for wife-beating, disgraced defenceman Slava Voynov: Just say “no” to Slava.

Why is it that when any of our baseball, football or hockey teams prevent a foe from scoring, we call it “a shutout” but soccer people call it “a clean sheet?”

Does anybody miss the Neymar dive-writhe-and-roll at the World Cup? I do. The Brazilian’s antics were comedy gold, even if his thespian skills are suspect. Jim Calder, acting coach from the University of New York, provided the New York Times with this critique: “Neymar does what all beginning actors do. They oversell the event. All humans are acting. You learn when you’re a baby. If I cry, my mother will come over. If I cry, this guy will get a red card. It’s the same thing.”

I note that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are talking about a mano-a-mano, winner-take-all $10-million challenge in Las Vegas. Apparently, both golf legends have agreed to a special concession that allows ol’ Lefty to hire English goalkeeper Jordan Pickford as his caddy. Pickford won’t be carrying Mickelson’s clubs, though. His sole duty will be to block any of Phil’s putts that roll past the hole and are in danger of skidding off the green.

What’s the over/under on how many restricted free agents Kevin Cheveldayoff will sign this week? Three? I have a hunch the Winnipeg Jets general manager will deal with most of his pertinent paper work swiftly, and that includes Jacob Trouba.

I’ve read and heard a lot about how Denis Shapovalov had usurped Milos Raonic as Canada’s top tennis player, an assessment based solely on one match between the two and the world tennis rankings. But look who’s still playing at Wimbledon. That’s right, Raonic, not Shapo, who can’t advance through the second round of any tournament that matters. I never bought into the Shapo over-hype. He’s a terrific, young talent (although far too geeked-up on court for my tastes). He might be the best tennis talent every produced in our country. But, for now, the kid’s still on training wheels. The gushing last year after wins over Rafa Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro should have been tempered.

TSN just won’t let the Johnny Manziel narrative go. In the wake of the CFL’s four Week 4 matches, there was plenty of fodder for interesting chatter, but not at TSN. Rather than talk about quarterbacks who actually played in the games, it always has been and, apparently, always will be about the Hamilton Tiger-Cats backup QB for TSN’s gab guys. Thus, Frick and Frack (more commonly know as Jay and Dan) invited football insider Dave Naylor to their show for something they call the Nayl Gun. Here’s how it went:

Dan: “At this pace, I don’t see Johnny Manziel hitting the field at all for the Ticats.”

Naylor: “I’ll tell ya, if you’d taken a hundred people who’ve studied the Ticats quarterback situation and said, ‘Do you think they’ll get to the bye week without Johnny Manziel taking a snap?’ a hundred people would have told you ‘No way’ and I’d have been to the front of the line. Look Jeremiah Masoli played really well, he’s had three 300-yard games, four 300-yard games, but the one issue that I think has been there, there’s been two games—Week 1 in Calgary and the other night in Saskatchewan—you know, he had the ball in his hands late in the game, down by less than a touchdown, and he couldn’t produce a win. Until he does that, I think there’s still gonna be a lot of scrutiny over his play. Will Johnny Manziel go through the year without getting on the field? No way. He’s gonna play at some point, and I think we’re getting close to that time. Is it possible he doesn’t start all season? I do think that’s possible because Jeremiah Masoli has earned the right to stay as the Ticats starter.”

Jay: “What do you think is more likely…gonna throw you a quick one here…more likely that he plays for the Tabbies this season or gets traded at some point this season?”

Naylor: “I think it’s far more likely he plays. Look, if we get to the end of this year and Jeremiah Masoli puts up the kind of numbers he put through the first four weeks, I think we will see a trade in the off-season. And I think there’s an understanding, ‘Hey, Johnny Manziel committed for two years in the Canadian Football League,’ but after a year of backing up, the Ticats would owe it to him to either trade Jeremiah Masoli or to trade him to somewhere where he can get on the field. So, I think a trade this season, highly unlikely, a trade within the division ever is unlikely, but can I see him traded out west or Masoli traded out west after the year? Ya I could.”

Yo! Boys! It ain’t news until Johnny Rotten actually takes a snap. Until then, talk about the guys who are, as Matt Dunigan would say, gettin’ ‘er done.

And, finally, this week’s CFL power rankings:

1. Calgary (3-0): Only unbeaten outfit will be tested by the RedBlacks in Ottawa.
2. Winnipeg (2-2): Highest scoring outfit in the league, and defence stepped up vs. B.C.
3. Ottawa (2-1): We’ll know if RedBlacks are the real deal this week.
4. Hamilton (2-2): Seriously? A loss to the Roughriders?
5. Edmonton (2-2): Seriously? A loss to the Argonauts?
6. Saskatchewan: (2-2): I don’t care if they beat the Ticats; Chris Jones has created a mess.
7. B.C. (1-2): Quarterback issues aren’t going away.
8. Toronto (1-2): The win over the Eskimos is an anomoly.
9. Montreal (1-3): Really bad in either official language.

The doctors are in and Genie Bouchard, Milos Raonic and Denis Shapovalov are on the couch

Twin sisters Dr. Patti Puck and Dr. Patti Pigskin are internationally renowned sports psychologists who specialize in what makes athletes/coaches/managers/owners/sports scribes/broadcasters tick.

Jocks the world over flock to their clinic, the River City Shrink Wrap, and Drs. Patti and Patti have a waiting list longer than a politician’s nose at election time. They don’t always have the right answer, but if loving athletes is wrong they don’t want to be right.

(Today’s emergency session is all about love, the kind of love you find on a tennis court. With us are Canadian tennis diva Genie Bouchard, hard-luck guy Milos Raonic and Rafa Nadal-beater Denis Shapovalov.)

DR. PUCK: “Welcome everyone. Would you like to get us started, Genie?”

BOUCHARD: “Why me? Why is the burden always on me? Let someone else carry the burden.”

DR. PUCK: “Well, Genie, of the three of you, you seem to be the most troubled and, dare I say, angry. You just don’t seem happy.”

BOUCHARD: “Would you be happy if the media never left you alone? Ever since Wimbledon in 2014, they’ve been putting pressure on me to perform at an elite level. Why can’t they see that me reaching the Wimbledon final was catching lightning in a bottle? I mean, what’s it now, 10 times that I’ve gone home after losing in the first round this year? How often do I have to lose in the first round of a tournament before those dweebs finally clue in that I’m not any good?”

DR. PIGSKIN: “You really think the media has been too hard on you?”

BOUCHARD: “Are you kidding me? One of them wrote the other day—right after I’d lost in the opening round again—that I was the second coming of Anna Kournikova! All gams and no game! As if. Talk to the hand, Mr. Writer.”

DR. PIGSKIN: “Perhaps if you spent as much time working on your groundstrokes as you do on Instagram, selfies and posing for magazine covers they’d talk more about your game than your gams, which, by the way, are quite lovely.”

BOUCHARD: “Why you old cow! Are you hitting on me?”

DR. PIGSKIN: “Of course not, dear. You’re young enough to be my daughter. But, again, if you spent less time on looks…”

BOUCHARD: “Hey! You don’t know what my days are like! You don’t know what my life is like! Actually, I don’t even know why I’m talking to you two old cows. Do you even know a double fault from frozen yogurt?”

DR. PUCK: “Well, it’s true that we normally work with hockey and football players, but your camp called us, we didn’t call you. They said something about the Canadian flag weighing you down.”

BOUCHARD: “Tell me about it. Just ’cause I’m Canadian, I’m supposed to win in Canada. That’s what the fans expect. That’s what the media expects. Well, like duuuh. It doesn’t work that way. Being Canadian makes it harder to win in Canada, not easier. The expectations are like playing with a manhole cover strapped to your back. It’s not O Canada, it’s Woe Canada. Ask Milos.”

RAONIC: “Oh, cry me a river, girly. You want to talk problems? Try living in my skin.”

DR. PUCK: “What are your issues, Mr. Raonic?”

RAONIC: “Four words—Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray. Genie thinks the Maple Leaf is like a manhole cover on her back. Ha! I’ve got four manhole covers on my back. Just my rotten luck to be born into the greatest era of men’s tennis. Take away those four guys and I’ve probably got five or six Grand Slam titles on my resume.”

SHAPOVALOV: “What’s so hard about beating those dudes? Easy peasy. I just opened a big ol’ can of whup-ass on Nadal in the Rogers Cup. Took him out in a tiebreaker in the third.”

RAONIC: “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know that? Why do you think I had to come and see the two Docs this morning? It was either unload on Docs Patti and Patti or Dr. Phil. I mean, I’ve been busting my tennis balls trying to beat Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray this entire decade and you know how many times I’ve won? Eight. You know how many times they’ve beaten me? Thirty-four times. That’s right, I’m 8-34 against the Fab Four. And now here you come along, not even old enough to order a beer in most provinces, and you take out Rafa right from the get-go. You’re still on training wheels!”

BOUCHARD: “Don’t worry, Milos. The media’s gonna latch onto Shapo like a pit bull on a pork chop. Beat Rafa once, he’ll have to beat him all the time now. By the time the media’s done with Shapo, he’ll wish he was born American or Russian or Croatian.”

SHAPOVALOV: “Never gonna happen. They can say what they want. I’m proud to be Canadian and I’m just trying to have some fun out there.”

DR. PUCK: “It sounds to me like young Mr. Shapovalov has really got it together.”

DR. PIGSKIN: “Unfortunately, our time is up. Would one of you like to add anything before you go? Or perhaps schedule another session?”

BOUCHARD: “Sorry. No can do. My calendar is full with photo shoots. But I think I’ve got time for a quick selfie with the whole group. Can’t wait to get it on Instagram.”

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 Genie Bouchard and the weight of the Maple Leaf…terrible tennis towels…the real CFL West Division standings…male golfers in short pants…and bad-ass athletes

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

Genie Bouchard wants no part of the “burden of Canada.” Furthermore, she thinks it’d be real swell if “the media doesn’t put pressure on me, that would be nice.”

Good thing she isn’t a hockey player.

I mean, Bouchard wants to talk about the “burden of Canada?” Try trading places with Sidney Crosby or Jonathan Toews or Carey Price. Or Shannon Szabados and Marie Philip Poulan.

We’re Planet Puckhead, from the bottom of Sid the 30-year-old Kid’s skate blades to Don Cherry’s white chin whiskers. Our men (or teenage boys) lose a shinny competition and there’s blood in the streets. Heads roll. Parliament is recalled. There are demands for a Royal Commission. National angst isn’t quite as intense and irrational when our women stumble and fall, but expectations of success might actually be greater for the girls, given that they compete in a field consisting of two thoroughbreds and a collection of pasture ponies.

No such emotional outlay and investment exists when One-and-Done Genie steps on court to lose yet again in the opening round of a tennis tournament, as she did on Tuesday at the Rogers Cup in the Republic of Tranna, this time qualifier Donna Vekic nudging her wayside, 6-3, 6-4.

Since no one has ever accused Canada of being a tennis nation, we don’t huddle around flatscreen TVs at home or in pubs and hold our collective breath on the Quebec belle’s every groundstroke or double fault. Large numbers hope she wins. Few expect her to win. Thus, whatever weight she feels from the Maple Leaf is self-inflicted, not fan or media imposed.

Unlike others, I won’t pretend to analyze the reasons behind Bouchard’s plummet from world No. 5 to No. 70 in the three years since she advanced to the Wimbledon final, whereupon she received a 6-3, 6-0 paddling at the racquet of Petra Kvitova in less than an hour. As she hastened to instruct news snoops and those who would draw a link between her increased social media/cover girl activity and her on-court faceplants, “You have no idea what my life is like and what my days are like.”

True that.

In terms of Genie’s game, though, it doesn’t take a Chrissie Evert or Billie Jean King to recognize distress. From 2-2 in the second set vs. Vekic, it was painfully evident that the Rogers Cup would be another one-and-done tournament for our tennis diva. Her body language was ghastly. It was defeatist.

Hard to believe that all those scattered shots had anything to do with the heft of the Maple Leaf. She’s just as lost in the Republic of Tranna as she is in Istanbul, Monterrey, Acapulco or Indian Wells.

Men just can’t do without their terrible tennis towels.

Just wondering: How is it that the elite of women’s tennis can start and finish a match without reaching for a towel every 10 seconds, whereas the men feel the need to wipe themselves down—from stem to stern—after every…single…point? It’s actually quite disgusting if you’re a ball girl or boy. Icky.

All best wishes to Eddie Olczyk, one of the good guys who wore Winnipeg Jets linen before the National Hockey League franchise fled to Arizona. Eddie O is battling colon cancer.

So, it turns out Jeff Reinebold was the problem in Hamilton. And here I thought the head coach, Kent Austin, was responsible for the Tiger-Cats’ 0-6 record. Silly me. Austin fired biker boy coach Reinebold as his defensive coordinator this week, just in time for a visit from Coach Harley’s former group, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. If the Tabbies fail to get off the schneid on Saturday, who does Austin next blame for his own misgivings?

Okay, here’s the deal: There are standings within standings in the Canadian Football League. You look at the Bombers as a 4-2 outfit, I see them as 0-2 because what they do against the big dogs in the West Division will determine their fate. They’ve already been beaten by the B.C. Lions and Calgary Stampeders, with the Edmonton Eskimos scheduled to pay a visit to Football Follies Field in Fort Garry on Aug. 17. If they harbor any hope of securing a home playoff date, it’ll take a 4-1 record, if not 5-0, the rest of the way to get the job done.

Here’s a look at the CFL West Division top four head-to-head:

Edmonton 2-0 (6 remaining: at Winnipeg, at Calgary, Calgary, Winnipeg, at B.C., Calgary)
Calgary 1-0 (6 remaining: at B.C., Edmonton, at Edmonton, B.C., at Edmonton, Winnipeg)
B.C. 1-2 (5 remaining: Calgary, at Calgary, at Winnipeg 2, Edmonton)
Winnipeg 0-2 (5 remaining: Edmonton, at Edmonton, B.C. 2, at Calgary)

What in the name of Chef Boyardee are they feeding the scribes at the Drab Slab? First it was Steve Lyons chirping about the Bombers doing themselves a favor by finishing fourth, and now young Jeff Hamilton and grizzled Paul Wiecek have joined in with the backup vocals. “It may just be the best-case scenario for the Bombers. That would mean a crossover to a weak East Division and a much easier road to a Grey Cup berth,” scribbles Hamilton. Apparently, this is now the weekly mantra of Winnipeg Free Press writers, despite undeniable historical evidence to the contrary. Do the math, boys.

Horrors! Male golfers were allowed to wear short pants during practice rounds for the PGA Championship tournament that commences on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. Better not tell Paul Wiecek. The Freep scribe is having a tough enough time dealing with Mike O’Shea’s short pants.

TSN had Craig Button do a bit on Canada’s projected roster for the 2018 World Junior Hockey Championships. Geez Louise. We’re only at the front end of August. Can we enjoy what’s left of summer without talking about lineups for a hockey tournament that begins on Boxing Day and wraps up in 2018?

This past Sunday I listed my five favorite all-time athletes (actually, I cheated because I had Arnold Palmer and Rafael Nadal sharing the fifth spot), so today I’m listing the five jocks I have most disliked. They are:

Mike Tyson: Convicted rapist. Cannibal.
Floyd Mayweather Jr.: Convicted woman beater and painfully boring boxer.
Angelo Mosca: Willie Fleming of the B.C. Lions was my favorite football player. Mosca, a Hamilton Tiger-Cats D-lineman, took Willie the Wisp out of the 1963 Grey Cup game with a dirty hit. I don’t promote violence, but I was most delighted when Joe Kapp laid out big Angie with a solid right-hand punch to the head at a Grey Cup function a few years ago.
Pete Rose: Long before we discovered he was having sex with teenage girls while in his 30s, married and the father of two children, the Major League Baseball hit leader creeped me out. From his stupid haircut to his galloping ego, I always believed there was a phoniness to Rose. He’s forever been fingernails on a chalk board.
Jose Bautista: So arrogant. He’s the reason I cannot watch the Toronto Blue Jays.

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 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 bad behaviour in sports…straight guys talking about gay things…sports scribes eating their own…the unlovable Blue Jays…clay-court tennis…and cole slaw on a hamburger?

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

It’s been an interesting and odd past couple of weeks in the sandbox. Let’s recap:

Kevin Pillar of the Toronto Blue Jays was shut down for two Major League Baseball games and instructed to do some serious soul searching after directing a homophobic nasty toward Atlanta Braves pitcher Jason Motte.
The National Hockey League lightened Ryan Getzlaf’s pay envelope to the tune of $10,000 after the Anaheim Ducks captain went all potty-mouth and homophobic in a playoff match.
Four heterosexual men who, to the best of my knowledge, have not spent a single day of their lives as gay men, gathered around a table in a TSN studio and discussed gay issues as if they harbored special insight into what words do and don’t offend gay people.
Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods, much like his golf game, was discovered asleep at the wheel and hauled off to a Florida hoosegow on a DUI charge. Tiger’s mug shot was rather ghastly but, hey, who looks good in the small hours of the morning when they’re hopped up on every pill known to man?
Terry Frei, award-winning sports columnist with the Denver Post, was told to leave the building and not return after a tweet in which he expressed his discomfort with a Japanese man, Takuma Sato, winning the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day in the United States. Frei later said we’re free to call him an idiot for his idiotic and racist remark, but he asks that we don’t call him a racist for his idiotic and racist remark.
Tennis legend Margaret Court has gone completely off her nut. She described the women’s tour as a lesbian-infested enterprise in which senior players groom vulnerable youngsters to adopt a lesbian lifestyle; she bemoaned the birth of Casey Dellacqua’s second child because she’ll be raised by two mamas and no papas; she insisted that transgender kids are the work of the devil; she compared a phantom LGBT lobby to Adolph Hitler and communism; she accused that same phantom gay lobby as the force behind a move to have her name scrubbed from one of the venues used for the Australian Open. (What is it with old tennis farts? It wasn’t so long ago when Romanian pig Ilie Nastase went off his nut with racist remarks about Serena Williams’ unborn baby—“Let’s see what color it has. Chocolate with milk?” and he made sexist comments about Britain’s top female player Johanna Konta, calling her a “bitch” and asking for her hotel room number.)
French tennis player Maxime Hamou, perhaps in an attempt to disprove Court’s theory that everyone in tennis is gay, was kicked out of Roland Garros for forcibly and repeatedly kissing Eurosport reporter Maly Thomas during a live TV interview.

I think that pretty much sums up the seedy side of sports in recent days, and I think we can agree that there’s been a whole lot of ugly going on.

The worst optic for me was the TSN panel on The Reporters with Dave Hodge. I mean, when I think of poor casting, Johnny Depp as Tonto comes to mind. Kevin Costner as Robin Hood. John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Ashton Kutcher as anybody. All bad, bad, bad, bad. But four heterosexual sports guys talking about gay things? The worst.

Heterosexual male sports scribes should be discussing gay issues only if they have spent considerable time in the LGBT community, if they offer a named gay source as a point of reference, if they have felt the sting of a homophobic barb, or if they have had to fight society for the right to marry the partner of their choice.

I doubt Hodge, Michael Farber, Steve Simmons or Dave Feschuk qualify on any count.

Farber suggested the way the Blue Jays and MLB handled the Pillar situation was “admirable.” Well, I’m sure it was to him. But he isn’t gay. Perhaps a gay sports writer might think the punishment for calling an opponent a “faggot” was too namby-pamby.

Trouble is, there are no gay sports scribes in Canada. At least not in the mainstream. If you’re talking about a jock journo at big city daily rags in the True North, there’s a 99.9 per cent probability that he’s a he, he’s white and he’s a confirmed heterosexual. The other 0.1 per cent is female. And probably straight.

Mark Spector of Sportsnet represents the 99.9 per cent, and he recently wondered why the NHL cannot hear a homophobic slur “the way a gay man would hear the word.” Well duh. It’s because the people who occupy the ivory tower in the NHL are not gay. Nor is Spector, so he doesn’t hear it “the way a gay man would hear the word” either.

Spector’s piece is thoughtful (he actually solicited gay insight from Brock McGillis, a former Ontario Hockey League goaltender who came out post-career) and he asks this question: “Why have the other sports experienced players come out, but not the National Hockey League? Or Canadian Major Junior Hockey?” Spector might pose the same query about his own business. I started in the rag trade in 1969. I worked with gay entertainment writers, gays on news side, gay librarians, gay department heads, but never once a gay male jock journo. You’d think that in the ensuing 48 years there’d have been at least one gay guy scribbling about sports at one of the big-city, mainstream dailies. But no. There have been more sightings of Sasquatch. Why no openly gay sports scribes? Probably the same reason there are no openly gay hockey players—they fear ridicule and don’t want to be thought of as a weaker-than or a lesser-than.

Hey, look who’s back! It’s the two Grumpets, Steve Lyons and Paul Wiecek. They’ve reappeared on the Winnipeg Free Press sports pages, and they did the unthinkable with their return volley: They ate their own. Actually, it was Wiecek who called out Cathal Kelly in a discussion about Tiger Woods’ arrest on a DUI charge. “The normally staid Globe and Mail had a hyperventilating column by Cathal Kelly up on their site already by Monday afternoon, which made the paper and Kelly—who is usually excellent—looking very stupid.” Yowzers. I can’t recall the last time I read one sports scribe dissing one of the brethren like that, but I think JFK was still alive.

Got a kick out of good guy Doug Smith’s blog in the Toronto Star. “How can you not hope for the best for a team that’s lost so many vital components already and still manages to soldier on?” Smith asks of the beleaguered Blue Jays. Well, Doug, I’ll give you two names to explain why I cannot root, root, root for the Tranna Nine: Jose and Bautista. He is the most tedious, tiresome man in professional sports.

While watching a McDonald’s commercial during the terrific five-setter between our top tennis guy Milos Raonic and Pablo Carreno Busta at Roland Garros on Sunday morning, I couldn’t help but wonder: Who thought it would be a good idea to put coleslaw on a hamburger? I’m not lovin’ it.

I do love clay-court tennis and its long rallies, though, which might explain why the French Open is my preferred Grand Slam event and my two main men of all time are Bjorn Borg and Rafa Nadal. The Raonic-Carreno Busta match was terrific theatre, with the Spaniard enduring 4-6, 7-6, 6-7, 6-4, 8-6.

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

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