racism

Let’s talk about the Winnipeg Jets 50th anniversary…another MOP for Zach Collaros…D’oh! More Rouge Football on The Simpsons…lumbering Logan and leadership…boos in the Bronx…Troy Aikman’s ‘dresses’…simpleton scribblings…and other things I’m not going to write about…

Here’s some stuff I was going to write about this morning, but decided not to write about:

I was going to write about the original home game in Winnipeg Jets history, because somebody should.

The Jets and the World Hockey Association were, of course, an iffy bit of business from the get-go, and we wondered what kind of a buy-in there’d be for what many among the rabble considered a lark—a tier-two operation with National Hockey League hand-me-downs and minor league lifers filling rosters, and a life expectancy of about a week and a half.

The early returns weren’t encouraging, with the Jets basically skating in front of friends and family (1,000 and change) in pre-season rehearsals, which prompted this remark from old friend Vic Grant in the Winnipeg Tribune: “If there aren’t more than six thousand people in the stands Sunday then we know that Winnipeg is a penny ante sports town.”

Well, the turnstiles at the Ol’ Barn On Maroons Road on the night of Oct. 15, 1972, didn’t make anyone’s head spin, even though the going rate was a bargain basement $6 (plus 60 cents tax) for a chair in the Reds and $5 (plus 50 cents tax) up higher where noses begin to bleed. The Jets had 3,300 season ticket subscribers going in, and the walk-up crowd more than doubled that, for a final head count of 7,283 for the coming-out party.

The rabble left disappointed, with the Jets found lacking in a 5-2 loss to the Alberta Oilers, but it was the beginning of a seven-year stretch of oft-glorious WHA shinny in the Ol’ Barn.

Alas, 50 years later, the golden anniversary was ignored by local news snoops, so I’m not going to write about the Jets original home opener either. I guess it’s true what a wise man once said: Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

I was going to write about the present-day Jets, who were strutting their stuff in front of numerous unoccupied chairs at The Little Hockey House On The Prairie on Friday night.

Unsold seats always give rise to angst among owners and bean counters of any pro sports franchise, even if the Lords of True North Sports + Entertainment ought to be used to it by now. When did the Jets last put up the soldout sign? Before any of us put on a face mask and allowed medics to jab us in the arm with needles to ward off COVID.

Many still cite the pandemic as the cause of yet another non-sellout. Others point to ticket costs (a C-note to sit where noses begin to bleed), concession costs, parking costs, soaring cost of living, an uncaring and smug ownership, GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s Summer of Nothing, and players who’d rather earn their living elsewhere.

But I’m not going to write about unsold seats, because these Jets aren’t an iffy bit of business. They’re backed by a dude, David Thomson, whose pockets are deeper than Buddhist dharma.

I was going to write about Zach Collaros, because it seems to me that he’s the heir apparent to himself.

That is to say, as sure as there shall be frost on the pumpkin when the showcase event of Rouge Football—the Grey Cup game—arrives on the Flattest of Lands in late November, Zach will be there to accept the Most Outstanding Player Award for the second successive season.

Oh, yes, I believe his bona fides are sufficient to satisfy members of the Football Reporters of Canada that there’s not been a finer performer on our Frozen Tundra, even if Nathan Rourke had eyes popping and jaws dropping through the first half of the 2022 crusade. And the fact Collaros won’t fling another football until Oct. 28 shouldn’t matter either. I mean, it’s not like Mcleod Bethel-Thompson is apt to suddenly morph into the second coming of Doug Flutie between now and closing time. He’ll have (some) better passing numbers than the Winnipeg Blue Bombers QB, but Macbeth’s play has been as spotty as a Dalmation. He looks like Ricky Ray one game, then looks like he can’t tie his own boot laces the next.

Anybody else MOP worthy? Well, I’d say Ka’Deem Carey has done boffo work lugging the leather for the Calgary Stampeders, but I wouldn’t say he’s having a Mike Pringle season, and that’s what it would take for the exalted members of the FRC to take their eyes off Collaros.

The girls and boys on the beat, you see, are smitten with quarterbacks. They fancy QBs the way Homer Simpson fancies donuts and Duff beer, and the evidence is there for all to see: They’ve dished out the MOP trinket 68 times, and the scoreboard reads: QBs 40, All Other Positions 28.

So I’d say Zach will be off to Regina, and I don’t expect he’ll be flying solo.

Guaranteed that one of the guy’s he’s been playing catch with, Dalton Shoen, will go along for the ride and collect a bauble as the Canadian Football League’s top frosh.

And, assuming I’m reading the room correctly, a second straight MOP Award puts Collaros in rather lofty company, because only four other players (Dieter Brock, Doug Flutie, Anthony Calvillo and Jackie Parker) have been anointed in consecutive seasons, and it’s shouldn’t shock anyone that they’re all QBs.

But I’m not going to write about Zach Collaros this morning, because he booked off work Saturday night and couldn’t pad his stats in a 40-32 loss vs. the B.C. Leos.

I was going to write about The Simpsons lampooning the CFL yet again, because I think Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and the entire cast of characters are a hoot. They still make me laugh out loud, even when the yuks are at the expense of three-downs football.

But I’m not going to write about The Simpsons, because I think you should watch it yourself. Here’s a spoiler alert, though: A left-handed Doug Flutie makes a cameo appearance and Homer does Homer things. D’oh!

I was going to write about shoddy journalism because of a “D’oh!” headline in the Drab Slab. To wit: “Now the West is won.” In the accompanying article, we’re told this: “With the West Division crown already placed atop their heads, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers blah, blah, blah…”

Uh, no. That simply isn’t true.

The B.C. Leos or Calgary Stampeders still have something to say about bragging rights in the West Division, because there’s the matter of the final on Nov. 13 at The Football Field In Fort Garry, and I’m guessing that the Bombers, to a man, would tell the gang at the Freep and anyone else who’d care to listen that they haven’t won squat. The large lads in blue-and-gold livery have clinched top spot in the West, but that won’t buy them a cup of java at Tims.

Finishing first is a feather in the cap. It means you’ve earned a bye to the division final, and the advantage of home turf. But you haven’t “won” anything. And, no, I’m not picking nits or splitting hairs

Any editor with passable knowledge of Rouge Football in Good Ol’ Hometown would know the West Division champion is determined in the final, and the Bombers are a recent case in point. In 2019, the Saskatchewan Flatlanders topped the regular-season tables, but it got them diddly. Winnipeg FC, which finished third, won the West, then claimed the Grey Grail.

But I’m not going to write about shoddy journalism at the Drab Slab, because people who don’t know a rouge from a rickshaw edit sports copy these days. Besides, the squawk boxes on TSN are spewing the same false narrative, and they’re just as wrong.

I was going to write about lumbering Logan Stanley starting another National Hockey League crusade with the Winnipeg Jets and Ville Heinola being banished to the farm again.

As far as I can determine, Stanley’s sole skill is being tall. Heinola, meanwhile, is notable for his skating, passing and puck smarts, but he has the (apparent) bad manners to be untall. He isn’t kiddie ride at Disneyland short, but he’d have to stand on a beer keg to look Stanley eyeball-to-eyeball. Apparently, that’s good enough reason to convince Jets intelligentsia to keep the unskilled No. 1 draft pick over the skilled No. 1 draft pick.

But I’m not going to write about Logan Stanley, because if the the geniuses haven’t figured it out by now it’s a lost cause.

I was going to write about the “new” leadership group with the Jets—Rink Rat Scheifele, Josh Morrissey and Adam Lowry.

That’s “new” like the Edsel is hot off the assembly line in Detroit.

I mean, the Rink Rat and Morrissey each wore an ‘A’ last season. Now they’ve stitched one on Lowry’s jersey. Well, big whoop-de-do.

All they’ve done is confirm that whatever virus ran though the changing room in the past started and ended with the ‘C’ that’s been ripped off Blake Wheeler’s chest, but the defrocked captain has already vowed to carry on as if nothing has changed.

So I’m not going to write about the Jets “new” leadership, because it’s same old, same old.

I was going to write about the mob at Yankee Stadium booing Aaron Judge.

That would be the same Aaron Judge who swatted 62 dingers this Major League Baseball season, the same guy who finished a couple of base knocks shy of the Triple Crown, the same guy to whom his New York Yankees playmates hitched their wagon all season. Now he’s scuffling in the playoffs and the rabble let him know about it in the seventh inning of a 4-2 loss vs. Cleveland Guardians.

“It’s the Bronx, man,” mused Pinstripes skipper Aaron Boone.

“It happens,” said the big man himself. “It’s happened many times in my career here.”

That doesn’t make it right. Nobody goes to the Vatican to heckle the Pope. Nobody went to Churchill Downs to razz Secretariat. And you don’t go to Yankee Stadium to boo Aaron Judge, not this October.

But I’m not going to write about the Yankees faithful turning on their marquee player, because there’s just no explaining the bad manners of some people.

I was going to write about Troy Aikman and ask him to join us in the 21st century, because the former NFL QB and current gab guy on Monday Night Football stuck both feet in it last week with a lazy, 20th century sexist trope.

After Chris Jones of the K.C. Chiefs had been flagged for roughing the passer vs. the Las Vegas Raiders, Aikman was quick to tsk-tsk game officials for the suspect call and observed: “My hope is the competition committee looks at this in the next set of meetings and, you know, we take the dresses off.” Sigh.

Aikman later performed an emergency foot-in-mouthectomy, saying: “My comments were dumb, just shouldn’t have made them. Just dumb remarks on my part.” Well, yes, they were.

But I’m not going to write about Aikman’s sexist drivel, because he isn’t a lone wolf. Male jocks think of women as lesser-thans, so that’s what they say.

I was going to write about Dustin Johnson collecting more coin for 18 rounds of golf than Tiger Woods earned through 26 years of golf. True story. DJ’s take through six of eight events on the LIV Golf Series tour is a whopping $155,758,600 in 4½ months: $125 million signing bonus, $12,758,600 prize winnings, $18 million payout for claiming the individual season championship. Poor Tiger he’s had to scrape by on a mere $120,895,206 for the past quarter century on the PGA Tour.

But I’m not going to write about Johnson and his blood-stained Saudi money, because he’s got to do what’s best for his family, and I suppose some guys can never have enough jingle in their jeans when a rainy day arrives. And, hey, his bride Paulina might need some skimpy new outfits to wear at The Masters.

I was going to write about Steve Simmons, because he’s totally lost the plot re racism in hockey.

In his alphabet fart for Postmedia last Sunday, the Toronto Sun scribe wrote: “No one wants to say this because of the politically correct police and all, but those who coached Akim Aliu must cringe every time they see him in a news report or a commercial talking about what’s wrong with hockey. Like he would know. By my count, Aliu played for 23 teams in nine different leagues in 12 professional seasons and rarely finished any season with the same team he started with. If that was colour-related, how is it that Wayne Simmonds spent just about the same 12 seasons playing in the NHL?”

To parrot a phrase from PM Trudeau the Younger in his comments about the Hockey Canada scandal, it “boggles the mind” that Simmons suggests knowledge of racism cannot be gained by someone bouncing around hockey’s outback. It’s appallingly ignorant.

What dazzling insights will Simmons share with us next, that a gay athlete can only speak to homophobia in sports if she or he has participated in X number of Pride parades?

I don’t pretend to harbor first-person experience of being a Black person, but I read. A lot. It’s something Simmons might want to try, because multiple studies show that BIPOC communities, gays and women learn about, and experience, the horrors of marginalization in their youth. Some overcome the abuse and bullying to reach the highest level. Many quit sports.

But I’m not going to write about Simmons’ simpleton scribblings, because I think Nazem Kadri of the Calgary Flames said it best: “He’s a guy who’s a little dated in his writing.”

And, finally…

Let’s talk about white guys telling white guys what to do…what was Nazem Kadri saying about Cassius Clay?…homophobia in the press box…baseball cards in bike spokes…the CFL and the Edsel…ARod and JLo a no-go for the Mets…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and I’m not protesting against anything today, but you might protest my still being here…

Social issues like racism, domestic violence, homophobia, sexism and misogyny tend not to have lengthy shelf lives around the ol’ sports hot stove, at least not with mainstream media.

They’ll use it as a chew toy for a few days—sometimes as long as a week—then abruptly turn their attention back to the scoreboard and more pressing matters, such as the Tranna Jurassics’ bid to repeat as rulers of the hardwood or Tiger Woods’ duck hook.

There’s a reason for the short attention span: They can’t relate.

I mean, the toy departments of Canadian newspapers are diverse like a Chihuahua is an elephant. It is an enterprise consisting of 99 per cent men, all of them white. They’ve never felt the sting of the barbs. Thus, it is head-shakingly laughable and absurd that numerous jock journos, print division, have been lecturing and preaching about proper protest protocol re racial injustice.

Worse, they’ve been scolding the National Hockey League and its players for a stutter-step before Planet Puckhead joined a professional athletes’ “racism is bigger than sports” call-to-action last week.

Some samples:

Ed Willes, Postmedia Vancouver: “On Thursday, the NHL bowed to pressure from the players and cancelled the two playoff games set for that night. Predictably, it was followed by a self-serving statement in which the league—along with the NHLPA in a joint statement—pledged unwavering support to the fight against racism. But it also came a day late and a dollar short. It was also perfectly in keeping with the league that it sat on the sidelines for 24 hours and let the players take the responsibility when it should have been leading the way.”

Mad Mike McIntyre, Drab Slab: “One thing we were reminded of today: The NHL and the vast majority of its players will care about a cause when it’s convenient to them, their schedule and their bottom line. Otherwise, all bets are off and the games go on. Actions really do speak louder than words.” He later called the NHL players’ retreat from the rink “an overdue step.”

Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star: “Instead of Black Lives Matter, they said We Skate For Black Lives. They said they were fighting against racial injustice and for health care workers, like it was a buffet menu. The NHL is a small white town on the US-Canada border and the same people have been in charge forever.”

Damien Cox, Toronto Star: “Apparently response from most NHL players will be ‘we didn’t know.’ What they don’t know is how clueless that makes them sound.” And: “Hockey players are really demonstrating themselves to be clueless.” And “By playing on, NHL is basically saying racial unrest is someone else’s problem. Undermines all the words said earlier this summer.”

Terry Jones, Postmedia Edmonton: “Hockey missed its moment to make a major statement and act in solidarity with the basketball players the night before. The way it worked out, however, was better late than never. The puck players got it right in the end and doubled down for effect. The NHL players thus managed to pull themselves up by the skate laces and emerge by making a significant statement after all.”

Steve Simmons, Postmedia Toronto (in a string of tweets): “Shouldn’t somebody on the Boston Bruins, who share a building with the Celtics, have taken a knee? Anybody? The NHL players tonight didn’t even take a knee. Sad. If you want to be disappointed, be disappointed in how NHL players responded last night.” Later he wrote: “The fact that NHL players chose to play on Wednesday night without any kind of sign of political awareness or togetherness—not a symbol, not a knee taken, not an arm locked—is a condemnation of them, not the league. This didn’t reflect on the league. It reflects on the players.”

Whoooo, boy. That’s a tall can of righteous ranting. Basically, what we have here is a bunch of white men from a very white business telling white men from another very white business what to do about something they’ve never experienced.

What next? They tell Paul McCartney how to write songs? Show Eric Clapton how to play the guitar? Explain method acting to Tom Hanks?

Look, racism ought to be an everybody issue, but it seems to me that the sports scribes should be asking questions, listening and learning, not telling people what to do and how to do it. Nor should they be tsk-tsking anyone, not when their own operation is naked in its whiteness.

Really what does it matter that NHL players were a day late and a dollar short in moving into lockstep with athletes from the National Basketball Association, the Women’s NBA, Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball and tennis players, who walked off the job earlier last week? As venerable Zen master Dalai Jocklama has been heard to say, “One is never late to the party if one brings good wine.”

Since I was knee high to Howdy Doody, athletes have been using their voices to pitch products from Gillette razor blades to ravioli in TV commercials, but now they’re using them to hopefully change minds, change habits and change built-in biases. More significant, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. before them, they’re speaking with their feet. That’s boffo stuff, but it’s also a risky bit of business. What happens the next time a cop kills a Black woman or man? Do they walk away again? If so, do the fans they still have give a damn if they ever return?

Not sure what message Nazem Kadri was trying to send when he wore a Cassius Clay hoodie for a show of solidarity re racism by NHL players last week. Muhammad Ali considered Cassius Clay his “slave name,” so I don’t get it. I’ve been waiting for Kadri to enlighten us, but so far no explanation.

Lived experience is, of course, the best of teachers and, yes, I have felt the sting of the barbs. Too many times and to the point of suicide ideation. I have been denied work, denied service, bullied, ridiculed, taunted, stalked and groped. I’ve been made to feel a lesser-than based on gender, and I’ve received physical threats. I once was told that I shouldn’t be allowed to sit at the bar in the very nightclub I cleaned for a living. “This is where the boys sit,” a longtime regular advised me, his voice dripping with contempt. “You should respect that and sit somewhere else.” All that in the past 12 years. Which is the reason I’ve written more than 100 essays on sports/social issues since I began blogging. Awareness leads to conversation and conversation hopefully leads to understanding and change.

Devin Heroux, a terrific CBC Sports reporter who happens to be gay, tells us he hears homophobic slurs “with alarming frequency during media scrums and in the press boxes and at sporting venues today.” That’s very disturbing. I mean, experience has taught me that the language on press row can get rather raunchy and salty, but homophobic? Call me naive, but I thought that would be strictly taboo in the year 2020.

Devin’s essay recounting his experiences listening to anti-gay slurs as a closeted gay kid playing sports (“I quit hockey because of it.”) is excellent. It’s the kind of stuff you’ll rarely find in a mainstream newspaper sports section because, again, the jock journos can’t relate. Thus they ignore issues like homophobia, sexism, misogyny and domestic violence until it becomes an inconvenience they can’t avoid.

Hey, for the bargain-basement price of $349, you can have your name engraved on the new base of the Canadian Football League’s biggest bauble, the Grey Cup. Which is sort of like having your name engraved on the hubcap of a 1958 Edsel. I mean, neither the CFL or the Edsel are up and running.

If CFL Commish Randy Ambrosie and the three downs overlords insist on panhandling shamelessly, why not go all in? Hold a nationwide telethon. If folks across the land care about our quirky game—and they surely do on the Prairies—they’ll pony up. If not, I guess it’s garage sales, weekend car washes, bake sales and lemonade stands.

Telethons have worked for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who were near extinction more than once. Rob Vanstone of Postmedia Flatlands has an interesting piece on the club’s history of financial challenges, which included a bank account that once showed a balance of exactly 30 cents. It’s worth a read.

So, a Mike Trout rookie bubble gum card has sold at auction for $3.936 million. Scant seconds later, millions of parents across North America grounded their kids indefinitely for putting baseball cards in the spokes of their bike wheels.

Just wondering: Do they still include that rock-hard, sugary bubble gum in a pack of baseball cards? I’m guessing dentists everywhere hope so.

Well, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriquez are no longer in the bidding to buy the New York Mets, and that’s really too bad. It would be nice to have another female owner in baseball not named Marge Schott.

Last week I suggested some local news snoops went double-ply Charmin soft on the Winnipeg Jets after their failure to qualify for the NHL Stanley Cup tournament. Basically, they gave the local lads a high-five because they tried really, really hard. Ugh. Therefore, it was with much interest that I read Stu Cowan’s take on the Montreal Canadiens, who, unlike the Jets, actually won a qualifier series and took the Philly Flyers to six games before bowing out. “This year, the Canadiens were a bad team that didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs,” he wrote in the Montreal Gazette. “There aren’t many NHL cities that will celebrate a first-round playoff exit, and Montreal definitely shouldn’t be one of them.” I trust the softies on the beat in Good Ol’ Hometown are paying attention.

And, finally, what’s the over-under on the number of positive COVID-19 tests it will take before the U.S. Open tennis tournament is double faulted? And, if they manage to finish what they start this week at Flushing Meadows, will it be a walkover for Serena Williams in the women’s draw, since six of the world’s top eight players have chosen to give the Grand Slam event a pass?

Let’s talk about bye, bye EskimoPie…the Edmonton E-Somethings…when Muhammad was Cassius…being wrong about Bucky…Postmedia’s D’Oh Boy…fake noise and fake fans…lesbian love and Ponytail Puck…splitsville for Aaron and Danica…and other things on my mind

A Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and it’s only fair to warn you that the odds are 2-to-1 that this post will offend someone…

Racist and/or bigoted language was not uncommon in the home of my early upbringing.

Eastern Europeans (read: Poles and Ukrainians) who had found their way to Canadian shores were “dumb DPs” (displaced persons) or “squareheads,” a descriptive I always found notably inaccurate given that, upon examination through the curious, wide eyes of youth, their heads looked no less round or long than any other adult head in the neighborhood.

Italians were “wops,” Japanese were “Japs” or “nips,” the Chinese were “chinks,” and Indians were “lousy redskins.” None of it was meant to be complimentary.

Black people, meanwhile, were “dumb darkies,” and usually “good for nothing,” and my dad reserved his most disgusting verbal bile for one of my favorite entertainers in those 1950s and ’60s, Sammy Davis Jr., who had the (apparent) bad manners to be both Black and Jewish, which made him a “dirty, little (N-bomb) Jew.”

I know, my dad was a real charmer.

Anyway, at no point did it occur to me that the word “Eskimo” was a racist slur. It was either someone who lived in an igloo up north, a tasty chocolate-coated ice cream treat (EskimoPie), or someone like Jackie Parker or Johnny Bright who played football in Edmonton.

Yet here we are today, with the forced rebranding of the Edmonton Eskimos.

The word “Eskimo” is considered offensive by many Inuit people and, in today’s social climate, that will never do, so the storied Canadian Football League franchise soon shall be the Team Formerly Known As The Eskimos.

“It should be considered a dark day,” scribbles Terry Jones, the dean of Canadian jock journos who wrote the book on Edmonton FC (Clearance Sale! Regular $249, now $99 plus tax and shipping; limited number of books remaining). “It’s a crime, considering the traditions involved, that they’re going to have to take down the sign over the dressing room door: ‘Once An Eskimo, Always An Eskimo.’”

Jonesy, who’s old enough to remember all but one or two of Edmonton’s 14 Grey Cup successes, closes his essay with this: “They’ll always be the Eskimos to me.”

I suspect he’ll have ample company on the disgruntled side of the name debate, because the die-hards will want to hang onto the old rather than grab onto the new.

Let’s be clear about something, though: A name change doesn’t alter the legacy of this model franchise. It still has 14 Rouge Football championships. Spaghetti Legs Parker and the China Clipper and Rollie Miles and Wilkie and numerous others are still in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame as Eskimos. (Come to think of it, so is Jonesy, the documentarian of all things green and gold.) And a new handle won’t erase the five successive years Edmonton FC hoisted the Grey Grail (1978-82).

So why would anyone get bent out of shape?

As Gertrude Stein wrote more than 100 years ago, not long after the Esquimaux became the Eskimos: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Or, as noted football correspondent Willie Shakespeare scribbled, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

And so it shall be with Edmonton FC.

I suppose I’d have different thoughts about this name-changing business if the rabble bullied the Winnipeg Blue Bombers into becoming something other than the Blue Bombers. But there hasn’t been much of a social outcry over airplanes that carry bombs since the Vietnam War, so I think we’re safe.

Apparently Edmonton FC would like to keep the alliteration in the name, thus no logo change, so they’re destined to become the E-Somethings. Here are five suggestions:
1. Edmonton Evolution.
2. Edmonton Empire.
3. Edmonton Emus.
4. Edmonton Elephants.
5. Edmonton Eeny Meeny Miney Moes.
Or…they can go all-in on something completely different, such as:
1. Edmonton Rockies (named after Premier Jason Kenney’s private downtown mountain range).
2. Edmonton Rough Riders (the CFL has gone too long without a second Roughriders team).
3. Edmonton Klondike (a salute to the city’s minimal role in the Klondike Gold Rush).
4. Edmonton Mallers (named after E-Town’s sole tourist attraction).
5. Edmonton Reboot (isn’t everything in sports a reboot these days?).

The moral of the story: Don’t name your franchise after people. Or marginalized groups of people. Or people who prey upon the marginalized (which rules out Daniel Snyder naming his National Football League franchise the Washington Trumps or Republicans).

I suppose the most famous name change in sports was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. to Muhammad Ali. Clay became Ali after whupping Sonny Liston to claim the heavyweight boxing title in 1964, but numerous New York scribes refused to acknowledge his Islamic name. Dick Young described it as a “hate name” and wrote, “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.” Red Smith called him Cassius Clay and described him as one of the “unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the war.” Arthur Daley refused to call him Ali and would refer to him as “the former Cassius Clay” into the 1970s. When Robert Lipsyte wrote Muhammad Ali in his copy, editors at the New York Times would change it to Cassius Clay. The Times refused to accept Muhammad Ali as his official name until 1970. The great Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times called him Cassius as late as 1967. My guess is Edmonton scribes won’t be so petty with the Edmonton E-Somethings.

I must confess that I was totally wrong about Connor Hellebuyck, Vezina Trophy finalist. When Bucky joined the Winnipeg Jets, he was gangly and awkward and seemingly confused, so I never had him figured for an elite goaltender, but he’s among the three Vezina finalists for the second time in the past three National Hockey League crusades. Who knew? Certainly not moi.

On the subject of getting it wrong, nobody was a bigger D’Oh Boy last week than Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna. He had himself a right proper Twitter fit on Thursday, scolding Trudeau the Younger and his squints for permitting the Blue Jays to spend what’s left of summer frolicking in the Republic of Tranna. “The government of Canada—do as we say, not as we do—has let us down again,” he harrumphed. “They are allowing the Blue Jays to play home games this summer in Toronto. That is beyond stupid.” No, beyond stupid is sending out that tweet, then doubling down on it (“beyond ridiculous”) when, in fact, Trudeau the Younger had not granted the Tranna Nine permission to set up shop in The ROT. As we suspected, the Jays have been orphaned and shall truck their bats and their balls south of the U.S.-Canada border for an abbreviated Major League Baseball crusade. D’oh!

Simmons took to Twitter on Saturday and offered a mea culpa to the feds. He’s now “proud” of them, don’t you know. I’m sure Trudeau the Younger will sleep better at night knowing that.

Simmons also submits that Donovan Bailey has not been awarded the Order of Canada because—wait for it—he’s a Black man. Yup, if not for the hue of his skin, the former Olympic sprint champion would have received the honor long ago. Hmmm. Apparently the advisory council that selects Order of Canada recipients didn’t notice Herb Carnegie’s skin color. Or Willie O’Ree’s. Or Ben Johnson’s. That’s right, Ben freaking cheater Johnson became a member of the Order in 1987. He has very black skin. Among the original group of recipients was Isaac Phills, a Black steelworker. So to suggest that Bailey has been blackballed due to race is “beyond stupid and ridiculous.” Simmons might want to consider another mea culpa, this one to members of the advisory council for branding them as racist.

MLB plans to use canned crowd noise from video games during the season, and sound engineers will have a selection of 75 audio choices. Apparently, the folks at Fenway Park in Boston have yet to decide if they’ll be using racial or anti-gay slurs as part of their sound package.

Also, a few MLB outfits will place cardboard images of actual fans in their empty ballparks. Lucky stiffs.

Just wondering: Will they still play Take Me Out To The Ballgame during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field?

Alex Rodriguez wants to buy the New York Mets and introduce an economic system that sounds suspiciously like a salary cap. Ya, says the guy who made $448,000,000 under the old system.

Here’s something you’ll never hear or read about in men’s professional hockey: Romantic relationships between teammates can be problematic. So says Sofia Reideborn, now a former goaltender with SDE of the Swedish women’s league. During a recent Summer Talk podcast she said, “SDE did well last season but my opinion is that we still didn’t reach our full potential because there were so many love relationships and so much drama within the team. The relationships become a problem. I have nothing against homosexual relationships, it is not what I turn against, but it is relationships with a team because it affects the sporting performance. If you want money, prospects or respect, a team in the highest league cannot possibly have five couples. Ten people involved in a relationship with each other. Half the team.”

SDE defender Jacquie Pierri delivered a robust rebuttal to Reideborn, tweeting, “To argue we should ban player relationships because they are inconvenient in one straight-person’s eyes is backwards and not befitting of any airtime or publicity.”

Speaking of relationships, it looks like football hero Aaron Rodgers and former fast-car racer Danica Patrick have hit the ultimate speed bump and arrived at splitsville. Apparently they had a flare-up over driving: He refused to stop and ask for directions, she couldn’t do anything but make left turns.

And, finally, according to Zodiak readings, if I were a pie I’d be a classic apple pie. And if I were Canadian comfort food, I’d be a Peameal Bacon Sandwich. I’m not sure what any of that means, but it’s making me hungry. Time for brekky.

Let’s talk about crossing the uncrossable border…Zip-Lock shinny…a COVID Carnival with car hops and the Fonz in E-Town…Winnipeg the grid Hub Bubble…what’s in a name?…Vlad the Bad’s lifetime contract…Citizen Kane’s fantasy world…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and, speaking of flattening the curve, here’s something else that’ll probably fall flat…

Did I miss a memo?

I mean, all I heard three months ago was this mantra: COVID-19 is “bigger than sports.” Athletes said it, league leaders said it, owners said it, medics said it, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and your neighborhood bookie said it.

It became the most-repeated creed since the Sermon on the Mount. Or at least since Richard M. Nixon tried to convince us that he was “not a crook.”

Thus, power brokers pulled the plug on every athletic event known to the human species—including the Olympic Games—and, hey, while we’re at it, let’s shutter the Canada-U.S. border for the first time since the British put a torch to the White House. We’ll open it again once squints in lab coats have a handle on this pesky coronavirus thing, because it’s “bigger than sports.”

News snoops and opinionists brayed in concert, even though jock journos recognized that there would be a scramble to fill sports pages and air time with quality content while every league remained in lockdown.

No doubt about it. This was a three-alarm pandemic. Much “bigger than sports.” Still is, actually.

Except here we are today and apparently COVID-19 has become an inconvenience no worse than a bad case of zits or rump rot.

Seriously. The squints have yet to discover a vaccine. Medics don’t have a handle on long-term effects of the coronavirus. There is no herd immunity. To mask or not to mask remains a debate. People are still dying. All hell is breaking loose in the United States. But, hey, the girls and boys have been without their play things long enough, so let’s allow the athletes back into the playground. After all, “sports is bigger than COVID-19.”

Now, I haven’t heard any among the decision-makers actually say that aloud, but that’s only because words tend to get muffled behind those pesky coronavirus face masks.

Oh, wait. In their rush to return to the playgrounds at the elite level of professional jockdom, the power brokers forgot to put on their face masks. Either that or, like Donald Trump, they don’t believe they’re necessary, even as the pandemic eats away at the United States like termites on a two-by-four.

Whatever the circumstance, the Toronto Blue Jays requested permission to flee a COVID-19 hot zone, Florida, and transport their bats, their balls and, perhaps, a fresh wave of COVID-19 to the Republic of Tranna. And, sure enough, Trudeau the Younger has given them the okie-dokie to commence training exercises in The ROT.

Moreover, Trudeau the Younger shall give ponder to the Tranna Nine’s wish to contest the home portion of their 60-game Major League Baseball crusade at home, allowing outfits from the COVID-ravaged U.S. to cross the uncrossable border and wander among the rabble willy-nilly. Even as 38 MLB players/employees have already tested positive for COVID-19.

I’m no epidemiologist, but I’d feel safer telling Mike Tyson his face tattoo looks stupid.

Meantime, the National Hockey League plans to establish hub bubbles in the Republic of Tranna and Edmonton, allowing players/attendants from two dozen American-based clubs to cross the uncrossable border and put locals at risk.

Oh, sure, they’re telling us the shinny elite will be going about their daily business in a safety zone sealed tighter than the tombs housing little green people at Area 51, but that isn’t as simple as stuffing last night’s leftovers into a Ziploc bag. Anyone who’s spent time observing young, testosterone-fueled athletes can tell you they don’t tuck themselves in when the street lights go on. To some, curfew and a wake-up call arrive at the same hour in the a.m.

Trust me, after a month in lockup, even downtown Edmonton will begin to look like Shangri-La, and a few of the boys (probably the St. Louis Blues led by Brett Hull) will make a jail break in search of peeler bars and those mountain ranges and streams Alberta Premier Jason Kenney promised them.

I suppose I shouldn’t care, because I’m safely removed from the fray, and if the deep thinkers in E-Town and the Republic of Tranna want to expose their rabble to a hike in COVID cases, who am I to squawk?

But I’d really like to know how and when the pandemic being “bigger than sports” became a case of sports being “bigger than COVID-19.”

I realize I can be a total ditz at times, a circumstance that plagues me with increasing regularity as I slide deeper into my dotage, but it confounds me how fan-free NHL games would make anyone in E-Town or The ROT giddy. I mean, oh joy, they get to watch the Oilers and Leafs on TV. You know, just like the rest of us.

Count veteran essayist Terry Jones of Postmedia E-town among the giddy. Once the Alberta capital had been confirmed as one of the two zip-lock shinny sites, he could scarcely contain his glee. “Edmonton in the summer is a festival city and this year all those festivals have been cancelled,” the dean of Canadian jock journos wrote. “But with proper social distancing, you can have a hockey festival. It’s going to be fun to see what Edmonton can create. Imagine big screen video boards erected around town and fans watching games in their cars Drive-In Movie style with Dog & Suds style car hops delivering food and beverages.” Ya, sure, and maybe the Fonz, Richie, Potsie and Ralph can drop by for the ceremonial faceoff.

I’m not saying the E-Town-proud Jonesy is wrong to wave pom-poms for his burg. Hometown boosterism is one of his admirable qualities, and I get a kick out of it, no matter how delusional it might be (especially when the topic is curling). But a roller-blading car hop asking, “Would you like fries with your order of COVID-19?” wouldn’t be my idea of a good time. I’d be surprised if the majority in northern Wild Rose Country share Jonesy’s enthusiasm for a COVID Carnival.

Similarly, why would any among the rabble in Good Ol’ Hometown want to welcome nine Canadian Football League outfits for a Coles Notes version of a no-fans, three-downs season? What, mosquitoes the size of St. Bernards and potholes the size of the Bermuda Triangle aren’t enough to deal with without adding an invasion of Yankee Doodle Dandies into the mix? If anyone can tell me what’s to be gained by trucking hundreds of Americans across the uncrossable border into Winnipeg, I’m prepared to listen.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers voice Knuckles Irving is fully onside with the large lads in pads assembling in River City to grab grass and growl at Football Follies Field In Fort Garry. “We’ve been saying for weeks on the CJOB sports show that Wpg is the obvious choice as a CFL hub city, IF it comes to that,” he tweeted. “And it might come to that, but it hasn’t yet. NOTHING has been finalized. When it is and the CFL decides ‘hubbing it” is the way to go, hello Winnipeg!!”

I mentioned this a week ago, but it bears repeating now that the feds have allowed the Blue Jays to nestle in The ROT: Perhaps they’ll explain why the Winnipeg Goldeyes are forced to call Fargo, N.D., home this summer. Oh, that’s right, Trudeau the Younger and cronies don’t want non-essential workers crossing the uncrossable border. Apparently Charlie Montoyo is essential but Rick Forney isn’t.

The Washington Redskins will likely change their team name (money talks). The Cleveland Indians will think about changing their team name. The Seattle NHL expansion franchise remains a Team To Be Named Later. Meanwhile, New York Knicks fans are hoping James Dolan changes his name to the Billionaire Formerly Known As Owner.

I note that Vlad (The Bad) Putin has signed a one-way deal to rule Russia until at least 2036, about the same time Tom Brady is expected to show signs of slowing down.

Speaking of lifetime contracts, the New York Mets continue to pay Bobby Bonilla to not play baseball. The Amazin’s top up Bonilla’s bank account by a whopping $1,193,248.20 each July 1 and will do so until 2035, even though he last wore their double-knits in 1999. If nothing else, the Bonilla deal gives new meaning to Casey Stengel’s lament about his 1962 Mets: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Bonilla doesn’t have to.

Imagine getting paid all that money to do absolutely squat. You know, like the Kardashians.

So David Price of the Los Angeles Dodgers has decided to skip the 2020 MLB season. That’s different. He doesn’t normally disappear until the playoffs.

What’s this? The Drab Slab plans to eliminate reader comments on July 14? Shame that. There’ve been days when the readers’ thread was more interesting and entertaining than the articles.

It’s fair to wonder what fantasy world Evander Kane exists in. I mean, the co-creator of the Hockey Diversity Alliance did the Zoom thing recently and claimed that the misdeeds of white athletes, such as Brendan Leipsic, are nothing more than “a footnote” on sports pages and TV.

“This guy does what he does, has a group message where he’s saying some not so good comments, to put it lightly,” Kane began. “I go on TSN and I’m trying to look for the article. I’m thinking, ‘Big story, career over, it’ll be at the top of the page’ because every time something happened to me or another Black player, top of the page, blowing up, front-line news. They want to make sure everybody can see it.

“I’ve got to scroll all the way down and there’s a little blurb. It’s not ‘Brendan Leipsic makes horrific comments about player’s girlfriend’ or ‘Makes misogynist comment or fat shames,’ it’s ‘Brendan Leipsic apologizes for comments.’ How generic and undetailed is that for a headline?’

“From my own personal experience, they want to make it as detailed as possible. They want to overstate it, blow it up. They want to portray you in such a negative light that it gathers so much attention. When it comes to white players, it’s a footnote.”

What a load of complete crap.

Leipsic’s conversation about women was front-page news, not a footnote, in the Winnipeg Free Press, the Winnipeg Sun, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the National Post and numerous other dailies and websites. Headlines included descriptives like “Misogynistic and reprehensible,” and “vulgar” and “offensive.” He’s been drummed out of the NHL. And he’s a white guy.

Drew Brees is also a white guy. He took a royal beating for a regrettable (stupid) comment about not respecting athletes who kneel during the American national anthem.

Johnny Manziel is a white guy. He’s been battered fore and aft for a string of ugly trespasses.

Josh Hader, Kevin Pillar, Ryan Getzlaf, John Rocker, Curt Schilling, Andrew Shaw, Brock Lesnar, Tyson Fury are among numerous white guys who’ve been called out in print and on air for homophobic/racist/sexist natter.

Just like Kane himself.

You might recall a tweet the then-Winnipeg Jets forward posted during an NBA playoff game in 2013: Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat “looked like a fairy going to the rim.” When challenged on the homophobic tone of the tweet, he stood firm, responding, “Man, there’s a lot of overly sensitive people on here. It’s unreal how some of you on here turn absolutely nothing into something so wrong. As I have said before and I’ll say it again if you can’t handle real talk unfollow.”

Ya, that’s the guy I want heading up a Diversity Alliance.

And, finally, my favorite tweet last week was delivered by old friend/broadcaster Peter Young: “In early 70s while teaching grade 9 Phys Ed one class was devoted to mild version on Sex Ed. One 14 year old female on fill in the blank question. ‘Most sexual diseases are transmitted in the area of the REGINA.’” So I guess former Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly was right when he called the Saskatchewan capital the “crotch of Canada.”

Let’s talk about Hal Johnson outing TSN…Where’s Waldo’s Sister?…Beep! Beep! There goes Alphonso!…Rouge Football takes a knee…Yippee for Youpii!…big bucks, baseball and bickering…the best of the Blue Bombers…Herb Carnegie gave the New York Rangers a pass…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and Happy Summer to you all…

Now that Hal Johnson has ‘outed’ TSN for racist hiring practices that included a limit on the number of Black reporters (one maximum) in 1988, here’s a question that needs to be answered:

What is the Black quota in 2020?

We know it’s more than one, because Farhan Lalji, Jermain Franklin and Kayla Grey are part of Team Yakety-Yak at TSN, but, in offering a lame mea culpa to Johnson the other day, the network’s spin doctors neglected to confirm or deny that a ceiling on the number of minority hires remains in place.

“There is still much work to do to improve our commitment to on-air and editorial diversity,” was part of a pre-fab statement on Twitter.

So, is what happened to fitness guru Johnson in 1988 still happening today?

If you missed it, here’s the Coles Notes version of Johnson’s TSN tale: Hired in the morning. Fired in the afternoon. By a suit in the ivory tower who believed adding a second Black news snoop was bad for business. So thanks for dropping in, Hal, and you can pick up your parting gifts on the way out. Oh, and by the way, we’d be happy to air your boffo Body Break fitness show with Joanne McLeod, but only if you hire a white actor to replace yourself because we can’t have an interracial couple exercising and having fun together on TV.

The spin doctors describe that as “a shameful part of our past,” (ya think?) but 32 years later TSN remains almost as white as a bowl of rice. It’s a sea of bleached faces, with a few former football players, Grey and John Lu in the mix.

All of which has provided pause for ponder.

The popular thing to do today is discuss diversity, also all the isms and phobias that are a pox on society. Suddenly, everyone has a tale to tell, and the great unwashed nod in enthusiastic agreement whenever it’s mentioned that discrimination, racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and bullying are bad manners.

Many have been drawn into the conversation out of genuine concern, a yearning to understand and a will to effect change, while others have felt obliged to participate for fear of a tsk-tsking. Even though mistreatment of the marginalized is older than the ink on the Dead Sea Scrolls, only now are they gazing into the looking glass.

It will be interesting to learn what they discover and, more important, what they’ll do about it.

Be certain that TSN isn’t flying solo here. Denise Balkissoon has written an essay for Chatelaine on racism at the Globe and Mail, and Morgan Campbell hasn’t been shy about detailing his experience with racism at the Toronto Star.

Meanwhile, I’ve been squawking about the lack of diversity in jock journalism for much of this 21st century, and when I look at the sports landscape in the rag trade I see that it’s still whiter than a box of Titleist golf balls. Not only that, finding a female face among jock journos at our daily newspapers is like playing a game of Where’s Waldo’s Sister?

So what’s the scoop? Is there a restriction on hiring females? Or is it a hesitancy owing to the horse-and-buggy notion that women can’t possibly know sports?

The last time there was an opening in the toy department of the Winnipeg Sun, more than 30 wannabes applied. Four of them were women. Scott Billeck landed the gig. It’s proven to be a beneficial hire, even as he’s become the tabloid’s Virus Boy, but it’s worth noting that the Sun’s stable of sports scribes hasn’t included a female since the turn of the century, when Judy Owen discovered better things to occupy her time and left the building.

As for gay jock journos, I know of two in this country’s mainstream—the terrific curling writer Devin Heroux of CBC, and Scott MacArthur of Sportsnet 590 The Fan.

It terms of diversity, it’s a rather bleak scorecard.

Our guy Alphonso Davies set gums a-flapping with his eye-popping lickety-split in a recent Bundesliga soccer match, dashing up the pitch at a dazzling 36.5 km/h. Not sure what the big deal is, though. I mean, I know sports writers who run a lot faster than that every time the bar tab arrives.

Hey, I’m not saying jock journos are cheap, but there’s a reason why Canada took the penny out of circulation—sports scribes had them all squirreled away.

I must confess that I can do without all the fuzzballs that romp around sports facilities, but I’ve always liked Youppi!, one-time mascot of the Montreal Expos and now the official furball of les Canadiens. Youppi! has been inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame (yes, there really is such a thing, in Whiting, Indiana), and I suppose that makes him this country’s best two-sport big-league star since Gerry James, aka Kid Dynamite. For those of you who haven’t been introduced, Kid Dynamite played for both the Tranna Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Blue Bombers, sometimes in the same year. He also won hockey’s Memorial Cup and football’s Grey Cup. Youppi! won neither, but kids really like him and that has to count for something.

I’ve been writing about the Canadian Football League since 1980—Toronto Sun, Calgary Sun, Winnipeg Sun and now as a blogger—so I must report that, yes, not having anything but Commish Randy Ambrosie’s awkward mutterings to opine about these days is a total bummer. Like all who follow the goings-on of Rouge Football, I would rather be discussing passers and pass rushers than Commish Randy’s panhandling on Parliament Hill, but it should be obvious to all that the large lads in pads will not be grabbing grass and growling this year. And that truly is a shame.

North American professional team sports in 2020: An unhealthy scratch.

Things that make me go Hmmm, Vol. 1: Donald Trump vows he won’t watch soccer or National Football League games if players are allowed to kneel during the U.S. national anthem. Hmmm. Something tells me they’ll all be watching when he takes a knee in November.

While in ponder of diversity, equality and inclusiveness, I found myself wondering if the Football Reporters of Canada will make this the year they finally vote a female into the media wing of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. At present, it’s the ultimate boys’ club, with 100 per cent male membership, and that’s something that needs correcting.

By golly, I do believe TSN nailed it with its all-time Blue Bombers team. As long as Bud Grant is the coach, Kenny Ploen is the quarterback, and Leo Lewis is one of the running backs, you can’t go wrong. If I have a slight quibble (of course I do), it’s the absence of Ernie (Zazu) Pitts among the receivers. Pitts is on my team before Rick House every time, but I’m not going to sue TSN for giving Houser the nod.

Just curious: Is baseball still a thing? Seriously. By the time Major League Baseball’s millionaire players and billionaire owners have finished bickering over who deserves how many bucks for playing however many games, nobody will give a damn. Maybe they’ve already arrived at that point.

Things that make me go Hmmm, Vol. 2: In a chin wag last week with Ron MacLean of Sportsnet, sports sociologist Dr. Cheryl MacDonald claimed to have interviewed “openly gay men’s hockey players who’ve played at elite levels.” Hmmm. We shouldn’t be surprised that Doc MacDonald didn’t name names, but I found myself wondering if she meant National Hockey League players. That seemed the logical next query to me, but MacLean declined to pursue that line of questioning. Frankly, his natters have become long on fluff and short on substance.

The lady doctor also suggested that the lack of out gay men in major team sports “might be even a masculinity thing.” Might be? What was her first clue?

It’s incredible how many people are just now discovering that hockey is not for everyone. The latest example of this ‘awakening’ is an essay on the Colored Hockey League by Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star. “Canadians call hockey ‘our game.’ But history tells us it hasn’t been everybody’s,” he scribbles. It’s a well-written, informative piece, but we don’t have to go back 100 years to realize that men’s hockey isn’t an inclusive enterprise. Its lack of acceptance is right in front of us today.

I’m a doctor of absolutely nothing, so COVID-19 is a mystery. I do, however, know that I’d prefer NHL players to be as far removed from me as possible during this pandemic, which means Vancouver is too close for my comfort. We haven’t had an active case of COVID-19 on Vancouver Island in more than a month, so I’m fine with the NHL choosing Edmonton or the Republic of Tranna as hub bubbles for the Stanley Cup tournament, thank you very much.

I like Murat Ates. A lot. He does boffo work for The Athletic. I like Sara Orlesky. A lot. She does boffo work for TSN’s Winnipeg bureau. But I believe Murat’s recent Q&A with Sara is a sure signal that he’s struggling for story ideas this deep into the pandemic.

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a jock columnist? Well, let’s have Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna tell us: “Life as a columnist. On Thursday, I write about my dad and Father’s Day and everybody loves me and thinks I’m great. On Friday, I break the (Auston) Matthews (COVID-19) story and I get called every name in the book and some that haven’t gotten there yet. On Saturday, I’m putting this notes column together, which is next to impossible with no games going on. On Sunday, thankfully, I exhale. And now on to next week.” The poor dear. I wonder if he’d like some cheese with that whine.

True, the gig can be a grind, but it isn’t “next to impossible” to churn out a notes column “with no games going on.” I do it every Sunday. I just do it in a different format and, unlike Simmons, I don’t get paid for it.

Simmons also continues to present himself as a hockey historian, even though his lived experience with the game doesn’t predate the 1960s. Commenting on Herb Carnegie, he writes: “Carnegie was more than good enough to play in the National Hockey League in the late 1940s, early ’50s. The Maple Leafs and the rest of the NHL wouldn’t sign him. He never got the chance to play at the highest level because he was black.” Actually, Carnegie did have the chance, even though he was Black. According to Cecil Harris’ book, Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey, the New York Rangers invited him to their 1948 training camp, and he stayed for 11 days, during which time the club presented three contract bids that would have had him begin the season in the minor leagues— $2,700 to play in Tacoma, $3,700 to play in St. Paul, $4,700 to play with the Rangers’ American Hockey League affiliate in New Haven. In other words, Carnegie was offered the same path to the big leagues that Jackie Robinson took with baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers. Start in the minors, graduate to the show. But Carnegie rejected each of the Rangers’ bids for his services, preferring to earn $5,100 with the Sherbrooke Saint-Francois of the Quebec Senior Hockey League. His choice.

And, finally, I note that Paul McCartney turned 78 last week. It seems like only Yesterday that I was watching him and the other three Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. They were fab…yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let’s talk about sexism and homophobia in kids hockey…the 21st century is calling, men…NASCAR ain’t just whistling Dixie…the Dream Gappers playing nice…on the in-isolation book shelf…why would any woman want to date George Costanza?…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and you might want to socially distance yourself from this…

There are times when it’s difficult to know where to begin, but experience has taught me that the beginning is a good place to start.

So, in the beginning…

That’s Delbert Wagner on the drums with the Jimmy King Quartet.

I initially noticed the hue of skin at age five, perhaps six, when the family had gathered for dinner one night on Melbourne Avenue in Winnipeg. There, at one corner of the table nearest my mom, sat Delbert Wagner, local jazz musician. I stared, studying him hard, like I would a freshly opened pack of Topps baseball cards.

“Is something wrong?” my mother asked, observing my fixation with our guest and perhaps thinking there was something about Delbert’s table manners that I didn’t appreciate.

“He’s a Black man,” I said, pointing. “He’s not the same color as us.”

The three adults in attendance tittered, and I made no conscious decision to accept or reject Delbert’s blackness because I was unaware that skin tone might be a matter for disagreement.

Similarly, when treated to a Saturday night out at Haynes Chicken Shack on Lulu Street, I would notice the mixture of black and white faces and think nothing of it, except to acknowledge that there were more black faces than I was accustomed to seeing. In the main, my consideration went to the musicians, who were wonderful, and it was cool when one of the owners/performers, Percy and Zena Haynes (Delbert’s step-father and mother), would work the room and join us at our table for a brief time. I likened it to a visit from Nat King Cole or Ella.

Those were my first inter-racial inter-actions, and I’m happy to report that they leaned heavily toward extremely pleasurable.

The sporting and/ or entertainment heroes of my youth, meanwhile, were an interesting collection: The elegant Wilma Rudolph, a Black woman, was the athlete I most admired; Sandy Koufax, a Jewish man, was my favorite baseball player; Floyd Patterson, a Black Catholic, was my fave boxer until Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, a Muslim; my favorite singers were Barbra Streisand, a Jew, and Frank Sinatra, a mobster; my favorite actor was Sophia Loren, an Italian.

It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t like any or all of them simply because of skin hue, choice of temple, circle of friends, or place of birth.

So you’ll have to excuse me if I fail to comprehend why anyone would stoop to the verbal and/or literal boot-stomping of Black people. I didn’t understand it in the 1950s and ’60s, when fire hoses and German Shepherd dogs were among the tools used to subdue peaceful marchers, and I don’t get it now.

I give ponder to this matter because of the great group howl that has dominated the conversation pit ever since a rogue cop executed George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis-St. Paul in late May.

Sports organizations and athletes who’ve never used their voices (hello, National Hockey League players) now raise them in a new-born awareness of racial inequity. Their chorus has invited praise. But also skepticism. That is, some wonder if there’s universal sincerity in the squawk against racism, or is the high, angered pitch a product of too many athletes with an inordinate amount of free time on their hands?

The hope, of course, is that it’s meaningful natter destined to bear fruit, but the fear is that it’ll disappear like summer wages.

In the meantime, allow me to squeeze an alternative thought into the main holler about racism and direct your attention to the real scourge of boys’ and men’s sports, particularly hockey—sexism/misogyny and homophobia.

The Greater Toronto Hockey League was bullied into releasing some interesting data the other day, numbers that break down misconduct penalties assessed in the past three seasons. In 2019-20, gender/sexism-related infractions numbered 172. Racism? Five. Yup, 172-5. Do the math. That’s 34 times as many.

I’d like to tell you I’m surprised, but I’m not. The go-to slurs, on-ice and in hockey changing rooms, are sexist or anti-gay. It’s an ugly segment of the culture, older than the back of Aurele Joliat’s head. Most disturbing is that it still holds grip at today’s grassroots level, where kids continue to recite a lesson learned from fathers, uncles and older brothers—women are lesser-thans.

Ditto gays. Homophobia is so embedded in hockey that there’s never been an openly gay player in the NHL. Not ever. In more than 100 years. There have been 60-plus Black players, but zero gays have felt comfortable enough to come out. Before or after their tour of duty.

The GTHL numbers tell us that sexism/gender and homophobia are far greater worry points than racism, and I’d suggest you’d find similar results anywhere in Canada.

And here’s a troubling notion: Those kids are our leaders of tomorrow.

At first blush, the GTHL figures don’t seem so disturbing, not when you consider we’re talking about 40,000 kids and 14,000 games per season. But then you contemplate a sound bite from GTHL executive director Scott Oakman: “I don’t think it’s a measure of the real life experiences players have in our league. We’ve heard, over the last week or so, lived experiences of players that were undetected by officials.” So what do we do, multiply the incidents by 10? By 100? Do I hear 1,000? It’s scary stuff.

I should point out that the women/gays-as-lesser-thans is strictly a male sports thing. Women’s pro hockey and Olympic rosters have featured lesbian and transgender players. Women’s National Basketball Association rosters include numerous lesbians, some of whom are married. Tennis, golf…many gay women. And, of course, there’s soccer and it’s Women’s World Cup where, according to Yankee Doodle Damsel lesbian Megan Rapinoe, “You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s never been done before.” So when will male sports organizations and athletes join the 21st century?

When I called up the Sportsnet website early Saturday morning, there were 10 items on racism. TSN had five on its main page. The Athletic had five. Be interesting to note the numbers a month from now.

Wow, that was some kind of big news from the good ol’ boys in NASCAR—no one is allowed to fly or display the Confederate flag on race day anymore. Most fans actually took the news in stride, but rioting broke out when they were told they also had to put their teeth in.

Excuse me? Did I just stereotype U.S. Southerners? My apologies. I was actually talking about Saskatchewan Roughriders fans.

It looks like scribes who follow the National Basketball Association might be required to live in quarantine at Disney World for 3½ months. No big deal. Most of them are too big for the rides anyway.

I tried watching some of the Charles Schwab Challenge from the Colonial in Fort Worth on Saturday, but it wasn’t working for me. I prefer spectator sports.

So, the NHL’s disgraced and outcast misogynist Brendan Leipsic has apparently found work in Russia. Finally, something the rest of us saw coming before the Houston Astros.

Here’s what’s on my in-isolation book shelf this week…

It Ain’t Over ‘Til the Lady with Three Chins Sings: The Collected Sayings of Yogi Berra (Politically Correct Edition).

Gone with the Blowhard: How Humpty Harold Ballard Huffed and Puffed and Turned the Maple Leafs from Champs to Chumps.

Left Turns & Whistling Dixie: The Illustrated History of NASCAR.

My Pants were On Fire and Your Nose was Growing: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa Finally Tell the Truth About Their Juiced-Up Home Run Race of 1998.

Hell, Yes, There’s Crying in Baseball: What Every Cleveland Indians Fan Needs to Know.

What’s this? Could it be that there’s an awakening in the world of women’s hockey? Appears to be so. Whereas members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association once took delight in trash talking the National Women’s Hockey League and its “beer league” product, the Dream Gappers are suddenly playing nice “What we forget about along the way is any opportunity in women’s sport right now is a good one,” says Kristen Richards, who opted to align with the PWHPA rather than join the NWHL. “Why are we women forced to say that we only deserve one league after all of this?” And here’s Jayna Hefford, main mouthpiece for the Dream Gappers: “When you look at men’s hockey, everybody knows the best players play in the NHL. It doesn’t seem confusing on the men’s side that there’s multiple professional leagues. To put it in laymen’s terms, there’s McDonald’s and there’s Burger King. They do the exact same thing. Are they pressured to be one company?” Could be that it’s just window dressing and the Dream Gappers are still as catty as ever, but I prefer to think they’ve grown some.

Here’s something only a scribe from the Republic of Tranna would write, re the Tranna Jurassics winning the NBA title a year ago: “That life-altering feeling may never go away, even now as we struggle through some of the largest challenges of our lives,” Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna tells us. Say what? “Life-altering?” Good grief. COVID-19 is “life-altering.” The other thing is a basketball game. Get a grip, man.

Simmons also had this to say in his weekly alphabet fart that appears in many Postmedia papers: “We need to do more in this country to make sports accessible and available and cool enough for young women to participate.” Right. That coming from a guy who once said, “I don’t believe there’s a demand from the public for women’s sports.” He also called women’s hockey at the Olympic Games “a charade.” When the discussion is female sports, it’s best if Simmons just sits it out.

And, finally, I’ve been watching a lot of Seinfeld lately, and I must say that those four main characters are quite unpleasant people. George Costanza, in particular, is among the smarmiest, most annoying people on TV, yet despite that and his lack of physical attractiveness, most of his girlfriends are babes. I don’t know about you, but most women I know wouldn’t date George Costanza on a dare, especially if it meant spending any time with his parents.

Let’s talk about death threats and bomb threats in Good Ol’ Hometown…the Buddha and Brees…Jackie Robinson and the American flag…Chris Cuthbert goes over the wall…another jock journo out of work…the Winnipeg Sun’s six-pack…and Fidel Castro’s angst

At first blush, the inclination was to suggest that Khari Jones had it all wrong. That he was misremembering.

I mean, death threats? To the Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback? Naw. Can’t be.

Look, I realize the football faithful in Good Ol’ Hometown can be a demanding lot. They’ll turn on a starting QB faster than Judas on Jesus (hello Dieter Brock, Matt Nichols, etc.), and they’ll get louder and more ornery as the beer snakes grow longer and longer in the fourth quarter of a losing skirmish.

But threaten to snuff him out? That’s something you’d rather not believe.

Except as Jones told the tale the other day, his nose wasn’t growing and his pants weren’t on fire.

He delivered his revelation in a calm, matter-of-fact cadence, like he was telling us what he had for lunch or what his kids ordered the last time at a McDonald’s drive-thru. He even smiled, almost as if he recognized that some among the rabble might suggest there was a tich of far-fetchedness to the disturbing narrative of his 2002 Canadian Football League crusade.

“In Winnipeg,” Jones began, “I received death threats, you know, because my wife is a different color than me. We had police officers staying at our house, kinda patrolling our house while I was at away games. There was a series of letters, and I still have those letters.”

I don’t know about you, but those words produce chilling imagery for me:

A woman—Jones’ bride Justine—home alone with her newborn, Jaelyn, while hubby and dad is flinging footballs hundreds of miles away, unable to protect his family from a wingnut lurking in the shadows of a darkening night. The stalker might have a gun. Or a knife. Maybe both. Stealth, slow-moving cop cars appear in the haze of dimly lit lamp posts, then disappear into the same darkness that protects the unseen scoundrel, prepared to pounce. It’s positively Hitchcockian.

It was just one person, we’re told, a racist who believes black and white belong together on piano keyboards, salt-and-pepper shakers and Oreo cookies, but not in the skin hue of a married couple. He penned a dozen letters to Jones, each peppered with vulgar language and threats. He was never caught.

Eighteen years later, Jones is finally talking about it because racism is the topic du jour in North America and he recognizes that his is a story people need to hear, even if they’d prefer not to hear it.

It’s the kind of stuff that gives pause for ponder, and you try to convince yourself that such a level of hate can’t possibly exist in Good Ol’ Hometown.

I was born, raised and spent most of my working life in Winnipeg and, sure, I recognize that racists, bigots, homophobes, etc. walk among the throng, but death threats because a quarterback is black and his bride is white? Come on, man, isn’t that supposed to be a 1960s Alabama thing? If only.

Truth is, I had my own close encounter with one of the wackos back in the day.

It was late March of 1979 and, with the Parti Québécois beating the separatist drums with gusto, the political climate was a tinderbox. Anti-Québec sentiment flowed freely in Western Canada and peaked in full, ugly voice the night the Finnish National B shinny side was in town for a friendly with the Winnipeg Jets, then still the World Hockey Association’s flagship franchise but soon to be a charter member of the National Hockey League.

Because the skirmish was televised locally on the CBC’s English and French channels, public address announcements were delivered in both our official languages. That didn’t work so well.

Each time PA announcer Germain Massicotte would parlez vous, the audience of 10,113 filled the Old Barn On Maroons Road with a robust chorus of boos, which ramped up in volume with each word he uttered en francais. By the time Morris Lukowich scored in overtime, Massicotte’s voice had totally disappeared beneath the might of the anti-Québec outpouring.

“It was kind of rude,” said young Rich Gosselin, a product of nearby St. Malo and one of two francophones wearing Jets linen that night.

“I just consider the source,” muttered Bobby Guindon, the veteran forward who, a year ealier, had been anointed most valuable player in the Jets championship crusade.

Like Gosselin and Guindon, I was unamused, so I scribbled as essay in the Winnipeg Tribune, giving the booing, bigoted boors a stern tsk-tsking.

“Winnipeg, if this is how you’re going to act next season when you’re in the National Hockey League, then you don’t deserve to see the Montreal Canadiens,” is how I signed off.

The following morning, the ringing of my kitchen telephone stirred me from slumber. It was a man. An angry man. He didn’t appreciate the tone of my column and volunteered to provide me with one-way passage to the Great Beyond. Yup, he’d bomb my house. Blow it up, me and my family with it. Apparently, that’s what you do with a “frog lover.”

Unlike Khari Jones, I didn’t call the cops. I told the boys at work about the bomb threat and we had a giggle, although I must confess mine was a bit of a nervous chuckle and there was some skittishness to my step for a few days.

But, hey, that house on Leighton Avenue in East Kildonan is still standing, a block away from the Red River, and I’m still ticking, so I guess the guy had a bad batch of dynamite or he was a graduate of the Wile E. Coyote School of Mayhem.

I don’t know if you’ve been following Paul Friesen’s work on the Khari Jones file for the Winnipeg Sun, but it’s boffo stuff. Top drawer in every way. Makes me proud that I played a part in poaching Paul from CJOB all those many years ago, and it all began with a chance meeting in a checkout line at the Safeway on Roslyn Road in Osborne Village. So, if you like Paul’s work, kudos to him. If you don’t like it, blame me.

Really hard to believe the boys at the Drab Slab basically ignored the Jones death-threat narrative, except to run one Canadian Press piece. That’s shoddy. Or lazy. Maybe both.

Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks are supposed to be bright guys. They aren’t allowed to be the dullest knife in the drawer, although Terry Bradshaw tests that theory every time he opens his squawkbox on Fox Sports NFL coverage. So what’s Drew Brees’ excuse for being such a D’Oh Boy? I mean, seriously, he thought Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest was about the American flag and not social injustice and police brutality? That’s like believing the Bible is porn. But wait. The New Orleans Saints QB experienced an awakening, as if he’d shared a bodhi tree with the Buddha, and a couple of days after dumbing down he was schooling Donald Trump, advising the Commander-in-Chaos that kneeling protests have “never” been about the Stars ‘n’ Stripes. I swear, we haven’t seen a retreat that rapid since Tiger Woods’ wife came at him with a 9-iron. Makes you wonder how Buddha Brees ever mastered the Saints playbook.

Every time I hear someone like Brees rage against Kaepernick and other National Football League kneelers, branding them as disrespectful ingrates, I am reminded of this excerpt from baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s book, I Never Had It Made: “There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only the principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.” So there.

The other night on TSN SportsCentre, anchor Jennifer Hedger said racism is an “uncomfortable” conversation. Why? And who’s uncomfortable? Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down social gatherings, my friends and I discussed racism, bigotry, homophobia, sexism, etc. on numerous occasions, with zero discomfort.

Big shakeup in the Tower of Babble On, with Chris Cuthbert defecting from TSN football to Sportsnet and Hockey Night in Canada. Initial reaction: Geez, can he take Glen Suitor with him?

Apparently Suitor was unavailable for comment on his longtime sidekick’s departure. “He’s still in rehab after having his nose surgically removed from Keith Urban’s butt,” a TSN spokesperson familiar with the situation confirmed.

Seriously, this is an opportunity for TSN to bring a new, fresh sound to its Canadian Football League broadcasts. Surely there’s a vibrant, young voice out there who can slide behind Cuthbert’s play-by-play mic and, at the same time, they can spare us another season of groupie Glen’s gushing over Urban. If they insist on going with the old guard, I say give the job to Gord Miller, who’s solid whenever he calls Rouge Football. And, for gawd’s sake, keep Kate Beirness away from the CFL on TSN panel.

Oh, dear, the body count continues to grow in the toy department, and Ken Wiebe is among the latest casualties. The Athletic slashed salary and scribes the other day, handing out 46 pink slips, and that leaves Murat Ates to fly solo on the Jets beat. I never met Ken, but I’m told he’s one of the good guys, and we can only wonder when this carnage will end and who’ll be left standing.

The Winnipeg Sun made it through the week without anyone heading to the pogey line, but the overlords at Postmedia have decided to eliminate one day of the week—Monday. Commencing June 22, the tabloid will become a six-days-a-week print publication (Tuesday-Sunday), which means they’ll be a day late and a dollar short whenever something big breaks on the Sabbath. You know, like the Bombers winning the Grey Cup. Or—dare to dream—the Jets hoisting the Stanley Cup on a Sunday.

And, finally, news that the Sun is becoming a six-pack provided reflection on my time with the tabloid.

Now in its 40th year (the official anniversary date is Nov. 5), the Sun wasn’t supposed to have a shelf life longer than four months, never mind four decades, but a three-days-a-week sheet bulked up to a seven-day production in 1992, and they’ve been going toe-to-toe with the Goliath on Mountain Avenue every morning since.

You don’t survive that long unless you deliver something the rabble is looking for and, in the case of the tabloid, that’s meant a heavy emphasis on cops and robbers, entertainment and, of course, sports scribbling served with sizable portions of sass, irreverence and 200-point headlines.

Oops. Almost forgot Page 3 (or was it Page 2?), which once featured a damsel in her scantilly-clads and heels as high as a giraffe’s forehead.

The Sunshine Girl was just one of the oddball things we did at the Sun. I also recall management’s curious fascination for Panda bears, and there was a cheeky promo during the 1999 Pan American Games that attracted the attention of El Presidenté, Fidel Castro.

Seems ol’ Cigar Breath was so distraught over Cuban defectors prior to/during the Games that it became the focal point of his annual Revolution Day natter, with the Bearded One barking about “traps and tricks” and “schemes” and “filth.”

We ran a “guess the number of Cuban defectors” contest, offering airfare and a one-week vacation in Havana, cigars not included.

“If this is a goodwill gesture, it is a perverse one,” noted José Fernandez, president of the Cuban Olympic Committee.

I don’t recall if it was eight or 10 Cubans who went over the wall during the Pan Ams, but that was us—the perverse paper.

Let’s talk about Canadian jock journalism and its diversity deficiency

The soft, societal underbelly of Canadian jock journalism is being exposed.

Again.

It is ever thus when real-life concerns (racism, gender equality, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, domestic violence, etc.) invade the playground and relegate final scores, statistics and Tiger Woods’ pursuit of Grand Slam golf titles to a seat of secondary thought.

That, of course, is what’s unfolding now as we observe the horror that is Battleground America.

Unrest has given way to rioting and rubble, the bitter backwash from the death of George Floyd, a Black man whose name held no position in the public conscience until video evidence confirmed that a Minneapolis-St. Paul police officer had used a knee to squeeze the final breath out of him.

In itself, the death of Floyd is not a sports story. Rogue cop kills a Black man. They’ve seen this movie, too many times.

Except Michael Jordan is talking about this one. Masai Ujiri is talking about it. LeBron James is talking about it. Evander Kane is talking about it. Blake Wheeler, Jonathan Toews and Logan Couture are talking about it. Kareem has weighed in. Numerous pro sports organizations have issued communiqués condemning racism and social injustice, and that includes the National Football League, which has managed to place itself in the awkward position of being full-score against Colin Kaepernick’s knee of peaceful protest and, at the same time, against a cop’s knee of death.

But here’s someone who can’t talk about it from a platform of lived experience—99 per cent of Canadian sports scribes.

Unless your name is Morgan Campbell or Donnovan Bennett, the best our flowers of jock journalism can do is provide sound bites from Ujiri, Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Kane et al.

And, yes, it’s terrific when they spread the word. It’s important.

Yet they themselves cannot provide explanation, analysis or offer first-person anecdotal evidence in the arena of marginalization. They fall short, like a warning-track fly ball. They are incapable of commenting and opinionating from a foundation of been there, had that done to me. They don’t know Black. Just like they don’t know female. They don’t know fists of fury. I doubt many of them know or care that this is Pride Month.

Consider this passage from a Michael Grange essay for Sportsnet the other day:

“It was also a reminder that I’ve never had a moment to be nervous about the police. That I’ve never sent my teenaged son into the world and worried that he could be a victim of a tragic misunderstanding, or worse. I’ve never had to wonder if my skin colour or ethnicity or gender was an obstacle to me reaching my potential. No one should have those fears and concerns. Not today, not ever. I believe we should all act, think, and vote in ways that reflect those fundamental values. I’ve never felt the need to write that before because it’s always seemed so self-evident. So clear. It’s not.”

After viewing the George Floyd death video, a white scribe like Grange might have cringed and muttered something like “That’s just horrible” and maybe even wept, but a Black writer would be more apt to gasp, “Good lord, that could be me or my child,” then lock his doors and keep his family behind cover.

When racism in hockey became the topic du jour late last year, Ron MacLean had a natter with his Hometown Hockey co-host Tara Slone and Black filmmaker Kwame Mason, and he delivered this confession: “It’s a real eye-opener that I don’t recognize the structural racism or sexism that’s going on.”

It was an astonishing admission, but MacLean found no requirement to give ponder to racism and sexism because it wasn’t, and isn’t, his ox being gored. He has the privilege of being white and male, which is totally in keeping with the makeup of jock journalism.

I presented these numbers from the most recent Associated Press Sports Editors Racial and Gender Report Card (2018, a study of 75 newspapers/websites in Canada and the U.S.) on Sunday, but they bear repeating:
90 per cent of sports editors were male;
85 per cent of sports editors were white;
88.5 per cent of reporters were male;
83.4 per cent of columnists were male;
82.1 per cent of reporters were white;
80.3 per cent of columnists were white;
44 women were columnists at ‘A’ level newspapers/websites, and 38 worked for ESPN. If the ESPN female columnist were removed, the percentage of female columnists would drop to 2.9 per cent.

Is that a recipe for racist, sexist coverage? Not necessarily. But it does explain why there are so few voices that speak to the very heart of those issues. Also why the message often gets misshapen.

For example, when Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs dropped his trousers to his ankles and mooned a female security guard at 2 o’clock in the morning last summer in Scottsdale, Ariz., male sports scribes turned the incident into a forum on his suitability to serve as team captain. They wrote it off as frat-boy frolic and gave scant consideration to his victim, Fayola Dozithee, and the every-day fears of females.

“We all do stupid things,” Cathal Kelly scribbled in the Globe and Mail. “We are all especially likely to do stupid things when it is late, when we are drunk and when we are 22.”

I submit that’s the language of a man who’s done a fair bit of stupid-thing, frat-boy frolicking himself, some of which might have victimized women.

On the domestic violence file, male scribes crucified NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for his botched handling of the Ray Rice case after viewing video evidence of the former running back dragging his unconscious girlfriend off an elevator, but then the boys celebrated the arrival of woman-beating Johnny Manziel to the Canadian Football League.

“Looking forward to seeing Johnny Manziel play in the CFL. Win-Win for the CFL,” rejoiced Chris Cuthbert of TSN.

“It will be fun for everyone to watch,” agreed Dan Barnes of Postmedia.

“Welcome to Canada, Johnny Manziel. And where do I sign up,” chimed in Steve Simmons of Postmedia.

Again, no thought given to the big picture because they aren’t female and vulnerable.

Meantime, there are no figures for the percentage of gay editors/columnists/reporters at major newspapers/websites, but I doubt I’m far off the mark if I suggest it’s less than 1 per cent. Consequently, there’s no one with lived experience to speak to the issue when someone like Michael Sam, Jason Collins or Robbie Rogers are targeted with anti-gay language and deeds.

When Sam became the first openly gay man to participate in a professional football game, many in the LGBT(etc.) collective were delighted and proud. But one prominent jock journo, the aforementioned Simmons, denied that Sam had actually participated in a Canadian Football League game.

“In reality, pro football still awaits its first openly gay player,” he wrote.

After Sam bugged out on the Montreal Alouettes due to mental health issues, an unidentified sports scribe accused him of “faking it.”

So we had one heterosexual man insisting that a gay man never existed, and another heterosexual man presuming to have first-hand knowledge of the demons that torture and haunt a gay man’s mind.

Jock journalism in our country has a serious diversity deficiency.

It could serve as a vehicle for societal change, but it isn’t constructed that way. Hiring practices make the business too white, too male and too hetero.

The women who appear on TSN, for example, are allowed to be pretty and read a teleprompter, but they aren’t allowed an opinion, the exception being women’s soccer. When skin hue is the topic du jour, Tim Micallef and Sid Seixeiro of Sportsnet can natter about it, but they are unable to reach the core of the issue until Donnovan Bennett is invited into the discussion. He might crack wise about “dial-a-Negro,” which he did, but there’s truth hidden in that joke.

Bennett authored a thought-provoking essay on the current racist unrest in the U.S., and he closed with this:

“I’m going to challenge my own industry. If you work in sports media and make a living off the talent and ingenuity of black athletes, the least you can do is use your journalistic skills and privilege to show that black lives have equal value to your own. The least you can do is allot more than 28 or 29 days in February to humanizing black people.”

My guess is they’ll have found a new chew toy by this time next week.

FOOTNOTE: Both Bennett’s essay and an article on former National Basketball Association player John Amaechi, who came out as gay after his playing career, are live on the Sportsnet website today. Yet the overlords at Sportsnet refuse to allow discussion on these race and LGBT(etc.) issues by disabling comments on both pieces. Go figure.

Let’s talk about a Grey Cup game on the frozen tundra…Tin Foil Man…comedy acts in Edmonton…Puck Finn’s chin whiskers…Akim Aliu’s message…faux fans in footy…the Six and the NWHL…an end game for Ponytail Puck…Naomi Osaka’s bankroll…and so long Eddie Haskell

A Grey Cup game in December. In Canada. Maybe in Winnipeg. Perhaps in Edmonton. Possibly in Regina.

That’s the latest bit of zaniness to drift out of the Canadian Football League bunker in the Republic of Tranna, and it appears that Commish Randy Ambrosie and his three-downs overlords are actually serious about possibly taking the Rouge Football showcase event to one of their frost-bitten burgs.

The way they have it figured, once there are only two teams still standing, the outfit with the superior record from a sawed-off season (eight, maybe nine, maybe 10 games) gets home field for the Grey Cup showdown, and that could mean the wind-ravaged, very frozen tundra of the Prairies.

Ya, that makes sense. You know, like building igloos in Arizona makes sense.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy all those campfire tales about all those wacky-weather Grey Cup games of yore—the Mud Bowl and the Fog Bowl and the Wind Bowl and the Ice Bowl and the Snow Bowl.

But do we really need a Hypothermia Bowl?

Think of the poor sap who’d be first to kiss the Grey Grail. It’ll take the jaws of life to pry the guy’s lips from the metal mug. No amount of Botox would make him right again.

Maybe that’s why Commish Randy and pals have gone hat in hand to the feds for $150 million. They’ll need the loot for lawyers when surviving players file a class-action lawsuit seeking compensation for cruel and unusual punishment.

Look, we all know the mercury on The Baldies is apt to dip low enough to freeze the brass monkeys off Commish Randy once we arrive at December. So if—and that’s an if as large as an O-lineman’s appetite—there’s a 2020 CFL season that concludes during the Christmas shopping crunch, they’re setting themselves up for the ultimate football folly.

Let’s face it, there’s only one logical locale for any Grey Cup skirmish in the last month of the year—the comfy, climate-controlled confines of BC. Place Stadium in Vancouver, even if Rouge Football isn’t much more than a rumor on the Left Flank.

What matters is that there’ll be a roof to keep the large lads in pads dry and warm as they argue their case for three-downs bragging rights.

So Commish Randy and the overlords might want to rethink that host city thing before they find themselves gathered in a frost-bitten burg, wondering why they rolled the dice on a minus-30C day when post-game lattés on an outdoor patio was available.

If (there’s that word again) there’s a Grey Cup game in December, it won’t be a first. There have been four since the CFL was formed in 1958, the last on Dec. 3, 1972, and each of those skirmishes took place in Southern Ontario, which has never been mistaken for the Canadian Prairies.

The CFL isn’t planning a “shortened” season or an “abbreviated” season or a Coles Notes version of a season. It’ll be a “truncated” season, don’t you know. Oh, yes, news snoops have fallen in love with the word “truncated,” the way Jesus favored the word “blessed” and Brian Burke loves to talk about “truculence.” They can’t file a dispatch without informing us that any 2020 CFL crusade will be “truncated,” and I imagine copy from the Grey Cup game will go something like this: “The truncated season came to a close on the Flattest of Lands today with much truculence and more than 30,000 blessed empty seats. Only seven players were forced from the game due to hypothermia, with another six treated for severe frost bite. MVP quarterback Zach Collaros began the day with 10 fingers, but finished with eight. Lawsuits pending.”

This has nada to do with sports, but I thought I’d share it nevertheless. While walking home from a pub yesterday (for the first time in more than two months), I saw a man with tin foil on his head. True story. I did a triple take to confirm I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Yup. Tin foil. On his head. He was loitering on the sidewalk, but I’m not sure if he was waiting for a bus or the Mother Ship. Either way, I wasn’t keen on approaching Tin Foil Man to inquire.

Things that make me go hmmm Vol. 1: A comedy club in Edmonton has been forced to shut down because belly laughs are a risky bit of business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s how Alberta’s top doc, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, explained it: “If it’s a comedy club or some kind of performance where you’re going to have an entire room of people laughing or cheering at the same time, there is some increased risk to those activities.” Hmmm. “Some kind of performance” that has a room full of people yukking it up. Apparently the good doctor has seen Milan Lucic play.

Things that make me go hmmm Vol. 2: Sticking with the Wild Rose Country/comedy theme, Jason Kenney has decided that Winnipeg is neither a major city nor a National Hockey League locale. “Edmonton has the lowest level of COVID-19 infections of any major city in North America, certainly lower than any other NHL city,” the Alberta premier stated in making his pitch for E-Town as a hub burg once the NHL hits the reboot button. Well, okay, let’s do the math. Active cases as of Friday: Edmonton 58, Winnipeg 3. Hmmm. E-Town hasn’t outscored Good Ol’ Hometown that badly since the Oilers-Jets playoff series of the 1980s.

Speaking of the Jets, Patrik Laine did the Zoom thing with news snoops the other day, and among his many sound bites was a vow to never again grow his terrible beard. (“Once was enough.”) Puck Finn also suggested that his game will be “terrible” whenever the NHL is back in go mode, because he’s been away from the freeze for two months. I don’t know about you, but I’m more interested in Puck Finn’s one-timer than his scruffy chin whiskers.

Seriously, are Puck Finn’s chin whiskers, his Lamborghini, his golf game, and his video games newsworthy? I suppose they are during a pandemic, and it makes you wonder why more NHL players don’t spice up their sound bites with a sprinkling of personality.

There’s very little fresh messaging provided by Akim Aliu in the essay he has written for The Players’ Tribune. He tells us that hockey “isn’t” for everyone, a mantra some of us have been chanting for quite some time, so I’m guessing many among the rabble wish he would just shut his squawk box and disappear like summer wages. Except that isn’t how this works. As long as racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, bigotry, hazing, etc. exist in hockey, people like Aliu need to speak their truth, and it doesn’t matter that he was a fringe NHL player. Ugly is ugly, and hockey’s underbelly is ugly. Or did you miss the charming comments a group of young players made about women a couple of weeks ago? Again, there’s nothing new in Aliu’s message, but that doesn’t make it any less important. I just wonder how many people are paying attention.

A Bundesliga soccer match between Borussia Moenchengladbach and Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday featured 13,000 life-size, cardboard cutouts (of actual people) in the stands. The bad news: Cardboard fans are hell on beer sales. The good news: No long lineups to the washrooms.

Footy side FC Seoul has apologized for using female sex dolls as faux fans during a recent match. I agree. Putting dummies in the seats at sports events is a really bad idea. But enough about Drake.

Now that I’ve mentioned Drake, it’s worth noting that the National Women’s Hockey League expansion franchise in the Republic of Tranna is called the Six, a term coined by hip hop guys Jimmy Prime and Oliver North (El-Khatib) and popularized by Drizzy upon the release of his album Views From the 6. The question is: Will anyone in The ROT view the Six when Ponytail Puck returns?

Anyone who follows women’s hockey knows the game is a mess, with the NWHL and the Dream Gappers (Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association) offering very different road maps toward a sustainable operation that pays the workers a “living wage,” whatever that might be.

Commish Dani Rylan is convinced her NWHL can achieve that end without the NHL serving as a sugar daddy, whereas it’s NHL or bust for the Dream Gappers. Or is it?

Consider this snippet from a natter between PWHPA head Jayna Hefford and the Ice Garden website on May 20…

Ice Garden: “Obviously the NHL is the endgame here but is that the only endgame you see or do you also see possibly a league with private investors, like large-scale private investors getting involved?”

Hefford: “We would never say it has to be the one and only way but there’s a number of things that we’ve communicated publicly that should be involved in a league.”

But wait. Now consider what Hefford told news snoops on April 23…

“We believe there needs to be an affiliation with the NHL. We’re adamant that there needs to be a connection there. We believe it’s the only way the women’s game will survive and grow.”

So either Hefford doesn’t know her own end game or, more likely, her pants are on fire.

Well, allow me to provide, once again, the Coles Notes version of the PWHPA agenda: The NWHL drowns in a sea of red ink; the NHL adopts the self-orphaned Dream Gappers and Ponytail Puck lives happily ever after.

Muppet heads Fozzy Bear and Colby Armstrong.

The squawk boxes at Sportsnet continue to suck up to PWHPA membership/allies with ass-kissing commentary, the most recent example delivered by muppet head Colby Armstrong on Hockey Central at Home during a blah-blah-blah session with Canadian national team member Natalie Spooner.

“Thanks for joining us,” Colby began. “Great seeing you as always and…we see you a lot, like we really get to see you a lot, and especially through this we get to see you out there a lot advocating for women’s hockey. I have three little girls and you know they love you. They’re big fans. What’s it like being a role model?

“I’ve been able to watch you and see you deal with a lot of people and fans and little girls, and I think you have a great personality for it, so I think it’s worked out.

“You’re a very social person, like, fun to be around, high energy, probably the, you know, the person in the room or in the gym that keeps it bumping. You love singing, you love dancing…people follow Natalie Spooner on her, what do you have Instagram? I don’t have it. I tell my wife, we watch your stuff all the time. You found a way to entertain. Ya, very entertaining.”

I swear, after chewing on all that sugar, I hope Spooner booked a dental appointment.

Here’s a female athlete who doesn’t require faux hosannas or a sugar daddy—Naomi Osaka. According to Forbes, the Japanese-born, American-raised, two-time Grand Slam tennis champion earned more coin ($37.4 million) in a 12-month time frame than any woman in history. Yup, Naomi is in front of Serena Williams ($36 million) at the pay window, and you can probably bet the farm that they’ll be the only two women among the biggest money-makers in sports when Forbes releases its annual Top 100 list this week. Naomi slides in at No. 29 and Serena is at No. 33. If there are any other women in the group, my guess is you’ll find them on a tennis court.

And, finally, Eddie Haskell is dead. Long live Eddie Haskell (in reruns). For all you youngsters in the audience, be advised that Eddie Haskell, played by Ken Osmond, was one of the regular characters on the 1950s-60s feel-good sitcom Leave It To Beaver, and he was a smart-ass kid. Here’s how Paul Farhi of the Washington Post describes him: “Eddie Haskell was a sneaky little rat, a two-faced suck-up and a tinpot bully. A punk who stirred up trouble.” That’s spot on, although I might have added the word “smarmy,” because Eddie was the kid your parents didn’t want you hanging with at home or on the street. Ironically, bad boy Eddie grew up to be policeman Ken in real life.

Let’s talk about white privilege and giving voice to women and minorities in hockey media

As the discussion about the cult of shinny rages on, I find it most disturbing that some opinionists are just now discovering that hockey is not for everyone.

Consider, as a prime example, a recent Twitter exchange between Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star and a chap with the user handle I Drink And I Know Nothing:

I Drink: “My daughter loves hockey but the ‘boys only’ culture she has to endure is going to ruin it for her. The area is too small to have a girls league and if you want to play, you have to put up with the players and coaches who feel that ‘girls are too weak.’”

McGran: “Even today? I thought we were at least past this.”

Earth to Kevin! Earth to Kevin! You might want to have a meaningful chat with some of the women in your life, and I’m guessing they’ll suggest you haven’t been paying attention.

Seriously, 2019 is a moment in history, not a cure-all for what ails shinny.

I mean, sure, women are now being accepted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, more females are playing the game today, and there’s a pro women’s league, but to assume the ‘old boys club’ mentality has gone the way of the dinosaur, the dodo and home milk delivery is pure folly. Also remarkably naive.

Meanwhile, one of The Athletic’s finest scribes, Sean Fitz-Gerald, has had an awakening of sorts, telling us that “hockey, increasingly, is not for everyone,” and a Calgary Sun editorial described racist language used by now-former Calgary Flames head coach Bill Peters as “shocking.”

Come on, people, where have you been hiding? Like, I’d be shocked if someone discovered JFK and Marilyn Monroe were still alive and shacked up together somewhere behind the Grassy Knoll, but a hockey coach spewing racism or bullying a player? That’s a dog biting a man.

Hockey has never been for everyone, and anyone who’s spent more than five minutes inside the cult that is hockey shouldn’t be shocked by the disgusting language Peters used 10 years ago, when he and the target of his toxic tongue, Akim Aliu, were trying to claw their way to the National Hockey League.

Since L’Affaire Peters-Aliu became top-of-the-page news, pundits hither and yon have had their say, but have you noticed anything about the jock journos who’ve been given a voice?

That’s right. All white faces. Male white faces.

I turned on Sportsnet the other day and three white guys were talking about it. I turned on TSN and four white dudes were talking about it. I called up newspaper websites, and no one but white guys were writing about it.

Does that not strike you as odd? Also wrong?

Like, what in the name of Martin Luther King Jr. do male sports scribes and talking heads of white privilege know about discrimination based on skin hue? Nada.

It was no different last March when Morgan Rielly of the Toronto Maple Leafs was thought, mistakenly, to have used a homophobic slur during a match. Both TSN and Sportsnet trotted out the usual suspects for panel gasbagging about the evils of anti-gay language, and those usual suspects had one thing in common—all were heterosexual men. How in the name of Harvey Milk can heterosexual men in hockey—a culture that is deeply and disturbingly homophobic—speak with any level of authority on anti-gay slurs?

The simple answer is they can’t. Yet no gay man or woman was invited to participate in panel discussions.

So we now are having a yackety-yack about racism in hockey, with tentacles also reaching out to touch on bullying, hazing, sexism, misogyny and LGBT(etc.) matters, and not until Saturday night on Hockey Night In Canada did we finally hear from a gathering of black people in the game.

Imagine that. People of color discussing racism. And one of them, Sarah Nurse, is a woman. What a concept.

Ron MacLean, Sarah Nurse, Anthony Stewart, David Amber.

Although inviting Nurse, Anthony Stewart, David Amber and Anson Carter to join the conversation, HNIC remains complicit in perpetuating the whiteness of hockey, something host Ron MacLean acknowledged in another discussion with black filmmaker Kwame Mason and singer/sports broadcaster Tara Slone.

“When the kids throw back to Hockey Night In Canada,” MacLean said, “as a general rule they’re all white, and if they’re not all white, the whites often have the speaking part, and it’s the same with our Hometown Hockey, we’re so proud of being inclusive but how many times do we get people of color to pick the three stars?”

He confessed that it’s “a real eye opener that I don’t recognize the structural racism or sexism that’s going on.”

That is an astonishing admission. How could MacLean not see and hear it?

For gawd’s sake, he spent the past 33 years sitting beside Don Cherry’s horrible wardrobe, listening to the gasbag promote cement-head hockey while, at the same time, flailing away at Europeans, Russians, French guys, pinkos and anyone else whose hairy knuckles don’t drag on the ground. MacLean heard Cherry insist that female reporters don’t belong in changing rooms. Over at TSN, their idea of diversity on its many hockey panels is allowing Marty Biron to prattle on in his fractured English. He’s the token Quebec guy. Sportsnet gives the aforementioned Stewart a voice, but their panel pundits are 99.9 per cent white male.

Women, meanwhile, aren’t a minority group, but they’re treated like one. They aren’t allowed to join hockey panels, even though there are numerous former and/or current players from our national and Olympic sides quite capable of stringing together complete sentences. I’ve heard them do that very thing.

It’s no different in the rag trade. This country’s top jock columnists are white, heterosexual males. They simply cannot relate or speak to issues of marginalized communities. To see the light at the end of the tunnel, one must first step inside the tunnel, so good luck to them trying to deliver the kind of meaningful commentary that only a lived experience allows.

People are talking about L’Affaire Peters-Aliu, also Mike Babcock’s bullying of Mitch Marner, as “watershed” moments for hockey. Maybe so. We’ll see. But I hope it also serves as a swift kick in the butt for mainstream sports media as it relates to hockey.

It isn’t just white, heterosexual men who know the game. Women and minorities also have something to say. Let them roar.

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