Toronto Six – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about the future of Ponytail Puck…holy Moses that man is slow…chirping at Augusta National…climbing the walls…baseball and beer…Barney Fife umping in the majors…chump change in the CFL…and other things on my mind…

Once members of the Canadian and American shinny sides collect their shiny gold and silver trinkets tonight in Brampton, those of us who give more than a passing glance toward Ponytail Puck will ask the obvious question.

To wit: What’s next?

Surely it can’t be status quo for women’s professional hockey.

I mean, members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association have been flitting hither and yon for the past four years, participating in glorified scrimmages and dressed up in hamburger chain and bank logos, and their fervent hope has been for the Premier Hockey Federation to make like summer wages. You know, disappear. That, in turn, would inspire the National Hockey League to adopt the PWHPA orphans, and Ponytail Puck would live happily ever after as one Super League.

Hasn’t happened.

The PHF (nee National Women’s Hockey League) continues to disappoint the PWHPA by its mere existence, and it recently concluded its eighth season, with the Toronto Six emerging as the first champion north of the Canada-U.S.A. boundary. Most noteworthy, there’s no indication that the seven-team loop is inclined to vamoose and, more to the point, it shall drop the puck again next autumn with a bulked up salary cap ($1.5 million per club) and bulked-up benefits.

The PWHPA, meanwhile, is…well, that’s the mystery.

The Canadian Women’s Hockey League went up in flames on May 1, 2019, and the PWHPA rose from its ashes 18 days later with high chatter of a helter-skelter Dream Gap Tour, but there’s really no there there, unless a bunch of now-dog-eared snapshots with Billie Jean King is a bragging point. In a way, it’s like LIV Golf: When are the tournaments, where are the tournaments and, say, does anyone know if they’re on TV or where we can find them online?

There’s no argument that PWHPA membership represents the elite of Ponytail Puck. All but one player (Rebecca Gilmore of the PHF’s Boston Pride) on the current Canadian and American rosters at the IIHF Women’s World Championship in Brampton are Dream Gappers (or American college kids), but the crème de la crème has nowhere to go once the final buzzer sounds in the gold medal match tonight. Unless it’s back to the drawing board to find a solution to Ponytail Puck’s split personality that’s in “shambles.”

That’s Kendall Schofield Coyne’s word, not mine.

The former U.S. captain made that statement in a natter with the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2019 and, unless the PWHPA has something hidden beneath its bonnet and plans to spring some glad tidings on us post-world tournament, Ponytail Puck will remain in “shambles” with one legit league and one sideshow, both of which will be largely ignored by mainstream media.

Make no mistake, jock journos and their editors have seldom done women’s professional shinny any favors, and a strong case can be made that they ignored the CWHL out of business, a disinterest that did not go unnoticed by league executives.

Calgary Inferno GM Kristen Hagg described her team as “Calgary’s best-kept secret,” and added: “We live in a society where people do not value women’s sport. Most of us have been socialized to accept men’s sport as dominant and somehow automatically more interesting. The problem is that once society internalizes falsehood, it’s not easy to correct it.”

Sami Jo Small, once GM of Toronto Furies and now president of Toronto Six, was singing from the same songbook: “People are supportive of women’s hockey. They love to watch it, but they don’t know how to watch it. That’s one of my biggest battles, to get people to know where to watch these games, how to watch these games, where to buy the tickets, and get them into the venue. Not just watching the Olympics.”

Looks like it’s deja vu all over again.

For example:

When the Six won the PHF title in March, TSN slotted the story into the 40th minute of a 60-minute show, while Sportsnet gave it bottom-feeder play in the 53rd minute.
In advance of a quarterfinal skirmish between Canada and Sweden on Thursday, the Toronto Sun could only find room for five paragraphs on the hockey game—in its sports briefs package on the 12th page of a 12-page section. It was bunched in with copy on UEFA futbol, NASCAR racing and, get this, an NFL player assaulting a women. (Running copy on women’s hockey together with the assault of a woman is some kind of sick joke or extremely lame news judgment.)
In a quick scan of sports sections on Our Frozen Tundra yesterday, seven of nine had zero (0, as in zilch, nil, nada) mention of the world tournament, which had entered the semifinal round.
At the Beijing Olympic Games slightly more than a year ago, Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star delivered this harsh assessment of Ponytail Puck: “Women’s hockey doesn’t belong in the Games. It’s a cheap medal, in no way comparable to the paramountcy that some nations historically enjoy in a specific sport—like the Norwegians and cross-country skiing or Jamaicans and sprinting. There is at least some semblance of competition—gobs of it actually — with scads of elite athletes to make a challenge.” She closed her column with this remark on the U.S.A.-Canada rivalry: “Honestly, I’m getting sick of this mythologized rivalry and everybody else an also-ran.”

Hmmm. It’s either scant press or bad press.

None of this is to say it’s solely on mainstream media to spread the good word, and it’s important to note that the PWHPA doesn’t do Ponytail Puck any favors.

Never mind the hit-and-miss nature of their glorified scrimmages and the great divide they created with the PHF. I called up the Dream Gappers’ website this morning, and the most recent posting is dated March 3, even as a healthy portion of the PWHPA constituency has been front and centre at the World Championship for the past 10 days. What their membership is doing isn’t worth noting?

I’m sorry, but they can’t make mainstream media give a damn if they don’t give a damn themselves.

No matter what’s next for women’s professional hockey, there has to be more to sell than U.S.A.-Canada if the PWHPA membership expects to earn a living wage at their preferred craft.

FYI: If you’re wondering, and you probably aren’t, there are 10 PHF players on rosters at the world tournament.

The female gum flappers on TSN really need to refrain from calling U.S.-Canada the “greatest rivalry in sports.” It’s pure nonsense. Everyone knows the “greatest rivalry in sports” is Tiger Woods’ legal team vs. any of his ex-wives/girlfriends’ lawyers.

Some Masters tournament leftovers: For those of you scoring at home, this is Woods’ scorecard for golf majors since he drove his vehicle into a ditch two years ago:
Masters: 47th.
PGA: Quit after 3 rounds.
U.S. Open: Did not play.
Open Championship: Missed cut.
Masters: Quit in third round.

Did you catch Patrick Cantlay’s slow-poke play at last weekend’s Masters? He took so much time between shots that Aaron Rodgers changed his mind about where to play football next season another dozen times.

I swear, if Moses had been as slow as Cantlay, we’d still be waiting for the last three Commandments.

This from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: “I do love watching the Masters, but I wonder: Can we edit out the bird chirping that’s heard in the background?” Oh, yes, by all means let’s get those pesky birds to shut the hell up. Perhaps we can take a weed whacker to all the azaleas, too. Good grief.

Just wondering: What does Simmons shout at on those days when there are no clouds in the sky?

I note F1 racing plans to put the brakes on the hazardous practice of team crews climbing the pit wall to wave their cars home. Meanwhile, Toronto Maple Leafs fans are expected to start climbing the walls any day now.

Six teams in Major League Baseball have called for a changeup on beer sales and are now serving into the eighth inning. So we’ve gone from the Juiced Ball Era to the Juiced Fan Era.

I’ve been following and watching baseball since the mid-1950s (go Brooklyn Dodgers!), and I feel obliged to say Shohei Ohtani is the best ballplayer in my lifetime. Go ahead and argue Willie Mays if you like, but the Say Hey kid never did what Shotime is doing.

Department of Dumb: Cody Bellinger of the Chicago Cubs returned to his old haunt, Dodger Stadium in L.A. on Friday night, and the faithful at Chavez Ravine acknowledged their former outfielder/first sacker with a warm ovation. Bellinger stepped out of the batter’s box for no longer than it takes to say “Jackie Robinson,” then home plate umpire Jim Wolf promptly slapped him with a pitch clock violation while the applause continued. Hey, it’s great that the pitch clock has put some lickety-split into MLB games, but this was buffoonish Barney Fife giving Goober a ticket for helping an old lady walk across Main Street in Mayberry.

Some among the rabble wonder why the Winnipeg Blue Bombers continue to make friends while folks are abandoning the Winnipeg Jets. I think it’s quite simple: Sticker price. I mean, you can purchase an 11-game season ticket package to watch Adam Bighill and the Big Blue take another run at the Grey Cup for anywhere from $150 (youth) to $1,209, whereas it’ll set you back $2,554 to $8,002 to watch Logan Stanley lumber around the freeze with the Jets. Do the math.

I don’t know about you, but Mackenzie Zacharias’ retreat from elite curling to pursue “other passions” for at least a year caught me by surprise. Mackenzie, 23, is a rising star among Canada’s Pebble People and she’s already been to two Scotties Tournament of Hearts—one skipping her own Manitoba team and, two months ago, throwing second stones for Jennifer Jones. It’s never good to see our fine, young curlers walk away from the game, but here’s hoping she finds what she’s after.

So tell us, Brent Laing, how do you think you and your bride, the aforementioned J. Jones, will get on at the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship beginning next weekend in South Korea? “I’m old enough to remember what it was like to compete at the world championship and it used to be that Canada could go over and play pretty well and win,” Laing tells Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun. “That’s just not the case anymore. It has nothing to do with Canada being worse. It has everything to do with there being more teams at the top level. There are a handful of teams over there that I know if we play our best, we may still not win. That never used to be the case. If we went and did that 10 years ago, I’m pretty confident our best would beat everybody else’s best. That’s just not the case anymore.” In other words, spare Brent and Jennifer the cheap shots on social media if they come up empty in Korea.

Looking for some curling memorabilia? Well, check out the For the Love of Curling online auction that offers items from nick-nacks to apparel signed by some of our elite Pebble People. Bidding closes at 2 p.m. Eastern on April 23.

Toronto Argos quarterback Chad Kelly has been flapping his gums again, which means we should probably give a listen since Swag’s hot takes are entertaining, even if very self-indulgent (he’s quite fond of himself). Last November, you might recall, he appeared on Pardon My Take and informed the natterbugs that he’s better than “50 per cent” of starting QBs in the NFL. Now, he has an issue with the chump change the Boatmen are paying him. “Obviously, I was on a shit contract and still am,” he says. “I mean, it’s not a shit contract, but it’s all incentive-based. Whereas guys want guaranteed money, guys want base salary. You shouldn’t want to just hit the incentives, you want to make more.” Well, okay, he collected $91,000 last season, plus bonus money, and his haul for the upcoming Canadian Football League crusade will be somewhere between $87,000 and $239,000. That’s for seven months of work. And it’s “shit” pay? Geez, maybe the 36 fans of Rouge Football in the Republic of Tranna can fire up a GoFundMe page for the poor guy. That ought to fetch at least $3.95.

And, finally, out here in Victoria, we count flowers at this time of the year. Back in Good Ol’ Hometown, they count potholes—more than 22,300 filled to date in 2023. Just wondering, do city work crews play The Beatles’ Fixing A Hole as background music when they’re on the business end of a shovel?

Let’s talk about the NHL’s “holy” hockey players and bogus ballyhoo…hey, what about Wick?…wagering $222,000 to win $2,000 on Tiger losing…digging the long ball…a gay man is the world curling champion skip…calling old West Kildonan North Stars…and other things on my mind…

What are we to make of the growing Rainbow Resistance Movement in the National Hockey League?

Well, in the grand scheme of things, a hockey jersey seems like a piffling talking point when there are more than 60 countries on our planet where it’s a crime to be gay or transgender (punishable by death in 11 locales), and a mind-numbing 400-plus anti-LGBT(etc.) bills have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S.A. this year.

So, ya, petite pommes de terre.

Except Pride nights in the NHL have become a talking point because it shouldn’t be a talking point.

That is to say, I always hold out hope that those of us in the LGBT(etc.) community are past being told we don’t belong. We are, after all, 23 years into the 21st century and I wouldn’t expect a prominent business that trumpets ‘Hockey Is For Everyone’ to tell us we aren’t welcome.

Yet, when Ilya Samsonov refuses to put a Pride decal on the back of his goalie mask; when James Reimer, Eric and Marc Staal, Ivan Provorov, Ilya Lyubushkin, Andrei Kuzmenko and Denis Gurianov decline to don rainbow-themed apparel and/or stick tape for 15 minutes; when the New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks and Minnesota Wild keep their Pride sweaters in storage—that’s what many in the LGBT(etc.) collective hear. We aren’t welcome.

Some naysayers suggest that’s selective hearing rooted in our own insecurities, but I suggest those people have never been required to justify their very existence while looking for lodgings, service, employment, a marriage licence, the opportunity to adopt children, etc. You know, basic human rights.

So I posit that it’s more accurate to say what some in the LGBT(etc.) collective are feeling is the fallout from many lifetimes of indignities.

A number of years ago, for example, I was shopping in a funky clothing boutique, searching for a gift. An employee approached and, in a harsh tone loud enough for others in the shop to hear, barked at me: “We don’t want your kind in here!”

Since that day, I’ve been harassed, maligned, ostracized, assaulted and bullied based strictly on sexuality and/or gender identity. It hurt like hell. And most, if not all, the people I know in the LGBT(etc.) community have experienced similar affronts meant to make them feel like lesser-thans or disenfranchised.

Thus, as much as a small group of hockey players/teams declining to support a marginalized community under increasing attack is a trivial matter to some, it serves as a haunting echo to myself and others. It saddens me and exposes the NHL’s broad-stroke claim of inclusiveness as bogus ballyhoo.

So let’s talk about “Hockey Is For Everyone.”

If it’s women’s shinny, yes, it appears to be for everyone.

Elite female hockey has featured Black players, Indigenous players, Asian players, gay players, bisexual players and transgender players, and we see it in the faces in the stands. If aliens were to touch down and inhabit our blue orb tomorrow—and some of them could skate and shoot a puck like Marie-Philip Poulin—I’m sure there would be room for the extraterrestrials in Ponytail Puck.

If, on the other hand, it’s the NHL we’re talking about…well, gays are the extraterrestrials.

The NHL trotted out its Trademark Big Lie about “Hockey Is For Everyone” in February 2017, at which time there had never been an openly gay player. Ever. That box still hasn’t been checked off. Not even by someone who’s come out in retirement. Which is astoundingly illogical, since that takes in approximately 8,000 men and 106 years. Nary a gay man? Right. And there are no Catholics in Rome.

It is, however, one thing for elite gay male hockey players to remain closeted, but it’s another matter to tell the LGBT(etc.) community that there’s no room at the inn.

Two reasons have been advanced for this: Russia and Bible scripture.

We’re told there’s a fear, real or imagined, among Russian players that wearing Pride gear is in conflict with Vlad Putin’s anti-gay propaganda law, and the wrath of the dictator’s henchmen shall descend upon them or their families back home should they play along with Pride initiatives.

Well, I can’t speak to that fear because, thankfully, I don’t live in Russia, nor have I ever visited. I just know it to be an untrustworthy nation, a feeling that took root for me in the late 1950s/early 1960s when it was the Soviet Union and Nikita Khruschev was threatening to lob his nuclear weapons at us and blow us all the hell up. The Cuban Missile Crisis and air raid drills, those were the fears I knew, and I can’t say anything’s different today. I still don’t trust the comrades.

Religion, meanwhile, is a different head of lettuce. I have an acquaintance with the church.

I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic.

I had confirmation and received my first Holy Communion at age 7.

I spent time in the confessional, often feeling obliged to ‘fess up to sins I actually hadn’t committed.

(True story: I’d whisper through the screen window between myself and the parish priest to inform him that there was a black blotch on my soul because I had stolen a candy bar from the corner store, which was a lie. So I’d then confess to lying, which was the truth. My penance was usually five Hail Marys, and I always walked out of the confessional feeling cleansed and not at all bummed out about lying.)

I attended mass every Sunday and on the first Friday of every month, which was mandatory for students at my Catholic schools.

I was taught by nuns through Grade 8, always wary of their 12-inch, wooden knuckle-rappers (you probably called it a “ruler”), and time was devoted each day to Catechism, which is when us sprigs learned of the miracle man Jesus and his 12 hangers-on.

And, my oh my, such stories we were told: Raising the dead, stilling storms, walking on H2O, hocus pocus involving fish and bread, turning water into wine, selling out a dear friend with a kiss, healing the lame, the sick, the deaf and the blind with the touch of a hand, wandering the wilderness for 40 days and nights without so much as a snack. That stuff was better than anything on TV. It left me gobsmacked.

The nuns with the 12-inch, wooden knuckle-rappers would regale us with these, and other, biblical tales that seemed more fable than fact, and we were expected to accept them as the gospel truth, no matter how far they stretched the boundary of reason.

We were a captive audience, awash in naiveté and prepared to believe anything those nuns, or the parish priests, told us. If they informed us Jesus fed thousands with no more food than what we had in our school lunch boxes, then it was true. If they told us Catholics are the only people who qualify for entry into Heaven (they did) or that we’d literally burn in a place called Hell if we committed a mortal sin (they did), we bought it, lock, stock and Bible scripture.

Odd thing, though: My strength of recall (which, admittedly, has ebbed) fails to recapture a single moment (not one) when the nuns/priests of my youth gave us the Bible’s, or Jesus’, take on the (apparent) evils of homosexuality.

But, based on “Sacred Scripture,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that gay sex acts are “of grave depravity” and “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” The inclination toward gay tendencies, meanwhile, is “objectively disordered.” Gay people have a “condition.”

So if I read it correctly, gay sex is a sin while gay people have something akin to dandruff, which can be treated and remedied.

I suppose this is what the NHL players believe when they tell us they love LGBT(etc.) people yet their religion doesn’t allow them to use a rainbow-themed jersey for a welcome mat.

I hesitate to question the depth and sincerity of anyone’s faith, but those outriders leave themselves open to accusations of hypocrisy. They cannot support the LGBT(etc.) community because gay sex is a sin? Fine. Yet how many among them have lusted after a woman who isn’t their wife?

The Sermon on the Mount Carl Bloch, 1890

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus told the people: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

It’s the seventh commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery. It’s considered such a grave sin that it’s mentioned 52 times in the Bible.

I know male hockey players. Trust me, they lust after women, and many of them act on that lust. According to Jesus, that’s a sin long before clothes begin to come off. Yet I’ve never read or heard of a player, or talked to a player, who denied or turned away a teammate based on adulterous behavior.

In other words, the sinners condemn the sinners (gay people) but not the sinners (adulterers).

Sounds positively unChristian to me.

So, again, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Faith can be a beautiful thing. To this day, I carry a rosary with me, I wear a medallion of the Virgin Mary and a cross of Jesus, I believe in angels and anticipate the day they come and carry me to the other side of the river.

But I don’t pick and choose scripture to serve an agenda that disenfranchises a beleaguered and oppressed people. It appears to me that’s what the “holy” hockey players are doing.

Matthew 23:28: “Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

Amen.

Whenever an LGBT(etc.) issue in sports becomes a topic du jour, I look and listen for gay voices in mainstream jock journalism to bring perspective and personal insight to the discussion. Alas, other than Devin Heroux of the CBC, those voices don’t exist. Maybe there are LGBT(etc.) news snoops on Our Frozen Tundra that I don’t know about. If so, I wish they’d join the conversation. Allies are wonderful, but I’d rather read or listen to someone with skin in the game.

Interesting read on Ponytail Puck from Hailey Salvian in The Athletic. She took the pulse of women’s hockey by asking 30-plus elite players from Canada and the U.S. their views on the game, and she included this question: What is the biggest issue facing women’s hockey? One answer: “We need to get back to having a league with a real season where we can play hockey.” I don’t know if that’s arrogance or ignorance from a member of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, but it’s definitely stupid. There is a league with a real season—the Premier Hockey Federation, which crowned the Toronto Six champion on March 26.

So who’s the best female player of all time? Gotta be Hayley Wickenheiser, no? No. According to Hailey’s poll, Marie-Philip Poulin is numero uno (62% of the vote), with Hilary Knight (21%) and Cammi Granato (9%) next in line. Jayna Hefford, Cassie Campbell-Pascall also received votes. And the great Wickenheiser? Nary a vote. Go figure.

No surprise that the TV talking heads continue to fawn over Tiger Woods, as if he’s still leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Apparently, his making the Masters cut is undeniable evidence that his Superman cape is not torn and tattered, and it doesn’t matter that 63-year-old Fred Couples qualified to play the weekend with a better score. Woods finished Saturday last on the leaderboard, but the squawk boxes couldn’t make it all about him today because he withdrew.

That was some kind of scary stuff during second-round play at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National on Friday, when stormy weather and high winds brought down three giant trees. Fortunately, the area was clear of patrons, thus no injuries.

Actual BBC headline: “Trees fall at stormy Augusta.”

How TV announcers described it: “Boy, that was quick-thinking and fast-acting by Tiger Woods, who prevented a disaster by moving patrons away from 17 tee and out of harm’s way just seconds before those giant trees toppled to the ground. No one saw it coming except Tiger, and we can only imagine how many lives the great man saved today.”

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,147: Would you wager $222,000 on Woods to not win the Masters? Well, one bettor did that very thing at Circa Sportsbook before the boys teed off on Thursday at Augusta National. The payout when Tiger comes up short? Just $2,000. Hmmm. Sounds like my last grocery bill.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,148: According to researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, there’s been a jump in dingers in Major League Baseball due to our shifting climate. In a paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, scientist and co-author Justin Mankin writes, “Global warming is juicing home runs.” Apparently, more than 500 HRs since 2010 are the fallout from “historical warming.” Hmmm. And here I thought it was due to syringes and butt cheeks.

To arrive at their conclusion, the Dartmouth climate nerds pored over data from 100,000 games and 200,000-plus balls swatted into play, as well as weather, facilities and other pertinent points. I don’t know if chicks still “dig the long ball,” but Greta Thunberg disapproves.

What’s that Yogi Berra line about attendance? Oh ya: “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.” And no one in Oakland is stopping the rabble from attending Athletics games. The head count at Oakland-Alameda County Colisum last Tuesday was 3,407. Twenty-four hours later, 4,930 took in the ol’ ballgame. Imagine that, less than 5,000 fans. Or, as the Arizona Coyotes call it, “a near sellout.”

Real nice read from young Taylor Allen in the Drab Slab last week. He tells us all about local volleyball player Averie Allard, who’s now playing pro in Italy. Good stuff.

Our women won a bronze medal at the world curling championship and our men collected silver Sunday in Bytown. So I ask: Do the alarmists still demand a major overhaul of our entire system, or have the flaws in the program been greatly exaggerated?

Chalk one up for the LGBT(etc.) community: Skip Bruce Mouat of the freshly minted world champion Scottish team, which whupped Brad Gushue and the boys 9-3 in the men’s final Sunday afternoon, is an openly gay man.

And, finally, the Stars are aligning for a big reunion bash on April 15 at Shooters Golf Course in Good Ol’ Hometown. I’m talking about my old outfit, the West Kildonan North Stars, and organizer Gord Homenick is looking for more former players to join in the fun. If you wore the colors, coached or worked with Westkay in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, get in touch with Gord, at ghomenick@shaw.ca or 204-782-1884.

Let’s talk about sports writers refusing to stick to writing sports…and a little of this and a little of that…

Once again, we are hearing a loud chorus of “stick to sports” from the peanut gallery.

Oh, yes, there are many among the rabble who believe it’s extremely ill mannered for jock journos to opine on anything other than goals, slam dunks, double faults, birdie putts, pitch counts, pitch clocks, and if Aaron Rodgers will ever get a new zip code.

Thus, they yelp for the stifling of sports scribes, in the same way and at the same volume Archie Bunker would try to stifle Edith.

A prime example would be the Twitter missive my good friend Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun received the other day: “STFU. Sports journalists commenting on social or political issues are the worst. No clue. Take your f—— agenda and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

How charming.

It’s a classic “stick to sports” rant, one of the many I’ve read on social media since Ivan Provorov started the Rainbow Resistance Movement in the National Hockey League.

I doubt the Philly Flyers defender meant to become a Pied Piper the January night he pooped on his team’s Pride-theme party by declining to wear a rainbow jersey, but it’s become follow the leader—James Reimer, Eric and Marc Staal, Ilya Lyubushkin and Andrei Kuzmenko have also opted out of a gesture meant to welcome the LGBT(etc.) community to the NHL.

Not surprisingly, numerous jock journos have delivered a stern tsk-tsking to the Defiant Six (and counting), because a great many of the scribes/talking heads lean left, politically and socially.

As an e.g., there was a collective gasp and they choked on their Cheerios when childhood heroes Bobby Orr and Jack Nicklaus pumped Donald Trump’s tires in advance of the last U.S. presidential election. They saw it as the greatest betrayal since Judas puckered up and planted a smooch on Jesus’ cheek, or at least since Roger Clemens took his syringes from Fenway Park to the Bronx.

The scribes and talking heads were told then, as they are today, to shut the hell up and stick to sports.

Except that isn’t how it works.

Sports is not a stand-alone cosmos. It’s been intersecting with politics and social issues since David forced Goliath to tap out.

Roll back to the early 20th century, when Jack Johnson and James J. Jeffries threw down for the world heavyweight boxing championship. Their tiff in Reno, Nev., on July 4, 1910, wasn’t billed the ‘Fight of the Century’ because it featured two great gladiators. It was about race and white supremacy, and that’s how the boys at ringside wrote it.

Here’s Max Baethahar of The Daily Gate City the day before the bout: “On Monday we are to see the consummation, the battle of the century, the battle of giants, a contest for physical supremacy between the white and black races.”

After Johnson kayoed Jeffries in the 15th round, race riots promptly broke out across America. At least 17 Black people and two whites were killed. That, not boxing, was the talking point.

When Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, the dean of America’s Black sports scribes, Fay Young, delivered this message to his Chicago Defender readers: “Robinson will not be on trial as much as the Negro fan. The Negro fan has been the ‘hot potato’ dodged by managers who would have taken a chance by signing a Negro player. The unruly Negro has and can set us back 25 years…The Negro fan can help Robinson. The Negro fan can ruin him. Robinson is an American citizen, an ex-army officer, a ball player and a gentleman. Let us try and meet his qualifications as a gentleman. If you Chicagoans have got to raise a lot of hell, do a lot of cussing, go somewhere else.”

Was Young supposed to write about Robinson’s batting average when Blacks across America were celebrating one of their own who went where none had gone before?

Think Cassius Clay, who joined the Nation of Islam and became the draft dodging Muhammad Ali.

New York columnist Red Smith likened him to “those unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the (Vietnam) war,” while Dick Young of the New York Daily News assailed the brash heavyweight titleholder for his religious beliefs, writing, “He is a braggart, but that’s no crime or there wouldn’t be enough jails. The shame of it is that Clay will be used by the Black Muslims, to shill for their brand of hate-mongering. I do not believe Cassius Clay or anyone who thinks like him is good for my country. He is for separatism. He is for black man against white man.”

They were writing about a political and social issue of the 1960s, not jabs and knockout punches.

Similarly, German Chancellor Adolph Hitler and his white supremist Aryan Nation received as much ink in the leadup to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as Jesse Owens. During the opening ceremony, some non-German athletes acknowledged Hitler with a Nazi salute, and swatstika symbols were in abundance. When Pete Rose lost his baseball career to gambling, the scribes scribbled about athletes and vices. When washout quarterback Johnny Manziel beat up a woman, they wrote about the evils of domestic violence. When John Carlos and Tommie Smith protested the oppression of Black people in the United States—and when Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest social injustice—that’s what the jock journos focused on. When Donald Trump called any NFL player who took a knee during the Star Spangled Banner “a son of a bitch” and advocated for his firing, social unrest was the topic du jour.

Does anyone truly believe the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union was strictly about hockey bragging rights? It was Us vs. Them. Our way of life (democracy) vs. their way of life (communism).

“It was f—— war,” is how Phil Esposito described it.

After Paul Henderson delivered the decisive score 34 seconds from time in Game 8, this is what he told Dick Beddoes of the Globe and Mail: “When I scored that final goal, I finally realized what democracy was all about.”

Today, the talking points are equal pay, equal rights, misogyny, sexual orientation, racist team nicknames/logos, Pride nights, gender identity, etc., and opinionists in the toy department deal with it. They must deal with it. Otherwise, they aren’t doing their jobs.

Last June the New York Times instructed its subsidiary The Athletic to keep out of politics: No expression of political leanings on social media or any platform. That’s just stupid. Can you imagine where we’d be if TSN told Rick Westhead that both Hockey Canada and Soccer Canada were off-limits to his deep dives?

Corey Masisak of The Athletic asked the aforementioned Reimer this question after the San Jose Sharks goaltender declined to wear a Pride jersey: “What are your thoughts on transgender people?” Reimer’s response: “My beliefs in Christ, what I think the Bible says on that stuff.” What he “thinks” The Bible says? He doesn’t know? Then what’s his beef with wearing a Pride jersey?

Not sure what Ron MacLean was going on about in a gum-flapper with Brian Burke last week on Hockey Night in Canada, but he mentioned something about Aristotle and the “human approach to ethics.” He then asked the Pittsburgh Penguins president how we find a “compromise or a middle ground.” Compromise? Middle ground? On ethics? Sheesh.

Few athletes will keep me up long past my bedtime. Caitlin Clark is one of them. My eyeballs were glued to the flatscreen on Friday night as she put the final touches to a 41-point performance in Iowa Hawkeyes 77-73 win over the previously unbeaten South Carolina Gamecocks. I’m not a huge hoops fan. I think the last game I watched from tipoff to final buzzer featured the Los Angeles Lakers and Jerry West when he was a player not an NBA logo, and I haven’t seen a minute of the NCAA men’s tournament. But I’ve taken a gander at Caitlin and the women’s March Madness twice now, and I like what I see. That’s riveting theatre.

An example of anti-female bias in sports media: On TSN’s overnight SportsCentre last Sunday/Monday, there was no mention of the Toronto Six winning the Premier Hockey Federation title until the show was into its 40th minute. There was just one 20-second highlight, the winning goal in a 4-3 OT game. Over at Sportsnet, they couldn’t find room for the Six until the 53rd minute. On the print side, the Toronto Sun completely ignored the Six’ success vs. Minnesota Whitecaps. That’s what they think of the world’s sole professional women’s hockey league.

Hey, it’s National Hockey Card Day on April 15. Just in time for spring, when the kids are hauling their bikes out of storage and looking for something to stick between the spokes to get that clackety-clack-clack-clack sound.

I note the name Wally Buono will be added to the B.C. Leos Wall of Fame in August. You mean he wasn’t there already?

Now that Jennifer Jones has added a Canadian mixed doubles title to her resume, does any doubt remain that she’s the finest curler ever produced on Manitoba pebble?

So, many times Manitoba champion Mike McEwen is going green, which is to say he’ll now be skipping a team on the Flattest of Lands, with Colton Flasch, Kevin and Dan Marsh as his accomplices. The boys will be curling out of Saskatoon, and I think one thing is certain: Mike won’t look any better in green than Matt Dunstone or Chelsea Carey did. Kermit the Frog looks good in green, Manitoba curlers don’t.

And, finally, some interesting stuff in weekly newsletters from Drab Slab sports editor Jason Bell and sports columnist Mad Mike McIntyre.

Let’s start with Bell. Writing about the highs and lows of getting a scoop and being scooped, he says: “There also comes a time when you tip your hat to the competition. And I’ll do that publicly to Winnipeg Sun columnist Paul Friesen, who wrote this week about the sexism, racism and hate that Gimli curler Kerri Einarson and her team has been subjected to online—during and after their latest effort at the world women’s championship. It’s ugly. And it’s ever so sad.”

Imagine that, acknowledging you got your butt booted and tipping your chapeau to a foe. Nice touch.

Meantime, I found Mad Mike’s newsletter interesting because he delivered his personal rankings of favorite NHL cities and barns.

Cities:
1. Winnipeg. Cheesy, sure, but there really is no place like home. Yes, even when winter refuses to pack its bags as we approach April.
2. New York City. Of course, this covers three teams in the Rangers, Islanders and Devils. The Big Apple simply can’t be beat.
3. Calgary. Some close friends and family members live there, so a visit is always a highlight.
4. Minneapolis/St. Paul. Same as above.
5. Vegas. Fairly self-explanatory, I would think!

Barns:
1. Madison Square Garden (New York). The World’s Most Famous Arena is truly incredible.
2. T-Mobile Arena (Las Vegas). The atmosphere is tough to beat.
3. Bell Centre (Montreal). A shrine to hockey history.
4. United Centre (Chicago). The best anthem in sports, hands down.
5. Scotiabank Arena (Toronto). The spotlight is bright. The stage is big.

That got me to thinking about my own time on the NHL beat for various rags, most notably the Winnipeg Tribune and Sun.

Cities:
1. Quebec City. Such character. Such beauty. Such lovely people.
2. Montreal. I love the joie de vivre of the French.
3. Los Angeles. Never mind the earthquakes and smog. I got to ride an elevator with Hawkeye Pierce of M*A*S*H once, and he was the spitting image of Alan Alda.

Barns:
1. Montreal Forum. The ultimate shinny shrine and best hot dogs in the world.
2. Maple Leaf Gardens. A bit of a dump, but so much history.
3. Chicago Stadium. Loudest room I’ve ever been in.

Let’s talk about the Gimli Gals and their shiny bronze medal…Fanatics and Lady Gaga’s meat dress…a standing O for Joe in the House…scripture and shinny…Jimmy G and a lifetime of freebes at the Chicken Ranch…Journalism 101…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Kerri Einarson…

Well, at least you’re coming home from Sweden with a trinket, even if bronze isn’t the color of choice.

We all know that you, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Briane Harris would have preferred to leave Tre Kroner country with gold knickknacks, but the rest of the planet’s female Pebble People long ago stopped cringing at the mere sight of the Maple Leaf and the World Women’s Curling Championship is a tough gig.

Problem is, many among the rabble still don’t get it. They figure any Canadian curler worth her weight in Scotties tissues ought to be able to tumble out of bed, have a quick cup o’ java and a muffin, then give both Silvana Tirinzoni and Anna Hasselborg a wedgie later in the day. No muss, no fuss. Just collect a gold medal and disappear until the frost is on the pumpkin again.

Except we both know that isn’t how it works.

Briane Harris, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Kerri Einarson.

You and your gal pals from Gimli have had three kicks at the can, Kerri, and your plunder includes two bronze medals, the first earned a year ago and the second this very day with your 8-5 victory over Sweden’s Hasselborg.

I say that’s admirable, but others don’t see it that way. All they see is failure.

I don’t know how much time you spend on social media, Kerri, but you might want to steer clear of it for a few days because the carping began before today’s joust with Hasselborg and, predictably, much of it is negative with gusts up to mean-spirited and just plain idiotic.

Some have called your team “a joke” and “not even in the top five in Canada” and “a curling flop.” Others are calling you and your gal pals “club curlers” and suggest you and Val take up new hobbies. (Like I said, idiotic.) Blah, blah, blah and yadda, yadda, yadda.

Hey, critique is okay, Kerri, but I’ll never understand why the rabble has to get stupid about it.

Personally, I’m not in the habit of trashing athletes who wear the Maple Leaf on the global stage, not unless they go all Ben Johnson and heap disgrace on Our Frozen Tundra.

I also have a soft spot for curlers, Kerri. I know they’re the finest collection of people in jockdom— every-day earthlings with every-day jobs and a special skill—and anyone who’s spent time with them will say the same thing. Pebble People rock!

So try not to let the buzz-kills dim the day, Kerri.

Take comfort in the knowledge that you, Val, Shannon and Briane are the finest outfit in Canada and third best on the planet. Enjoy your summer, then come back for more once the frost is back on the pumpkin.

D’oh Boy commentary of the week comes from old friend and former Postmedia Edmonton columnist Terry Jones. After the Einarson team finished the round-robin portion of the tournament at 7-5, he took to Twitter to inform us that the Gimli gals “definitely don’t deserve to be involved” in the playoffs. What a remarkably dense remark, especially for a Canadian Curling Hall of Fame scribe. Since the global championship shifted to a six-teams playoff format, outfits with seven wins (or worse) have earned a spot in the playoff round every year.
2023: 7-5 (.583)
2022: 7-5 (.583)
2021: 7-6 (.538)
2019: 6-6 (.500)
2018: 6-6 (.500)
I’m not sure what part of those numbers Jonesey doesn’t understand, but I suppose we can cut him some slack since he’s an Alberta boy who’s been brainwashed into believing the inturn and outturn were first introduced on a frozen pond at the intersection of Jasper and 105th in downtown E-Town.

The National Hockey League has chosen Fanatics to replace adidas as its official jersey-maker beginning in 2024-25, and scores of noses are out of joint. Oh, yes, many among the rabble are outraged! Why, there hasn’t been this big a fashion foofaraw since Lady Gaga showed up at the 2010 MTV Music Video Awards adorned in a raw meat dress, a slab of raw meat on her head, and her feet wrapped in raw meat shoes that would have fit a prize hereford. And I don’t get it. I mean, do the seamstresses at Fanatics sew with their knees and elbows? Frankly, I’ve never understood why anyone would fork out $300 for a garment with another person’s name on it, so don’t ask me to explain fan outrage over laundry.

Lady Gaga’s meat gown, by the way, was approximately 50 pounds of Argentinian beef bought at a Los Angeles butcher shop. At, say, $20 a pound, that’s a $1,000 gown, far cheaper than anything she would have found on the Prada rack.

U.S. President Joe Biden received a standing O in the House of Commons the other day, simply for saying he likes Canada’s NHL teams but not the Toronto Maple Leafs. Can we get Joe’s name on the ballot for our next federal election?

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Ivan Provorov, James Reimer and the Staal boys, Eric and Marc, refused to wear a rainbow-themed jersey on team Pride Nights because it runs contrary to their religious beliefs. Yet they gladly work for, and accept paycheques from, owners who openly support the LGBT(etc.) community. In other words, they won’t do the bidding for an LGBT(etc.) ally, but the LGBT(etc.) ally’s money is good. Interesting how that works.

Eric Staal insists he has never—ever, ever, ever—worn a Pride warmup jersey, except there’s photographic and video evidence of him adorned in a Pride warmup jersey while with the Montreal Canadiens in 2021. He must have misplaced his Bible before that game.

Interesting results from the annual NHL Players Association poll of 626 members, but, given the climate of the day, I would have asked them questions about how deep their religious beliefs run. To wit:
a) If a group of fans with a Pride flag asked you to pose with them for a pic, would you oblige or tell them your Bible won’t allow it and stomp off?
b) If a member of your family came out as gay, would you openly support them, or would you disavow her or him?
c) Would you play on a team owned by a gay man or woman?
d) Do you “remember the seventh day and keep it holy” by not playing or practicing?
e) Would you accept a gay teammate and support him in every way?

Squawk boxes on the Left Flank of the Land are making a hard pitch for Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks to win the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top rearguard. As if. There’s as much chance of that happening as O.J. leading the FBI to the real killers sometime today, so they can save their oxygen. Hey, Hughes is a fine, young player, but his misguided boosters seem to think the determining factor in Norris balloting should be his +18 rating, not Erik Karlsson’s 22 goals and 90 points.

Babe alert! Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo might have received an offer he can’t refuse—nookie for life. Yup, good-looking Jimmy G has caught the attention of workers at Nevada’s famed brothel, the Chicken Ranch, and they’re offering free samples. “I almost fainted when I heard Jimmy signed with the Raiders,” said Caitlin Bell. “He deserves free sex just for joining our team. But he gets free sex for life from us just because he’s such a legit babe!” Puts a new twist on the term “quarterback option,” don’t you think?.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,146: Damien Cox of the Toronto Star figures the final dash to the Stanley Cup tournament is a giant yawn. “Another season in which the final 15 games of the NHL campaign are mostly just waiting for the playoffs, and seeing which team will have the best odds in the draft lottery. Playoff races? A thing of the past,” he tweets. Hmmm. Cox might want to have a word with the rabble in Pittsburgh, Sunshine, Fla., Calgary, Winnipeg, Nashville and on Long Island about “a thing of the past,” because last time I looked, which was this morning, their hockey heroes are still squabbling over final seeding in the present.

Hell freezes over, Vol. 1,288: Toronto Six were on the sports front of both the Toronto Star and Toronto Sun last Tuesday.

An ‘F’ in Journalism 101: How do you write an entire column on the Six and not mention the Premier Hockey Federation? Well, we’ll have to ask Steve Simmons about that. The Postmedia Tranna scribe, you see, waxed on in an ode to the Six and women’s hockey, yet he failed to mention what league they play in, nor did he mention the PHF’s competition, the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, when commenting on the overall state of Ponytail Puck. The best he could do was inform readers that there’s “one league and a partial second league of better talent.” The column wouldn’t have passed the sniff test in Journalism 101, but facts are a casualty when a guy parachutes in to scribble a know-it-all, one-off piece.

Simmons estimated the head count for the Six-Connecticut Whale semifinal skirmish at Mattamy Athletic Centre in the Republic of Tranna at 600, and suggested “the game deserved more. The players deserved better. This was a game in need of a full house, in need of atmosphere that came as much from the stands as it did from those on the ice.” Pot meet kettle. Simmons and the Toronto Sun have ignored the Six for almost the entirety of their three-year existence. Don’t the women “deserve” better press coverage?

The Isobel Cup, by the way, will be awarded this very night at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Ariz., where the Six and Minnesota Whitecaps squabble over PHF bragging rights.

Good grief, the Winnipeg Sun had a two-page sports section on Wednesday, with a grand total of three articles. As an alumnus who was there when the good times rolled, that’s painful to see.

And, finally, here’s what head coach Deion Sanders told his Colorado Buffaloes before they bolted for spring break: “Fellas, be careful on your break. Be careful on your comings and goings. Everyone ain’t for you, everyone ain’t with you, everybody don’t love you, everybody don’t appreciate you, everybody don’t want you to be that guy you plan on being, and your life is of value. Your life is of essence. You are somebody. You are important. So, be careful please. We don’t want to put on all black and go to a funeral. We want to put on all black and go out there and whoop somebody.” Kind of sad that Prime Time felt obliged to deliver that sermon.

Let’s talk about nothing but glory in Good Ol’ Hometown for Zach Collaros…what Cody Fajardo did on his ‘vet’ day…the Winnipeg Jets, the Toronto Maple Elites and the skunk shirts…Blab Costas and the baseball playoffs…TorStar scribes and cement heads…Ponytail Puck…bikinis…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Zach Collaros.

I’m not sure how you’d describe the past few years of your football life, but it’s surely been an interesting journey.

I mean, you were rejected on the Flattest of Lands and ushered out of the Republic of Tranna in the space of five months, but just look at you today: Grey Cup champion starting quarterback, x2; Most Outstanding Player Award in Rouge Football, soon-to-be x2; freshly minted three-year contract, at $600,000 per, tucked in your ditty bag.

Add to that your bride, Nicole, and two lovely daughters, Sierra and Capri, and, as the cool folk say, you’ve got it made in the shade, Zach. Talk about a wonderful life. Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey ain’t got nothing on you.

And, in a twisted sort of way, I suppose you can thank Simoni Lawrence for your favorable turn of fortune.

I don’t have to remind you that Simoni is the ruffian who knocked you loopy on the third play of the 2019 Canadian Foootball League season, Zach, setting in motion a sequence of events that brought you to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, with whom you’ve done nothing but put up Ws and earn the admiration of all who worship at the blue-and-gold shrine.

Yes, it’s been all glory in Good Ol’ Hometown, Zach, so much so that people are mentioning you and Kenny Ploen in the same breath, and the hosannas don’t get higher than a comparison to ol’ No. 11. Not if you’re talking football in Winnipeg, they don’t. K.P. was, is and always shall be football deity whenever and wherever devotees of the big, gold-and-white ‘W’ gather, and you’re making a compelling argument that you’ll soon be sitting beside him on legends row.

If only Jeremy O’Day, Pinball Clemons and John Murphy had known what was to become of you, Zach. So much would have changed.

I’m guessing you remember those guys, Zach. But, in case things are a bit blurry, let’s refresh:

O’Day had you on the Flattest of Lands in 2019 and, once you’d been rendered loopy by Lawrence, the Saskatchewan GM arrived at a dire diagnosis: You were done like a overcooked cob of corn at the Biggar county fair. Thus, he reasoned that upstart Cody Fajardo was a better bet than an oft-concussed QB, and he peddled your butt to the Republic of Tranna for a fourth-round shoutout (receiver Kian Schaffer-Baker) in the 2020 auction of CFL wannabes. It was “the best thing to do for the organization,” he explained.

Pinball Clemons and John Murphy, meanwhile, made the same (mis)diagnosis and figured the Toronto Argos were in better hands with Mcleod Bethel-Thompson and James Franklin. Thus, they dialed up Kyle Walters’ number on Oct. 9, 2019, and made the Bombers GM an offer he refused to refuse: It was you, Zach, and a future draft pick (kicker Marc Liegghio) in barter for two wannabes (O-linemen Theren Churchill, Dylan Giffen). Murphy, VP of player personnel with the Boatmen at the time, explained: “That was too much to pass up on.”

Larry, Curly and Moe…meet Jeremy, Pinball and Murph.

The Canadian Mafia: GM Kyle Walters, CEO Wade Miller, head coach Mike O’Shea.

Actually, Zach, they weren’t as dopey as the Three Stooges, because we have to remember you had a whack of cobwebs up in the attic at the time and all the medical experts, including those without medical degrees in the stands and on press row, had written you off. How were they to know Walters, Mike O’Shea and Wade Miller—the Bombers’ Canadian Mafia—had the magical healing powers of water at Lourdes?

It helps, of course, that they’ve blessed you with an O-line that provides better protection than the guys who keep the wackos away from Joe Biden, but I think we all know it’s mostly down to you, Zach.

The Argos-Bombers deal rates as one of Rouge Football’s all-time fleece jobs, and it might rank as the mother of all all-timers if you and the large lads in blue-and-gold livery conspire to bring home the Grey Grail for a third successive crusade.

So it’s grand to know you’ll be sticking around until 2025, Zach, and I don’t think anyone among the rabble gives a rat’s patootie that you, Nicole and the kiddies vamoose and spend your off-seasons in Aurora, Ont. Hey, I get it. I know all about Winnipeg winters. They’re like a stray dog with a bad attitude: Avoid whenever possible.

For now, though, Aurora can wait, Zach. You’ve got two more football games to win, and I’m guessing you won’t mind if your escape is delayed a day or two due to another championship parade.

Yes, sir, it’s a wonderful life, Zach.

So let me see if I’ve got this right: In a survival skirmish Saturday night, Saskatchewan Flatlanders head coach Craig Dickenson told the aforementioned Cody Fajardo to grab pine and, instead, pinned his club’s playoff aspirations on a QB, Mason Fine, who’d never started a game in the CFL and had flung the football a grand total of 42 times in his three-downs career. Ya, that makes sense. No surprise that Fine got the Flatlanders into the house just once. End result: Calgary Stampeders 32, Flatlanders 21. So Saskatchewan joins the ranks of the no-hopers, with their post-season quest expired, and Dickenson should be grateful he’s under contract for another year.

What’s up with Dickenson giving Fajardo a “vet” day off last week? What the hell is a “vet” day? Did Cody need to take the family pet in for shots and a deworming? Or is it something akin to “load management?” My take: It’s a load of what comes out of the south end of a bull. I don’t want to hear about “vet” day unless it’s Nov. 11.

Somebody at TSN needs to tell gab guy Milt Stegall that the Toronto Argos are not—repeat, not!— “Eastern conference champions” two years in a row. The Boatmen didn’t win the East Division title a year ago, and they haven’t won it this time around. They’ve locked down first place and a bye into the East Division final at BMO Field in the Republic of Tranna on Nov. 13. That’s when the East Division “champions” will be determined. Do better, Milt.

After Toronto Maple Leafs bench puppeteer Sheldon Keefe called out his “elite” workers for being notably unelite in a 4-2 misstep vs. the Sad Sack Arizona Coyotes last week, one of the elitists, Mitch Marner, insisted no players’ noses were out of joint because of the coach’s tsk-tsking. “We’re grown men,” he said. If it’s all the same to Mitch, I’ll reserve judgment on that until I see evidence that he’s old enough to shave.

Got a giggle out of dispatches from Saturday night’s skirmish between the Tranna Maple Elites and Winnipeg Jets at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie.

In the Drab Slab, the main headline blared, “BAD BLOOD AND BAD CALLS…Leafs escape Jetsville with 2 points and the zebras’ blessings.” Beat guy Mad Mike McIntyre told us Toronto’s 4-1 victory was “draped in controversy” and refs Graham Skilliter and Corey Syvret “completely lost the plot.” The skunk shirts were also “cowardly.” (But, hey, he doesn’t want to be viewed as a homer.) He described Josh Morrissey’s collision with Nick Robertson of the Leafs as “what looked to be a perfectly-timed hit,” while over at the Winnipeg Sun Scott Billeck saw it as “a clean hit.”

Meantime, there were no screaming headlines about shoddy officiating in either the Toronto Star or Toronto Sun, apparently because news snoops were watching a different game. Mark Zwolinski of the Star called the Winnipeg blueliner’s broadside of Robertson a “predatory hit” and Sun scribe Terry Koshan saw it as “a perceived” illegal blow.

Hmmm. If you were wearing Jets goggles, it was “clean” and “perfectly-timed,” but if you had on a pair of Leafs goggles, it was “predatory” and “perceived” as dirty. Go figure.

It’s a “happening” any time the Elites grace the freeze in Good Ol’ Hometown, and it’s especially exciting on a Saturday night, because those fancy schmancy Hockey Night in Canada towels are up for grabs. I just wonder what the players do with them. Take ’em home? Hang ’em on the towel rack in the biffy? Display ’em on a man cave wall? Wrap ’em up and gift them as Christmas stocking stuffers? Give ’em to the dog for a chew toy? Inquiring minds want to know.

Fashion note: Those Winnipeg Jets reverse retro uniforms look like some kid was a few crayons short of a full box. I mean, my favorite color is blue, but I like it most when it’s blended with other hues of the rainbow. You know, like red. But I guess adidas thinks a jersey that looks like it’s been through the wash/rinse cycle about 1,000 times too often is a thing.

The heritage unis the home side wore Saturday night vs. the Tranna Elites are still the best, and always will be.

Is it safe to watch the Major League Baseball playoffs again, or is Bob Costas still yammering about everything but rounders? Seriously, I turned on my flatscreen to observe a New York Yankees-Cleveland Guardians game last week and a Costas filibuster broke out.

I don’t think there’s a squawk box in sports who loves the sound of his own voice more than this guy. He doesn’t call the game, he lectures in an arrogant “I’m the legendary Bob Costas and I know more important people than you” tone, at the same time taking more detours than a lost dog.

His starting point might be baseball, but he’s apt to wander off to the Civil War to 9/11 to JFK to the shootout at the OK Corral to Grantland Rice and the day the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame rode, before returning to the matter at hand and informing us that Aaron Judge had been scuffling at the plate: “I know Aaron has lost his groove, but I also know he likes his breakfast eggs sunny side up, and, coincidentally, so did General George Smith Patton Jr., who, by the way, was something of a student of fencing during his time at West Point, and Old Blood and Guts also competed in the modern pentathlon at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Sweden, where he became the only non-Swede to finish in the top five. He later became Master of the Sword…and there’s goes Aaron Judge, down on strikes again. But back to General Patton, did you know…blah, blah, blah.”

Basically, he’s under the misguided notion that a ball game ought to be a (bad) Ken Burns documentary, and he believes he’s doing our ears a favor with his non-stop natter. Well, I’m sorry, but my ears begin to bleed at the first sound of his ego.

What’s the worst fear while listening to Bob Costas broadcast a baseball game? Extra innings.

The New York Post reports that Charles Barkley has agreed to keep filling TNT air with his basketball bon mots, and the arrangement is expected to easily top the $100 million mark. Hmmm. If paid at a penny per word, Bob Costas would be a millionaire by the seventh-inning stretch.

My main issue with the current Major League Baseball playoffs is this: I don’t hear the sound of garbage cans clanking, so I can’t figure out how the Houston Astros are cheating.

Good grief, Nick Kypreos has joined Dave Poulin as a contributing columnist for the Toronto Star, leaving me to wonder when he’ll use his new platform to promote goon tactics in the NHL. I mean, if we learned anything about Kypreos during his lengthy run with Sportsnet, it’s that he’s a horse-and-buggy thinker who truly believes you have to beat ’em in the alley before you can beat ’em on the ice. He was a cement head when he played, and he’s still a cement head. If it’s all the same to the deep-thinkers at the Star, I prefer to remember a time when their sports pages featured scribes like Jim Proudfoot and Milt Dunnell and Frank Orr, not broken-down jocks.

Speaking of the Star, the paper’s public editor, Donovan Vincent, has noted his sports section seldom covers female athletes and their teams. Well duh. What was his first clue? Turns out it was a missive from a female reader that alerted Vincent to the issue, and he ought to be embarrassed. I mean, this is nothing new, and Vincent long ago should have noticed the lack of words and scarcity of photographic evidence devoted to the distaff side of the playground. Not to mention the scads of studies that confirm mainstream print and electronic media ignore the games girls/women play. Now that he’s finally pulled his head out of the sand, perhaps other newspaper decision-makers across our Frozen Tundra will do the same and stop treating the females like second-hand Roses.

Hey, check it out. The Drab Slab delivered a significant takeout on Ponytail Puck the other day. Mike Sawatzky took a look at the Toronto Six, now in final prep for the Premier Hockey Federation’s eighth season, and he reminds us that one of our own, Sami Jo Small, is at the top of the food change with the Six. The roster also features three Manitoba-breds. Good stuff.

Did you know, and do you care, that the other half of the Ponytail Puck equation, the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, staged a set of its glorified scrimmages last weekend in Montreal? Well, if you went looking for game info on the PWHPA website, you won’t have a clue, because they apparently like to keep details of their on-ice activity hush-hush. Not a word about the four-team frolic featuring Team Sonnet, Team Scotiabank, Team adidas and Team Harvey’s. So, if they don’t care to fill you in, why should you care?

The PWHPA has been in existence since May 2019, after rising from the ashes of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, and I’m still trying to figure out what they’re trying to prove, except that they’re the most stubborn group of women ever assembled.

Dugie and GG Mary Simon
Photo: MCpl Anis Assari, Rideau Hall

A size XXXXXL shoutout to old friend Don Duguid, who had snacks and made small talk with Governor General Mary Simon on Thursday in Bytown. The GG invested Dugie as a member of the Order of Canada, and I’d say that sounds about right for a world curling champion, turned curling innovator, turned curling guru, turned curling gab guy. I don’t know if the The Digit gave Guv Mary an earful about the Monarchy, but I’m guessing he mentioned King Charlie a time or two. Dugie is one of my all-time favorite people.

Toronto FC pays Lorenzo Insigne $14 million guaranteed per year to play footy, which is better pay than anyone in the NHL. So perhaps someone in mainstream media can tell us again how Major League Soccer isn’t major league.

Bet you didn’t know that the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue has a Rookie of the Year Award. Yup, Christen Harper and Katie Austin are this year’s recipients of the frosh honor because, according to editor and chief MJ Day, “there’s never been two more worthy people.” And, hey, don’t run off with the notion that Christen and Katie put on their skimpy outfits for self-serving reasons. They do it “for random strangers.” Translation: Teenage boys who can’t get their hands on a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

Sometimes I don’t want to believe what I’m reading and hearing, and I don’t want to believe that tennis great Simona Halep is guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs.

And, finally, it’s about soft landings for delicate NFL QBs…

Let’s talk about everything’s Ducky and the Winnipeg Jets ‘hands-on’ owner…the Rink Rat takes a tumble…the price of a souvenir baseball…Little Tiger…drawing the line on the draw to the button…a $52.5 million part-time job…Henderson has scored for Canada…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Mark Chipman, or as I prefer to call you, Puck Pontiff.

I don’t mean anything nasty by the nickname, Mark. It’s just that I harbor a long-held belief that you exercise papal power as it relates to the jewel in your True North Sports + Entertainment crown—the Winnipeg Jets.

You even confessed as much in a Hockey Night in Canada natter with then-host George Stroumboulopoulos a few years back, saying you’re in GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s kitchen every day, and the larger the decision the louder your voice. It short, you’re a buttinski.

That, of course, is the privilege of rank and, as executive chairman of the True North fiefdom and governor of the National Hockey League franchise, it’s your prerogative to stick your nose where others think it doesn’t belong.

However, I’m not here this morning to rattle your cage or yank your chain, Mark. Instead I salute you for the salute to Dale Hawerchuk on Saturday. Nice. Very nice. Or should I say it was “just Ducky” of you? (Sorry, Chipper. I agree, that’s a Ron MacLean-level bad pun.)

Give or take Teemu Selanne, no player in Jets NHL history was more impactful than our Ducky. The difference between the two legends is this, Mark: Dale spent nine seasons wearing the linen (and the ‘C’ for six), and he butted heads every winter with Gretzky, Messier, Coffey, Fuhr and the rest of that dreaded Edmonton Oilers lot in the 1980s, a moment in time that defines Jets 1.0. Teemu’s time in Good Ol’ Hometown was, by comparison, a fly-by.

So, ya, a statue at True North Square to honor a shinny icon who left the building before any of us wanted is a beautiful thing, and I continue to curse the cancer that claimed Ducky at such a young age.

One final thing, Chipper: I’m especially pleased that you gave a shoutout to two people in particular: Former owner Barry Shenkarow, a major player in arranging the Jets entry into the NHL, and the late John Ferguson, the man responsible for bringing Ducky to Good Ol’ Hometown.

You did good, Puck Pontiff. Real good.

Chipman is, literally, a hands-on owner. The Puck Pontiff, you see, poured the metal for the right glove on the Ducky likeness unveiled yesterday, and it doesn’t get much more hands-on than that. Ben Waldman of the Drab Slab had a natter with sculptor Erik Blome, and he gives us the skinny on the making of Ducky in bronze.

Well, the “experts” at TSN put their little heads together to determine the top 50 players in the NHL, and Rink Rat Scheifele has taken the greatest fall since Humpty Dumpty. A year ago, the geniuses had the Jets centre rated 20th overall, but this time around they couldn’t find room for him in the top 50. Hey, I get it. He’s a pooch defensively and some of his shifts are longer than a Sunday sermon, but he’s been a point-a-game producer for the past six crusades and I can’t think of a guy not named Connor McDavid who can say that. So, I’m sorry, but they can’t sell me on the notion that Jack Hughes is a better player than the Rink Rat.

I’m not convinced the Jets will be the stumble bums that many of the pundits are suggesting in advance of the 2022-23 crusade. Oh, I realize the Rolling Stones make more lineup changes than Winnipeg HC, but I believe success/failure depends on the amount of ice time Blake Wheeler and Logan Stanley don’t get. The less time on the freeze for those two, the better the chances of proving the naysayers wrong.

It’s about the Aaron Judge home run chase: Many of my vintage consider Roger Maris’ 61 dingers in 1961 the true single-season record, because those who’ve gone yard more often—Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa—wear the stink of steroids. A younger generation, however, might be more inclined to accept Bonds as Major League Baseball’s king of clout for his 73 four-baggers in 2001. Whatever the case, the debate brings to mind a lyric from the Buffalo Springfield protest classic For What It’s Worth: “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”

I don’t know about you, but I was delighted to see Judge swat HR No. 61 in the Republic of Tranna last week, and it’s just as well that the souvenir ball landed in the Blue Jays bullpen and wasn’t caught by a fan at Rogers Centre. I mean, it’s estimated that the thing is worth upwards of $250,000 US, but only about $1.50 on the Canadian exchange rate.

Thirteen-year-old Charlie Woods fired a 4-under 68 last weekend in the Notah Begay III Junior National Golf Championship, and a lot of people are saying the kid’s just like dad Tiger. I don’t know about that. I mean, he’s barely old enough to give a waitress a food order, let alone have an illicit affair with her.

Dumb headline of the week, from Golf Week: “Charlie Woods shoots career-low round with dad Tiger on the bag.” A “career” low? Good gawd, when did puberty become a career? I guess it’s another example of how life happens at a lickety-split cadence in this 21st century, and I suppose we can expect young Charlie’s autobiography to land on bookstore shelves any day now.

Scofflaw O.J. Simpson decided to play Couch Coach and used Twitter to advise Pittsburgh Steelers head man Mike Tomlin it would be in his best interest to plunk starting QB Mitch Trubisky on the pine and anoint Kenny Pickett starting QB. Oh, put a sock in it, Juice. Don’t you have some “real killers” to catch?

Simpson has 888.2K followers on his Twitter account. My question is this: “Why?” Are those people expecting him to cop to the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman?

A couple of our most-decorated Pebble People, Jennifer Jones and Marc Kennedy, tell Teddy Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun that they aren’t fond of the experimental draw-to-the-button method of breaking ties in elite curling events. “I don’t like it,” said Jones, whose freshly minted team cashed in to the tune of $50,000 in the freshly minted PointsBet Invitational last weekend. Kennedy, meanwhile, provided the backup vocals, saying, “Personally I wish they wouldn’t touch extra ends.” Hear, hear! I mean, I’m all for gimmickry…if it’s at the carnival or some kind of parlor trick when friends are over for din-din. But I don’t want to see the Scotties or Brier champion determined by silly shenanigans. Let soccer and hockey have the stupid stuff.

One of our very own, Cathy Gauthier, has moved into the chair vacated by Cheryl Bernard—smack dab between Vic Rauter and Russ Howard—on TSN’s Season of Champions curling coverage, and that has to be about the best call since John, Paul and George asked Ringo to grab his Ludwig drum kit and tag along with them. Like Cheryl, Cathy’s always been able to go jab-for-jab with Vic and ol’ Hurry Hard Howard in the verbal thrust-and-parry, and her appointment means another winter of good banter from the booth.

Another of our very own, Sami Jo Small, has been anointed el presidente of the Toronto Six, where she joins Hockey Hall of Famers and world champions Angela James (GM) and Geraldine Heaney (head coach) in leading the Premier Hockey Federation franchise. If sports editors at the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star noticed, they failed to find room for the news on their sports pages. Kind of tough for Ponytail Puck to gain traction in the Republic of Tranna when the local rags put the home side on ignore.

Strange tweet of the week comes from former NHLer and present-day conspiracy theorist Theoren Fleury: “The biggest spreaders of misinformation are the ones who are spreading misinformation.” Thanks Theo. And the leading cause of death is life.

I really don’t think anyone should be surprised the Calgary Stampeders have moved on from QB Bo Levi Mitchell and handed the football, plus gobs of coin on a two-year contract, to Jake Maier. Bo’s been off his feed the past couple of years, and when head coach Dave Dickenson and GM John Hufnael say it’s time, it’s time. I mean, if there’s one thing those two know above all else, it’s Rouge Football QBs.

After watching the Toronto Argos score just two points in a loss to the Stampeders last night, it’s hard to believe they entered the fray on a four-game winning run. Who’d they beat? A dozen kids from my neighborhood?

When the time arrives, Novak Djokovic wants a warm-and-fuzzy farewell, just like Roger Federer, and he’d especially like rival Rafael Nadal to be present. “We played the most matches against each other of any other rivalry in the history of tennis,” he says. Yo! Novak! Women play tennis, too. Martina Navratilova and Chrissie Evert met 80 times in singles play. You and Rafa have been on opposite sides of the net 59 times. Do the math.

Tyreek Hill has already collected more than $25 million to catch passes and run the ball for Miami Dolphins this NFL season, and he’s guaranteed $52.5M on his current deal. Yet he says football is “just our part-time job.” Earth to Tyreek. Tell that to the kid making $10 an hour to bag groceries at the local market on weekends, or a student scrubbing pots and pans in the back of a greasy spoon three days a week to pay tuition.

Things I discovered in the past week: 1) There is a Professional Disc Golf Association, complete with a tour; 2) there is a Professional Pickleball Association, also with a tour. I’m particularly curious about disc golf: How do they fit a frisbee into that wee, little hole?

Still can’t believe how weak some of the acting is on the new Law & Order. Angry cop Cosgrove and ADA Price are truly lame. I keep watching in the hope they’ll improve, but no.

Only once during my 30 years in jock journalism did I ask an athlete I covered for an autograph: Paul Henderson. And, you’re right, that put me in breach of one of the unwritten commandments in the sports scribe’s code of conduct. I’m not sure which commandment it is, but it clearly states: Thou shalt not collect autographs. It’s totally taboo. At least it was back in the day (I can’t speak for today’s news snoops). At any rate, I sought Henderson’s signature after he and his Birmingham Bulls associates had concluded a morning, game-day skate. Knowing I was in breach, I made my request on the QT, asking him to sign a Prudential Insurance print depicting the moment that had earned him a prominent and permanent place in Canadian hockey folklore—the winning goal in Game 8 of the 1972 Summit Series between our good guys and the Soviet Union comrades. No one heard my request, and no prying eyes were nearby, but a wave of guilt washed over me. Didn’t matter. He happily scrawled his signature on the bottom right-hand corner of the print, and we made small talk. Years later, I had Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretiak sign that same print. What a keepsake. Alas, a person to whom I’m no longer wed sold it on the QT at a yard sale for 50 cents.

Henderson scored the most iconic goal in Canadian hockey history, and he had the winning tallies in Games 6 and 7 of the Summit Series, as well. Question is, why, 50 years later, does he still have to pay his way into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the Republic of Tranna? Okay, sure, most would rate his NHL/World Hockey Association career a notch above garden variety, but, give or take Tretiak, Henderson was the most significant performer in the most significant shinny series ever played—Canada vs. U.S.S.R. 1972. What he did was lightning-in-a-bottle stuff, and it seems to me it’s HHOF worthy. I mean, Harper Lee wrote just one book (some say two tomes) and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature.

And, finally, this week’s vanity license plate:

Let’s talk about Pebble People getting a raw deal…McDavid, Draisaitl and who are those other guys?…dirty rotten scoundrels…no room in Cooperstown for cheats and Schilling…the Babe, booze and babes…Ponytail Puck…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and in honor of Groundhog Day, I’ll pop my head out of the ground on Tuesday and let you know if there’ll be six more weeks of bad blogging…

Kerri Einarson, Val Sweeting, Briane Meilleur, Shannon Birchard (clockwise from top left) from Gimli are the defending Scotties Tournament of Hearts champions.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight:

National Hockey League players traipse willy-nilly across the COVID-infected tundra, and they’re granted a quarantine exemption from Manitoba’s top docs and politicos. Meanwhile, our curlers plan to shelter themselves in a Calgary bubble for the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the Brier and the mixed nationals, yet they’re told they must go into isolation for the full 14 days once they return home from two weeks of hijinks in February/March. No quarantine exemption for you!

This is fair how?

Oh, wait. Silly me. I forgot that the millionaire hockey players provide an “essential” service (as if the Ottawa Senators are “essential” to anyone), while bunking down in five-star hotels and being whisked about in charter or private aircraft. The curlers? Apparently, hurrying hard is not an “essential” service. Pebble People are just everyday working stiffs blessed with good draw weight, so it doesn’t matter that they might have to carpool their way to and from Calgary. Or that they might be out of pocket if away from the salt mines for an additional 14 days. It only matters that the millionaire hockey players are happy.

That is so wrong.

Hey, I’ve never thought of hockey players as coddled and pampered. They have a special skill that means they take in rarified oxygen, but the same has to be said of our curlers, who are among the best on the planet. And Pebble People are the salt of the earth.

If hockey players deserve a quarantine concession, the curlers do too.

Quick thought on the Winnipeg Jets: Evander Kane has an oversized personality. Gone. Patrik Laine has an oversized personality. Gone. Dustin Byfuglien has an oversized personality. Gone. What are we to make of that?

We need to discuss the Edmonton Oilers, because they annoy me. The Oilers are Jesse James, Billy the Kid and 18 guys with water pistols. Seriously, they have more no-names than the Witness Protection Program. I watch the Oilers play and, 60 minutes later, it’s like Butch and Sundance: “Who are those guys?” They’re as memorable as the second man to leave a footprint on the moon. You know, Ol’ What’shisname.

That bothers me.

It shouldn’t, of course, because the Oilers became the Evil Empire in Good Ol’ Hometown during the 1980s, when they made paddywhacking the Jets a spring ritual during their Stanley Cup binge. It’s been a pox on the E-Town house ever since. But I can’t help it. I want Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl to succeed. So sue me.

I just don’t think the Oilers should stink. Just like the Montreal Canadiens, Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, New York Yankees and Green Bay Packers should never stink. It’s okay to root, root, root against any or all of those storied franchises, but you shouldn’t want them to stink.

Oh, I know, many among the rabble in Good Ol’ Hometown can’t get past that 1980s thing, and they’re probably still sticking pins in their old Slats Sather, Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier voodoo dolls.

Well, hocus-pocus rituals aren’t necessary these days. The Oilers stink on their own merit.

Yes, I realize they managed to muster up a victory on Saturday night, nudging the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-3 in OT, but they’re 4-6 and that’s no way to behave when your lineup features McDavid and Draisaitl.

Fashion note: Those reverse retro unis that the Oilers wore on Saturday night looked like poorly designed Orange Crush bottles, and the Leafs’ threads were absolutely ghastly. Seriously. Dark blue numbers on dark blue sweaters? The ghost of Humpty Harold Ballard lives on.

The Tkachuk boys, Brady, top, and Matthew.

Random observations two weeks into the 2021 NHL crusade: There’s a very good reason why so many players in the Hoser Division are at or near the top of the NHL scoring table: Nobody plays defence. There are no big, ugly, nasty teams that lean on you, just a bunch of fly boys. That works now, but not so much once they’re down to the final four in Beard Season and the Canadian survivor is required to deal with big bodies that try to slow them down…You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t join the chorus and rave about the entertainment level of COVID hockey. Much of the activity I’ve seen has been, to borrow a Danny Gallivanism, “as shabby as an old hobo’s coat.”…The Tkachuk brothers are soooo smarmy. Both Matthew and Brady are more irritating than a bad case of fanny fungus. They’re the dirty, rotten scoundrels who like to sit at the back of the class and fire spitballs at the nerds. They probably stole enough lunch money to prop up a third-world country. But, yes, I’d take either one of them on my team…The Ottawa Senators are an embarrassment best kept off prime time TV…It’s obvious the Hoser Division playoff positions will come down to this: The two teams that piddle away the most points v. the Senators will be on the outside looking in. That means the next week is pivotal to the Oilers’ post-season aspirations. They’ll be fed a steady diet of the Sens, meeting them four times…Yes, I still think a Hoser Division is a boffo idea, but I’m not sold on the baseball-style schedule. I understand the reasoning behind it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it…Hands up anyone who knows what teams are leading the other three divisions. Actually, hands up anyone who can name the other three divisions…I was wrong about the Montreal Canadiens. They look legit. I was wrong about the Senators. I thought youthful enthusiasm would serve them well. I was right about the Calgary Flames. Their win over the Habs on Saturday notwithstanding, the Flames are a false bill of goods, and will continue to be as long as they have Milan Lucic dragging his knuckles up and down the freeze…Shouldn’t Sportsnet lift their regional blackouts and give us the full menu each night in this special season? If it’s all the same to them, I’d much rather watch the Jets-Habs than Canucks-Senators.

Part of Curt Schilling’s Nazi memorabilia.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame will go 0-for-2021, with no players receiving the required 75 per cent of the vote for enshrinement to Cooperstown, and that means “integrity, sportsmanship, character” won out over stats. Noted steroids cheats Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens struck out in this year’s balloting, as did Curt Schilling, who collects Nazi SS memorabilia and isn’t fond of anyone unless they wear a MAGA hat and attend Toby Keith concerts. It’s the ninth time Schilling has been snubbed by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, and now he wants his name erased from the ballot. “I’ll defer to the veterans committee and men whose opinions actually matter and who are in a position to actually judge a player,” he wrote in a self-indulgent, 1,200-word whinge on Facebook. He also labeled Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy a “morally decrepit” man, and accused scribes of lining up to “destroy my character.” I don’t know about that. Seems to me Schilling has assassinated his own character on social media, with transphobic tweets, a posting that suggested lynching journalists is “so much awesome,” calling Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones a liar for accusing fans at Fenway Park in Boston of dropping N-bombs in his direction, and giving thumbs up to the recent riot at the U.S. Capitol. Bottom line on Schilling’s NBHOF candidacy: “I don’t think I’m a hall of famer,” he said. Fine. Case closed.

Most peculiar take on the latest NBHOF voting was delivered by TSN analyst Steve Phillips. The former Major League Baseball exec drew a parallel between segregation and ‘roid cheaters Bonds and Clemens sticking needles in their butts. “There’s been performance enhancement in every era of baseball,” Phillips said. “Babe Ruth didn’t play against some of the best Negro League players of the time, players went to war, players stayed home, the mound was lowered, the DH was entered, ballparks have changed. So it’s been in every era.” Hmmm. I thought the Babe hit all those home runs (714) because he was a rare breed, but now I find out it was only because he never saw the spin on a Satchel Paige slider. Who knew? Actually, I have a different theory, and it has nothing to do with Jim Crow-era baseball or the boys of summer marching off to kick Hitler’s ass. To wit: Had the Babe laid off the booze, the babes and the speakeasies, and had he not missed playing time due to STDs, he would have swatted 914 dingers.

In his first natter with news snoops after signing with Toronto, slugger George Springer compared the Blue Jays to his Houston Astros outfit that cheated its way to a World Series title. “This (Jays) lineup reminds me a lot of them,” he said. Great. Vlad the Gifted gets a trash can. Bo Bichette gets a trash can. Cavan Biggio gets a trash can. Everybody gets a trash can. Bang the can slowly, boys.

Nice to see Sportsnet and, on a more subdued level, TSN have discovered the National Women’s Hockey League. Until last week, any talk of Ponytail Puck at Sportsnet was reserved for the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, and it was mostly pathetic pandering from Tara Slone and Ron MacLean. Now Sportsnet Central is delivering nightly updates/highlights on the Isobel Cup season/tournament in Lake Placid, and there are numerous articles on the website. It’s fabulous.

An outfit from the Republic of Tranna is in Lake Placid. It’s called the Six. It has a 3-1-1 record, and stands atop the NWHL tables. Someone might want to clue in the geniuses at the Toronto Sun. I look daily but, unless I missed it, the tabloid has given its home team less ink than Bernie Sanders’ mittens. TorSun trumpets itself as the top sports sheet in the nation, but I call BS on that if they can’t squeeze in a few paragraphs about Ponytail Puck.

It’s puzzling that the aforementioned PWHPA has gone radio silent on its website since Dec. 21. Not a peep. The propaganda peddlers have stopped telling us that they “deserve” a living wage, that they “deserve” an affiliation with the NHL, that they “deserve” our undivided attention, and there have been no photo-ops with Billie Jean King. The Dream Gappers have $1 million of funding from Secret, and they’ve said they’ll stage a series of barnstorming showcase tournaments, but they still aren’t telling us where or when they’ll drop the puck. Silence is a peculiar way to sell your product.

Speaking of product, the Argos need all the help they can get to make the rabble in the Republic of Tranna sit up, take notice and find their way to BMO Field, so what do they do? That’s right, they sign a repeat offender of the National Football League drug policy. Martavis Bryant was first banished for four games in 2015, then sent to his room for the entire 2016 crusade, then punted indefinitely in 2018. The Canadian Football League needs guys like Bryant the way Bill Gates needs my spare change.

It was a double whammy of bad tidings for Rouge Football last week. Aside from the Bryant hiring, Scott Milanovich took his three Grey Cup rings and walked away from the E-Town E-Somethings before ever stepping onto the sideline at Commonwealth Stadium, and can anyone really blame him? Coaches gotta coach, and since we don’t know if there’ll be three-downs football this year, Milanovich opted for the sure thing as quarterbacks guru with the Indianapolis Colts. I just wonder if this means the second coming of Chris Jones to the E-Somethings.

Pam Shriver, left, and Martina Navratilova.

So, TSN ran a feature discussing the greatest athlete of all time in North American “team sports.” Names tossed about were Tom Brady, LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky. SportsCentre co-anchor Kayla Grey immediately added this to the debate: “Ask Serena Williams about all that,” she said smugly. Just wondering: What part of “team sports” does Grey not understand? Last time I looked, Williams is a tennis player. Her specialty is singles play. If, however, we were to consider her form chart in doubles, which certainly is a team sport, Williams isn’t the GOAT in the women’s game. It’s Martina Navratilova, who once partnered with Pam Shriver to win 109 consecutive matches and went more than two years without a loss. Check it out:

Grand Slam Doubles Titles
Navratilova 41 Williams 16

Doubles Match Victories
Navratilova 747 Williams 190

Doubles Titles
Navratilova 187 Williams 25

There are at least 37 women and 55 men with more doubles titles than Williams, including our guy Daniel Nestor with 95. Do the math. Williams’ 25 doesn’t spell G-O-A-T in “team sports” to me.

Really, it’s time for Serena-ites like Grey to cease with the GOAT narrative. She isn’t the greatest tennis player of all time (hello Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic—take your pick), ergo she cannot possibly be the finest athlete in history. So do us all a favor and clam up.

The January numbers are in for coverage of female athletes in the two local rags (30 publishing days):

Sports front
Winnipeg Free Press-4.
Winnipeg Sun-1.

Total number of articles
Winnipeg Free Press-29 (plus 12 briefs).
Winnipeg Sun-3 (plus 4 briefs).

Number of days with female-centric copy
Winnipeg Free Press-21 of 30.
Winnipeg Sun-6 of 30.

And, finally, I think it’s great that so many people are willing to share their mental health challenges on Bell’s Let’s Talk day, but it would be even better if we did it more than once a year. I’ve always thought of mental health as an every-day thing.

Let’s talk about the sexism gene in sports coverage…Sarah Fuller getting her kicks…the Drab Slab and moth balls…bravo Dugie…fabulous Friesen and his Bombers epic…fiftysomething fossils fighting, plus Big Angie and Peanut Butter Joe…our greatest Olympians…and other things on my mind

A Monday morning smorgas-bored…and adios to November and let those sleighbells ring…

I have sometimes wondered if sports editors and scribes consciously ignore female sports, or if it’s simply because they’re wired that way.

You know, like it’s a sexism gene that carries a built-in bias.

I mean, because it’s scientifically accepted that male athletes are bigger, stronger and faster—as are the major pro sports leagues—it seems to me that there’s an automatic reflex to play a guys’ story at the front of the sports section and relegate the women’s article to the back pages, if not spike the thing.

Consider hockey as a prime e.g.

The Canadian Women’s Hockey League was ignored out of business. There was scant game-day, or off-day coverage, in print or on air. Only when the CWHL turned out the lights did mainstream media sit up and take notice. Basically, they attended a total stranger’s funeral and gasped, “Oh, what a shame.”

When the Toronto Six of the National Women’s Hockey League anointed Digit Murphy head coach, it was like a tree falling in the forest. No one there to hear it? Guess it didn’t happen.

When the NWHL outlined its blueprint for a 2021 crusade last week, trumpeting a six-team tournament Jan. 23-Feb. 5 in a Lake Placid, N.Y., fan-free bubble, it was a three-paragraph brief on the last page of a 12-page sports section in the Toronto Sun. I found no mention of it on the Toronto Star website. That, even though there’s a franchise in the Republic of Tranna.

When was the last time we read anything about the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association and its Dream Gap Tour?

Let’s face it, unless it’s Canada v. U.S.A., Ponytail Puck is an afterthought in mainstream media. Why is that? Is it because the decision-makers know the finest female players in the world strain mightily to beat teenage boys at the Midget AAA or prep school level? And since they don’t cover Midget AAA or prep school level shinny, the women don’t warrant coverage either? Or is it the sexism gene?

Whatever the case, if Canadian newspapers aren’t prepared to write about the best female shinny players on the planet, what hope is there for other sports?

Oh, sure, female Olympic athletes are granted their due every two years, but none of the boys on the beat cover rhythmic gymnastics or synchronized swimming by choice. They hold their noses and do so because it’s a small, inconvenient price to pay for an all-expenses-paid trip to Greece or Tokyo or London or Rio.

Olympic Games aside, it’s almost as if a female athlete or women’s event must include a circus side-show element to attract serious attention.

We’ve seen plenty of the novelty acts, like the Kendall Coyne Schofield skedaddle and the 3-on-3 game during National Hockey League all-star hijinks, and Phil Esposito using Manon Rheaume as a publicity stunt in goal. And, of course, most recently we watched Sarah Fuller become the first female to participate in an NCAA Power 5 football game on Saturday.

It was as if Sarah had discovered a fool-proof vaccine for COVID-19, the way folks carried on, but she didn’t actually do anything other than breathe, unless one considers a 30-yard pooch kickoff and walking off the field without touching a foe a remarkable athletic accomplishment. But, hey, there were 21 male football players on the field and one female soccer player, so her presence certainly warranted ink and air time, and Sarah received more of each than any female footy player in a non-World Cup or Olympic year. Eat your heart out, Megan Rapinoe.

But, sans the carnival-barker component, mainstream media doesn’t seem interested, and it’s a sticking point they struggle to get past.

Early last month, SE Steve Lyons of the Winnipeg Free Press wrote about “being as equitable as possible” in terms of female/male coverage. So how is he doing since then?

Let’s just say that, to date, he talks a good game, but doesn’t deliver.

His Freep published 30 times in November. Copy/pics strictly about female athletes were featured on the front page of the section just five times—curler Kerri Einarson, retired volleyball player Tammy Mahon, WNBA, a pic of Kim Ng (the story was on the inside pages), and an Andrea Katz column. Total stories/briefs devoted to women in 30 days: 13/7.

That’s equitable like an Archie comic is deep reading material.

Over at the Winnipeg Sun, the picture is much more bleak. Females (curlers) found their way to the sports front once—repeat, once—in 29 editions. Total stories/briefs devoted to women: 9/1.

Pick up a daily newspaper—any newspaper—across our vast land and it’s the same.

Lyons has taken a step toward correcting the imbalance of sports coverage in the Drab Slab, bringing Katz on board to focus on the distaff side of the playground, and she made her first appearance on Saturday. The actual column failed to tell us anything many of us didn’t already know, but one assumes (hopes) it will become more informative and shine a light on our fabulous female athletes.

Credit to Lyons. It’s a starting point, which is a whole lot more than I can say for the lord and masters at Postmedia.

Here’s a prime example of the sexism gene at play: On Nov. 20, the Drab Slab ran golf stories on Tiger Woods and his son Charlie, the RSM Classic in Georgia and a brief on the Joburg Classic in Johannesburg. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a single word on the LPGA event that featured Canadians Brooke Henderson and Alena Sharp. Two days later, there was a full story on each of the men’s tournaments, while the Pelican Women’s Championship was a sports brief.

Initial reaction to Sarah Fuller suiting up to handle kicking chores for Vanderbilt on Saturday: Seriously? Vanderbilt has a football team?

As much as Sarah’s participation in a major men’s college football game was newsworthy and hailed as a significant moment, many on social media dismissed the occasion as Tom-foolery and at least one prominent American jock journo, Jason Whitlock of Outkick the Coverage, gave it a long, hard crapping-on. “I don’t believe she played football,” wrote Whitlock, who’s scribbled for the Kansas City Star, ESPN and Fox Sports, among others. “She scored a point in the culture war. The people who believe the only difference between men and women is in how they choose to identify consider Fuller a poor woman’s Jackie Robinson. She broke big time football’s gender barrier. But did she? Sarah Fuller received a standing ovation for kicking the ball 30 yards or so and high-tailing it to the sidelines to be greeted by the winless head coach using her to save his job. This wasn’t Jackie Robinson 2.0. It was Make A Wish. Treating Sara Fuller like she’s a special-needs kid does not uplift the cause of equality.” Harsh, but not entirely inaccurate.

By the way, if you’re wondering why Vanderbilt recruited Sarah’s right leg rather than someone from the school’s men’s soccer side, there is no men’s soccer side. It was shut down in 2006.

It was a bit of the old, a bit of the new for the Drab Slab last week, with SE Lyons pulling his buddy and former columnist Paul Wiecek out of moth balls and introducing Katz on the same day. Nothing wrong with bringing Wiecek back for a cameo appearance. The guy can write. And he actually managed to scribble an entire essay without taking a cheap shot at Jacob Trouba, so I guess he’s mellowed since walking away from the columnist gig a couple of years ago.

Fabulous series from Paul Friesen of the Sun on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ journey to their 2019 Grey Cup win. It was a very readable, insightful, nine-part epic, even if there was no rhyme nor reason to the way the geniuses at Postmedia handled it. I believe they published Part One at the start of the pandemic and delivered the final installment this past Friday. Seriously, it took less time to film all the Rocky and Godfather movies combined. In reality, the Friesen series began on Oct. 9 and concluded on Nov. 27, and we had to guess on which days it would appear. Sometimes it was one day between installments, other times it was eight or nine days. Shabby. But oh so Postmedia.

A huge tip of the bonnet to home boy Don Duguid, one of my favorite people. The former world curling champ and longtime gab guy for the People’s Network has been appointed to the Order of Canada, and I trust that meets with everyone’s approval.

Just wondering, when the Winnipeg Jets brought Dave Lowry on board last week, did they hire their next head coach at the same time?

I saw highlights (if you want to call it that) of Charles Barkley playing golf the other day, and I’m lost to find an accurate description for Sir Charles’ swing. But a milking cow trying to climb a tree comes to mind.

Mike Tyson informed news snoops that he smoked a joint or two prior to his fiftysomethings fist-fight v. Roy Jones Jr. on Saturday night. It’s also been reported and confirmed that anyone who actually paid to watch the two boxing fossils fight was also on drugs.

Loved this tweet from Rob Vanstone of the Regina Leader-Post on the Tyson-Jones Jr. tiff: “This fight will be scored by using the 10-point rust system.”

I didn’t watch Tyson-Jones Jr., but you’ll never convince me that it was a more entertaining old geezer dust-up than Joe Kapp v. Angelo Mosca, two Canadian Football League legends who’ve never exchanged Christmas cards. If you missed it, Peanut Butter Joe offered Big Angie a flower; Big Angie told him to “stick it up your ass.” Big Angie attempted to cocobonk Peanut Butter Joe with his metal cane; Peanut Butter Joe lashed out with a right fist to the jaw. Down goes Big Angie! Down goes Big Angie! A Grey Cup week classic.

December arrives on the morrow, so I grant permission to one and all to begin playing Christmas tunes.

This from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: Former lickety-split champion of the track, Donovan Bailey, is “Canada’s greatest modern Olympian.” Really? Let me count the ways Bailey, a two-time gold medalist, falls short:

Clara Hughes: Only Olympian in history to win multiple medals in both the Summer and Winter Games—1 gold, 1 silver, 4 bronze.
Cindy Klassen: Six medals—1 gold, 1 silver, 3 bronze.
Hayley Wickenheiser, Jayna Hefford: Five medals—4 gold, 1 silver.
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir: Five medals—3 gold, 2 silver.
Charles Hamelin: Five medals— 3 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze.
Marc Gagnon: Five medals—3 gold, 2 bronze.
Francois-Louis Tremblay: Five medals—2 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze.
Lesley Thompson: Five medals—1 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze.
Caroline Ouillette: Four medals—4 gold.
Jennifer Botterill, Becky Kellar, Meghan Agosta: Four medals—3 gold, 1 silver.
Kathleen Heddle, Marnie McBean: Four medals—3 gold, bronze.
Gaetan Boucher: Four medals—2 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze.
Eric Bedard: Four medals—2 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze.
Victor Davis: Four medals—1 gold, 3 silver.
Denny Morrison: Four medals—1 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze.
Adam van Koeverden: Four medals—1 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze.
Penny Oleksiak: Four medals—1 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze
Kim St-Pierre, Cherie Piper, Colleen Sostorics, Gillian Apps, Charline Labonte: Three medals—3 gold.
Danielle Goyette: Three medals—2 gold, 1 silver.
Carolyn Waldo: Three medals—2 gold, 1 silver.
Rosie MacLennan: Two medals—2 gold.

Either Simmons doesn’t consider any of the above to be “modern” Olympians, or he can’t count.

Why the Winnipeg Sun continues to run Simmons’ Tranna-centric copy is an ongoing mystery, and it continues to get up my nose. In his most recent alphabet fart, he prattled on about attendance at Blue Jays games, the Maple Leafs payroll, Auston Matthews, Blue Jays play-by-play guy Mike Wilner, the Blue Jays pursuit of free agents, Terence Davis of the Tranna Jurassics, Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster contract situations with the Jurassics, the Toronto FC payroll, sports gambling in Ontario, Serge Ibaka leaving the Jurassics, a new ballpark for the Republic of Tranna, and the Argos losing the 1971 Grey Cup game. This is what Postmedia believes people in Good Ol’ Hometown want to read on a Sunday morning? The Winnironto Sun? Spare me.

And, finally, the RCR has topped the 50,000 mark in views for the year, which is my cue to retreat for a spell. I shall return Christmas week and not a day sooner. Unless, of course, stupid happens before Santa touches down. In the meantime, thanks for dropping by.

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