At my former favorite saloon, the Toad In the Hole Pub & Eatery in Osborne Village, Mick the late-night barman was oft heard delivering the pained plea, “Can I have the last three minutes of my life back?”
His lament always was born of the empty-headed blather of those who sat before him at his bar.
And so it was for me in the small hours of Tuesday. (No, I wasn’t sitting at Mick’s bar, although after hearing what I heard on Sportsnet I surely had to suppress the urge to reach for a bottle.)
While on my morning jog to numerous websites, you see, I made the most unfortunate discovery of a creature called Dean Blundell, a dinosaur of sorts in that he is a radio shock jock, a species I thought to be extinct. Imagine my surprise to learn that a) shock jocks still exist, and b) people actually still listen to the radio. Who knew?
Anyway, my unearthing of Blundell on the Sportsnet website was a misadventure because seldom, if ever, has a bigger boatload of bilge dropped anchor at my ears. For two minutes and 52 seconds, I listened to an astonishing verbal assult on Shane Doan, a longtime National Hockey League worker of admirable loft who, according to Blundell, had the bad manners to re-up with the Arizona Coyotes.
“I don’t really care whatsoever, but this was running through my mind when I read it this morning,” Blundell began on Sportsnet 590 The Fan in the Republic of Tranna. “Have you ever in your life seen a guy in any professional sport that likes losing as much as Shane Doan? I don’t know that there’s another man who’s been as good as he’s been in his sport that’s been not just okay with sucking, but looked forward to it, preferred it, took pay cuts to do it and is staying and finishing his career in a place he knows he can’t win.
“I don’t get it whatsoever. This is why they’ve sucked for as long as they’ve sucked. They’ve got a guy that loves sucking. Like, he looks forward to it. Every season. I read this the other day and Shane Doan’s like, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ I’m like, no kidding because you love to suck and that’s the centre of the suck universe when it comes to the NHL.
“He has no clue, he has no desire to win. I have never in my life seen anything like it. Never. He’s gonna get $2.5 million, with his bonuses and incentives he could make up to $5 million just to suck. If that’s the goal for him, good for him. Job well done. You’re the Stanley Cup of suckage. Shane Doan prefers to suck.”
I believe it was supposed to be funny, because Blundell had at least one hand-picked stooge, perhaps two, providing the backup vocals and a cheesey laugh track. But this was funny like gonorrhea is a knee-slapper. I got more belly laughs watching The English Patient.
I suppose we ought to be thankful, though. I mean, Blundell stifled any urge to include crude homophobic humor in his rotten-to-the-core rant. He also fought off any compulsion to use a young hockey player’s death as part of a punch line about life in Edmonton.
Those, be advised, were among the trespasses for which Blundell was punted from his shock-jock gig at 102.1 the Edge in the Republic of Tranna. Yup, the guy is a class act. Like raw sewage is a martini and the back of a garbage truck is a salad bar. That didn’t stop the geniuses at Rogers Media from diving in and digging him out of the 102.1 dumpster for their morning show, though. I guess toilet humor and groundless guttersniping was in short supply at Sportsnet 590 The Fan.
Rather than lashing out at Doan for choosing to re-up for a 21st crusade with a franchise that drafted him when still housed in Winnipeg, Blundell might have put his two minutes and 52 seconds of slander to better use.
He could have Googled the name Ernie Banks, who spent 19 Major League Baseball seasons as a lovable loser with the Chicago Cubs, not once participating in a playoff game. Never once getting a sniff of a World Series title. Yet not once did he ask for, or demand, a trade to a contending team. He just kept arriving at Wrigley Field every day, saying, “Let’s play two.” I guess Mr. Cub “sucked” and had “no desire to win.”
He could have Googled anyone who’s ever willingly signed with the Cubbies post-1908, or anyone who wore Boston Red Sox linen between 1918 and 2004, or anyone who’s played for the Toronto Maple Leafs post-Punch Imlach, or anyone who’s happily pulled a San Diego Chargers jersey over his head. They all must have sucked and had no desire to win.
Sports is overflowing with franchises that never win. That suck.
The Edmonton Oilers suck like nobody has sucked for the past 10 years. So what does that say about Milan Lucic, who decided he’d rather spend his next seven NHL winters on the frozen tundra of the Alberta capital than with a Stanley Cup contender in Los Angeles?
Actually, a better question is this: Why would Sportsnet post the Blundell bile on its website?
Hey, I’m all for having fun. I love cynicism, irreverence, wit, satire and parody. But Dean Blundell’s calling out of Shane Doan was none of the above. It was lame and insulting. It was three minutes of cheap theatrics aimed for the kind of cheap laughs the loudest lump on a bar stool gets from his drunken buddies.
It failed. Miserably.
Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.
The River City Renegade 
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