Tag: Jack Finarelli

Scattershooting on a Monday night while awaiting the arrival of 2020 . . . Happy New Year!

Scattershooting

I can count on Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, to come through annually with a link to a column by Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It is the column in which Collier uses a whole bunch of words to examine the triteness of language in sports over the previous year. . . . Well, Jack came through on Monday with the link to Collier’s column in which he, for the 36th time, awards the Annual Trite Trophy. . . .

At one point, Collier writes:

“Pirates play-by-play guy Joe Block must have set the record for earliest use of If The Playoffs Started Today, coming as it did on May 21, when he said that if the playoffs started that day, the Pirates would have been in a wild-card game.

“May 21.

“On the day the playoffs actually started, the Pirates were in last place, 22 games out.”

This is fun stuff — after all, it’s not Collier’s first rodeo — and it’s all right here. Enjoy!

The Fiesta Bowl, in which the Clemson Tigers got past the Ohio State Buckeyes, 29-23, in Phoenix on Saturday night, was all that is great about U.S. college football. We can only hope that the Jan. 13 BCS final, with Clemson meeting LSU in a clash of the Tigers, is as entertaining.

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Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, with some observations from the 49ers’ 26-21 victory over the Seahawks in Seattle on Sunday night:

“Russell Wilson’s greatest scramble this year came after Sunday’s game, as he tried to explain the Seahawks’ delay-of-game penalty. . . .

“While there has been no satisfactory explanation given for the Seahawks’ game-wrecking delay-of-game penalty, scientists have found that mental processes — specifically, quick thinking — may be impaired by overly-vigorous chewing of gum. . . .

“NFL referees and their supervisors have no earthly clue what PI is. Some of them believe it is a guy named Magnum.”

F Matt Savoie of the Winnipeg Ice cut into the middle of the ice in the offensive zone during the first period on Saturday night and F Marcus Sekundiak of the visiting Brandon Wheat Kings lowered the boom. Savoie, who will turn 16 on New Year’s Day, is listed at 5-foot-9 and 178 pounds; Sekundiak, 19, is shown at 5-foot-11 and 188 pounds. . . . Sekundiak wasn’t penalized for the hit, but Mike Sawatzky of the Winnipeg Free Press wrote that “Sekundiak . . . was the target of payback afterwards, absorbing a number of punishing hits from Ice players.” . . . As expected, the usual sober reflection occurred on social media, with folks suggesting: (a) it was a clean hit; (b) it was a headshot; (c) the Ice should have responded by gooning Sekundiak; (d) Sekundiak should have stayed in close proximity to the unconscious Savoie; (e) there shouldn’t be a suspension; (f) a 25-game suspension would suffice . . . and on and on it goes.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the hit . . .

Sekundiak wasn’t suspended and played in Brandon’s 4-1 victory over the visiting Regina Pats on Monday night. . . . Savoie, who I think it’s safe to assume is in concussion protocol, didn’t play in Winnipeg’s 3-2 victory over the host Prince Albert Raiders on Monday night. BTW, the Ice moved atop the East Division with that victory.

With the year’s end upon us, there are more lists and awards out there than there are snowflakes in a blizzard. . . . Patti Dawn Swanson, aka the River City Renegade, has joined the club, but her list is different, a whole lot different, than the norm. Check right here to see who earns The Old Man Shouts and Waves His Fist At Clouds Cup, The Flip Flop And Don’t Tell A Lie Laurel, and The Tranna Maple Beliebers Bauble, among others. It’s all good fun, unless you’re a recipient.

“Antonio Brown is working out for the New Orleans Saints,” Janice Hough, who is at leftcoastsportsbabe.com, wrote last week. “Have to assume head coach Sean Payton is just (toying) with Roger Goodell.”

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One more from Hough: “Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin, who just returned from Mar-A-Lago, says despite being voted by NHL fans as an All-Star Game captain he’ll accept a one-game suspension and miss the game to ‘listen to his body.’ So did he miss the message from his body not to go party for a few days and eat junk food with Donald?”

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Hough, again: “Melting down over a movie cameo cut by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2014? With all due respect I have blueberries in my fridge with thicker skins than Trump.”

Don’t be afraid to click on the link and check out the thread . . .

ICYMI, the BCHL’s West Kelowna Warriors fired Brandon West, their general manager and head coach, on Friday night. . . . Simon Ferguson was named interim head coach. He was in his second season as head coach of the major midget Okanagan Rockets. . . . John Murphy and Rod Hume, the Warriors’ new owners, said in a news release: “This decision is about becoming a better hockey club now and in the future.  We are charting a new course and building a new culture.” . . . The Warriors were 7-23-7 and in last place in the seven-team Interior Division at the time of the move. . . . Former owner Kim Dobranski hired West on Jan. 28. Murphy and Hume purchased the franchise in October. . . .

Not to be outdone, the Salmon Arm Silverbacks dumped general manager and head coach Scott Atkinson on Monday. Former WHLer Tyler Shattock, who had been on staff as an assistant coach/assistant GM, has taken over as interim head coach. . . . Brooks Christensen, who had been the operations manager, now is the GM. . . . Atkinson had been with the Silverbacks since June 1, 2017. Salmon Arm was 1-8-1 in its 10 games prior to the axe falling. On the season, it is 21-15-2 and third in the Interior Division.

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JUST NOTES: Old friend Jay Varady, the head coach of the Tucson Roadrunners, will be the Pacific Division head coach at the AHL’s 2020 All-Star Classic in Ontario, Calif., Jan. 26 and 27. Varady, who coached in the WHL with the Everett Silvertips, is in his second season with the Roadrunners. They had the AHL’s best record (23-6-0) through 29 games, with the coaches of division leaders after 29 games named to the Classic. . . . The festive season is almost over. How do I know this? Because the leftovers are almost gone and the fridge is looking terribly bare. . . . Have to wonder if F Kobe Mohr got a bigger suitcase for Christmas? He started the season with the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers, lost out in the 20-year-old game and went to the AJHL’s Drumheller Dragons, made a stop with the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets, was dealt to the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors, lost out, again, in the 20-year-old racket, and now is back with the Dragons. And the trade deadline isn’t even here yet. . . . Pitchers and catchers report in 42 days. . . . Happy New Year, and here’s to a healthy and safe 2020!

Scattershooting on a Friday night while pondering which leftovers to feast on . . .

Scattershooting

Headline at TheOnion.com: 4-year-old convinced father a moron after 45th consecutive hide-and-seek victory.

Shots fired . . . If you’re on Twitter, check the thread . . . 

If you are Canadian and a sports fan, I hope you took advantage of the opportunity to watch RB Chuba Hubbard and his Oklahoma State Cowboys in the Texas Bowl on Friday. Hubbard, who is from Sherwood Park, Alta., ran for 149 yards as the Cowboys lost, 24-21, to the Texas A&M Aggies. He finished with 2,094 yards rushing this season, the 18th-best total in NCAA history. He also is just the 32nd player in FBS history to run for at least 2,000 yards in a season. Among those who were quick to offer congratulations to Hubbard, a first-team All-American and Big 12 offensive player of the year, was former NFL great Barry Sanders, who also played at OSU. . . . Hubbard, who completed his sophomore year, has yet to announce whether he will enter the 2020 NFL draft. . . . Oh, he also is the first player in Big 12 history to have 12 100-yard rushing games in a season.

The NCAA football semifinals are to be played today (Saturday); the final is scheduled for Jan. 13. Of the 16 days between dates, Janice Hough, who can be found at LeftCoastSportsBabe.com, notes: “Players have so much time off they might even have to go to class.”

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If you happen to be in the Kamloops area between now and Jan. 5, you really should consider stopping by the BC Wildlife Park and partaking in its 22nd annual Wildlights Festival. . . . It runs through Jan. 5, with the doors opening at 5 p.m., and the last admission at 8:30. . . . It includes thousands and thousands of lights, and you will want to ride the Wildlife Express miniature train. . . . More info is available right here.

Dwight Perry, in the Seattle Times: “Hear about the New York fan who found a magic lamp last summer and got his greatest wish for the Knicks granted? Well, sort of. Guess he should’ve told the genie something besides ‘we want to be neck-and-neck with the Warriors next season.’ ”

Earlier this month, Perry marked the 20th anniversary of his writing Sideline Chatter for the Times. He calculated that he has produced almost 3,900 episodes. Great stuff!

Myles Mattila, the founder of MindRight for Athletes Society, continues to do some amazing work when it comes to athletes and their mental health. These days, Mattila, 20, plays for the junior B Kelowna Chiefs of the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League while studying business at Okanagan College. The other day, MindRight and HeadCheck Health announced a partnership aimed at advancing “athlete health and wellness by making MindRight’s resources and peer-to-peer support available through HeadCheck’s mobile app and web-based software platform.” . . . “I believe we have helpful resources available for youth and need to support them to get help if they need it,” Mattila said in a news release. . . . For more on the partnership, click right here.

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I used to work with a sports columnist who often referred to the Excited States of America. After all the nonsense of Thursday, when Trump and Co. went berserk over CBC-TV having edited him out of that classic movie Home Alone 2, I’m thinking the late Bob Hughes was ahead of his time. . . . I mean, sheesh, at what point does the so-called base realize that the rest of the world is laughing at them and not with them? . . . Do they even get Home Alone 2 in Russia?

Dept. of pet peeves: There isn’t any such thing as “first annual.” . . . The first one is the “inaugural tournament.” . . . The second one is the “second annual.”

You may have heard that the Jacksonville Jaguars have fired Tom Coughlin, their vice-president of football operations whose management style seems to involve having everyone under one of this thumbs. As old friend Jack Finarelli (sportscurmudgeon.com) points out: “Anyone who thinks Coughlin is overbearing likely would curl up into the fetal position if they had to live under Vince Lombardi.”

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CLEANING UP: If you’re a fan of the Edmonton Oilers, do you have that sinking feeling yet again? . . . ICYMI, hockey vagabond Troy Mick’s next stop will be in Philadelphia where he will be the general manager of the Philadelphia Hockey Club’s junior A program and head coach of the U-16 teams. Mick, who was spotted playing shinny at Silver Star Mountain near Vernon, B.C., on Friday, is a former WHL player and coach. He is to start work in Philly in January. . . . F Matt Savoie, 15, played in his 11th game of the season with the Winnipeg Ice on Friday night in Brandon. When will the WHL get around to announcing that its rosters now are open to 15-year-olds as full-time players? . . .

The best part of the World Junior Championship is listening to Dennis Beyak handle play-by-play of some games. I hope fans of the Winnipeg Jets realize how fortunate they are to hear him on a regular basis. . . . You are a real WHL fan if you are able to remember when Beyak was the general manager of the Seattle Thunderbirds and Tri-City Americans. You also are old. . . . Might the Memorial Cup-host Kelowna Rockets trade for a veteran goaltender between now and the WHL’s trade deadline of Jan. 10? . . . Have to think Kelowna’s Memorial Cup-organizing committee is hoping for the Kamloops Blazers to win the WHL title, if the Rockets don’t, that is. . . . The worst part of Christmas? Knowing that family is coming for a few days, the time moves so slowly before the arrival. A few days later, you awaken and realize it’s all over. Where did those four days go?

Scattershooting on a Thursday night while wondering what it is about Regina drivers and their phones . . .

Scattershooting

The New York Yankees and host Houston Astros combined to use 14 pitchers — seven apiece — in Game 6 of the ALCS. The game, won 6-4 by the Astros as they won the series, took four hours nine minutes.

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On Oct. 13, 1960, Pittsburgh’s Bill Mazeroski hit a ninth-inning home run to give the Pirates a 10-9 victory over the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series. That game featured nine pitchers, five by the Yankees, and took two hours 36 minutes.

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Yes, Major League Baseball has a problem.

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I really don’t know what was more fun — social media in the two weeks before the Canadian election or social media on Tuesday, the day after said election.

With the NBA regular season opening this week, Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, writes: “I would like to pose a rhetorical question to the players on the team that wins the NBA Championship next June. I am sure that many — if not most — of those players would choose not to accept an invitation to go to the White House as part of their championship celebration — and I have no problem at all with that. Here is my question: If President Xi Jinping of China invites the NBA champions to come to his office for an honorary visit, would you go, or would you stiff the President of the PRC? . . . Oh, while I am at it, let me ask Commissioner Silver what his position might be in this circumstance?”

Hey, Regina, this police officer wrote 1,134 distracted driving tickets all of last year. . . .

Patti Dawn Swansson, the River City Renegade, writes: “Tiger Woods has taken up the quill and will write a memoir to tell the ‘definitive story’ of his life as a golf prodigy and icon. So we’ll finally get the answer to that burning question: ‘When Elin found out about all the blonde cocktail waitresses and escorts that Tiger was shagging, did she attack him with a nine-iron or a pitching wedge?’ ” . . . There is a lot more Swansson gold right here.

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“Some 310 birds crashed into the windows of the NASCAR Hall of Fame building in Charlotte, N.C.,” reports Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times. “Even more stunning, the birds were chimney swifts, not racing pigeons.”

Here’s a memory from Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Welterweight boxing champ Errol Spence spectacularly flipped his Ferrari, but he apparently got off easy with fairly minor injuries. Spence, unbelted, was ejected from his chariot. Flash back decades. A flight attendant asks then-heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali to fasten his seatbelt. Ali: ‘Superman don’t need no seat belt.’ Flight attendant: ‘Superman don’t need no airplane.’ ”

Alexander Gulyavtsev is the head coach of the KHL team Amur Khabarovsk. He is from the Russian city of Perm, as is Victor Gashilov, a referee in a game on Monday. During that game, an unhappy Gulyavtsev told Gashilov: “I’m going to set fire to your car in Perm.” . . . The KHL has fined the coach 300,000 rubles, or about US$4,700. . . . Gulyavtsev later said it was a joke. As he put it: “I just said car; it’s not as if I said apartment.” . . . The score in the game? Dynamo Moscow won, 5-1.

In all of hockey, there may be nothing more over-rated than the game-day morning skate. In an era when the importance of rest finally is being recognized, more and more teams are doing away with something that has been there seemingly forever. Here is Mike Sullivan, the head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, explaining why he has done away with them to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Jason Mackey: “It’s like, ‘Why does the whole league have morning skates?’ It reminds me of why my mother cut the side of the hams off before she cooked ‘em. I asked her, ‘Why do you cut the sides of the hams off?’ She said, ‘I don’t know. Because that’s how my mother taught me.’ So I asked my grandmother. I said, ‘Why do you cut the side of the hams off before you put ’em in the oven?’ She said, ‘That was easy. I didn’t have a pan that was big enough.’ That’s my analogy.”

Here’s Greg Cote of the Miami Herald: “Kenyan superstar runner Eliud Kipchoge broke the 2-hour marathon barrier in 1:59.40.2, a once unfathomable feat. I once covered 26.2 miles even quicker, but didn’t get credit because I was in a car.”

ICYMI . . . the WHL returned to Cranbrook on Thursday . . .

Scattershooting on a Wednesday night and, hey, it’s George Reed’s birthday . . .

Scattershooting

Hey, we’re scattershooting from the road so we’re doing some catching up . . .

You know that you might be in Regina when you pick up a copy of The Leader-Post and the major headline above the fold reads: RIDER LEGEND HITS 80. . . . And the sports section front and second page are both all George Reed all the time. . . . Hey, not complaining. Just sayin’ . . . Hey, George, happy birthday and here’s to many more!

Brad Flynn is an assistant coach with the WHL’s Red Deer Rebels. His fiancee, Christine, was diagnosed with breast cancer in April and is undergoing treatment. The other day, all of the Rebels players had their heads shaved in a show of support for her. Well done, Rebels! Well done! You can bet that really means a lot of Christine and Brad.

When old friend Bob Ridley walked into the broadcast booth in the ENMAX Centre in Lethbridge a couple of Friday’s ago, he began his 50th season of calling the play-by-play of games involving the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers. . . . Going into the game, the Tigers had played 3,936 regular-season, playoff and Memorial Cup games, and Ridley had been on the air for 3,935 of them. (Yes, there’s a story behind the game he missed and it involves women’s curling. Ask him about it the next time you see him.) . . . As blogger Darren Steinke points out, “If you called 80 games a season . . . for 49 campaigns, you would still fall short of Ridley’s current total.” . . . And let’s not forget that Ridley was the Tigers’ bus driver for the vast majority of those seasons, too. . . . Steinke has more right here in a blog posting.

Here’s a plug for old friend Dickson Liong’s podcast — Two Peas in a Pod . . . cast. He and Jon Guarin talk about, in Liong’s own words, “topics that society is afraid to talk about, including mental health, relationships and everyday struggles.” . . . Check it out right here.

Headline at TheOnion.com: Tearful Justify holds press conference blaming failed drug test on contaminated salt lick.

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Thanks to Rod Pedersen, whose new show is available via Facebook, for the kind words: “The WHL and CFL lost two huge media figures when Gregg Drinnan and Drew Edwards walked away from their blogs (Taking Note and 3DownNation). They left for different reasons, but now a huge hole has been created in coverage of both leagues. 3DownNation will be okay because Justin Dunk has assumed control but as far as the Dub goes, there will never be another Gregg Drinnan. He doesn’t just belong in a Hall of Fame for WHL Writers; it should be named after him. Teams and head offices sometimes saw these guys as a pain, but we’re going to see now why the media is so important to what happens on the field, the ice, in the stands and at the turnstiles.”

From Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times: “For you big believers in Bad Things Happen in Threes, Ben Roethlisberger (elbow) is out for the Steelers, Drew Brees (thumb) is out for the Saints and Christie Brinkley (broken arm) is out for Dancing With The Stars.”

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One more from Perry: “The Cowboys opened as 20-point favorites over the Dolphins earlier this season— the largest opening spread in 30 years. Stealing a page from the college-football book, Miami asked to be paid a $950,000 appearance fee.”

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Perry, again: “The NCAA banned Georgia Tech’s basketball team from postseason play for one year because boosters provided impermissible benefits to a recruit — including clothing and a strip-club visit. Which certainly puts a whole new spin on ‘shirts and skins’.”

Can anyone explain how ex-Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon became so dumb so quickly? As Jack Finarelli, aka The SportsCurmudgeon, writes: “Joe Maddon’s teams in Chicago accumulated a five-season record of 471-340, which is a winning percentage of .581. To put that in perspective, there are 25 managers in the Baseball Hall of Fame whose career records are below .581.”

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If you haven’t already read it, Steve Greenberg of the Chicago Sun-Times spells out right here what went wrong at Wrigley Field.

Headline at TheOnion.com: Overwhelmed Dolphins GM asks players to please use automated email form when making trade requests.

Scattershooting on a Tuesday evening while wondering what happened to summer . . .

Scattershooting

A note from old friend Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon: “High school football is a very big deal in the State of Texas. The Prosper, Texas, school district is about 40 miles north of Dallas. Prosper HS sold the naming rights for its new football stadium to Children’s Health — a pediatric health care provider in Dallas. The deal runs for 10 years and the school district will collect $250K per year, making the total value here $2.5M. Children’s Health also will provide medical personnel on the sidelines for the games. The Prosper HS district built the stadium for a total cost of $53M; the stadium has a capacity of 12,000 seats.”

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After my note here the other day about the Victoria HarbourCats leading baseball’s West Coast League in attendance, a reader sent along a note pointing out that the Okotoks Dawgs of the Western Major Baseball League drew “102,368 fans to 26 games for an average of 3,937.” . . . That’s impressive and it’s worth noting that Okotoks, which is 18 km south of Calgary, had a population of 29,002 according to the 2018 census.

Headline at Fark.com: Detroit Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire says he understands if he’s Gardenfired.

ParallelParking

I have never been able to understand why the CFL game that had the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in Regina to play the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Sunday is referred to as the Labour Day Classic when it no longer is played on Labour Day. Just sayin’ . . .

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I took this photo near our home east of Kamloops. A note to the land owner: Its not correct and I hope your not paying for it.

An item from a recent post by Patti Dawn Swansson, the River City Renegade:

“Speaking of indifference, can anyone at Sportsnet explain why they basically ignore the CFL? I realize that Rouge Football is a TSN property, but sports news is sports news is sports news. Call up the CFL on the Sportsnet website and you’ll find three videos: One from July, one from February and one from December 2018. That’s disgraceful.”

She has a point, and the complete post is right here.

Flipped on the TV on Tuesday morning and found the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox playing on five Sportsnet channels. Didn’t recall seeing a day game on the schedule when I checked the previous night. Turned out it was Monday night’s game being replayed. On five channels. Seriously! Is this what happens when the seasons for darts and poker have ended?

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times reports that “former NHL forward Darren McCarty says marijuana ‘saved his life.’ Which probably just clinched him the first Lady Bong Trophy.”

A report released in B.C. the other day pointed out that we’re being gouged to the tune of 13 cents a litre when we gas up. In Burnaby, gas stations will drop the price in the evening, then raise it the following day. I filled up on Saturday evening for $1.36.9; by Sunday morning, the price was $1.54.9. . . . Now I’m wondering if the 13-cent gouge is based on evening or day-time prices?

Outfielder Christian Yelich of the Milwaukee Brewers had his season come to an end on Tuesday, thanks to a fractured right kneecap. He was injured when he fouled a ball of the knee. . . . With the playoffs less than a month away and the Brewers charging hard for a wild-card spot, that’s crushing news for the Brewers and awful news for any baseball fan. . . . Jayson Stark of The Athletic pointed out that Yelich, in the past calendar year, had 91 extra-base hits, 52 of them home runs, with 120 RBI and 121 runs, to go with a slash line of .338/.445/.700/1.145. Amazing!

 

Scattershooting on a Thursday evening while wondering if Regina is Queen City of Distracted Driving . . .

Scattershooting

A note from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times: “A pride of lions ate three poachers who broke into a South African game reserve to hunt rhinoceroses, Newsweek reported. This partial score just in: Lions 3, Raiders 0.”

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Here’s another report from Perry: “Heretofore doughy Phil Mickelson, via Twitter, after his sister posted a beach photo in which the golfer looks absolutely ripped: ‘FYI, those weird bumps on the side of my stomach we’ve never seen before, Doc called them obliques and said it’s nothing to worry about.’ ”

Las Vegas bookies have had the most early NFL action on the Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns. That resulted in this from Janice Hough, aka The Left Coast Sports Babe: “There’s a reason they’ve been able to afford to build all those amazing resorts.”

Department of Pet Peeves — A couple of submissions from Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon: 1. “People who refer to something as ‘very unique’ or ‘rather unique.’ Unique doesn’t take modifiers easily; something is either ‘unique’ or it is not. . . . 2. ‘Imply’ and ‘infer’ aren’t synonyms and cannot be used interchangeably.

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Congrats to old friend Jim Swanson and the Victoria HarbourCats, who have led baseball’s West Coast League in attendance for a sixth straight season. The HarbourCats had 27 home games in 2019, and drew 62,400 fans for an average of 2,311 per game. Throw in five non-league games, an exhibition game and three playoff games and the total is 79,737. . . . Swanson, a long-time newspaper man before his life-long love affair with baseball took him to Victoria, is the HarbourCats’ managing partner and general manager.

It is embarrassing the way Canada’s two sports networks treat MLB fans . . .

On Monday night, TSN scheduled a doubleheader, with the second game to have started three hours after the first one began. Unfortunately for fans, both were ESPN games and ESPN telecasts never end in less than three hours. . . . Of course, TSN does have a bunch of channels — five of them in my house — so when the first game runs late you are free to wonder why the second game doesn’t start on another channel, like maybe the one that was showing Sports Centre? . . . Sorry, but I didn’t hang around for Yankees and Mariners, the second game, on Monday night. Instead, it was over to the Diamondbacks and Giants with Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper, two broadcasters who get it right.

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One night later, it was Sportsnet’s turn. On this night, Yankees and Mariners were joined in progress at 8:05 p.m. PT, about an hour after the game had started. . . . There are eight Sportsnet channels on my package — the World Poker Tour was on two of them, Highlights of the Night was on one and Sportsnet Central was on five. . . . No sense treating baseball fans with a modicum of respect and putting the Yankees and Mariners on one of those eight channels at 7 p.m. PT. . . . On top of all that, Sportsnet showed Yankees-Mariners highlights before joining the game in progress at 8:05 p.m., with the New Yorkers leading, 5-0, in the top of the third. . . . Hey, Sporstnet, thanks for the poke in the eye. . . . Hey, Sportsnet, I went back to Twins at White Sox, then to Diamondbacks at Giants.

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ICYMI, Sportsnet dumped Nick Kypreos, John Shannon and Doug MacLean from its NHL coverage this week. Don’t worry, though, because Don Cherry still is there, as is Brian Burke. . . . Daren Millard, who was shown the door by Sportsnet last August, was named to the Vegas Golden Knights’ TV team on Thursday.

ICYMI Part 2 . . . Stu MacGregor, who lost his job as the Kamloops Blazers’ general manager after the WHL’s 2018-19 season, now is the Victoria Royals’ western senior regional scout. Tom Gaglardi, the Blazers’ majority owner, dumped MacGregor in a major reshuffling of deck chairs, and added him to the scouting staff of the NHL’s Dallas Stars, his other toy, er, team. . . . MacGregor lasted one season with the Stars before moving on down the road.

Another WHL note . . . Each August, Alan Caldwell compiles, or attempts to compile, training camp rosters, puts them on spreadsheets, and makes them available to fans. On top of that, he adds and deletes as teams make player moves. . . . After the Kelowna Rockets informed him earlier this week that they wouldn’t be making a roster available, someone in the Little Apple took photos of a roster— it included last names only — that was posted in the arena and got them to Caldwell. He then was able to put together the Rockets roster that is right here. . . . The surprising thing about all of this is that there was someone in the arena in Kelowna who apparently isn’t part of Bruce Hamilton’s choir.

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Why would a WHL team choose not to release a training camp roster? Other than shortsightedness, who knows? . . . There was a time, more than 20 years ago, when WHL teams sometimes had players in camp under assumed names — hello, Bob Bell! hey there, Connor McRae! — supposedly to allow said players to try to protect their NCAA eligibility. Those days are over, though, so who knows what they’re afraid of in Kelowna? . . . It is interesting, though, that the WHL has established standards for the arenas in which its teams play — resulting in some cities having to purchase and install new boards, glass and score clocks with video boards — but doesn’t have any standards for something as simple as the releasing of training camp rosters.

Hey, Regina . . . Do the math: 910 x $280 is a lot of dough. My wife, Dorothy, had a kidney transplant on Sept. 23, 2013. She is getting ready to take part in her sixth Kidney Walk. Had each of you donated $100 to support her — you can do so right here — you would have saved yourself a lot of money and gotten an income tax receipt. . . . BTW, when did Reginans become wealthy enough to throw away money in this fashion? . . . I wonder if Regina’s distracted drivers are aware that there isn’t a prize for No. 1,000?

Scattershooting on a Sunday while wondering what Rory will do with all that dough . . .

Scattershooting

Here’s Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times: “Mariners infielder Tim Beckham drew an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs. Considering he’s been hitting .211 since April 7, here’s hoping he kept the sales slip.”

When Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, is having trouble falling asleep, he often turns to reading The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm. Such was the case the other night, after which he emailed:

“I just ran across this entry and thought it might interest you — Canada: Free health care. Low crime. Birthplace of William Shatner. Two out of three ain’t bad.”

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Here is The Sports Curmudgeon, once more: “I fear that Thursday was just a tad scary. CBS Sports streamed a six-hour program devoted entirely to Fantasy Football. The key parts of that previous sentence are: 1. Six-hour, and 2. Fantasy. . . . Even a 12-year-old boy with his first access to a Victoria’s Secret catalog would find something else to do in less than six hours. Can Armageddon be far off?”

I’m note sure what is a greater sign of the impending Armageddon — six-hour fantasy football shows, the fires in the Amazon rainforest, or the Hasbro Toy Company owning Death Row Records.

Happy retirement to Brad Rock of the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. He’s done as of month’s end, after more than 40 years with the newspaper. His one-liners have populated this column on more than a few occasions over the years. . . . Here is Deseret News columnist Doug Robinson on Rock: “Rock is a writer first and a fan, well, never. He doesn’t even watch sports on TV unless he has to for the job, and he never roots for one team over another; free of loyalties and prejudices, he could write honest accounts with an objectivity and professional distance that are disappearing fast in the era of advocacy journalism. You know he’s doing his job well when readers accuse him of being a BYU fan and a Utah fan the same week.” . . . Robinson’s complete piece is right here.

It was a really bad week for the NFL and Major League Baseball. . . . The NFL took a whole lot of criticism, and deservedly so, for the debacle in Winnipeg on Thursday night when the Oakland Raiders and Green Bay Packers played an exhibition game on an 80-yard field. . . .

However, that was nothing compared to the weekend that MLB had. For some reason, MLB’s pooh-bahs chose to have all teams wearing either black or white uniforms — visiting teams wore black, home sides wore white. And it was beyond awful. . . . A fan should be able to tell who is playing by the uniforms, but with the New York Yankees in Los Angeles to play the Dodgers — two teams with iconic uniforms — you had no idea at a glance just who was on the field, and it was the same in every MLB park. . . . On top of that, players were permitted to put nicknames on the name bars, but home uniform tops had white lettering on top of white. . . . In most parks, the umpires wore black shirts. So whenever the visitors were on defence it looked like they had a seven-man infield. . . . Oh, and the home team pitchers wore all white except for their caps, which were black. . . . Ai-eeee! What a horrible, horrible experience the whole thing was. Here’s hoping we aren’t subjected to anything like this again.

You may have noticed that Oakland punter A.J. Cole arrived in the Manitoba capital wearing a t-shirt that had “Winnipeg, Alberta” on its front. . . . Patti Dawn Swansson, aka The River City Renegade, informs that  Winnipeg, Alberta, t-shirts and hoodies “are available from TeeChip on the Internet. They come in sizes S-XXXXXXL and nine colours. I’m not saying I endorse them, but they might make a good gag gift for family and friends unfortunate enough to live in Wild Rose Country.” . . . Swansson’s latest musings, readable as always, are right here.

Department of Pet Peeves — Writers who use “morning” and “a.m.” in the same sentence, as in “the opening game is scheduled to start on Saturday morning at 10 a.m.” . . . Posters that indicate a tournament or event is the “first annual.” There isn’t such a thing. The first one is the inaugural; the second one is the second annual. . . . To be continued.

Headline at RollingStone.com: Our Very Smart President Wants to Nuke Hurricanes, Report Claims

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Scattershooting on a Sunday evening while wondering why it’s almost dark at 8:42 . . .

Scattershooting

Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, is a reader of newspapers, columnists, surveys, reports and so much more.

Earlier this week, he provided a bit from a column by Bob Molinaro of the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Our kids need more coaches who can create enjoyable athletic environments. So says a Utah State University study that reports that the average child today spends fewer than three years playing organized sports and quits by age 11. Financial issues also chase them away. But mostly, the kids say they aren’t having fun.”

Finarelli responded, in part:

“That made me think of the old Laurel and Hardy films because that is an example of ‘another fine mess.’ Kids are not having fun playing sports to the point that they stop playing when they are only 11 years old and that must be caused by something other than the games themselves. After all, the sports we are generally talking about here (baseball, football, basketball, soccer, tennis . . .) have all existed for a long time, and all of them used to command healthy and enthusiastic participation beyond age 11.”

He then did a deeper dive and what he came up with is interesting and right here.

——

The Sports Curmudgeon also had this take, and even though he lives in the U.S., I’m sure we all can relate:

“Senator Amy Klobuchar is promoting the passage of the Honest Ads Act seeking to prevent foreign actors from buying political ads on social networks.

“Even better would be for the Honest Ads Act to apply to all political ads — thereby rendering all of them illegal and keeping them off my TV set and my Internet sites. My life would be a lot better with the enforcement of that law!”

“THE Ohio State University filed a trademark application for the word ‘THE’,” reports Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times. “Smokey THE Bear is livid.”

Here’s Tyler Conway of BleacherReport.com: “If you’ve lost count, the word ‘the’ has been used in this article 22 times. We’ll await the (whoops, 23) cease-and-desist letter.”

One more from Perry: “Mike Tyson said he consumes $40,000 worth of marijuana a month. Joe Frazier? Looks like they called the wrong one ‘Smokin’.”

Onion

You may have heard that the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox are going to play a game next season on the Field of Dreams diamond near Dyersville, Iowa. As comedy writer Alex Kaseberg noted: “They were going to play at the park in The Natural, but the lights still aren’t working.”

ICYMI, Mike Mayock, the general manager of the San Francisco 49ers, told reporters on Sunday that it’s time for prima-donna wideout Antonio Brown “to be all-in or all-out.” . . . This comes after Brown didn’t practice on Sunday, having apparently left the team after taking part in a walk-through on Saturday. . . . If you haven’t heard, Brown wants to wear a 10-year-old helmet that no longer is certified by the NFL or the NFLPA. . . . One can only assume the 49ers aren’t shocked by Brown’s behaviour, or are they really wondering why Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers keep collapsing in fits of giggles?

PiPiper

The 2019 Kamloops Kidney Walk is scheduled for Sept. 22. Dorothy Drinnan will be walking for a sixth straight year after having a kidney transplant on Sept. 23, 2013. . . . If you would like to support her, you are able to do so right here. . . . Thank you.

ICYMI, the latest ponderings from Patti Dawn Swansson, aka The River City Renegade, are right here. As usual, they are well worth the time, especially with a cuppa joe. Enjoy! . . . A couple of spoilers: She doesn’t want to see Kevin Glenn in blue and gold, and she drops back, then runs a check down on TSN’s Glen Suitor. Good stuff!

Pitcher Adrian Houser of the Milwaukee Brewers has thrown up twice this season on the mound at Miller Park. As Adam McCalvy of MLB.com noted: “Houser is a promising young hurler for the Brewers.”

If you are a fan of the New York Yankees, I really hate to be the one to break it to you, but you just don’t have the starting pitching necessary for an October run. Hey, there’s always next season!

Janice Hough, aka The Left Coast Sports Babe, wonders: “Does Trump want to buy Greenland because he thinks the ‘Green’ part has something to do with golf?”

Here’s Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun with a valid point: “How have NHL stars been penalized by the league’s salary cap? Before the cap, 15 years ago, Peter Forsberg was the NHL’s highest paid player at $11 million a season. Now, it’s Connor McDavid at $12.5 million. That’s less than a one per cent increase per year increase for the sport’s greatest player. Over the same period of time, the value of the Maple Leafs as a franchise has gone from $265 million to $1.4 billion. Up more than 500 per cent. In other words, ownership wins once again.”

Scattershooting on a Sunday night while wondering how it was that Hogan’s Heroes ate so well . . .

Scattershooting

Here’s Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, on the state of the NBA today: “The NBA and its fans must come to grips with the fact that a new era has dawned. Professional basketball in the U.S. now is part of the Age of Load Management (ALM). The inexorable fact of life in the ALM is that a fan who tunes into a game — or purchases a ticket to see a game at an arena — cannot rely on seeing star players perform even when those star players are perfectly healthy. Now, if you think as I do that far too many NBA regular-season games are nothing more than an exhibition of dunks and 3-point shot attempts, the last thing you want to see is such a contest populated by the junior varsity.”

“Seattle Mariners infielder Tim Beckham drew an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs,” writes Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times. “Considering he’s been hitting .211 since April 7, here’s hoping he kept the sales slip.”

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One more from Perry: “Two weeks after the LPGA Tour’s Dow Great Lakes Invitational included a Anannarukarn-Thanapolboonyaras twosome, Im and An shot 62s to share the first-round lead at the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship. That, folks, is what you call an overcorrection.”

Horses

The B.C. Lions are 1-7 after giving up a 15-point lead and losing, 35-34, to the Tiger-Cats in Hamilton on Saturday night. They also are the CFL’s biggest tire fire, lacking a pass rush and an ability to keep quarterback Mike Reilly on his feet. . . . The Lions visit the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (6-2) on Thursday, then return home to face the Tiger-Cats on Aug. 24. You are free to wonder just how many fans will show up for that one, especially if the Lions lose to Winnipeg and go home with a 1-8 record.

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The Lions were at home to the Edmonton Eskimos on July 11. The announced attendance for what was a 33-6 loss was 17,026. But theBreaker.news checked with PavCo, the landlord at B.C. Place, and the actual attendance was 12,502. . . . On July 27, the Lions dropped a 45-18 decision to the visiting Saskatchewan Roughriders before an announced crowd of 20,950.

DalaiLama

If you are wondering how this blog got to this point, moving from hockey to kidneys, Marty Hastings of Kamloops This Week explains it all right here.

If you haven’t seen the latest from Patti Dawn Swansson, it’s right here, including a rather timely fact check on Postmedia sports columnist Steve Simmons.

The Oakland A’s signed Nathan Patterson the other day after he hit 94 m.p.h. — or maybe it was 96 — on a radar gun in a booth at a minor-league game. Here’s Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle:

“I stepped into one of those booths about 15 years ago. Gave ’em my best Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days” speedball. The read-out was somewhere in the 50s. High 50s, as I recall. I slunk away, cursing the defective radar gun. Iced my throbbing arm for a week.

“Those speed-gun booths are to orthopedic surgeons what Halloween is to dentists. You warm up with a beer and a churro, then fire the rock as hard as you can? Snap, crackle, pop.”

File this one under ‘The More Things Change . . .’

Thread . . .

The 2019 Kamloops Kidney Walk is scheduled for Sept. 22. Dorothy Drinnan will be walking for a sixth straight year after having a kidney transplant on Sept. 23, 2013. . . . If you would like to support her, you are able to do so right here. . . . Thank you, in advance.

Weaving

Scattershooting on a Sunday evening while waiting for the heat to arrive . . .

Scattershooting

“A pro surfer attacked by a shark off Jacksonville Beach, Fla., nixed a hospital visit so he could go to a bar and share his story,” reports Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times. “And then it was time to go back, grab his board and hang nine.”

“CFL commish Randy Ambrosie has been known to puff out his ample chest and gab about transparency. So how about ordering the Argos to release the head count at BMO Field, Commish Randy. We know it’s as bad as a bear’s breath, but why is the number a secret?” . . . It is because of notes like this that Patti Dawn Swansson, aka The River City Renegade, is a regular read here. . . . Her latest file is right here.

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Here’s one more bit from Swansson, and, yes, I wholeheartedly agree with her: “Why are our teenage boys playing high-level hockey tournaments during the dog days of August? Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky weren’t on the ice 12 months a year. Why should these kids be?”

Water

If you were able to watch the visiting Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees in one or both ends of a doubleheader on Saturday, you got a real treat — Bob Costas handled the play-by-play in place of Michael Kay, who is recovering from surgery to repair a vocal cord. . . . A real baseball fan, Costas didn’t forget to mention the late Pete Sheehy in one of his many anecdotes. . . . His presence meant lots of anecdotes and not a lot of numbers. . . . With Costas, Paul O’Neil and David Cone in the booth, it was an enlightening double-dip. Unless you are a Red Sox fan, of course, because the Yankees swept the Beantowners, 9-2 and 6-4.

Dorothy and I live about 20 km east of Kamloops, just off the Trans-Canada Highway. Spent some time on that highway this weekend and I just want to thank all the Albertans for visiting with us and spending their money here, especially on our over-priced gasoline.

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BTW, we were driving west on the Trans-Canada Highway going up the big hill that runs through Kamloops on Sunday afternoon. A driver in front of us moved into the left lane in preparation of passing a big rig, so I moved over, too. We both were doing 100 km/h in a 100 zone. I checked the rearview mirror and the driver behind me was giving me the palms-up ‘get the hell outta my way’ gesture, never mind that there was a car in front of us. . . . Once we got past the big rig and back into the right lane, Ms. Palms-Up jammed it to the floor and zoomed past in a cloud of exhaust. . . . The real miracle of our highways is that there aren’t more accidents, especially when you consider the number of idiots who think they are the only ones on them.

NFL training camps are rolling, which means that Hard Knocks, the show produced by NFL Films and HBO, is about to hit the air. (It starts on Tuesday.) . . . This time, it’s in the camp of the Oakland Raiders. . . . Here’s Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle setting the stage: “That damn ‘Hard Knocks’ will be a distraction, says the football team that has sucked for decades, was homeless for months before sulking back to the Oakland Coliseum, and recently signed one player who arrived in a hot-air balloon, and another who will sit out two games because, according to a police report, he allegedly threatened to kill mortuary workers when they wouldn’t let him cut off his dead father’s head for research.”

Genetics

If you are headed for Kamloops, you should know that the forecast is for heat — 35 C on Monday, 36 on Tuesday, 35 on Wednesday . . . and so it goes.

After another “retirement’ by Urban Meyer, Jack Finarelli, who can be found at SportsCurmudgeon.com, noted: “If you look at leaving a job as a head coach in college football as akin to divorce, then Meyer is the Zsa Zsa Gabor of the Gridiron.”

The pooh-bahs who run PAC-12 football are crying in their milk because of what they see as a lack of attention from fans who live in the Eastern time zone. So the deep thinkers are contemplating starting games at 9 a.m. Pacific time. . . . As someone who lives in the Pacific time zone, I will say that this is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard. . . . The afore-mentioned Jack Finarelli, The Sports Curmudgeon, offers: “Starting games at 9 a.m. Pacific means that the entire atmosphere of PAC-12 games will change. Instead of energetic and aroused fans in the stadium who might not be able to pass a breathalyzer test because they have been tailgating/partying for six hours before the game, the fans will be hungover from Friday night and/or still asleep in the dorms/frat houses. . . . The fan-experience at college football games is built around energy and adrenaline and enthusiasm. Some of those intangibles will be in shorter supply if the games start on Saturday morning at 9 a.m.” . . . But, hey, those TV numbers!

Pete Carroll, the head coach of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, mentioned the other day that L.J. Collier, a first-round draft pick, would be out “a bit” with an ankle injury. Brett Miller, a sports desker at the Seattle Times, tweeted: “Carroll famously undersells injuries, so I’m not even certain Collier is alive after reading this.”

MRI