Toronto Blue Jays

Let’s talk about echoes and Connor Hellebuyck putting the Jets between a rock, a hard place, and a wrecking ball…rose-tinted goggles…Bobby Clarke’s tooth…Goldeyes and City Hall still fussing and fighting…who is that paper boy?…Drab Slab letting female athletes down…and other things on my mind…

Are you hearing echoes?

I am.

It was something that Connor Hellebuyck said during his season-closing natter with news snoops, scant hours after the Winnipeg Jets had been found wanting in another National Hockey League crusade gone wrong.

“I’m starting to run out of time and I can feel it,” Hellebuyck acknowledged. “Wheels (Blake Wheeler) talks about this all the time. It flashes by, and I’m starting to understand. You gotta make the most of your years. I’m gonna make the most of whatever my situation is and give my all and give everything I can to this spot or the team that I have.”

That, my friends, is a haunting echo from March 2017, only then it was a 29-year-old and healthy Bryan Little confirming he had begun to hear whispers from Father Time.

“It’s another year of your career that you can’t get back,” he said in the wake of the Jets failed bid to qualify for the Stanley Cup tournament. “Some of the best players in this room are the youngest. There’s definitely a bright future, but some guys are older and want to do something right now.”

One of the “youngest” in that 2017 Jets changing room was Hellebuyck, a fresh-scrubbed 23. Alas, there were 30 candles on his birthday cake two weeks ago, marking him among the most long-in-tooth lads in a greying group (eight guys 30 or older).

So what is Winnipeg HC to do with their tall drink of water in the blue paint?

Well, if we are to take Hellebuyck at his word (and why wouldn’t we?), his main aspiration is to have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup. That doesn’t make the Jets goaltender unique among the NHL’s 700-plus players, but it does make charting course an iffy bit of business for both himself and the club.

Hellebuyck and the Jets have arrived where the road forks, and what they do will tell us everything we need to know about the direction Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff plan to take their oft-dysfunctional outfit.

In the simplest of terms, they either keep their ‘keeper, or they move him out. No muss, no fuss.

Except there’s always a dab of muss and a smidgen of fuss when dealing with a Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender who’s eligible for free agency 13 months hence and beginning to feel the urgency of time.

Keep Hellebuyck and the sticker price will be dear. What number will it take to make him happy and convince him to stay for the long haul? $9 million? $10 million? What term? Five years? Six years? Do that and they’re tying the team’s wagon to a 30something, just as they did with Blake Wheeler in September 2018, and we all know how well that’s worked out.

The Puck Pontiff and Chevy will have to ask themselves what their Hellebuyck-backed Jets have accomplished in the past two crusades to warrant a hefty increase in salary. And here’s their answer: Missed the playoffs and surrendered rather meekly in the first round of this spring’s Stanley Cup runoff, after crawling in as the last seed (and that was with Vezina-calibre puck-stopping).

Why, then, would the Jets entertain the notion of jacking up Hellebuyck’s annual $6.166 million pay to put him beside, or directly behind, Andrei Vasilevskiy and Sergei Bobrovsky at the pay window? The former has his name engraved on the Stanley Cup (twice) and Conn Smythe Trophy, the latter is in this spring’s final and a leading candidate to win the Smythe. Does a bit more of the Puck Pontiff’s spare change in Hellebuyk’s fat-cat wallet move the Jets closer to a championship parade?

Doubtful.

Go ahead and argue that without Hellebuyck in goal the Jets, as presently constructed, would be a draft lottery outfit. No argument. On this team, he’s the scoop of ice cream in the cone. But padding fat-cat wallets doesn’t stop pucks, and the Jets won’t make a deeper dive into spring simply because they roll the Brinks truck up to the goaltender’s front door.

Hellebuyck has wedged the Puck Pontiff and Chevy between a rock, a hard place and a wrecking ball. He’s informed them he wants to win the Stanley Cup. Surely they know he can’t do it with the current supporting cast. And he’s “not interested” in a rebuild.

In short: Can’t win with him, can’t win without him, can’t surround him with neophytes.

It’s going to take the wisdom of Solomon for the Jets to sort this out, and we know they can’t cut the goaltender in half, even though half a Hellebuyck isn’t such a bad bet.

The echoes of 2017 remind them time’s a-wasting. Again.

Here’s another echo, this one from Hellebuyck in July 2018: “The tools are in this locker room to be a championship team. I love it here and I want to be here and I really believe this team has what it takes.” It doesn’t sound like he’s still feeling the love.

Here’s another echo, this one a tweet from old friend Joe Pascucci in April 2019: “Another concern, of many, I have about the Jets and the changes sure to come this off-season is that they’ll become a team that is 2 years away from being 2 years away.” Yup.

Here’s one final echo, this one from my own self in October 2020: “It seems to me that Winnipeg HC has retreated to the wait-and-hope part of the ‘process’. The Puck Pontiff and Chevy are waiting and hoping on Sami Niku. They’re waiting and hoping on Dylan Samberg. They’re waiting and hoping on Ville Heinola. They’re waiting and hoping on David Gustafsson. Hell, they’re still waiting and hoping on Jack Roslovic, and they drafted him in 2015. And, apparently, they’ll wait and hope on Logan Stanley forever.” Samberg appears to be the only keeper in the bunch. Otherwise, it reminds me of the 1960s Kinks song Tired of Waiting for You: “So tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for you…”

This tickled my funny bone: The Toronto Maple Leafs, when measured against the Jets, were a superior side in 2022-23. The evidence…
Leafs: 111 points, 2nd in division, 4th in conference, 4th in NHL, won playoff round.
Jets: 95 points, 4th in division, 8th in conference, 14th in NHL, lost in first playoff round.
Here’s the knee-slapper part: It’s the Jets faithful wearing rose-tinted goggles when they view their hockey heroes. We know this because of surveys conducted on the Jets by The Athletic and the Leafs by the Toronto Star. Consider:
61.1% of Leafs fans say the season was a failure.
78.4% of Jets fans say the season was a success.
Either Leafs loyalists have become completely jaded, or the rabble in Good Ol’ Hometown are easier to please than kids at a carnival.

If what we hear about the Maple Leafs is accurate, president Brendan Shanahan makes all the important hockey decisions. So why hire Brad Treliving as GM?

For a guy who just two weeks ago said he had no intention to pull up stakes and leave the Republic of Tranna, defrocked Leafs GM Kyle Dubas must have set a land-speed record for dashing from The ROT to Pittsburgh, where he’s now president of hockey ops for the Penguins. Cripes, man, the door didn’t even have time to hit him on the ass. I swear, we haven’t seen anyone get out of Dodge that fast since Butch and Sundance saw the posse coming.

Mike Babcock to coach the Columbus Blue Jackets? Oh dear. Thoughts and prayers to Johnny Gaudreau. Ditto Patrick Laine.

An unidentified man recently returned a book to St. Helena Public Library in California’s Napa Valley. Nothing unusual about that, except this particular book—A History of the United States, by Benson Lossing—had been checked out in 1927! Making it scandalously overdue. You know, kind of like NHL commish Gary Bettman is overdue to finally get it right with the Arizona Coyotes.

A woman was strolling on Rio Del Mar State Beach on the California coast recently when she found a tooth which, according to Wayne Thompson of the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, came from a Pacific mastodon, an extinct, elephant-like creature that dates back to the Ice Age. Well, duh. Of course it’s from the Ice Age, and Philly Flyers legendary captain Bobby Clarke wants his tooth back.

Just wondering: Will the Winnipeg Goldeyes-City Hall spat ever end? Seriously, it seems like they’ve been hissing at each other since Sammy Katz and his Local Nine set up shop at the beautiful Ball Yard By The Forks, (aka Buck A Year Ball Park) in 1999. The Harry-Meghan split from King Chucky and the Royal Family hasn’t been this messy. The club’s original lease is set to expire on July 28, but glitches over grant money, parking stalls and end time for a new lease have popped up like a .200 hitter with runners in scoring position. Come on, people, let’s get along. I’ve never been a Sammy Katz fan, but I know spending an afternoon/evening watching the Local Nine is a delightful experience, and the American Association club adds value to Good Ol’ Hometown. Get ‘er done.

So, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have punted Marc Liegghio, including the embattled kicker among their final roster cuts in advance of the 2023 Canadian Football League season. Talk about a day late and a dollar short. That decision came one convert/one field goal attempt too late, and it cost them a third successive Grey Cup title.

Longtime followers of the Bombers might get a giggle out of the pic you see here, which landed in my inbox thanks to good friend Robert Temmerman. Winnipeg Tribune paper boy Chris Walby didn’t make the cut as an electrical engineer or receiver (and who knew 12-year-old Chris was into stamp collecting?), but he was more than passable as an O-lineman in a hall-of-fame football career.

Receiving that newspaper clipping from Robert gave me pause for ponder on the passage of time, and I came to realize I’ve never watched a game in The Little Hockey House On The Prairie or at The Football Field In Fort Garry. When I put Good Ol’ Hometown in the rear view mirror, Winnipeg Arena and Winnipeg Stadium were still standing, Jennifer Jones had never won a Scotties, Valour FC didn’t exist, the Winnipeg Sea Bears (dumb name) didn’t exist, the Jets didn’t exist, the Winnipeg Ice didn’t exist, Glen Murray was mayor, Gary Filmon was premier, and I could order a delicious turkey clubhouse for lunch at the Wagon Wheel restaurant.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,156: Season tickets to watch the Toronto Blue Jays from a seat in the Home Plate Club at Rogers Centre next year will set you back $39,500 to $68,500. But, hey, you aren’t just buying baseball. You’re getting “unique entertainment features plus private members’ entrance and in-seat dining.” Hmmm. For $68,500, I’d expect Adele to entertain me with a few tunes and dinner with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.

This batting tip from broadcaster Keith Hernandez during Friday’s New York Mets-Jays game: “You want to always be erect when you make contact. Like a telephone pole!” There are no words.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight: Naomi Osaka declined a natter with news snoops at the 2021 French Open, citing “mental health” issues as the reason. For that, she was fined $15,000 and tournament officials bullied the young player, with menacing threats of scorching the earth around her if she didn’t talk. So Osaka quit. Meanwhile, last week at the French Open, Aryna Sabalenka declined a chin-wag with news snoops for “my own mental health and well-bring.” Her punishment? Nada. Threats? Bullying? Nada. There was zero talk of dire consequences, like banishment from all four tennis Grand Slam events, and she plays on. More to the point, officials gave Aryna the okie-dokie to duck out of the usual post-match gab. So what changed? Is Sabalenka’s mental health of greater value than Osaka’s, or did the French finally realize that they’re dealing with human beings, not robots with great top-spin?

The lowest. That’s where the Drab Slab sports section went with its local female coverage during May. Of its 31 editions, just four (4 of 31!) included articles/briefs exclusive to local female athletes/teams, and there was a 16-day stretch with zero (0!) content other than one pic/cutlines on high school futbol. Pathetic. Shameful. Not even close to being good enough.
These are the numbers through the first five months of the year:

And, finally, it’s Pride month. Let an LGBT(etc.) person know you’re on their side.

What are athletes like Anthony Bass afraid of and how does anti-gay speech impact LGBT(etc.) youth?

Every time I hear an athlete, coach, manager, owner, broadcaster or sports scribe spew anti-LGBT(etc.) bile, or post it on social media, I ask myself the same questions.

To wit:

“Really? They still don’t get it?”

“Why do they care who gay people date?”

“Would they say these things if they discovered one of their children was gay?”

“What are they afraid of?”

Then a wave of weariness washes over me, because hearing the vitriol has become tiresome.

I imagine it’s much the same feeling Blacks or Jews or Indigenous, or any marginalized peoples, experience when they’re the targets of hate speech and/or actions. But I don’t know that with certainty. I can only speak for myself.

And I just cannot understand why being gay/bi/transgender(etc.) is so damn damnable.

Why does it matter to Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass that Target has put LGBT(etc.) merchandise on its shelves? Don’t like it? Then spend your money at Walmart. Why does he care that Anheuser-Busch used a transgender person to peddle Bud Light? Don’t like it? Then pop a top on a Coors Light.

But no.

Rather than make those simple choices (as so many have), Bass felt obliged to traffic in hate and cruelty by sharing a post advocating boycotts of Target and Bud Light for “evil” and “demonic” marketing campaigns.

Evil and demonic. Sigh.

I wonder how many LGBT(etc.) youth saw, or heard about, the Bass post and retreated into themselves to wrestle with the worst kind of thoughts. Like suicide. And, no, that’s not being alarmist. It’s reality according to findings from The Trevor Project’s most recent studies (2021/22):

LGBTQ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers.
45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth.
The Trevor Project estimates that more than 1.8 million LGBTQ youth (13-24) seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S.—and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds.

“LGBTQ youth are not inherently prone to suicide risk because of their sexual orientation or gender identity but rather placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in society,” reads the intro to one of the studies.

“We must recognize that LGBTQ young people face stressors simply for being who they are that their peers never have to worry about,” writes Amit Paley, CEO/executive director of The Trevor Project. “The fact that very simple things—like support from family and friends, seeing LGBTQ representation in media, and having your gender expression and pronouns respected—can have such a positive impact on the mental health of an LGBTQ young person is inspiring, and it should command more attention in conversations around suicide prevention and public debates around LGBTQ inclusion.”

Support from a professional athlete (a role model, if you will) seems like a simple thing, too, but here we have Bass, a marginal pitcher demonizing a marginalized community. And his employers, who have a Pride Weekend planned for June 9-10, permit him to play on.

The Blue Jays chucker, it should be pointed out, delivered a mea culpa on Tuesday, but it was noteworthy more for its brevity than its content.

“I’ll make this quick,” is how he began his 31 seconds of “my bad,” which was sincere like a Louisville Slugger is a toothpick.

But, hey, he managed to squeeze in a token mention of his “friends and close family members” who are part of the LGBT(etc.) community, so if he has gay friends and family he can’t possibly be anti-gay. As if.

This is part of the reason anti-LGBT(etc.) language has become so tiresome and weighty, like trying to push an ATM up a steep hill. If the apologists aren’t propping up their gay friends and family as unimpeachable proof of their accepting ways, they’re telling us that the dreadful thing they said “isn’t really who I am,” as if we don’t know prime rib from a Happy Meal. Their words and actions tell us exactly who they are.

I don’t know how many innings I have left, but I’d like to think Bass and those of his ilk are a vanishing breed, and they might even be gone by the time I sack my bats. I won’t make book on it, though.

This week it’s Bass. Before him it was University of West Virginia hoops coach Bob Huggins calling Catholics a bunch of “f–s.” Before him it was Cam Thomas of the Brooklyn Nets. Before him it was seven National Hockey League players balking on Pride night initiatives. Before them it was Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Before him it was football hall-of-fame coach Tony Dungy. Before him it was Jon Gruden. Tomorrow it will be (fill in the blank).

They’re seemingly everywhere and they’ve worn me out, to the point where some days I hesitate to step out of doors. I’ve heard every slight and slur imaginable, and I really don’t care to hear it anymore.

Which takes me back to one of the questions I posed at the top of this essay: What are they afraid of? I’d really like to know the answer so I can pass it on to our LGBT(etc.) youth.

Let’s talk about Commish Gary and the team formerly known as Jets 1.0…Arrrr! Ron MacLean talking about a scurvy dog…a six-pee OT…fantasy GMs…survey says!…Aaron Judge’s sideways glance…take me out to the ball game and bring the defibrillator…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Gary Bettman.

Well, looks like there’s not much fight left in your desert dogs, although I’m sure there’s still some fight left in you.

If we know anything about you, Gary, it’s that you’ve got a stubborn streak as wide as the Grand Canyon and as long as the Gila River, and you won’t give up on the Arizona Coyotes until there’s no more cacti in the Sonoran Desert.

But the good people of Tempe have given up on the Yotes, turning thumbs down to a proposal for a fancy schmancy entertainment district that would have featured a swanky, new barn for everyone’s favorite National Hockey League punch line.

So what’s your next move, Gary? You’re the NHL commissioner. Are you prepared to let Coyotes ownership cry uncle and flee the desert, or do you want to throw another dart at a map of Arizona and find another loser home for your skating vagabonds? You’ve already tried Phoenix and Glendale and Tempe. I swear, you’ve covered more ground in Arizona than Geronimo. So how about Yuma? Casa Grande? Flagstaff? Tombstone?

Hey, maybe that’s the ticket, Commish Gary. You can have them set up shop in Tombstone, next door to the OK Corral. You can track down one of Wyatt Earp’s ancestors and have him drive the Zamboni. You can reenact the shootout between the Earp brothers/Doc Holliday and the Clantin and McLaury boys during intermission. That was 30 seconds of bullets flying but mostly missing the target, kind of like the Winnipeg Jets offence.

Now that I’ve mentioned the Jets, Gary, I probably don’t have to remind you that you still wear the black hat in Good Ol’ Hometown.

Oh, yes, many among the rabble remain properly PO’d because you allowed their beloved hockey team to skip town and pitch tent in Arizona in 1996. Since then they’ve watched you grant the Coyotes more second chances than a Catholic in a confessional, and they don’t understand why you failed to show the same heels-dug-in zeal for Winnipeg. Not even the arrival of Jets 2.0 in 2011 soothed all souls. You’re the bad guy. Forever.

I don’t share their anger, Gary. At least not totally.

I remember what it was like back in the day when little, old ladies were signing their pension cheques over to Save the Jets funds and, at the same time, school urchins were busting up piggy banks and donating their nickels and dimes in the hope of keeping Keith Tkachuk and Teppo Numminen in town.

I also remember that the Ol’ Barn On Maroons Road was as shabby as a playoff beard, the Canadian dollar was worth about 15 cents US, and Barry Shenkarow couldn’t find any local business tycoons willing to pony up and take a lost cause off his hands.

What choice did you have, Gary, except to help orchestrate a sale to outside interests who believed there was more appetite for hockey in the Arizona desert than hockey on Our Frozen Tundra? I understood, but was it necessary to cackle like a nincompoop while the moving vans rolled out of River City. That was harsh, man. Bad optics. And it’s the reason you’re a pariah in Pegtown.

Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking now, Commish: You can do the right thing and end the buffoonery, but you won’t. You’ll continue to permit the Coyotes to frolic in rinky-dink Mulletthead Arena, a college rink that accommodates fewer than 5,000 customers, and you’ll turn over every desert stone in search of a new Arizona home before you tap out.

In the final reckoning, though, you’ll cry uncle. You’ll convince team bankroll Alex Meruelo that there are more suitable locales for your vagabonds.

All the usual suspects have been mentioned, Gary—Houston, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Atlanta (seriously?), Southern Ontario and, of course, Quebec City, which has the kind of rink you were looking for in Tempe. But I think we all know you aren’t interested in a Ville de Quebec redo and we know the reason why—too close to the North Pole.

You know, once upon a time a return of the Yotes to Good Ol’ Hometown was a romantic notion, and we’re told it almost came to be before Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and Jets co-bankroll David Thomson settled on Door No. 2 in 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers. It would have been poetic.

Alas, it’s all part of the “what if?” lore of the Jets-Coyotes franchise, and we’re left to wonder where the lineage goes from here.

I just hope you find a proper zip/postal code for the Coyotes, Gary.

Oh, there’s one more thing: For gawd’s sake, get them a rink that isn’t named after a bad haircut.

I lowered my eyelids long before Matthew Tkachuk’s 4OT goal in Game 1 of the Florida Panthers-Carolina Hurricanes Stanley Cup skirmish the other night, but I understand Ron MacLean spent part of one intermission talking about Blackbeard and pirates. Sigh. Apparently his history lesson tonight will be Circus Clowns: Weary Willie’s Influence On Don Cherry’s Wardrobe.

When I was a kid, I thought OT games sucked because I wasn’t allowed to stay up late and watch. Now I think OT games are boffo because I’m in bed long before Ron MacLean starts talking about pirates.

How long was the Game 1 Florida-Carolina overtime? Well, by the time Tkachuk scored the winning goal, I’d woken up six times to take a pee.

You know we’re fully into the silly season when news snoops are playing pretend GM and proposing trades that are about as likely as finding Wayne Gretzky’s rookie card in a Crackerjack box.

Take Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star, as an e.g. He figures it would be a swell idea for the Jets to ship Connor Hellebuyck, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Twig Ehlers to The Republic of Tranna for Mitch Marner and Ilya Samsonov.

“Hellebuyck is a Vezina-worthy goalie who could teach Joseph Woll a lot, while Dubois—a restricted free agent with arbitration right —is the closest player to Matthew Tkachuk on the trade market,” he fanticizes. “The risk for the Leafs is extensive. Hellebuyck ($6.166 million) has one year left on his deal and Dubois is an RFA hoping for a trade to the Montreal Canadiens. If not, he’ll sign there as an unrestricted free agent in 2024-25. So they’d be loading up for one year only, although Ehlers—drafted one spot behind Nylander—is the long-term play. The Jets are looking not so much to rebuild but to recalibrate. Samsonov is a restricted free agent who can be a No. 1 goalie. Getting him to sign an extension with the Jets would be the only way this works. The Jets might also look for one or two NHL-quality young players who are far from unrestricted free agency. Think Timothy Liljegren or Pontus Holmberg.”

Hey, I get it. Speculation can be a fun part of the jock journo gig. It gets tongues flapping. But it would help if it involved at least a teaspoon of logic rather than a bucket full of fairy dust and unicorns. I mean, why would the Jets want Marner? They already have enough guys who don’t score in the playoffs.

Some interesting stuff from Murat Ates in his two–part survey of the Jets faithful for The Athletic. For example, 78.4 per cent of nearly 1,000 respondents are convinced Winnipeg’s latest crusade was “a success.” Say what? Crawling into the Stanley Cup tournament as the eighth seed and surrendering meekly to the Vegas Golden Knights warrants an “atta boy” from the faithful? Meantime, 81.4 per cent gave them a passing grade of either B or C. Apparently those fans nodded off in class, because they missed the part about the Jets being a .579 outfit on the season. According to the Manitoba provincial report card, that’s a D+ grade, meaning, “limited understanding and application of concepts and skills.” That sounds about right to me, so I give the Jets faithful an F for their Bs and Cs.

Also of note in Murat’s findings: 77 per cent want Rink Rat Scheifele on the next stage coach out of Dodge, 68 per cent want a new postal/zip code for Blake Wheeler, and 60 per cent want to see the back of Dubois’ head. Tough crowd.

A 55-year-old professor at the University of South Florida, Joseph Dituri, has established a world record for living under water, passing the old mark of 73 consecutive days, and he plans to stay submerged at the bottom of a lagoon in the Florida Keys until Day 100 on June 9. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I mean, the Maple Leafs have been treading water for 56 years.

Kidding aside, Dr. Deep Sea’s mission is a serious bit of business. Every breath he takes, every step he takes and every move he makes under water is being monitored and put under a microscope. You know, kind of like being GM of the Maple Leafs.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,155: Cops have collared the cad who allegedly stole two of the ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The shoes were pilfered in 2005 and recovered in a 2018 FBI sting operation, but no culprits were identified until last week. When swiped, the slippers were insured for $1 million, but today they’re valued at about $3.5 million. Hmmm. A pair of stinky sneakers worn by NBA star Michael Jordan in the 1998 NBA final sold at auction for a record $2.2 million last month. Does that make him the Wizard of Odour Eaters?

Rafa Nadal won’t play Paris later this month, and that saddens me. Rarely have we seen dominance in any sport greater than Nadal on the red clay of Roland Garros. He won 14 French Open titles and the only men to better tennis’ King of Clay in 115 matches were Novak Djokovic, twice, and Robin Soderling. That’s right, Rafa was 112-3. The only comparable I can think of is Secretariat’s gallop in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, which was a beast of another kind.

So, I turned on the Toronto Blue Jays-New York Yankees skirmish the other night just as the Go Yard Yankee, Aaron Judge, gave a sideways glance toward his first base coach, or the dugout, during an at-bat against Jay Jackson. To my shock, that prompted Blue Jays natterbugs Buck Martinez and Dan Shulman to suggest something fishing was going on—i.e. cheating. “You don’t wanna go throwing allegations around without knowing, but…” said Shulman. But nothing. Shulman and Martinez implied that Judge, who now has 13 dingers on the season, was cheating, even though no evidence existed to support such a claim against Major League Baseball’s reigning home run king. The commentary was as shoddy as Jackson’s next pitch, which Judge whacked 431 feet for another stroll around the bases.

Take me out to the ball game! Yes, the Winnipeg Goldeyes are back doing their thing at the beautiful Ball Yard By The Forks, and 5,736 ball fans were there Friday night to see the Local Nine whup Lake Country DockHounds 10-4 in the home opener. But it wasn’t just winning baseball on the menu—apparently there’s also something called a Grand Slamwich at Goldie’s Grill, and it’s Code Blue waiting to happen. Not to be confused with Denny’s Grand Slamwich (scrambled eggs, crumbled sausage, bacon, shaved ham and Canadian cheese on potato bread grilled with a maple spice spread and served with hash browns for $16.29), the Goldie’s Slam consists of four meat patties, four slabs of cheese, four chicken fingers, four strips of bacon, two butterflied hot dogs, nacho cheese, crispy onions, spicy ketchup, all served on garlic bread for $60. Defibrillator paddles and paramedics with a working stomach pump are extra.

It’s about fans booing Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka at the PGA championship yesterday: What’s the big deal? Athletes hear catcalls in every sport, so why should golfers be exempt?

There are numerous reports that James Harden wants out of Philly to play hoops for an NBA team with “a competitive roster and the basketball freedom for the star to be himself.” Translation: “My ego is too big to share the floor with MVP Joel Embiid, so I’m going to stomp my feet and take my ball and beard back to Houston.”

So, they packed ’em in at Wembley Stadium for the Manchester United-Chelsea women’s FA Cup final, with a head count of 77,390. That’s a world futbol record for a female domestic club match. Meantime, in The Republic of Tranna, 19,923 folks crammed into Scotiabank Arena for a WNBA friendly between Chicago Sky and Minnesota Lynx. Makes me wonder what the Premier Hockey Federation and the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association are doing wrong, since their games attract only friends and family. Oh wait. I remember now. They’re too busy fighting each other to do what’s right for Ponytail Puck.

And, finally, Reba McEntire will replace Blake Shelton as a coach on The Voice next season. And I can’t believe I mentioned those two in the same sentence. One is a legendary country singer, the other has fooled a whole lot of people.

Let’s talk about the mess Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and the Winnipeg Jets are in…a serving of ruffled feathers…Becky and the Jurassics…Hot dog! Joey Chestnut was in the Blue Jays house…golf and hives…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Mark Chipman.

Are you feeling a burning sensation in your buttocks these days? Well, it isn’t hemorrhoids, Mark. It’s the bonfire your head coach Rick Bowness lit last Thursday night, whereby he informed news snoops that he’d had it up to his chin whiskers with the Sad Sack manner in which your Winnipeg Jets go about their business.

“The same crap” is how Bones described their play in a 4-1 loss to Vegas Golden Knights, a surrender that ushered them out of the Stanley Cup tournament and ushered in another premature summer vacation.

It was a withering, scornful volley aimed mostly at your National Hockey League team’s elite and, naturally, local jock journos haven’t been shy about stoking those flames. Especially now that the workers have begun to bark back.

Oh yes, Mark, the poor dear millionaires with the eggshell-thin egos are crapping on the coach who had the (apparent) bad manners to crap on them.

I’d say it’s a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into.

I don’t know if you read newspapers or pay attention to the talking heads online and on flatscreens, Mark, but scribes and natterbugs recognize that your Jets have issues that run deeper than your billionaire co-bankroll David Thomson’s pockets. Thus they’ve had the local shinny side rotating on the spit since its tail-between-the-legs ouster from the post-season party in Glitter Gulch, where they made like Rover and played dead on the Golden Knights’ command.

Here’s a sampling of what the boys on the beat are scribbling/squawking about…

Paul Friesen, Winnipeg Sun: “Whether Cheveldayoff stays or goes is obviously Chipman’s call. I’d be surprised if he makes the move. Hiring a savvy team president/advisor to help fill in for Cheveldayoff’s weaknesses makes some sense. From the core players to the front office, the Jets have milked what they can from this bunch.”

Scott Billeck, Sun: “This team desperately needed a new voice behind the bench. Now it badly needs a new vision behind the GM’s desk.”

Mike McIntyre, Drab Slab: “A no-holds-barred approach from veteran coach Rick Bowness in the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s embarrassing, playoff-ending defeat in Las Vegas should only accelerate—at Mach speed—what has become so obvious around here. The status quo has got to go. No doubt many, just like Bowness, are feeling ‘disappointed and disgusted.’ So now the question is what ownership is going to do about it. Trying to apply yet another shiny coat of paint when it’s clear the foundation is so deeply flawed would be a massive mistake. There must be tangible changes, along with full transparency about both the short and long-term vision from the organization so fans don’t feel like they’re being strung along. Memo to Mark Chipman, David Thomson and company: blow it up.”

Murat Ates, The Athletic: “Fans deserve better than platitudes that border on insults about fantasy hockey. They deserve the honesty Bowness gave them after Winnipeg’s loss to Vegas in Game 5. The Jets’ window to win before Connor Hellebuyck, Wheeler, Scheifele, Niederreiter, Dillon, DeMelo and most likely Dubois hit free agency is slamming shut. Winnipeg needs to move on from the players who contribute to the problem Bowness is picking at, to get returns which help the team stay competitive and to commit to a direction that fans can believe in. If the goal is to squeak into the playoffs and claw at gate revenue, name it. If the goal is to win the Stanley Cup, then name it and make it clear what the plan is to get there. The Jets are out of runway now. That 2024 free agency class is a ticking clock.”

Ken Wiebe, Sportsnet: “Make no mistake there are some solid pieces in the Jets’ organization, but the time has come to change the mix. And change it significantly. Shuffling the deck chairs isn’t going to be enough. That’s never been clearer than it is today. Don’t just take my word for it, invest the time in watching the way Bowness delivered the mic drop message that might just prove to be the impetus for a major renovation project.”

Harsh. Also to the point.

The thing is, Mark, it was your head coach who described your team’s performance in the finale vs. Vegas on Thursday as “the same crap,” so why would news snoops be inclined to disagree with Bones’ truth bomb?

They’re convinced something has to give, and they’re curious about your plans. Do you back up the truck and load on the deadwood (read: players)? Do you let GM Kevin Cheveldayoff keep his hands on the wheel? Do you really believe the rabble will buy into your ill-conceived and insulting “purchase season tickets or else” campaign after another crusade gone wrong?

As Friesen posits, it’s totally your call, Mark.

You’re the Puck Pontiff and we all know you’re a hands-on kind of guy (I prefer to describe you as a buttinski). I mean, if forensic scientists paid a visit to your workplace, they’d find your fingerprints and DNA on everything from the beer cups to the backup goaltender. Hell, they might even discover evidence that you change the oil on the Zamboni. It’s always struck me as control freakish, but, hey, the Jets are your toy and you’re free to do what you will with it.

Here’s the deal, though: You’re one of two constants in this play, Mark. The other is Chevy. You’ve had 12 seasons together to get it right and you’ve been found wanting for 12 seasons. Never failed to fail: That isn’t something one puts on a business card.

But why should you care what the nabobs of negativism think? You didn’t build your downtown fiefdom by listening to the serfs in Good Ol’ Hometown, no matter how legit their gripes might be.

You keep doing it your way, Puck Pontiff. Never mind that hitching your wagon to Blake Wheeler was a colossal miscalculation and only a fool would take his contract off your hands today. You, and only you, know what’s best for your Jets, right?

So why change, Mark? Unless, of course, it’s to do the right thing for a change.

Was that the sound of ruffling feathers we heard yesterday? Yup, sure was. Turns out that Captain Cranky Pants (without the ‘C’) Wheeler and a handful of accomplices figure Bowness got it all wrong when he administered a public flogging to the players scant seconds after they’d tapped out vs. Vegas, so he returned fire and it wasn’t friendly. “We could have had those discussions behind closed doors,” he said on Jets garbage bag day. “I didn’t agree with how he handled himself after that game. Regardless of what the message was, that could have been done more appropriately. He’s a person, too, so we don’t expect him to be perfect all the time. People make mistakes. We can all be upset and pissed off at each other, but let’s do it face-to-face. You guys (media) don’t need to be involved in that.” Interesting. They wouldn’t push back against Vegas, but they’ll push back against their coach’s sound bites.

Garbage bag day was also true confession time for the Jets, and assistant captain Adam Lowry delivered this interesting nugget: “We all still look at Wheels as the captain. He’s kinda the leader in the room. He knows what to say, when to say it. He’s knows how to approach things, he’s seen a lot of things.”
If anyone finds it surprising that Wheeler continues to hold sway in the changing room, I’ll remind you of something I scribbled last September, not long after Bowness had ripped the ‘C’ off his uni:
“Wheeler is now ‘C’-less, but he’s still in the dressing room and has no desire to fade into the background like an old piece of furniture destined for a yard sale. Anyone who thinks otherwise is “sorely mistaken,” he told news snoops, adding “I don’t envision changing my role at all” and “I’m still gonna be doing the things I would have done with the ‘C’ on my jersey.” It sounded more like a threat than a promise.”
And so it has come to pass. Wheeler remains the leader of the alpha dog pack and they’re still bitching at the end of another lost crusade. Somewhere on the East Coast, Paul Maurice is nodding knowingly.

Still trying to wrap my head around the reality that the Winnipeg Sun didn’t have boots on the ground in Sin City when the Jets performed their predictable pratfall. That’s just wrong.

Oh my. The Toronto Maple Leafs have advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup spring runoff for the first time in 19 years. Just wondering: Did they mention it on SportsCentre and Sportsnet Central last night?

Now here’s a notion I’d be quick to get behind: Becky Hammon being anointed head coach the Toronto Jurassics. If we can believe various reports—and why wouldn’t we?—the decision-makers with the NBA outfit plan a sit-down natter with Becky to discuss her bona fides for the job, and if she gets the gig to replace the defrocked Nick Nurse it’ll be ceiling shattering. First, Becky is female and, second, she’s gay. Hiring a gay female as head coach in a land of alpha male giants would be such a 21st century thing. If it happens, the Jurassics will gain at least one more fan.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,151: Four of the Canadian Football League’s nine outfits have been caught cheating, and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were the main offenders, soaring $64,499 over the salary cap in 2022. Toronto Argos were next in line on the scofflaw list, spending $49,735 more than they were allowed to spend. Hmmm. Those two teams met in the Grey Cup skirmish last November on the Flattest of Lands. I guess what they say is true: If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.

The Lords of Rouge Football have hopped into bed with the CBS Sports Network in United States, signing a partnership that’s reportedly worth $1 million. They’ll broadcast 34 games this year. Question is: Does anyone actually watch CBSSN? I have a hunch viewership will be similar to pickleball or frisbee golf.

It was Loonie Dogs Night last Tuesday at Rogers Centre in the Republic of Tranna, and public pig-out champion Joey Chestnut was in the house along with 28,917 other souls. While the Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago White Sox played nine innings of rounders, the gathering went to work on 51,629 Schneiders one-dollar hot dogs, a local record for gluttony. No word on how many of the 51,629 tube steaks that Chestnut scarfed down, but medics on site confirm they performed an emergency wienerectomy on a lumpy man with ketchup and mustard stains on his shirt.

Did you know there’s something called a Paternity List in Major League Baseball? It’s true. Players are permitted to skip out on 1-3 games for the birth of a child. Good thing they didn’t have that in boxing back in the day, otherwise George Foreman would have missed his entire career.

Just so you know, Foreman has 12 kids, including five boys, each of them named George but known as Junior, Monk, Big Wheel, Red and Little Joe when they’re sitting around the dinner table.

If you’re keeping score at home, this is what our Pebble People did in the three main global curling competitions this year: World women’s, bronze medal; world men’s, silver medal; world mixed doubles, nada. A cause for alarm? Only if this was the 20th century.

Interesting exchange between Eric Nehm of The Athletic and Giannis Antetokounmpo after Milwaukee Bucks had been drummed out of the NBA championship tournament:

Nehm: “Do you view this season as a failure?”

Antetokounmpo: “You asked me the same question last year, I think. Do you get a promotion every year? No, right? So, every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work toward something—to a goal—which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, to be able to provide a house for them or take care of your parents. You work toward a goal. It’s not a failure. It’s steps to success. Michael Jordan played 15 years. Won six championships. The other nine years was a failure? Exactly, so why you ask me that question. It’s the wrong question.

“There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days, some days you are able to be successful, some days you are not, some days it is your turn, some days it’s not. That’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. Some other group is gonna win and this year someone else is gonna win. Simple as that. We’re gonna come back next year and try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better.

“So, 50 years from 1971 to 2021 we didn’t win a championship, it was 50 years of failure? No it was not. There were steps to it. And we were able to win one and hopefully we can win another one.”

Many among the rabble have saluted Antetokounmpo for his thoughtful perspective. Others have panned Nehm for his question, suggesting it was purposely inflammatory. Nonsense. It was a fair question and Antetokounmpo was both right and wrong with his answer.

Turning to another sport and another natter, it’s a good thing Emma Raducanu isn’t paid by the word. In a to-and-fro with news snoops prior to the Madrid Open, Britain’s No. 1 female tennis player used 58 words to answer 16 questions, which works out to 3.625 words per answer. That isn’t a press conference. It’s an audition for a gig as a street mime.

I don’t know if we’ll see our Genie Bouchard win another tennis tournament, but the quest to get there is keeping her from becoming a layabout. “I could just chill, I guess, for the rest of my life,” she tells The Telegraph. “I could sit on my couch and watch Netflix. And that sounds appealing, for sure. But after two days, I would go crazy. I want to be top 100 as soon as possible because then you start really feeling like a player on tour.” Genie’s right about chilling. Between tournament earnings ($6,785,645), product endorsements and taking most of her clothes off for Sports Illustrated, she’s amassed a small fortune and could live on Easy Street.

A swarm of bees disrupted play at the Mexico Open last week in Puerto Vallarta. All the golfers got hives.

Looking for a good read? Check out George Williams’ piece in the Drab Slab about two women who escaped Ukraine and found a home at Assiniboia Downs. As my first sports editor, Jack Matheson, would say, it’s “damn good” stuff.

Now that Aaron Rodgers is a member of the New York Jets, can we all get back to regularly scheduled living? Personally, it means that I can root, root, root for the Green Bay Packers again.

When I think of Packers quarterbacks, it’s Bart Starr, Brett Favre and Rodgers. Anybody else of note either played before my time or got lost on a darkness retreat.

It’s about all the glut of gambling ads in print, online and on our flatscreens these days: Pete Rose demands a recount.

Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna writes this: “Under the department of dumb: Edmonton fans booing Drew Doughty, who was brilliant for Canada at the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Games. And he would have been on two more Olympic teams had NHL players been sent in 2018 and 2022.” Now that is truly “under the department of dumb.” I mean, last time I looked, it was an L.A. Kings logo on the front of Doughty’s jersey when he was in E-Town, not our Maple Leaf. So boo him to your hearts content, kids.

And, finally, my heart skipped a beat on Saturday when I saw the name Willie Nelson trending on Twitter. I feared the worst. Turns out it was people with glad tidings for Willie on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Gee, ain’t it Funny How Time Slips Away?

Let’s talk about Chevy’s fishing…wedding bells and mountains…the Babe, Roger and here comes da Judge…David Letterman’s ‘tub of goo’…good reads in the Drab Slab…Joe Pop…Jumbo Joe’s beard…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Kevin Cheveldayoff. Have a nice summer? Hope the fish were biting more than the black flies out there at your Lake of the Woods hideaway.

I know you fish, Chevy, but you sure don’t do much of it on land. I mean, the lads have hit the ice for another crusade—your 12th general managing the Winnipeg Jets—and your group looks strikingly similar to the Sad Sack side that stumbled and (mostly) grumbled its way through the 2021-22 National Hockey League frolic.

I don’t need to remind you that those Jets missed the boat (pun intended), and you shored up your non-playoff roster by landing a goaltender nobody wanted and an aging forward nobody wanted. Oh joy. What were you using for bait that so many others passed on? The iffy wifi or even worse weather?

I suppose it’s only fair that I point out you did manage to land yourself one big, off-ice catch, Chevy. That would be Rick Bowness, a wrinkled, good-guy coach who might have been No. 2, 3, 4 or 5 on your wish list of head knocks not named Barry Trotz. Bones’ mission is simple: Turn leftovers into a scrumptious, full-course meal that includes dessert with a cherry on top, which is to say a seat on the Stanley Cup merry-go-round and a deep run next spring.

Bones aside, Chevy, call it a Summer of Nothing, and it wasn’t your first. Is it your last, though?

Some of us think your seat should be hotter than a ticket to an Adele gig in Vegas, but the guy whose opinion matters most, Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman, has your back, and the three-year contract extension he handed you for never failing to fail is the evidence.

Justified or not, Chevy, it’s bonus time for you to finish what you and the Puck Pontiff started in 2011. Otherwise, the Gone Fishin’ sign needs to go up permanently.

Rink Rat Scheifele had a natter with Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on their 32 Thoughts podcast the other day, and the Jets centre insists there’s a “tight knit” team sitting in the changing room. Ya, we saw that at the end of last season when they all got together, linked arms and held a group gripe about too many guys more interested in padding their stats than playing the right way. Oh, but wait. Apparently, a culture shift is afoot. We’re told a bunch of the boys gathered to witness Josh Morrissey take a bride during the summer, and the lads shall assemble in the Rocky Mountains next month for a 1960s-style love-in, where it’s assumed Rick Bowness will read bedtime stories and tuck them in each night. Hmmm. Wedding bells? A mountain retreat? Are they building a hockey team or making one of those hokey Hallmark movies?

I suppose some will view the addition of Sydney Daniels to the Jets’ stable of bird dogs as a “woke” hire or “virtue signaling,” but I’ll take their word that she’s got the chops to handle the college scouting portfolio. Sydney’s from the Flattest of Lands, which is a good place to start any hockey resumé, and she’s familiar with the U.S. college scene, having played and coached at Harvard. She’s also Indigenous, which makes her a double-barreled role model for girls and women. Good for Sydney and good for Winnipeg HC.

This from hockey scribe Kevin McGran in his 13 Musings column for the Toronto Star: “The Winnipeg Jets are going to be a train wreck, right?” Ouch. And Michael Traikos of Postmedia Toronto describes Winnipeg HC as “a rudderless ship.” Ouch again. Actually, I’m not surprised that they would take a dim view of the Jets. I’m only surprised that shinny scribes in the Republic of Tranna acknowledge there are NHL teams out here in the colonies.

This also from McGran: “Gotta believe the Leafs will go slowly before putting a sponsor’s logo on the front of their game sweater.” D’oh! He wrote that Tuesday. Scant seconds later, the Toronto Maple Leafs introduced their 2022-23 jerseys with—you guessed it—an advertising patch (Farmers of Ontario “Milk”) on the right chest.

No surprise that Patrik Laine and Johnny Gaudreau will be together on the left and right flanks once the puck is dropped on Columbus Blue Jackets dress rehearsals. Evidently the lineup for auditions to play centre with Puck Finn and Johnny Hockey is longer than the queue for Queen Liz’s funeral.

Always worth noting that Laine is all-in with the Blue Jackets, having signed for the next four seasons, and that’s something Puck Finn refused to do with the Jets. So it’s fair to wonder what Columbus, Ohio, (of all places) has that Good Ol’ Hometown is missing. Oh, well, his loss I guess. I mean, he’ll miss all that warm-and-fuzzy bonding next month in the Rockies.

When I was a sprig, Babe Ruth was more myth than man, someone who seemingly had sprung from the pages of a dime novel.

Elders would regale us with tales taller than a New York skyscraper about the Babe, claiming one swing of the Bambino’s bat would send a baseball hurtling from the Bronx to Baton Rouge. The Babe was Bunyanesque. His 60-home run season in 1927? Also mythical. I mean, who did that? Not Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or Henry Aaron or Ted Williams. Only the Babe. The Sultan of Swat.

Then Roger Maris came along and we saw it actually happen.

I was 10 when Maris whacked a Tracy Stallard pitch into the right field porch at Yankee Stadium, then made his 61st home run trot of the 1961 Major League Baseball season. No, I didn’t see it live on TV. We were limited to televised games on Saturday afternoons back then, and Roger passed the Babe on a Sunday. But I read all about it in the next morning’s Winnipeg Tribune, so it had to be true.

And now we have another damn Yankee, Aaron Judge, doing Ruthian and Marisian-type things. He has 60 dingers, and there’s counting yet to be done.

Will kids 60 years from now listen to grandpa spin yarns about a larger-than-life, mythical man who didn’t have a catchy nickname? Somehow I doubt it. Aaron Judge is too real to be a myth. He doesn’t stick needles in his butt. He doesn’t call his shots. He doesn’t booze it up and consort with fancy females on the road. He isn’t into dramatic, diva-like bat flips. He just plays baseball. Hey, maybe that’s become the myth…a guy who just plays baseball.

What’s the going rate for a souvenir baseball? Well Sal Durante, a Brooklyn truck driver, caught Maris’ 61st HR ball and eventually peddled it for $5,000 to restaurant owner Sam Gordon, who promptly handed it to Maris. Durante gifted half his poke to his parents, then spent the remainder on furnishing a house with soon-to-be bride Rosemarie. They said their I do’s three weeks after Sal snatched the Maris HR ball, and they honeymooned in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Reno, Palm Springs and Sacramento, all on Gordon’s dime. Durante, now hospitalized with dementia at age 80, also received a Zippo cigarette lighter with a Yankees logo on the front and Roger’s name on the back from the Yankees slugger. The guy who hauls in Judge’s 62nd HR ball (assuming he hits it) could easily afford a three-bedroom home a block away from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and have enough coin left over for yearly around-the-world honeymoons and a solid gold Zippo.

The cost of making a baseball is about $7, but you can buy one designed to exact MLB specifications on Amazon for $33.16 (goop and nasty toxins that Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole applies not included).

Okay, Alejandro Kirk doesn’t have the body perfect (nor did the Babe, for that matter). He’s squat, with an ample girth. Stand him next to Aaron Judge and you’re looking at an igloo beside the Empire State Building. But is the sight of the rotund Toronto Blue Jays catcher rumbling around the base paths “embarrassing for the sport” of baseball? TSN radio guy Matthew Ross thought so, and said so, on Twitter, prompting keyboard warriors to pounce with loud squawks and accusations of body shaming. No surprise that Ross delivered a mea culpa, saying in part, “defaming people for the way they look is not where my heart or intent was in this moment—or ever!” Sigh. Why do these guys always use the “that’s not who I am” copout? As the Wise Woman of the Village once said: “No matter who and what we claim to be, what we say and do is who and what we are.” So just own it, for gawd’s sake, then vow to do and be better.

The Kirk clatter brought to mind the time late-night gab guy David Letterman went off on Atlanta Braves relief pitcher Terry Forster. Among others things, Letterman called Forster “the fattest man in all of professional sports. The guy is a balloon. He must weigh 300 pounds. He is a looaad.” Just so his national TV audience didn’t miss his meaning, Letterman closed his body-shaming bit by labeling Forster “a fat tub of goo.” That’s the way it was in 1985. People yukked it up over stuff that brings out the tar and feathers today.

Some good copy in the Drab Slab lately, starting with Jeff Hamilton’s deep dive into the matter of disgraced high school football coach Kelsey McKay. It isn’t the first time Jeff has gone into the dirty areas of sports, and he always delivers the goods. Meantime, Mike Sawatzky has a nice piece on the 1962 U of M Bisons football team, which had old friends George Depres and Jeep Woolley on the coaching staff. Jeff and Mike are the best weapons in the Freep’s toy department.

On the subject of the write stuff, you might want to check out Eddie Tait’s piece on Joe Poplawski over at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers website. Joe Pop is this year’s inductee to the Winnipeg FC Ring of Honour, and young Eddie has the background poop on a guy recognized hither and yon as one of the finest people in sports. Any sport. Any era.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Montreal Larks head coach Danny Maciocia always looks as confused as a guy who’s forgotten where he parked the car?

The Larks got the better of the Hamilton Tabbies on Friday night, 23-16, and Montreal QB Trevor Harris mentioned Jesus three times during a brief post-victory natter with John Lu on TSN. Hmmm. I realize Larks legendary QB and current O-Coordinator Anthony Calvillo is revered in Montreal, but when did they start calling him Jesus?

So, who becomes the fall guy in Bytown, where the 3-10 RedBlacks looked shockingly inept in a 45-15 paddywhacking from the Toronto Argos last night? Well, it’ll be Paul LaPolice, of course. It isn’t Coach LaPo’s fault that he lost his starting QB, Jeremiah Masoli, to a dirty bit of business by the felonious Flatlander Garrett Marino, but consecutive three-win crusades doesn’t cut it. This is his second head-coaching gig in Rouge Football, and at 22-49 I believe there’s a warm seat waiting for Coach LaPo beside Kate Beirness on the TSN panel.

Nice to see Darren Dutchyshen back on SportsCentre with Jennifer Hedger while he fights the good fight against cancer. Dutchy has been a mainstay at TSN since 1995, which seems so darn long ago, .

Apparently ’tis the season to retire. Zdeno Chara, P.K. Subban and Keith Yandle all said toodle-oo on the same day last week, and one of them is destined for the Hockey Hall of Fame, another probably has a future in the gab game if he chooses, while Yandle packs it in as the NHL’s iron man, having clocked in for work in 989 consecutive games from March 26, 2009, to March 29 this year. Meanwhile, no word on Jumbo Joe Thornton’s NHL future until scientists complete carbon dating analysis of his beard.

I don’t like the term “GOAT.” It’s overused to the point of being nails-on-a-chalkboard icky, and when an unGOAT like Blake Shelton tries to use an actual goat as a prop on The Voice, you know it’s also become cheesy and Oklahoma cornball. I think “GOAT” should be banned as it relates to sports, and I certainly won’t use it, except to tell you I won’t use it. I mean, Secretariat was the greatest race horse I’ve ever seen, but do we really want to call Secretariat a GOAT? Not gonna happen.

So, does Becky Hammon’s success leading the Las Vegas Aces to the WNBA title move the needle closer to her becoming the first female head coach in the NBA, or is she now pigeon holed into women’s hoops?

The WNBA final, by the way, featured two openly gay head coaches—Hammon, who’s married to Brenda Milano and the mother of two young kids, and Curt Miller of the Connecticut Sun. More role models for LGBT(etc.) youth.

Dumb Headline of the Week, from the Sportsnet website: “Exciting developments from PWHPA won’t include new league in January.” Good grief. There can be just one “exciting” development with the Dream Gappers—a league. Everything else is last week’s baked goods. I mean, there’s nothing fresh and “exciting” about playing glorified scrimmages for a fourth successive winter. Jayna Hefford and her Dream Gappers can dress up their “friendlies” six ways to Sunday, but Team Harvey’s vs. Team Sonnet will never get the pulse racing. The PWHPA needs to be something more than photo ops with Billie Jean King and hit-and-miss weekend scrimmages if they expect the masses to take Ponytail Puck seriously.

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

Let’s talk about the bearded ladies of Winnipeg…cheering in the press box and on the anchor desk…Box Car Willie on Sportsnet…trading Auston Matthews…Tiger’s still a saint on CBS/ESPN…garbage in the outfield…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and a heaping, helping of media stuff right off the hop, because someone should keep their tootsies to the toaster oven…

Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab has done the math, and he tells us that the Winnipeg Jets have more wins and points than all Western Conference outfits since the puck was dropped to start the 2017-18 National Hockey League season.

“Remind me why we seemingly can’t go a week or two around here without hearing calls from some quarters to fire the coach, axe the general manager, bench this lousy player and trade that bum,” he writes.

Geez, I don’t know Mad Mike, ya think it might have something to do with the Jets’ first-round ouster in 2019 and their failure to qualify for the Stanley Cup tournament last summer? I mean, you can lead the first 199 laps at the Indy 500, but the driver leading lap 200 gets the checkered flag, the bottle of milk and a kiss from a pretty girl.

Truly bizarre headline on that Mad Mike column: “Ladies and gentlemen…Start your playoff beards.” Seriously? Bearded ladies? Little wonder Good Ol’ Hometown is at the top of most no-trade lists for young NHL players.

Did anchor Ken Reid actually say he and his fellow talking heads at Sportsnet don’t cheer for any specific team? Yup, sure did. That is to laugh. The company that signs his paycheque, Rogers Communications, owns the Toronto Blue Jays and, in partnership with Bell Canada, holds a 75 per cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which bankrolls the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC and Argos. So, make no mistake, the squawk boxes on both Sportsnet Central and TSN ‘s signature SportsCentre are full of sis-boom-bah and rah, rah, rah for Team(s) Tranna. I mean, they couldn’t contain their glee during the Tranna Jurassics run to the NBA title a couple of years back, and they positively choked on their pom-poms when their hoops heroes were ushered from the playoffs last year. A funereal, long-faced Lindsay Hamilton began SportsCentre by saying, “This one stings,” and, over at Sports Central, reporter Michael Grange blew his cover when he said, “As Raptors fans, we…” That’s right, he confessed to being one of the fawning flock. That’s never a good look.

Can someone, anyone, at Sportsnet explain why they continue to permit Elliotte Friedman to appear on camera looking like the back end of a nasty all-nighter? His Box Car Willie shtick is disgraceful and, again, it’s a blatant double standard because none of the female talking heads would be allowed on air looking like a bridge troll.

Damien Cox continues to astound and amaze on Twitter. Last Thursday, the Toronto Star columnist took a moment to give himself an enthusiastic on the back by tweeting, “From the beginning said Matthews would be the best player the Leafs ever drafted.” That doesn’t exactly make him Nostradamus, and it’s positively belly-laughingly hilarious when you consider this tweet he sent out in November 2018: “John Tavares is playing so well it makes you think; why not sign (Mitch) Marner and (William) Nylander and trade Matthews for a whole pile of goodies? Not saying they would, but it’s not such a crazy idea anymore.” There are no words.

Cox didn’t stop there. In his latest alphabet phart in the Star, he wrote this: “More than 95 per cent of senior positions in the NHL remain reserved for white men. In sports, only golf is more dominated by white culture than hockey.” Apparently he’s never seen a NASCAR race.

So tell us, Phil Mushnick, what say you about the talking heads on CBS/ESPN for their continued hero worship of Tiger Woods, absent from The Masters golf tournament after driving into a ditch and almost killing himself in February? “Even those who wouldn’t recognize a con if it were sold with multiple, fill-in-the-blanks certificates of authenticity, now know that this 25-year anointment of Tiger Woods as a saint on earth was a media con,” the New York Post columnist writes. “Again, it wasn’t enough that he was the world’s best golfer, he additionally had to be the best son, best husband, best father and finest human being. But if that had been you instead of Woods, the one who, unimpeded at almost double the speed limit, rolled his SUV off the road, you’d have been charged with a pile of negligent driving charges—even while hospitalized and before your blood results returned. For him to still be sainted on the national telecast of a major as a gift from above was designed to be swallowed by the tiny fraction of fools still available to be fooled. That’s supposed to be all of us. Again. And it’s nauseating. Again.” Harsh. But I don’t disagree.

I kept waiting for one of the CBS gab guys, or Dottie Pepper, to call out Bryson DeChambeau on Saturday, not for his wonky game but for his arrogance. You might recall that golf’s incredible bulk basically pooh-poohed Augusta National as nothing more than a pitch-and-putt course prior to the 2020 Masters last November, boasting, “I’m looking at it as par-67 for me.” So, here’s his scorecard at the par-72 course since then: 70, 74, 69, 73, 76, 67, 75. He goes into today’s final round sitting 38th among the 54 guys who teed it up on the weekend. Yet there wasn’t so much as a peep about DeChambeau’s disrespect for one of the most challenging and treasured golf courses on the planet, because that’s not how it’s done during coverage of The Masters. You don’t dare ruffle the azaleas or disturb the piped-in bird chirping and the soothing piano music. So they gave him a pass. Sigh. If only Johnny Miller was still sitting behind a mic.

Best line I read or heard about The Masters was delivered by longtime, now-retired sports scribe Cam Cole. After noted cheater Patrick Reed had swatted a ball into the azaleas, Cam tweeted: “Breaking: Patrick Reed has hit into the flowers behind 13 green. Rules officials are racing to the spot.” That’s funny.

Talk about a day late and a dollar short. It took the Drab Slab two weeks to acknowledge the death of Todd Kabel, a kid from McCreary who got his break riding the ponies at Assiniboia Downs for five seasons then made it big at Woodbine in the Republic of Tranna. Todd’s death on March 27 had been reported hither and yon, but somehow escaped the notice of the Winnipeg Free Press sports desk. Not good. That’s a major whiff. George Williams has a real nice piece on the seven-time Sovereign Award-winning jockey that you might want to check out in the Saturday’s edition, not that it excuses the negligence.

I’d say the Winnipeg Sun missed the boat on Kabel, too, except the suits at Postmedia in The ROT don’t allow Paul Friesen, Ted Wyman and Scott Billeck to fill their two or three pages with anything other than the Jets, Blue Bombers and curling.

One more note on the Drab Slab: They often run a full-page, poster pic on the Sunday sports front, and that seems like a colossal waste of space to me. Why not a quality feature or something light and bright? Plopping a large pic in that premium space shows zero initiative or imagination. It’s just lazy.

Three months in, I still really don’t know what to make of this NHL season, except to submit that it’s kind of like the breakup of the Beatles. Instead of one genius rock band, we were left with three solid solo artists and Ringo Starr. That’s what the NHL is today, a quartet of separate house leagues, although I haven’t decided which of the four is Ringo. I am, mind you, leaning toward the Central Division because, once you get past Tampa, Carolina and Florida, you’re left with nothing but a band of bland clubs and a guy named Torts who, come to think of it, is a lot like Yoko Ono. You know, a dark, foreboding presence determined to ruin a good thing (for evidence see: Laine, Patrik).

If nothing else, this NHL crusade is a study in the distortion of facts. Media pundits insist on taking numbers and pro-rating them over an 82-game crusade, as if delivering a weighty message, but in truth it’s delusional, like imagining Patrik Laine and John Tortorella sitting by the campfire and singing Kumbaya. Consider the Jets. They’d be on pace for a 106-point season, which would be their second best since the Atlanta caravan rolled into River City in 2011, but it’s false currency. We wouldn’t be looking at similar numbers if they were required to play the Vegas Golden Knights and Colorado Avalanche 9/10 times each instead of the Ottawa Senators and Vancouver Canucks. But, hey, I’m not here to piddle on your Corn Flakes. Enjoy it, Jets fans. Much like the Edsel, this kind of season won’t happen again.

All power to the Edmonton Oilers for getting the brooms out and sweeping the Senators, 9-nada, on the season, but, I’m sorry, that should never happen in any big-league sport.

Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl ate the Senators’ lunch to the tune of 21 points each in those nine games, so if they got to play Ottawa 82 times they’d finish with 191 points. That would still leave them 24 shy of Wayne Gretzky’s best year.

Hey, check out the Los Angeles Dodgers 2020 World Series championship rings. They’re as big as a Volkswagen Beetle. I swear, they won’t be able to take those things to a jeweler for cleaning. They’ll need a car wash. But they’re 11-karat, 232-diamond, 53-sapphire beauties. Much nicer than the Houston Astros 2017 WS rings, which featured diamonds set into a replica trash can lid.

Speaking of garbage, Anaheim fans tossed trash cans onto the field when the Astros were in town last week. We haven’t seen that much garbage in the outfield since the 1962 Mets.

By the way, if you’re looking for something special for that special Dodgers fan in your life, limited-edition replica World Series rings are available to the faithful. Cost: $35,000US. Let me just say this about that, though: If you have a spare $35K kicking around to spend on finger decoration, I have the number of a food bank that would love to hear from you.

The Chicago Cubs plan to erect a statue of Baseball Hall of Fame hurler Ferguson Jenkins outside Wrigley Field, and the New York Mets will unveil a pigeon perch of pitching legend Tom Seaver outside Citi Field in July. Meanwhile, the Toronto Blue Jays are starting to wonder if they’d be better off with a statue at shortstop rather than Bo (Oops) Bichette.

Brendan Bottcher and his group from Wild Rose Country came up empty at the men’s world curling championship in Calgary. Someone please alert the six people outside the Prairie provinces who actually give a damn.

And, finally, I have never engaged in a chin-wag about “TV’s most-talked-about show,” mainly because I’ve never watched “TV’s most-talked-about show.” I have never overheard a conversation about “TV’s most-talked-about show.” What show am I not talking about? Well, if you don’t know, then perhaps it isn’t “TV’s most-talked-about show” after all.

Let’s talk about the chicken, the egg, the Argos, the CFL and the media

I stumbled upon an interesting Twitter to-and-fro last week involving three of the nation’s notable jock journos, two of whom are widely respected and the third not so much.

The exchange—between Winnipeg Blue Bombers longtime voice Bob (Knuckles) Irving, veteran observer of three-downs football Dave Naylor of TSN, and Damien Cox of the Toronto Star—centred on the Toronto Argos and the reason(s) behind woeful head counts whenever the Boatmen come up for air at BMO Field in the Republic of Tranna.

The Argos, be advised, don’t attract crowds to BMO. It’s more like pockets of stragglers. You know, folks who get lost while looking for something better to do.

Officially, average attendance in 2019 was 12,493, although we know better. That might have been tickets sold, but it wasn’t bums on benches. My guess is that the audience numbered sub-10,000 more than one day/night, meaning the Canadian Football League’s largest market has the smallest following, a level of neglect challenged only by indifference on the Left Flank of the land, where people won’t even come in out of the rain to watch the B.C. Lions.

One reason advanced for Argos apathy is a generation thing. That is, Rouge Football doesn’t appeal to anyone without age in their eyes and grey in their temples, which set off this Irving-Naylor-Cox exchange:

Irving: “Part of the reason for that is the Toronto media basically ignores the CFL—not good enough for most of them.”

Naylor: “Come on Bob, it’s the media’s fault? The Winnipeg media reports aggressively on the Bombers because there is a demand for information. If that existed in Toronto, the media would respond accordingly.”

Cox: “Individual media people don’t make these decisions. Sports departments do. In Toronto, sports staffs are stretched to the limit, fewer ppl doing more. There’s a lot more sporting events to cover in Toronto than Winnipeg.”

Okay, let’s unwrap that.

First, Knuckles Irving is correct when he submits that mainstream media in the Republic of Tranna treats the Argos and Rouge Football as an afterthought.

For example, the Toronto Star no longer cares enough about the CFL to dispatch a scribe to the Grey Cup game unless it’s played in The ROT, and Tranna-based Sportsnet pays only token attention to the CFL simply because its competition, TSN, holds the broadcast rights. (No one expects Sportsnet to promote the other guy’s property, but it is a news gathering and distributing outlet and, as such, has a responsibility to inform viewers of CFL games/stories on air and on the website with an expected level of substance.)

Meanwhile, when Rouge Football went dark last August, the cancellation of the season was front page of every sports section of every daily on The Prairies, but the story served as inside filler (pages 8 and 9) in the Toronto Sun. (I don’t recall what made the Sun front that day, but I suppose Auston Matthews might have been trimming his mustache, which would have warranted a lede, sidebar and a 150-point headline.)

In terms of the Argos-media, it really is a chicken-and-egg riddle. Is the media indifferent because the rabble steers clear of BMO on Argos game days, or does the rabble steer clear of BMO on Argos game days because the media is indifferent?

It certainly isn’t the responsibility of news snoops to do the bidding of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which bankrolls the Boatmen and BMO’s more popular tenant, Toronto FC. But, although historically the most successful of The ROT’s pro sports franchises (17 Grey Cup championships, including three this century), the Boatmen have fallen to fifth on the pecking order, behind the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays and Toronto FC. That isn’t about to change anytime soon, no matter what the local rags put on their sports pages or radio/TV puts on their air.

Which brings us to Cox’s point that “there’s a lot more sporting events to cover in Toronto than Winnipeg.”

What a load of hooey.

Had Cox said there were more “pro sporting events,” I’d agree. But overall sports? No.

It’s all about priorities, and they differ from town to town. In the Republic of Tranna, the major beats are the Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays and Toronto FC, with the Argos the runt of the litter. In Winnipeg, it’s the Jets, Blue Bombers and…curling.

Pebble People have made the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press sports section 23 times this year. That’s right, 23. I doubt curling has been on the sports front of either the Toronto Star or Toronto Sun once this century, let alone 23 times in a three-month, one week time frame.

Also making the front page of the Freep sports section were two levels of junior hockey, high school hockey, women’s amateur hockey, volleyball, university sports, auto racing, etc. At different points in the year, they make room for local golf, tennis, high school football/hoops, Usports, and more of what you’ll never find in the Toronto rags.

The Sun and the Star have become pro sports sheets, whereas the Free Press continues to cover the peripheral sports, during a pandemic with a stable of scribes that has shrunk to four.

Dating back to my start in the rag trade in 1969 when the Bombers were top dog, it’s always been that way in Good Ol’ Hometown. Lower-level sports were never given short shrift, even after the Jets arrived to nudge the Bombers down a notch, and I suspect the Freep will carry on that way.

I just wish I could say the same for the Winnipeg Sun. Unfortunately, the suits at Postmedia in the Republic of Tranna ruined a good thing.

Let’s talk about the NFNFL (No Fans, No Football League)…COVID on the West Coast…The Rock and the Sugar Daddies ‘R’ Us shop…an all-Easter sports lineup…Tiger’s tight lips…Men In Green Jackets chow down…a “huggable” Blue Jay…the Boston D’oh Boys…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and Happy Easter; may you find all those hidden eggs while I lay another one…

Okay, we knew there would be at least six zeroes on the bottom line of the Winnipeg Football Club’s 2020 operation, and we knew all those zeroes would be written in red ink, if not blood.

So the $7,000,000 bath the Blue Bombers took shouldn’t surprise any among us, except perhaps those who believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and The Rock as a turn-red-ink-into-black-ink Messiah of the Canadian Football League.

Some might even put on a pair of rose-tinted glasses and look at the financial wallop WFC took as favorable tidings because, even with a lost crusade due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a $7 million shortfall, the doors remain open out there at postal code R3T 1Z2 on Chancellor Matheson Road in Fort Garry. That the community-operated Bombers remain in business is a testament to the dollars-and-cents gymnastics of once-maligned CEO Wade Miller and the board.

Mind you, it’s good news like a guy who had his arms and legs shattered in a car accident, but he’s happy he didn’t break his nose, even if he can’t blow it without someone holding the hanky.

And, really, that’s what the Bombers and their eight partners in Rouge Football require today—help.

As mentioned last week, the CFL is in an arms race, as in vaccines in arms. It’s become the NFNFL—No Fans, No Football League—so the immediate future of our quirky game rests in the hands of needle-pushers hither and yon.

Trouble is, the number of COVID vaccinations required to make football fields across the tundra fan friendly is a mystery.

When I last looked, 13.4 per cent of the citizenry in Manitoba had been vaccinated, so let’s say 80 per cent in Good Ol’ Hometown have been jabbed by June. Is that ample enough to get the turnstiles spinning at Football Follies Field In Fort Garry? If so, how many would be cleared to visit the Rum Hut and watch the large lads grab grass? Will they require a proof-of-vaccine badge? Also, keep in mind there’s no guarantee the faithful will rush back to the ball yard. After all, the thought of joining a large gathering likely will make some among the rabble quite antsy, like a Hertz rent-a-car clerk seeing Tiger Woods approach the counter.

Miller, of course, was talking a good game the other day, assuring Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun that “we’re going to get on the field,” and telling Taylor Allen of the Drab Slab “we’re getting ready to play with fans in the stands.”

I want to believe him. I really do. But we all know the harsh reality: The Bombers CEO doesn’t control the vaccine rollout in Manitoba, let alone across the dominion.

What’s happening in Winnipeg isn’t necessarily what’s happening in Vancouver or the Republic of Tranna, not that anyone other than friends and family in those latter two ports-o-call gives a damn about Rouge Football. Point is, we have six different provincial health authorities receiving an unequal number of vaccine shipments and poking needles into arms in accordance to their parochial priorities.

Furthermore, there seems to exist a bit of a helter-skelter vibe to the vaccine rollout nation-wide, and that certainly doesn’t help the CFL put its house in order or butts on benches.

Cardboard cutouts don’t cut it. They don’t drink beer, they don’t eat hot dogs or popcorn, and they don’t buy $250 jerseys. They just mean no long lineups at the washrooms.

So, really, it’s vaccines or bust on a 2021 CFL crusade. In other words: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls…present arms!

So here’s another question: Can Rouge Football kick off a 2021 crusade if the Bombers were allowed to welcome, say, 8,250 patrons (25 per cent capacity) to Football Follies Field while the B.C. Leos, Tranna Argos and Montreal Larks grab grass in empty buildings? I know, I know. The Leos and Argos are accustomed to crowds the size of a yard sale, and the folks in Montreal only pay attention when the Larks are winning, so an imbalance at the box office already exists. But can the CFL allow some teams to collect game-day revenue while others must keep their tills closed? I think not.

Frankly, I’m most concerned about B.C. If the Leos fail to get the okie-dokie for patrons in B.C. Place Stadium, do they take a leave of absence rather than pay 50-plus players’ wages with zero game-day revenue? Does the CFL shrink to an eight-team operation for a year? I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss that possibility. Keep in mind that B.C.’s top docs wanted no part of an NHL bubble last summer, and they’ll be less inclined to green light a Rouge Football season now that the coronavirus and its variants have ransacked the Vancouver Canucks roster. I mean, if the bug(s) can’t be kept at bay in the Canucks’ rigidly controlled environment, what chance would the Leos have with twice as many players wandering about the burg? B.C. health officials talk about the vaccine rollout being completed by the end of June, but what they really mean is sometime in July. The Leos allegedly gather for training sessions next month, they allegedly have a dress rehearsal at an empty facility on June 4, and they allegedly begin playing for full wages (three times) later that month. Do the math. I’m sure the guardians of the late David Braley’s estate have done that very thing and don’t like the numbers.

We have yet to hear 2020 bottom-line numbers from our prairie friends in Edmonton and on the Flattest of Lands, but we can assume they’ll be dripping in as much red ink as WFC. We already know that most, if not all, of the E-Town E-Somethings’ $12.9 million rainy day fund has vanished like summer wages, and the Saskatchewan Roughriders face their “biggest financial crisis in 110 years,” according to team president Craig Reynolds. Sigh. If only there was a Sugar Daddies ‘R’ Us shop available to the three community-operated clubs. Oh wait. Isn’t that where The Rock is supposed to come in?

Apparently The Rock and his accomplices, Dany Garcia/RedBird Capital, continue to make nice with CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie and the Lords of Rouge Football, working toward a CFL-XFL alliance. But what do they actually bring to the table? Well, yes, their pockets are coal-miner deep, but they offer a twice-failed brand name, zero franchises, zero players, and the hope of springtime football, which has always landed in the gridiron graveyard. Sorry, but short of them underwriting all CFL-XFL losses, I fail to see the upside.

Moving on from the CFL, here’s my all-time, all-Easter-themed lineup:
10. Bunny Ahearne, longtime IIHF executive
9. Rabbit Maranville, baseball player
8. Bugsy Watson, hockey player
7. Luke Easter, baseball player
6. The Eggman, golfer Dan Halldorson
5. Christian Laettner, hoops player
4. Roman Gabriel, football player
3. Jesus Alou, baseball player
2. God Shammgod, hoops player
1. Connor McJesus, Edmonton Oilers messiah.

Officials have determined the cause of Tiger Woods’ car crash in February, but they’ll keep it on the QT until the golf great gives them the okie-dokie to release the information. Hmmm. I wonder which will arrive first, details of Tiger driving his SUV into a ditch or Haley’s Comet, due on July 28, 2061. My money’s on the comet.

Hey, I’m not saying Tiger is tight-lipped, but a bag of airline peanuts is easier to pry apart than his lips.

Just wondering: Do you think Woods will have hired a chauffeur by July 28, 2061?

So here’s some real dirt on Jack Nicklaus, told by the man himself on Twitter: “I was a switch-hitting catcher growing up & and if I hadn’t chosen golf baseball might’ve been my future. But I never liked standing around on a dusty field waiting for 10 kids to show up. With golf, it was me against myself, my own abilities & the course. But I still loved baseball!” Ya, almost as much as he loves Donald Trump.

I assume the Golden Bear will be at Augusta National this week to put on the feedbag at the Men In Green Jackets chow-down in advance of The Masters. It’s officially known as the Masters Club Dinner, but you don’t get a seat at the table unless you’re wearing one of those ugly green jackets that champions are allowed to wear only at Augusta (tie optional). The Men In Green Jackets menu was chosen this year by the reigning Man In Green, Dustin Johnson. What, no greens?

What’s this? Connor McDavid went McSquirrely the other night? Sure did. The Oilers captain shoved his right elbow into Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s chops, and I couldn’t have been more surprised had I found a copy of Sinatra: The Rapper Years at my local vinyl store. The reaction, on the other hand, was not unexpected. Some among the rabble were calling for the hangman, and to them I say, “Come on, people.” I mean, Gordie Howe is glorified to this day for using his elbows to perform unlicensed dental surgery on foes. Rumor has it that Mr. Hockey nailed two pallbearers and the grave digger as they lowered his casket. And now you want to crucify McDavid for one errant elbow? Hey, I’m no fan of goon hockey, but he isn’t Charlie Manson. He did it, he’s paid his $5,000 fine, so let’s move on.

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star wrote this about Toronto Blue Jays pudgy catcher Alejandro Kirk last week: “Kirk is immensely huggable.” Nothing offensive, right? But let me ask this: If a male jock journo used the same adjective to describe our leading lady of the links, Brooke Henderson, would he be branded a sexist oinker? Damn straight, he would. And that would be unfortunate. Descriptive scribbling in sports has become passé, if not a lost art, in our daily newspapers. The boys on the beat don’t dare write that our Brooke is “huggable,” for fear of a robust and thorough tarring-and-feathering on social media. So they simply write about birdies, bogeys and unplayable lies. But wait. Brooke Henderson is a delight. She seems very approachable. She smiles a lot. She has that squeaky clean, girl-next-door quality. Every time I see her, I want to pinch her chipmunk cheeks. She strikes me as teddy bear “huggable.” Why shouldn’t the boys on the beat feel comfortable writing that about Brooke the person? It’s no more sexist than Rosie DiManno telling us that Alejandro Kirk is “huggable.”

So I’m watching Mathew Barzal rack up the points (three goals, two helpers) in the New York Islanders 8-3 rout of the Washington Capitals the other night, and I couldn’t help but flash back to the 2015 National Hockey League entry draft. The Boston Bruins had three successive shoutouts that day, Nos. 13, 14 and 15. They chose Jakob Zboril, Jake DeBrusk and Zachary Senyshyn, otherwise known as the Boston D’oh! Boys. DeBruck is the only one of the three who’s been worth half a lick. Meanwhile, plucked immediately after were Barzal, Kyle Connor and Thomas Chabot. Here’s what the scorecard looks like today:

Barzal: 272 games, 241 points.
Conner: 287 games, 237 points.
Chabot: 240 games, 142 points.
Totals: 799 games, 620 points.

DeBrusk: 224 games, 127 points.
Zboril: 34 games, 7 points.
Senyshyn: 12 games, 3 points.
Totals: 270 games, 137 points.

Damien Cox of the Toronto Star might have established a new standard for poor taste in tweets when discussing the Vancouver Canucks and their raging COVID crisis, which has shelved the entire operation and puts the club’s season in jeopardy. Noting that Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet suggested the Canucks schedule could be tweaked by eliminating four games vs. the Ottawa Senators late this month and replacing them with skirmishes vs. playoff-bound outfits, Cox had this horrible hot take: “The question then becomes are you handicapping those playoff bound teams by forcing them to play against a VAN team that’s more rested than it otherwise would be?” Seriously? Lying in a sick bed with an IV needle stuck in your arm or hand becomes a competitive advantage? It makes you more rested? My goodness. When someone is that tuned out, there are no words.

Here are the numbers for coverage devoted exclusively to female athletes/teams in the Winnipeg Sun and Drab Slab for March:

Front Page
Free Press: 4
Sun: 1

Articles
Free Press: 35 stories, 20 briefs.
Sun: 4 stories, three briefs.

Number of issues with female coverage
Free Press: 27 of 31 days.
Sun: 6 of 31 days.

And, finally, I give up. Why was there a promo for Steve Simmons on the front page of the Winnipeg Sun last Tuesday? He is a Tranna-based scribe, he writes a Tranna-centric column, he mentions athletes/teams from Good Ol’ Hometown in his alphabet pharts perhaps half a dozen times a year, and the local tabloid seldom runs his copy. Yet there was his scruffy mug on the front page of the Winnipeg Sun. This makes sense to whom, other than the misguided suits at Postmedia HQ on Bloor Street East in the Republic of Tranna?

Let’s talk about Jills writing about jocks…Scotties ratings take a nosedive…covering the Snake in Ottawa, or was it Montreal?…BS and road apples in Alberta…the NFL QB and the UFO…baseball and beer…Ponytail Puck…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and let’s salute the girls and ladies of sports on the eve of International Women’s Day…

I spent 30 years in the rag trade and worked alongside four women—Peggy Stewart and Rita Mingo at the Winnipeg Tribune, Mary Ormsby at the Toronto Sun, and Judy Owen at the Winnipeg Sun.

Oh, wait. There was a fifth.

We had a summer intern at the Calgary Sun, although her name escapes me. I recall that she failed to surface for her first day of work (something about her car breaking down in Banff on a long weekend—nudge-nudge, wink-wink), and that was our initial clue that she might have made a wrong turn on her career path.

Hey, I get it. Cars break down all the time. Been there, done that and had the hefty repair bills to prove it. Happens to us all. But in Banff? On a long weekend? How positively convenient.

I jokingly informed sports editor John Down that I would have crawled from Banff to Calgary if it meant arriving to my first assignment at the designated hour, but Downsy was as laid back as a Sunday afternoon on the porch, and he let it slide. Alas, that young lady with the pleasant personality one day showed up to cover a golf tournament a bit too uncovered. She was wearing hot pants and stilettos, and she sashayed onto the practice green in her spiked heels, puncturing the immaculately groomed lawn.

Her internship was aborted shortly thereafter.

Not because of her wardrobe malfunction, understand. That would have been an unacceptable double standard, even in the early 1980s.

I mean, none of my male colleagues back in the day were GQ cover material, the exception being Shakey Johnson, who knew how to hang a three-piece suit. The rest of the lot were borderline slobs. Some looked like they’d spent the night sleeping with a raccoon family under a bridge. Their idea of evening wear was a white shirt with anything less than three ketchup or mustard stains. But sartorial slobbery was a non-issue.

So, no, the young lady intern’s dismissal wasn’t about one ghastly fashion foible. It was her lack of zest for the job, the absence of an all-in mindset, and iffy subject knowledge. Let’s just say it became readily apparent that writing sports at the Sun wasn’t meant to be her calling.

Anyway, there were four full-time female sports scribes during my tour of duty, and I can’t imagine any of them considered wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes to the golf course, rink, ball park or stadium.

Rita, Judy and Mary all enjoyed lengthy, admirable careers in journalism, but I don’t know what became of the ever-smiling Peggy Stewart, hired by Jack Matheson as the first female to write sports full time at a major daily newspaper in Western Canada.

Today, the landscape in Good Ol’ Hometown is barren, with zero females in the toy departments at either of the daily newspapers.

Why is that? I’m uncertain. It could be that the rag trade has become too much of a bad bet. Maybe it’s still too much of a boys club. Perhaps it’s a reluctance to enter man caves and deal with brooding, boorish male athletes and/or coaches

“You know, it may just be a lack of interest in writing sports, rather than doors being closed for them,” Judy Owen suggests in an email. “After all, sports hours—when the world is normal—are kind of crappy and the sometimes-crazy deadline writing isn’t very appealing to a lot of journalists.”

Good point. The hours really do suck and often mean you’re not hopping into the kip until well after the pumpkin hour on game nights.

Whatever the case, the female sports scribe is extinct in Winnipeg, so here’s to those who were once there—Judy, Rita, Ashley Prest, Barb Huck and Melissa Martin.

How are we doing with coverage of women’s sports? Not so good. A 2019 U.S. study tells us that 40 per cent of athletes are female, yet the distaff side of the playground receives just 4 per cent of ink and air time. What about in Good Ol’ Hometown, though? Are the Winnipeg Sun and Drab Slab giving the ladies a fair shake? Well, I monitored both sheets for three months—November, December, January—and the findings aren’t favorable. The evidence:

Women on the sports front
Free Press 16 of 90 editions.
Sun 3 of 89 editions.

Copy on female sports
Free Press 74 articles, 30 briefs.
Sun 20 articles, 7 briefs.

Editions with coverage of female sports
Free Press 63 of 90.
Sun 24 of 89.

Naturally, the numbers were jacked up in February during the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, but I suspect coverage will revert to same old, same old moving forward.

The TSN curling squawk squad: Cheryl Bernard, Vic Rauter, Russ Howard, Bryan Mudryk, Cathy Gauthier.

TSN’s ratings for the Scotties final last Sunday took a face plant from a year ago, with an average of 682,000 sets of eyeballs checking out Kerri Einarson-Rachel Homan II, a sequel to the 2020 championship match that attracted 979,000 viewers. I trust no one is surprised, because it’s an industry-wide reality for major events during the COVID pandemic. Here are the facts, ma’am:

Stanley Cup final: -61%
U.S. Open golf: -56%
NBA final: -49%
Kentucky Derby: -49%
U.S. Open tennis: -45%
World Series: -31%
Scotties: -30%
Super Bowl: -15%

I didn’t tune in to every draw of the Scotties, but I can report that I never heard one F-bomb, or any other salty language, from the lady curlers in the draws I watched. Somehow I doubt I’ll be able to say the same of the men at the close of business at this week’s Brier. They can be quite potty-mouthed Pebble People.

Gather ’round the campfire, kids, old friend Peter Young has a curling tale to tell. It’s all about a Snake and the longtime broadcaster faking it, which is to say Pete covered a Brier in Ottawa from the Forum in Montreal. True story. I don’t know if that makes him the Father of Zoom, but he surely was ahead of his time.

If the Columbus Blue Jackets send head coach John Tortorella packing, please don’t tell me there’s a job waiting for him on Sportsnet or TSN.

Jennifer Botterill is fantastic on Sportsnet’s hockey coverage. Just saying.

Muhammad Yaseen of Alberta’s provincial Hee-Haw Party has introduced a bill in the Legislature proposing that rodeo become the official sport of Wild Rose Country. He sees it as a “beacon of hope.” Animal rights activists, meanwhile, see it as a steaming pile of BS. They figure if you’re going to pay homage to a bunch of big, dumb animals that work for no more than eight seconds a day, why not the Calgary Flames?

When you think about it, Yaseen’s pitch makes sense for Alberta, where Wrangler jeans and straw hats are considered formal attire. Each year the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association sanctions approximately 50 events in Wild Rose Country, and there are probably just as many rodeos that fly under the radar. Hmmm. That’s a lot of road apples to clean up. About the biggest mess since Flames GM Brad Treliving took on Milan Lucic’s contract.

Actually, the Looch is having a decent year. He has more goals (six) than National Hockey League luminaries Nathan MacKinnon, Evgeni Malkin, Jack Eichel, Claude Giroux and Taylor Hall, so maybe I should stop picking on him. On second thought, naw.

Cleveland Browns QB Baker Mayfield claims he observed a UFO while driving home from dinner in Austin, Texas, last week. He described the object as a “very bright ball of light.” UFO experts immediately pooh-poohed the sighting, claiming Mayfield had actually just seen the top of Terry Bradshaw’s head.

Archaeologists continue to make amazing discoveries in the ruins of Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried by volcanic spewings in 79 AD. The latest finding has them really excited. It’s a ceremonial chariot that features ornate decorations of bronze and tin medallions, although they don’t know what to make of the Tom Brady rookie card stuck in the spokes of one of the wheels.

Speaking of Brady, his National Football League rookie card sold for $1.32 million at auction last week. Remind me once again how money is tight during this pandemic.

On the subject of high finance, some people think Fox Sports is nuts for agreeing to pay annoying squawkbox Skip Bayless $32 million over the next four years. I don’t know about that. When you break it down, it’ll work out to only 50 cents an insult.

Baseball is peanuts, Crackjack and hot dogs. And beer, of course. But how much booze? Well, the folks at njonlinegambling.com talked to 2,631 Major League Baseball fans to determine which team’s following is the booziest of the bunch, and nowhere do they swill more suds than on the south side of Chicago. White Sox loyalists chug down 4.2 drinks per nine innings, spending $46 on their libations, so you know they’re well-juiced by the seventh-inning stretch. Blue Jays fans, meanwhile, are middle of the pack when it comes to drinking (3 per game, $25), but they top one category: 70 per cent of them get into the grog before the opening pitch. Yup, they feel the need brace themselves for what’s to come.

TSN’s favorite washed-up quarterback, Johnny Manziel, apparently has used up all his Mulligans in football, so he plans to devote the next 12 years of his troubled life to earning his way onto the PGA Tour. As what? Tiger Woods’ chauffeur?

While saluting friend and former teammate Chris Schultz, who died of a heart attack on Friday, did Pinball Clemons really refer to the Toronto Argonauts as Canada’s Team? Sure enough, he did. Someone ought to share that little secret with the citizenry in the Republic of Tranna. That way the Boatmen might attract more than friends and family to BMO Field next time they grab grass, whenever that might be.

Watched the movie Creed a few days ago. I won’t make that mistake again. Total rubbish. Yo! Adrian! Tell Rocky to do us all a favor and find another hobby.

If you’re a fan of Ponytail Puck (guilty, yer honor), there’s good and not-so-good tidings.

First, select members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association have assembled in Chicago to continue the renewal of their Dream Gap Tour and pose for the mandatory photo-ops with Billie Jean King.

It’s the sequel to last weekend’s engagement at historic Madison Square Garden in Gotham.

That the Dream Gappers have returned to the freeze is a favorable development, to be sure, even if they can’t seem to blow their noses without borrowing a Kleenex from BJK.

Not so good, on the other hand, is the setup.

These are glorified scrimmages, featuring many of the top female players on the planet. There is no league. Nothing is at stake, save for bragging rights, some post-match bottles of bubbly, and a share of the $1 million pot Secret Deodorant has donated.

There is no rooting interest, either. Unless, of course, Team adidas throwing down on Team Women’s Sports Foundation gives you the urge to break out the pom-poms.

I think we can agree that identity is vital in sports. We (mostly) pledge allegiance to our local sides/athletes, whether on a community, national or international level. We like to have a dog in the fight because it gives us a sense of ownership and allows us to get sucked up in rivalries (Red Sox-Yankees, Canada-Russia, Ali-Frazier, Chrissie-Martina, Arnie-Jack, Canada-U.S. in women’s hockey, Habs-Leafs, Tiger-Phil, Rafa-Roger, Serena-nobody, etc.).

Alas, there’s nothing compelling about the Dream Gap Tour structure. They play their friendlies, they pat themselves on the back for existing, then they sit back and listen to their pals in the media heap praise on the product but ignore the problem.

Those of us who want Ponytail Puck to work (one viable league) have yet to see or hear a doable business plan from the Dream Gappers. The mission remains as it was at the PWHPA start-up in May 2019: Bury the National Women’s Hockey League and wish, hope and cross fingers that the NHL is prepared to adopt approximately 125 orphans.

Trouble is, unless there’s something developing behind closed doors that we aren’t privy to, that isn’t about to happen anytime soon. The NWHL has shown no inclination to cede the territory it’s staked out in the past six years, and NHL commish Gary Bettman has made it abundantly clear that he harbors no eagerness to further muddy the waters of a divided women’s game.

Which brings us back to the matter of identity sports.

Who are the Dream Gappers? Well, they’re barnstormers. A curiosity piece. A novelty act, if you will, much like the Harlem Globetrotters or Stars On Ice. But that isn’t who they want to be. It isn’t what fans of Ponytail Puck want them to be.

Unfortunately, they’ve trapped themselves in a contradiction of their own creation. That is, they want to play hockey in a professional league, but they refuse to play in the only professional league available to them.

Thus, without an attitude adjustment, they’re destined to be nothing more than a sideshow.

And that’s a shame.

And, finally, can we call for a moratorium on broadcasters using the word “unbelievable” to describe everything from Auston Matthews’ mustache to a five-point game from Connor McDavid? I mean, Darryl Sittler once scored 10 points in a match, so why is five points unbelievable? Nothing in sports is unbelievable if it’s already happened, and when something happens for the first time it has to be believable because it’s happened. So knock it off.

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

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

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

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

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

This is fair how?

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

That is so wrong.

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

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

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

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

That bothers me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tkachuk boys, Brady, top, and Matthew.

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

Part of Curt Schilling’s Nazi memorabilia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pam Shriver, left, and Martina Navratilova.

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

Grand Slam Doubles Titles
Navratilova 41 Williams 16

Doubles Match Victories
Navratilova 747 Williams 190

Doubles Titles
Navratilova 187 Williams 25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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	GORDIE TUMILSON on Let’s talk about the NHL…