Fishing with Big Buff…$8 million will buy a lot of Slurpees…Bombers put best foot forward…going ga-ga over Lady Gaga

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

Big Buff the fisher.

Ice fishing as a selling point. Who knew?

Not many National Hockey League free agents would think of a one-day, winter getaway to Matlock as a little slice of heaven, but spending a few hours in a small shack on a frozen Lake Winnipeg in sub-zero temperatures is Dustin Byfuglien’s idea of a swell time.

So he’s staying. In good, ol’ Hometown. For the next five winters. Thus, all those pike, perch and walleye are on notice: Big Buff is coming for you.

The Winnipeg Jets big blueliner didn’t cite ice fishing as one of the reasons he chose to forego untethered free agency and remain in River City, but it’s common knowledge that angling is among Byfuglien’s deepest passions, and the availability of dropping a line into a hole in the ice when the Jets aren’t busy losing hockey games surely played a part in his decision.

Will his signing help lure other free agents to Pegtown? Doubtful. But it does confirm a message the Jets began sending three years ago with the signings of Blake Wheeler, Bryan Little and Zach Bogosian—they are willing to spend the big bucks in order to keep their elite players in the fold. As much as bankrolls Mark Chipman and David Thomson operate on the cheap, they didn’t chintz out on Byfuglien. His sticker price of $7.6 million per annum is not pocket change.

I mean, 38 mill can buy a guy lot of live bait. Cripes, man, Buff can afford all of Lake Winnipeg now. And a few rivers to be named later.

Byfuglien will make more money ($8 million) next season than the entire Winnipeg Blue Bombers roster and the combined salaries of every member of the Manitoba Legislature. With a bit more than $2 million left over.

A Jumbo Jet Dog

Here’s what $8 million can buy Big Buff:

• 4,000,000 large Slurpees.
• 727,272 Mr. Big Nip Platters at The Sals.
• 727,272 10-piece orders of chicken wings at Hooters.
• 640,000 Jumbo Jet dogs with extra toppings at the Little Hockey House on the Prairie.
• 1,230,769 corned beef sandwiches at Oscar’s Deli.
• 533,333 visits to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.
• 405,063 visits to the Assiniboine Park Zoo.
• 10,000 Nanook thermal two-man ice-fishing flip tents from The Fishin’ Hole.
• 347,826 Berkley Gulp Alive floating crawlers.
• Every shack on Wellington Crescent (except for that $11-million job).

Did I hear Grand Master Kevin Cheveldayoff correctly during his chin-wag with news scavengers after the Byfuglien signing became official? I swear the Jets general manager said his outfit’s current place in the Central Division pecking order is “a little bit of a blip.” Is that what we’re calling last place these days? A bit of a blip? Good grief, Chevy. Talk about losing the plot.

Now that the Jets’ Raging Dane, flyweight Nikolaj Ehlers, has added fighting to his repertoire, can we expect Anthony Peluso to start scoring goals? Naw. Life never works that way, does it.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers GM Kyle Walters vowed to put his best foot forward once the Canadian Football League’s annual free-agent livestock auction commenced, and he did exactly that in hiring Justin Medlock’s lower left limb. Medlock, late of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, is only the most accurate kicker of footballs in the annals of the three-down game, and he replaces Sergio Castillo, who believes his field goal attempts are pre-determined by God. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a guaranteed three points over a prayer every time.

Okay, it’s agreed. Cam Newton is a sore loser. He’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan Island. So what. Sure, it would have been wonderful had the Carolina Panthers quarterback been less pout and more polish during his meet-the-press gab session scant seconds after he and the Carolina Panthers had been beaten by the Denver Broncos in their Super Bowl 50 skirmish on Sunday, but, last time I looked, providing scintillating sound bites is not part of the gig for a National Football League QB. A guy like Peyton Manning can pull it off, win or lose. Ditto Tom Brady. Newton can’t, but it’s no biggie. It just means it’s unlikely he’ll be hosting Saturday Night Live any time soon.

How can you tell a friend of yours is gay? When he comes up to you the morning after Super Bowl 50 and insists on talking about Beyonce “walking it” during the halftime show and Lady Gaga’s rendering of the American national anthem rather than the Denver Broncos mauling of Newton. I must confess that I missed Beyonce, but I caught Lady Gaga’s act and was wowed by her outfit. Still can’t get over the sparkling red eye shadow (Note to self: Must, must, must get some of that stuff!), the blue polish on the nails, the blue shoe on his left foot and the red-and-white striped shoe on her right. Oh, ya, her singing was boffo, too. Love the Lady. My gay friend Markus prefers Beyonce.

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 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 in 2015.

All about the Blue Jays trading binge, Jose Canseco in stilettos, Tom Brady’s balls and other items of interest…

News and views on the world of sports…

NEWS: Alex Anthopoulos, the man who generally manages the Toronto Blue Jays, goes on a trading binge and delivers Troy Tulowitzki, David Price, Ben Revere and Mark Lowe to skipper John Gibbons scant hours before the Major League Baseball trade deadline.

The GM’s tinkering has positioned the Jays to make a serious run at a wild-card playoff position, if not the American League East Division pennant.

VIEW: Is it too late for Brendan Shanahan to redo the Lou Lamoriello thing and hire Anthopoulos as GM of the Maple Leafs instead?

NEWS: Jose Canseco is going bowling with the boys. He’ll be playing poker with the boys. And he’ll be wearing a frock, lipstick and a wig while doing it. Oh yes he will.

Canseco, you see, has joined the Cult of Cait. Not only is he sipping the Cait Kool-Aid, but the former Major League Baseball juicer vows to go all Ru Paul on us by adorning himself in female garments in a declaration of support for Hollywood glam trans gal, Caitlyn Jenner.

And, don’t you know, the one-time Bash Brother is so thoughtful that he plans to share the charade with the rest of us.

“I can’t say exactly how it’s going to be done yet,” he told the New York Daily News. “It will be done for about a week—and it will be on my Internet show called Spend a Day with Jose.”

VIEW: Sigh.

NEWS: Toughest dudette on the planet, Ronda Rousey, wasted little time in ridding herself of a potty-mouth pest named Bethe Correia in their UFC women’s bantamweight championship bout. It was over, save for the post-fight trash talking, in 34 seconds.

VIEW: Hmmm, 34 seconds. About the same amount of time Jose Canseco will last walking in a pair of stilettos.

NEWS: The Arizona Cardinals have hired a lady coach, Jen Welter.

Not surprisingly, her appointment as an intern coach of inside linebackers (she’ll work at training camp and pre-season matches) has been greeted with much skepticism because, well, the NFL is a man’s world where women are sometimes used as tackling dummies or punching bags (see: Rice, Ray; Hardy, Greg; McDonald, Ray; etc.). So, her hiring is seen by some as a public relations gimmick.

VIEW: If Jen Welter is a gimmick, give us more of her. I mean, her answer to a question about Tom Brady and Deflategate during her first day on the job was classic:

“I really am tired of hearing about Tom Brady’s balls,” she said. “I’d rather move on. It is kind of serendipitous, though, or funny or God’s irony that the same day we announce a woman coach in the NFL, we can’t get off Tom Brady’s balls.”

NEWS: National Football League outfits have commenced training exercises and soon shall be engaged in dress rehearsals, but we still don’t know if Tom Brady is persona non grata.

The New England Patriots quarterback is, of course, under suspension for allegedly letting the air seep out of game balls last season, yet he is in full frolic with his mates at training camp. That, however, is no guarantee he’ll be behind centre when the real fun begins next month. Brady must first do the chin-wag thing with a federal judge in mid-August, as will NFL lord and master Roger Goodell, and only after those Deflategate discussions will we know his status.

VIEW: What Jen Welter said.

NEWS: So, we soon shall discover if Michael Sam is a football player who happens to be gay or a gay man who happens to play football.

To date, it has been all about Sam’s sexual orientation, because the wannabe rush end has yet to grab grass and growl with the Montreal Alouettes. That is about to change, though. Tom Higgins, head coach of the Canadian Football League outfit, assures us that Sam will play a game sometime this month. Honest. He’s good to go.

VIEW: Unless, of course, Sam has a more-pressing engagement, like Dancing with the Stars or sitting on Oprah’s couch. Or perhaps he’ll just want to go home for two weeks again.

NEWS: There were reported, and confirmed, sightings of the “Tiger Woods of old” at the Quicken Loans National golf tournament in Gainesville, Va., where he carded three rounds in the 60s, including a 68 and a 66 on the first two days.

VIEW: Trouble is, the rest of the field doesn’t see the “Tiger Woods of old.” They see an old Tiger Woods.

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.