I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…
It has been a good week for sanctimony, theorists and figurative lynch mobs.
Really, all that was missing in the fallout from the Great Beer Chuck in the Republic of Tranna was a grassy knoll and a grainy Zapruder film that might or might not have been doctored. I swear, when cops identified the culprit who hurled a partially consumed can of beer at Baltimore Orioles outfielder Hyun Suh Kim at the Rogers Centre on Tuesday night, I was shocked his name wasn’t Lee Harvey Somethingorother.
I don’t mean to make light of someone chucking a can of brown pop at an athlete on the playing field. I mean, with better accuracy, the hops-and-barley missile might have whomped Kim on the melon and Ken Pagan would be looking at a charge a tad higher up the criminal code than public mischief.
As it is, though, it has amounted to crying over spilt beer. And, my goodness, such crying.
The Toronto Star apologized to the city of Baltimore on behalf of the city of Toronto, describing the dastardly deed as “a misguided attempted to win what after all is just a game.” In case the good citizenry of Baltimore is too dense to follow the plot, the Great Beer Chuck was also “childish” and “totally unacceptable” according to the Star. So there.
Not to be outdone, the Toronto Sun, a Postmedia chattel known for operating on the chintz, somehow scraped together enough money to offer a $1,000 reward for the capture of the desperado, who fled the scene scant seconds after lobbing his aluminium grenade during the seventh inning of the Major League Baseball wild-card playoff joust between the Orioles and Tranna Blue Jays (their players, incidentally, were in no danger of a beer bombardment). Imagine the surprise when Postmedia checked its own payroll and discovered the name Ken Pagan, a chap who draws a stipend as a sports copy editor working out of Hamilton. Guess, he won’t be receiving a Christmas bonus this year. But, then, who at Postmedia does?
It wasn’t merely the media crying us a river, though. John Tory, the mayor of all the people, lent his voice, branding the beer-chucker a “loon-ball,” and isn’t that an interesting thing for a mayor from the Republic of Tranna to say, given that a loon-ball not so long ago sat in the big office at City Hall (hello, Rob Ford).
The deafening din will, of course, lessen in volume because media have a short attention span. The sanctimonious scribblings shall give way to a new chew toy for them to gnaw on, and the Great Beer Chuck will have been reduced to what it actually is—one person in a crowd of 50,000 tossing a can of beer on to a baseball field.
Again, there’s no attempt here to make light of an action that might have been injurious. But, come on. Reward money? Open letters to an entire city? Name-calling from elected government officials?
I think what everyone needs right now is a beer break. Just don’t toss the can away.
Ken Pagan has hired lawyers and his legal beagles believe proof of his innocence is in his postal code: “He’s from Hamilton, so he couldn’t possibly have done this,” they said in an official statement from the law offices of Mason, Matlock & McBeal. “Whoever heard of a man from Hamilton throwing away a beer can before the can was empty?”
Interesting take on the great game of rounders in a Globe and Mail editorial: “Baseball is generally a slow-paced, cerebral and potentially boring sport,” writes an unidentified scribe. “Alcohol makes the game more engaging for some fans…” While it’s true that baseball and beer go together like Trump and brain farts, I’ve never found the game so boring that it’s driven me to drink. Except, of course, when Buck Martinez is doing the play-by-play. Then there’s never enough beer in the fridge.
If I’m Blue Jays officials—and, by extension, Major League Baseball mucky-mucks—I’m more concerned about the racial taunting that took place the other night at the Rogers Centre. In its silly open letter to Baltimore, Toronto Star suggests, “racism? That just isn’t us.” Apparently it is and has been for some time.
If anyone in Winnipeg is feeling smug and tsk-tsking Toronto due to the events of Tuesday night, I remind them of the 1991 Grey Cup at Winnipeg Stadium, whereby some lout had the bad manners to hurl a can of beer at Toronto Argonauts Rocket Ismail at the tail end of his 87-yard kickoff scamper. Like Calgary Stampeders defenders, the beer can missed and Rocket arrived safely in the end zone. There was no great hue and cry, though (most likely because both Hue and Cry were frozen in place on that sub-zero afternoon). We just blamed it on Roughriders fans because, unlike men from Hamilton, they’re not bright enough to finish their beer before tossing away the can.
Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 46 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.
The River City Renegade 
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