Wrigley Field

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know, my dad was a real charmer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why would anyone get bent out of shape?

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

And so it shall be with Edmonton FC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s talk about The Lady & The Trump…unplugging the TSN live mic…bye-bye Bobby Loooo…the Toronto Star and BS…give that Muppet a Cookie…the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ Lucky strike…CFL boos and booze…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and, in a salute to the women’s World Cup, it’s a red card for you and a yellow card for you and a goooooal for all the straight shooters in the past week…

Goooooal! Somehow, the women’s World Cup became a story of The Lady & The Trump last week, and it provided a delightful bit of symbolism, in that Megan Rapinoe has done to Donald Trump what she hopes American voters will do next year—give him the boot.

After being called out by the U.S. president for (apparently) dissing Betsy Ross’ stars-n-stripes needlework, the Team USA co-captain hoofed the only two balls that found the back of the net for the Yankee Doodle Damsels in a 2-1 victory over France on Friday in Paris, sending them forward to a semifinal date with the Lionesses of England.

So there’s your basic difference between Trump and Rapinoe: He puts his foot in his mouth, she let’s her feet do the talking.

Red Card: Donald freaking Trump. What a cad. You’d think that a dustup with Iran, a trade squabble with China, border wall bickering, and a trip to Asia would be enough to occupy the American president’s time, but no. He had to pick a fight with Rapinoe two days before she led her side onto the pitch for the quarterfinal skirmish v. the French. His timing was most peculiar. But, then, Trump is a most peculiar fellow. His Twitter hissy fit stemmed from a months-old clip of Rapinoe saying “I’m not going to the fucking White House” should the Americans win the soccer tournament. Well, why would she want to go? I mean, she has two strikes against her in the Trumpiverse: She’s a she and she’s lesbian. Those aren’t bad things in the real word, but that isn’t where Trump resides.

Goooooal! Rapinoe wasn’t the only U.S. player who refused to back down from the Bully-in-Chief. Ali Krieger, also a lesbian, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her teammate in this tweet: “In regards to the ‘President’s’ tweet today, I know women who you cannot control or grope anger you, but I stand by @mPinoe & will sit this one out as well. I don’t support this administration nor their fight against LGBTQ+ citizens, immigrants & our most vulnerable.” Love it.

Yellow Card: TSN has announced plans for 18 live mic games during the Canadian Football League season. This was a good gimmick. Once. It soon became extremely irritating, with gusts up to unlistenable last year. Honestly, I’d rather lend an ear to the squawking of Rod Black, Duane Forde and Glen Suitor. Yup, that’s how bad a live mic game is.

Goooooal! Hayley Wickenheiser and Roberto Luongo. Hayley becomes the seventh female player to enter the Hockey Hall of Fame, and I should say so. She wore the Maple Leaf for 23 years, helping Canada collect four Olympic Games gold medals and seven world titles along the way. Bobby Loooooo, meanwhile, also has world and Olympic championships on his resumé, so he’s earned his day of rest after 20 winters of getting in the way of 95-100 m.p.h. pucks for the New York Islanders, Florida Panthers, Vancouver Canucks and, of course, his home and native land. He also does boffo work on Twitter.

Red Card: The Toronto Star continues to provide Damien Cox with a soap box for his misguided and illogical spewings. In his latest alphabet fart, served up on Twitter, Cox pooh-poohed two National Hockey League trinkets: “Selkes and Lady Byngs are the biggest bullshit consolation prize awards. They mean squat when it comes to who are the true stars.” Let’s see, the following have won the Selke and/or Lady Byng trophies: Pavel Datsyuk, Anze Kopitar, Patrice Bergeron, Steve Yzerman, Sergei Federov, Ron Francis, Doug Gilmour, Bobby Clarke, Bob Gainey, Johnny Gaudreau, Martin St. Louis, Alexander Mogilny, Joe Sakic, Wayne Gretzky, Paul Kariya, Brett Hull, Mike Bossy, Jari Kurri, Rick Middleton, Butch Goring, Marcel Dionne, Jean Ratelle, Gilbert Perreault, Johnny Bucyk, Alex Delvecchio, Stan Mikita, Bobby Hull, Dave Keon, Red Kelly. To the best of my knowledge, not one of those “true stars” declined his “bullshit consolation prize.” So someone is definitely full of BS, and in this case it isn’t the NHL.

Goooooal! The New York Yankees paid tribute to the LGBTQ community with a plaque acknowledging the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising. It was placed in Monument Park next to markers honoring Jackie Robinson and Nelson Mandela. The baseball club, along with Stonewall Inn co-owners Stacy Lentz and Kurt Kelly, also awarded five $10,000 college scholarships to graduating high school kids, one from each of New York City’s boroughs. Nice.

Goooooal! The Chicago Cubs recruited good, ol’ Cookie Monster from Sesame Street to warble Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field on Thursday. It’s believed that Cookie is the first Muppet to perform the ritual since Don Cherry.

Goooooal! and a Yellow Card: TSN and Sportsnet will combine to broadcast 19 WNBA games this season (that’s the goooooal!), but where were the two networks when the Canadian Women’s Hockey League was starving for attention (that’s the yellow card)? Televising a game a week might not have saved the CWHL from the dumpster, but I guess we’ll never know, will we.

Red Card: Sportsnet has punted Doug MacLean from its roster of hockey natterbugs. It doesn’t matter that Mac’s one great flaw was describing everything and everyone in the NHL as “unbelievable!” He and Brian Burke were terrific together on Hockey Central at Noon, especially during the Ask the GM segment on Fridays, and I suppose his dismissal means extra servings of the resident meathead, Nick Kypreos, as well as spare parts like Anthony Stewart and Mike Zigomanus. Ugh.

Goooooal! Gotta close this segment on a positive note and, once again, I salute TSN’s soccer panel of Clare Rustad, Kaylyn Kyle and Diana Matheson. Those girls are insightful, instructive, knowledgeable, blunt and playful, and it doesn’t bother me that they discuss cosmetics or hair styles or losing an earring on occasion. Why would that bother anyone? (Having said that, host Kate Beirness needs to turn down the volume. Not everything is worth shouting about.)

Connie Laliberte, Janet Arnott, Cathy Gauthier and Cathy O back in the day.

Such sad news that Janet Arnott has passed away. We’re talking curling royalty, kids. Janet was a seven-time provincial champion (five as lead for her sister, Connie Laliberte, and one each with Jennifer Jones and Cathy O), a world champion, and she coached the Jones team during its gold-medal journey at the Sochi Olympics in 2014. Whenever there’s a discussion about legendary Pebble People from Manitoba, the name Janet Arnott has to be part of the conversation. More important, by all accounts she was a lovely person.

Speaking of legends, and lovely people, a word to the wise: Do not, under any circumstances, ask Winnipeg Blue Bombers play-by-play dude Knuckles Irving about provincial health care. Just don’t.

Lucky Whitehead showed some serious lickety-split and catch-me-if-you-can escapability in the Bombers 28-21 W over the E-Town Eskimos on Thursday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, and I think we can all agree that Winnipeg FC might have found the big-play dude it lacked in recent seasons. I’m not sure what impressed me the most, though. His two touchdowns or Lucky’s long red locks. The guy has to have the best hair in the CFL. Or any league for that matter.

The Bombers were out-numbered by a wide margin v. the Eskimos. They were out-run, out-passed, out-kicked, out-possessioned, out-turnovered and out-sacked. But not outscored. And that’s the question I asked back in February, right after GM Kyle Walters convinced Willie Jefferson that he’d look better in blue-and-gold than green-and-white: Who’s going to score on the Bombers? Ya, I realize they allowed E-Town quarterback Trevor Harris to move the Eskimos up and down the field like a halftime marching band, but guess what? The band didn’t score any touchdowns and neither did Harris and Co. You won’t be beaten too often when limiting the opposition to three-pointers, and Richie Hall’s defensive dozen has surrendered 10 field goals against just one touchdown in two matches. Works for me.

The Bombers are 2-nada on the season, one of three unbeaten sides, yet the wolves are at the door. QB Matt Nichols? Meh. The defence? Flimsy. The coaching? A notch below meh. Tough crowd. My favorite commentary is this: There’s “room for improvement.” Well, duh. That isn’t exactly penetrating analysis. It’s like telling a bald man there’s room for hair on his head. He knows already.

CFL outfits are struggling to find new customers, and it appears they’re trying to ply them with liquor. To date, the Tranna Argonauts and Bombers have sold suds on the cheap in a bid to put people in the pews, and the Eskimos plan to do the same next month. So those won’t be boos you hear, it’ll be booze. (I’m giving myself a red card for that groaner.)

Did Rod Black really call Hamilton Tabbies quarterback Jeremiah Masoli “the Great 8” on Friday night? Yes. He did. C’mon, Blackie. There’s only one Great 8 and he doesn’t throw footballs in the Hammer. A yellow card for you!

Really enjoying Kirk Penton’s scribblings in The Athletic, notably the raw content provided by anonymous CFL coaches and managers. Two samples from Kirk’s most recent offering:

* “When Saskatchewan signed Solomon Elimimian, that GM in BC (Ed Hervey) threw him under the bus. No need to disrespect a player who’s been wearing your colours. Maybe he’s done. Maybe he isn’t. He isn’t playing yet for the Riders, so it’s hard to say. But the tape tells us B.C. doesn’t have a middle linebacker to replace him. They’re not very good on defence as a football team. Not close to what (DeVone) Claybrooks had in Calgary. As coaches, you can’t ask us to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

* “I didn’t like how Montreal handled their business, firing (Mike) Sherman before he coached a game. Nothing against Khari (Jones), but I hope Hamilton sticks a boot so far up their asses that a mickey won’t ease their pain.”

Tip of the bonnet to good Canadian boy Russell Martin. The former Tranna Blue Jays catcher took the mound the other night for the Los Angeles Dodgers and retired the Arizona Diamondbacks in order. It’s the second 1-2-3 inning of his career, which is no doubt a record for a position pitcher.

And, finally, oddest headline of the week was served up by Global News, and it had nothing to do with sports: “Cities get hotter during heat waves.” Who knew?

About the Winnipeg Blue Bombers having ‘jump’…a theme song for bellies and butts…Grapes hitting a sour note in Chitown…mix-and-match curling…and an ‘ace’ reporter

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

The Green Bay Packers have their Lambeau Leap after touchdowns and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have their…well, I’m not quite sure what to call their post-TD ritual.

It certainly isn’t a leap, a hop, a jump or a skip.

I mean, watching Travis Bond or Jermarcus Hardrick try to launch themselves into the stands at Formerly Football Follies Field in Fort Garry is like watching an Orca try to climb a tree. An ATM machine has a better vertical. Calling what the Bombers’ O-linemen do a leap is like calling a manhole cover a frisbee.

If anything, it’s a splat. Those guys are all belly and butt. It’s 300-plus pounds of mom’s home cooking colliding with rubber padding and concrete.

And those fans who attempt to lift the large lads in pads off the ground and haul them into the pews? Good luck with that. You’ll see Hillary Clinton in the White House before you ever see daylight between the soles of Bond’s shoes and terra firma.

But the O-linemen TD hijinks is a hoot. It’s really big kids having little kids’ fun. It’s good energy. Even if they don’t have jump.

What the Bombers O-linemen need is an official TD celebration song. All those in favor of Jumpin’ Jack Flash by the Rolling Stones say “aye.” All those opposed, come up with a better jump song than these five and we’ll discuss it…
1. Jumpin’ Jack Flash—Rolling Stones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQSGw0hMd_I
2. Jump—Van Halen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EqWN4fT79s
3. Jump They Say—David Bowie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avJt0SQec0I
4. Devil’s Jump—John Lee Hooker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_d07EWNoAs
5. Leap of Faith—Bruce Springsteen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouWEZPkbznQ

The Big Splat Attack has become a fun part of the fabric of a crusade that likely has exceeded the expectations of most, if not all, in Bombers Nation. I certainly didn’t see 6-2 coming. Or a sniff of first place in the dog-eat-dog world that is the West Division of the Canadian Football League. Call me crazy (I’ve been called worse), but after the Bombers dismantled the Edmonton Eskimos, 33-26, I see just one outfit better than the Blue and Gold at this moment in history—the Calgary Stampeders. And the Albertans surely looked vulnerable during their 21-17 conquest of the B.C. Lions on Friday night, an intense skirmish that was more yawn-inducing than awe-inspiring.

Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea, who can safely get through another week without anyone with a poison pen writing about his short pants and smirk, wins this week’s prize for low-key after he described his club’s victory over the previously unbeaten Eskimos as “pretty pleasing all around.” Ya think? That’s the biggest understatement since Custer looked at the Indians and said, “Gee, there sure are a lot of them.”

Nice head count for the Eskimos’ visit to Formerly Football Follies Field in Fort Garry—a season-high 30,554. Guess we have to blame the empty 2,680 seats on O’Shea. If only the guy didn’t wear short pants and a smirk.

Sportsnet continues to treat the CFL as the red-headed, freckle-faced stepchild. They devoted two tiny lines on the front page of their website to the Bombers-Eskimos, while the main story was about the Toronto Blue Jays winning to remain on the “fringe” of the Major League Baseball playoff chase. There was also a riveting piece on “breaking down the best of NBA’s new Nike jerseys.” Stop the presses! Meanwhile, on the TSN website, Bombers-Esks was the main story and there were also three video features from the game. That’s how it should be done.

The difference between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats with and without Jeff Reinebold as defensive co-ordinator? A rouge. With Reinebold pulling the strings for the defensive dozen, the Tabbies were 0-6 and surrendered 39 points per game. Without him, they’re 0-2 while allowing 38 points per. But, hey, the guy had to go and head coach Kent Austin had to stay, right?

Grapes should feel the wrath of Cubs fans.

Two things we learned about Don Cherry this weekend: 1) He’s a horrible singer; 2) he’s a horrible house guest. If you missed it, the Chicago Cubs invited Cherry to warble Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the seventh-inning stretch of a Blue Jays-Cubbies game at Wrigley Field. Blowhard Grapes can be forgiven for being off-key with his singing, but changing the lyrics from “root, root, root for the Cubbies” to “root, root, root for the best team” is beyond lame. That’s like messing with the National Anthem, man. A pox on his suits and ban him from any karaoke night at any pub near you.

Dumb headline of the week comes from the Toronto Star: “Shapovalov down to earth with expectations sky high.” Exactly what are the Star’s “sky high” expectations for Canadian tennis teen Denis Shapovalov? Do they, or anyone, expect him to go to the U.S. Open and go on the kind of run he had at the Rogers Cup in Montreal? He’ll be doing great if he qualifies and wins a match or two.

Only in curling do we find the elite of the sport competing on equal footing, regardless of gender, which is why I’m really looking forward to the Everest Curling Challenge, Aug. 25-27 in Fredericton. Skips Rachel Homan, Kevin Koe, Brad Gushue, Jennifer Jones, Chelsea Carey, John Epping, Brad Jacobs and Victoria Moiseeva will be drafting two-men, two-women teams in quest of a $200,000 winner’s payout. Ah, but there’s a hitch: The skips cannot choose players from their regular outfits. Winnipeg’s Jones, for example, is obliged to draft someone other than Kaitlyn Lawes, Jill Officer and Dawn McEwen. Should be fun and you’ll have to excuse me if I root, root, root for one of the lady skips to win.

Bravo to Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Sun, who scored two aces in one round of golf at Glendale last week. I do that all the time. In mini-golf and my dreams.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.

About the Winnipeg Jets and those pesky sun delays…the Puck Pontiff got the name right…good and bad at the Freep…go Cubbies go…and the Bombers are back in town

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

Now that the big top has been torn down and cleanup on the sideshows is complete, we can return to regularly scheduled cynicism, skepticism, criticism, optimism and all the other “isms” that make scribbling about sports such a guilty pleasure.

I use the word “guilty” because there are times when I feel pangs of discomfort after skewering someone, but it’s usually a fleeting moment of emotion. I immediately remind myself that if anyone takes my barbs and bites seriously then they really need to get out of the house more often.

Anyway, the Heritage Classic has come and gone and I wish I had been there in good, ol’ Hometown for the five days of fun and frolic, but I vowed that I would only attend if Bobby Hull joined the hijinks. No Golden Jet, no golden-age girl. So I stayed home in Victoria where, unlike Winnipeg, no one has ever been heard to say, “there’s too much sun.”

Who’d have thought hockey and sunscreen went together? But I suppose sunshine was the great irony of the Heritage Classic. When the National Hockey League agreed to bring one of its outdoor gimmick games to River City, worst-case weather scenarios would have included frigid temperatures, white stuff falling, rainfall or roof-raising winds. But too much of ol’ Sol? That’s like Chris Walby saying there’s too much food and beer in the world.

I didn’t like it when Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and his megabucks co-bankroll, David Thomson, named their NHL franchise Jets in 2011. I leaned toward a new beginning rather than a link to the past, both gloried (World Hockey Association) and inglorious (NHL 1.0). My preference was to call the club Falcons. Don’t ask me why. I just liked the name. If not Jets, though, the Heritage Classic and all its trappings couldn’t have happened. There would have been no gathering of the throw-back clan at The Pint, no Anders and Ulf induction to the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame, and no Geritol Generation Game featuring Team Ducky and the Edmonton Gretzkys. I mean, how do you sell nostalgia in the form of a Falcons-Oilers game? So I’m okay with Jets now. The Puck Pontiff and his billionaire buddy made the right call.

For those of us who were on the outside looking in Sunday when the Jets and Oilers faced off in the Heritage Classic, Melissa Martin offers a fabulous insider’s take of the goings-on. Her article in the Winnipeg Free Press describes many of the nuances of the day and puts you right among the rabble in and around the Facility Formerly Known As Football Follies Field in Fort Garry. Someone might want to send a copy to Bobby Hull. Not that he’d care, but just because.

Not so terrific was Paul Wiecek’s most recent broadside of Jacob Trouba on the Freep sports pages. It’s starting to sound personal, which is never a good thing for a sports columnist. Following the Jets’ season-opening victory, Wiecek used just under 1,000 words to tell us what a dolt Trouba is for sitting at home in Michigan rather than join his Jets mates in their 2016-17 NHL crusade. The young defenceman is not just a loser, he is “the biggest loser.” His reasons for refusing to sign with the Jets are “hard to believe.” He mentions Trouba’s “petulance.” His trade demand is “reckless.” Yet he also writes this: “(Josh) Morrissey wants to play and do wherever he is asked. Trouba doesn’t. I’m OK with that.” If Wiecek is “OK” with it, why belabor the point with insults and an attack that’s based on the result of one game? It might not be personal, but it sure reads that way to me.

I wasn’t born when the Chicago Cubs were last in the World Series (1945) and I wasn’t born when the Cleveland Indians last won it (1948), but unless you are a lifelong Cleveland fan how can anyone not root, root, root for the Cubbies in the Major League Baseball championship series? I’ve long had a soft spot for the Cubbies because of Wrigley Field and its ivy-covered outfield fence, daytime baseball, Ernie Banks and Harry Caray, but a Cubs win would also let poor Steve Bartman off the hook. A Cleveland win wouldn’t disappoint me, though. I have a special fondness for that franchise, as well, because it was the first American League outfit to field a black ballplayer, Larry Doby. Both he and Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher from the Negro League, became the first black players to win the World Series with the ’48 Indians.

Say, whatever happened to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers? Oh, that’s right. They were kicked out of their home so the Jets and Oilers—old and new—could play a little pond hockey. The Bombers are back in business this weekend, though, with the Ottawa RedBlacks in town for a Canadian Football League skirmish of no small measure. Second place is there for the Bombers’ taking. It’s an afternoon kickoff—let’s just hope it isn’t too sunny. I hate those pesky sun delays.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 46 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

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