Finally…

Great news in the baseball world. The late Tom Cheek, who had been the primary play-by-play voice for the Toronto Blue Jays, calling a total of 4,306 consecutive Jays games before cancer prematurely took him from us, has been named the 2013 Ford C. Frick Award recipient by the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown today.

This award has been a very long time coming. Including this year, he’d been nominated for the Frick Award for nine consecutive years. But the campaigning to have him honoured is now done, successfully.

The Ford C. Frick Award recognizes one’s contribution to baseball broadcasting, and Tom was one of the best, being with the Jays from their opening day in 1977.

Congratulations, Tom!

The NHL lockout continues… *sigh*

[Posted today on Facebook. I decided that more people should see this, so I made it my blog entry, too.]

Ok, something came to mind. Yes, there was word today that the National Hockey League cancelled all the games for the month of November.

So what? If and when NHL hockey resumes for any number of games (even 82, if a deal had been made before last Thursday), the entire schedule will need to be adjusted, or rewritten, to get a decent balance of games within each conference and division. Once the NHL started cancelling regular season games, this became the case.

So why is the NHL bothering to cancel a month of games, when it’s clear that every team would need a whole new schedule anyway? Cancelling looks to be just a ploy to try to get the NHL Players’ Association to cave in.

In reality, the cancellations mean nothing!

Again, the people who are being hurt by this lockout are not the players or the owners, but rather those that stand to lose their jobs (if they haven’t already lost them) because of the lockout: arena staff, workers in restaurants near the arenas, sports memorabilia folk, to name a few.

Come on, owners and players. Enough is enough! Get together and solve this issue!

NHL lockout looming…

Well, it looks 99% certain that there won’t be NHL hockey when the actual season gets under way next month.

As of tonight (Saturday night), the players will be locked out by their teams, because they won’t have reached a new collective bargaining agreement.

Here’s what gets to me: league revenues are up big time, meaning that the NHL appears to be flourishing, and yet the league is trying to claw back money that, until the current CBA expires tonight, went to the players.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has been saying, time and again, that player salaries have been going up too quickly, and is trying to reduce the salaries paid to the players. But the owners are at fault too, as they’ve signed a number of players to big contracts, like the deal by the NHL-owned Phoenix Coyotes, signing 36-year-old captain Shane Doan to a $21-million, 4-year contract.

So Mr. Bettman is saying one thing about player salaries, and doing the opposite, as he had to approve Doan’s deal, because his league owns the Coyotes.

The players are not blameless in this. It is not a matter of the owners simply saying “We will pay you X million dollars for you to be with our team.” It took two months, I understand, for Doan and the Coyotes to reach an agreement, so the amount must have been rolling around in Doan’s mind for some time.

So let’s see: the players, who are already earning more than I think they should (in my opinion, no player, not even Sidney Crosby, is worth millions of dollars a year), have been going after these huge contracts, and the owners are willingly giving them these deals. And yet, Mr. Bettman is saying that salaries are too high?

Something is not right here.

And with the lockout beginning tonight, the rest of us (fans, arena staff, anyone else who would earn money from the games) are left out in the cold.

I’d said it, perhaps jokingly, before. Perhaps I’m more serious about it now. The negotiators on both sides (including Bettman and NHL Players Association head negotiator, Donald Fehr) should be locked in a hotel room somewhere, not to come out until a deal is done. Yes, give them access to bathrooms and room service, but nothing beyond that.

Sooner or later, both the owners and players have to come to their senses that the season is about more than just them, and get this deal done! Enough of this crap we’ve seen recently!

UPDATE (9/16): As of midnight this morning, the 99% chance I mentioned became 100%, barring a deal before the season starts (which is unlikely). The collective bargaining agreement between the NHL owners and players has expired, and the lockout is officially on. 😦

The latest shows offered by GSN…

…really don’t appeal to me.

Last week, GSN debuted two brand new shows: Beat the Chefs and The American Bible Challenge.

I already see interesting cooking competitions on Food Network, so I don’t need to see another one with Beat the Chefs, and as many of you know, I’m not a very religious person, so The American Bible Challenge holds no interest for me.

However, one upcoming show that I’m really looking forward to is GSN’s version of The Pyramid: its take on the classic Pyramid game show format that has been very successful in the 70s and 80s. From the promos I’ve seen so far, it looks like they’ve put the set together right. It’s modern, of course, but reminiscent of the earlier versions of the show (unlike the very dark-looking remake of Pyramid, hosted by Donny Osmond, a few years ago).

That said, I do wish they’d update the lineup at GSN, so that it isn’t running various versions of Family Feud seemingly all the time (almost to the point of calling GSN the “Family Feud” network).

I had a look at the schedule, and on three nights of the week, if they’re not running eps of Beat the Chefs or The American Bible Challenge, it’s an all-evening block of episodes of Family Feud, with either Richard Karn, John O’Hurley, or current FF host Steve Harvey. Plus, GSN runs an hour of Harvey’s version twice every day: once in the afternoon, and once just before the late-night block, which also has an episode each of Karn and O’Hurley. There is just too much Family Feud on GSN. Don’t get me wrong: I like Family Feud (I’m not a fan of Harvey’s version, though. I realize that Harvey’s version is newer, and has been well received by the viewers – I just don’t like the version). I just don’t want it to be on as much as it has been for some time.

There are other shows that were just taken off the air, like Jim Perry’s version of Card Sharks, and a variety of other shows that have aired in the past. Why can’t GSN pull them out for another run? Even some of the more-recently-produced shows, like Chain Reaction (which does get some air time) or Russian Roulette, both GSN-produced shows, could help with the schedule.

Roger Federer deserves 7th career Wimbledon win. But…

Wimbledon has come and gone for another year. The men’s final today, one way or another, was going to be history-making. This year, the final was between Roger Federer (a victory would tie him with Pete Sampras for the most titles, with 7) and Scotland’s Andy Murray. Murray’s appearance marks the first time since 1938 that a Briton has reached the men’s final at Wimbledon. If Murray were to win, it would be the first time since 1936 that the Wimbledon men’s champ would hail from the British Isles.

Murray seemed to throw down the gauntlet right off the bat in the final, breaking Federer’s serve in the opening game of the match. Federer had broken back a short time later, but Murray broke Federer again and came away winning the first set, 6-4.

The second set was won by Federer 7-5. One set apiece.

In the third set, both players held their serves, going to 1-1. At that time, the skies opened up and it started raining, causing the players to leave the court, while the tarp was put on the court and the Centre Court roof was closed. But not only do they close the roof when threatening weather begins, work also gets under way to get the temperature and humidity under control. The whole process, before play could resume, took nearly 40 minutes.

Eventually, play resumed. At 3-3 of the third set, Murray, unfortunately, on three occasions, apparently found damp places in the grass, causing him to slip. Those slips proved to be costly, as his serve ended up being broken, and Federer didn’t look back, winning the third set 6-3, and the fourth set 6-4, to earn the Wimbledon title.

Now, I’m of the mind that Wimbledon’s handling of the roof – not just today, but the entire tournament – was not good. On a number of occasions, in the middle of a match, the rain came, and play had to be halted in order to close the roof and get the interior conditions under control. Each time, there was a loss of about 40 minutes of playing time. Now, in any other sports event where there is a retractable roof, such as Major League Baseball games at the Rogers Centre in Toronto (the home of MLB’s Blue Jays), if there was a significant chance of serious weather coming that could delay action, the roof would be closed before the event started, so it could be played without interruption. Apparently, this thinking doesn’t occur in Wimbledon. They apparently prefer to keep the roof open as long as possible, not closing it until it is absolutely necessary. If there wasn’t as much of a delay in resuming play, that idea would make sense. However, a wait of 35-40 minutes waiting for the roof and the stadium to get to playing condition is unforgivable. The roof has been in place at Centre Court since 2009. The folks at the All-England Lawn Tennis Club need to be more proactive on this. If it means a few more matches are to be played indoors, so be it. I believe that a retractable roof is there to be closed before play begins when weather threatens to delay a match; to avoid a significant period of delay in play.

Such a delay took place today in the match between Federer and Murray. The delay, while waiting for the roof to close and Centre Court to be ready for game play again, was nearly 40 minutes again. It is my strong belief that during the delay, though he’d been fighting tooth and nail against his opponent until then, Murray lost something – call it “the edge” or “the will”, or whatever – and the slips that occurred when he was serving at 3-3 in the 3rd set certainly did not help (If the roof had been closed before the start of the match – assuming organizers knew the storm was coming – the wet patches Murray had slipped on would not have been there, and the rain and the delay would not have been a factor). I believe that if Wimbledon had been more proactive regarding the roof, to make sure that the final could play in its entirety uninterrupted (which, to me, should be the reason for spending millions on the roof in the first place), we may have seen a different result to the final. Today’s result seems a little tainted to me, for that reason.

Of course, I’m not taking away from Federer’s work on the final. The handling of the roof was done according to the Wimbledon rules. Like any champion, he saw a weakness in how Murray was playing and took advantage of it. Roger Federer is one of the best tennis players the world has ever seen. One does not become a 17-time Grand Slam event champion without being able to take advantage if his opponent falters in some way.

Meanwhile, by even making it to the final, Murray became the first British player to make it that far since 1938. He played very well, and represented Britain very well, under the circumstances. But when you’re playing against someone of the calibre of Roger Federer, you pretty much have to play perfectly the whole match. You cannot allow even the slightest opening to your game, for whatever reason, or Federer will take advantage of it.

Congratulations to Roger Federer – seven-time Wimbledon men’s champion! No question – you’ve earned this title, and you have, even more, cemented your place in tennis history with today’s win.

Notes about game show hosts…

Some time ago, in this blog, I wrote about the current version of The Price Is Right, and how I like the current host and announcer: Drew Carey and George Gray, respectively.

A friend of mine and I recently chatted about game shows, and we agreed that, in general, the better hosts of recent game shows are, or have been at one time, stand-up comics. This is true of The Price Is Right, as both Carey and Gray spent time on the stand-up circuit.

The reason, to me, that comics make good hosts and announcers is because they know how to engage the audience, and get them interested in the game.

There are some hosts who fit that category for me. One is Bill Engvall, who had spent six years as part of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, and is the host of the currently-running season of Lingo. He’s very good at talking with the players and keeping them interested on the game.

A couple of others come to mind, and though they were never on the stand-up circuit, they do have backgrounds in comedy acting, and that has helped them engage the contestants and audience. I’m referring to former Family Feud hosts Richard Karn of Home Improvement fame, and John O’Hurley, who is best known for the repeating role he had on Seinfeld, and also his appearance on Dancing with the Stars. Both Karn’s and O’Hurley’s versions of Family Feud are currently airing on GSN, and they are fun to watch.

On the other side of the coin, the first host of the latest version of Family Feud, Louie Anderson, and the new current host of the show, Steve Harvey, just don’t work for me. With Anderson, I never liked him much, so it’s not surprising that I didn’t like him on FF, but I was a bit surprised that I do not like Harvey’s work that much. Harvey was a stand -up comedian at one point, and has been in comedy for years after that, but I don’t like seeing him as FF host.

I did like the previous versions of FF, such as the Ray Combs version that ran in the late 80s/early 90s. Again, Combs had a background of stage comedy, which helped him to work with the players and the audience.

But to me, the original host of Family Feud continues to be my favourite. Richard Dawson, like all the other FF hosts, has a comedy background. A regular in the 1960s series Hogan’s Heroes, he spent the early 70s being a regular in comedy classics Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Dawson was also a regular panelist in the early years of Match Game before being given his own show: Family Feud. Now, Richard knew how to engage the players and the audience, and the way he controlled the flow of the show helped make Family Feud one of the all-time game show favourites.

Wishing all the best to Mariano Rivera…

If you follow baseball at all, then you heard about what happened to Mariano Rivera last Thursday. During batting practice before his New York Yankees took on the Kansas City Royals, Rivera was doing what he always did during batting practice: shagging fly balls. However, on this evening, a normal routine for Rivera took a horrible turn. Chasing a fly ball in deep center field, his right knee gave out and he collapsed, clearly in a lot of pain.

Seeing the replay, I didn’t think he’d done anything before his right knee simply collapsed on him. But a number of reports say he caught a cleat on the seam between the turf at Kaufmann Stadium and the warning track carpet, and that was a factor in the tear of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) of his knee.

Many speculated that Rivera’s pitching career may be over – and they may be right. This is a devastating injury, and a difficult one for any pitcher to come back from. But a friend of mine said that if anyone is likely to come back from an injury like that, it’s Rivera.

I do hope that Rivera is able to come back and pitch in 2013. He has announced that he does intend to return to the mound next year. Hanging it up due to an injury, he said, is not the way to end a career. I could not agree more. Yes, he’s with the Yankees, a team that many of us, as baseball fans, love to hate, but at the same time, we can’t help but admire Rivera’s success on the mound over the years, and he is one of the best pitchers the game of baseball has ever seen.

How good has Rivera been in his career? Nothing short of spectacular! He started out in the Yankees rotation in his first year, back in 1995, before moving into the bullpen. He would lay claim to the Yankees’ regular closer role in 1997. In that year, he was an impressive 43 of 52 in save opportunities. Yep. In that first full year as the Yankees’ regular closer, Rivera had all of nine blown saves. That’s the most blown saves he would have of any year. Most years, he’d blow something like 3, 4 or 5 saves at the most, and in one year, in 2008, he would be nearly perfect in save opportunities, collecting 39 saves in 40 chances. Yep – just one blown save the entire year! When you were playing the Yankees, you dreaded facing Rivera on the mound when the Yankees had a save on the line. Rivera was money in the bank. He was that dominant over the years.

Including the five saves he collected this year before his injury, he has amassed a total of 608 saves in his career – more than any other pitcher in major league history!

A pitcher like Mariano Rivera deserves an end to a career much better than what appears to be the end, as a result of an injury that took place during, of all things, batting practice! Got to give him a lot of credit that he’s going to try to come back next year. He has a hell of a long road ahead, with surgery to repair the ligament, and months of rehab after that. But I agree with my friend. If anyone can pull off the recovery needed to get back on the mound after an injury like that, it’s Mariano Rivera.

RIP Dick Clark…

Unless you spent all of Wednesday under a rock, then you’ve heard about the passing of TV and media legend Dick Clark, who’d died after having had a massive heart attack while at hospital for outpatient surgery. He was 82.

Many will remember Dick from the decades he had spent as the host of American Bandstand. I admit, I was not one of those fans. Having grown up on country music, Bandstand really held no interest for me.

However, I’ve been a fan of game shows my entire life. And when it came to the various incarnations of the Pyramid game show that have run over the years, Dick was the quintessential host. Other folks have tried their hand at hosting Pyramid (John Davidson, Donny Osmond, even the legendary Bill Cullen) but no one could steer the course of a Pyramid show better than Dick could.

I was also a fan of other shows that Dick Clark hosted, such as TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes, in which he shared hosting duties with Ed McMahon. I always loved the way Dick handled himself, regardless of what show he was involved in.

One of the things that will constantly be talked about is the youthful appearance he always exhibited, up until his last few years. Take a look at footage from American Bandstand’s earlier days from the 50s, and compare it to images from the $25,000 Pyramid over 30 years later, and even some of his New Year’s Rockin’ Eve footage from before his 2004 stroke, and you’d find it very difficult to see a change in apparent age over those some 50 years! That was one of his hallmarks, and the reason he was dubbed “America’s Oldest Teenager”.

My condolences to Dick Clark’s family: his wife Kari Wigton, and his three children: Richard, Duane and Cindy.

To the Leafs: apology not accepted…

On Monday evening, the Toronto Maple Leafs posted a message to fans on their website, which reads as follows:

—

OPEN LETTER TO LEAFS FANS

Dear Leafs Fans:

On behalf of the ownership of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, we want to thank you for your unwavering passion and loyalty. Like every fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs, we are disappointed with the results of this season.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a public trust with the greatest fans in the world. We have fallen short of everyone’s expectations, and for that we are sorry. We take full responsibility for how this team performs on the ice, and we make no excuses. The way this year ended was unacceptable. Results are the only measure of success in sports and the results speak for themselves.

Ownership believes in the plan for the Maple Leafs. All of the resources at our disposal will be used to make sure that the entire organization is focused on making the Leafs a successful playoff team. We are 100% committed to ensuring we ice a team that competes with the NHL’s best. Passion, hard work and accountability will always be the hallmarks of our organization.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are privileged to have such passionate and loyal fans. We do not take that for granted. Our entire organization wants nothing more than to deliver a team that makes you proud.

Yours sincerely,

Lawrence M. Tanenbaum, O.C.
Chairman of the Board
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment

—

[thanks to the Maple Leafs website]

The problem with the Leafs is not that they’re unable to get the personnel needed to make them competitive year after year. It is because, as long as the arena gets filled to the rafters game after game, regardless of how they are doing, the Leafs can field whatever team they wish, knowing that the seats will be filled every game night, and those who cannot make it to Toronto (or cannot afford the incredible cost of a ticket) will undoubtably turn the game on, either on TV or the radio. So the Leafs brass know that the money will be there, no matter who they put on the ice. And that’s a major problem.

In spite of claims by Mr Tanenbaum that they do not take the fans for granted, I don’t believe it for a second. For as long as I can remember, even going back to the days of Maple Leaf Gardens and Harold Ballard, it has been like that most years. Yes, there have been years in the past where the potential was there to break a Stanley Cup-less streak that is now at 45 years (the last time the Leafs hoisted the Cup was in 1967), but most years, the Leafs have merely been fortunate to get just a taste of the playoffs and not much more. And in the past few years, they haven’t even gotten that taste: they have not even made the playoffs since the NHL lockout that killed the 2004-05 season.

And yet, the fans still attend and watch the Leafs in droves. This has got to stop, so a message can be sent to the Leafs brass that what they have been putting on the ice is no longer acceptable. That means that fans should stop attending Leafs games at the Air Canada Centre. Put an end to this situation of selling out game after game.

But I know what many of you are thinking: many of the seats for Leafs games have been bought as season tickets by companies, who might give the tickets from time to time to their employees or such, and these companies don’t care what kind of team is on the ice. True, but hear me out, as there are other ways that regular fans keep track of the games.

Just under 19,000 fortunate souls get the opportunity to watch the Leafs at the ACC. But what about Leafs fans everywhere else, who live in other parts of Canada and the world, or who are unable to, or cannot afford to, make the trip to the ACC? How do we get our Leafs fix? By television or by radio.

Leafs games are televised in Ontario on Sportsnet or Leafs TV, and nationally on TSN or CBC. And all of the games are on the radio. The rights for these broadcasts are certainly not cheap, and have already been paid to the Leafs, usually in multi-year deals. Sponsors will attach themselves to these broadcasts, knowing that there will be folks tuning in to watch or listen, and therefore, will be exposed to the commercials that run. The networks, again knowing that the viewers/listeners are there, are able to set a pretty price for the privilege of running commercials during games.

But if Leafs fans stop watching or listening to the games, it can all fall apart. Fewer viewers or listeners means fewer eyeballs seeing, or ears hearing, the commercials and therefore, possibly, not purchasing as much in the sponsors’ goods and services as in the past. Therefore, the sponsors will have fewer dollars produced by those commercials. They will want to offset that by demanding a lower price for the ads they wish to run, and/or they will run fewer such ads per game. Either way, fewer dollars will go to the Leafs. Or even worse, the sponsor will stop supporting the Leafs completely. Bye-bye, sponsorship dollars.

So, if folks stay away from the Leafs games in whatever way possible, the Leafs bottom line could be hurt terribly, and that might kick the Leafs brass in the butt and tell them, “Hey, this is not good. The only way to get the fans back is to field a team that they’ll want to watch.”

So, Mr. Tanenbaum, no, I do not accept your apology. To me, the only way you and the Maple Leafs will be able to make us fans happy and keep following your games, is to get a team on the ice, that will be worth watching, either in person or on TV, or following your games on the radio. Any other action will be more of the same that we have dealt with in the past, and that we will deal with no longer.

My thoughts on the Blue Jays season opener yesterday…

On Thursday, the Toronto Blue Jays opened their 2012 season with the first of three in Cleveland. It looked like the Jays were going to start off with a loss, having given up 4 runs in the 2nd inning, and were trailing by a score of 4-1 heading to the 9th inning.

Little did baseball fans know that they were in for a little history that day.

The Jays scored 3 runs to tie the game up 4-4, and they held the Indians scoreless in their half of the 9th. Going to extra innings.

Both teams had chances to put this game away sooner in the extra frames, but could not score – either by poor hitting or great pitching and defense – some of both at times!

The score remained 4-4 until the 16th inning, when J.P. Arencibia smacked a pitch into the stands in left field for a three-run home run to put the Jays ahead 7-4.

Heading to the bottom of the 16th, the plan was for Jays closer Sergio Santos to come on to pitch the full inning, and get a 3-run save. However, relief pitcher Luis Perez, who had pitched the past 3 2/3 innings, sprinted onto the field and crossed the baselines. Once he had done that, he was required to pitch to one batter before coming out of the game. Santos had to return to the bullpen and wait. Perez got the batter out and then made way for Santos, who did walk a batter, but got the job done, getting the last two outs without giving up a run. The Jays erased a 4-1 deficit, tied it up, and won 7-4 in 16 innings – the longest opening-day game in MLB history, in terms of innings played. The previous record was 15 innings, set twice: once in 1926, and repeated in 1960.

The plan had been for Santos to come in at the beginning of the inning and pitch the entire inning to earn the save. However, because he had to wait until the first batter had been put out by Perez, it turned out he only pitched 2/3 of an inning, and the rule for saves states that for a pitcher to qualify for a 3-run save, he must have pitched a full inning, closing out the game. Santos didn’t pitch the full inning as planned, so no save for him.

In the grand scheme of things, however, this was a great day for the Jays. They showed a “never say die” attitude, though they were trailing for most of the first 9 innings. They held the Indians off the scoreboard for the rest of the game, and came away with the victory in 16 innings. It was a great game to watch, and if the Jays show that kind of attitude the rest of the season, 2012 looks to be a great Jays season to follow. Pundits have predicted that the Blue Jays will likely end up with only some 85 wins for the season, but I think that if they keep the same “never say die” attitude that they showed Thursday, the Jays will end up still in a lot of games that, in past seasons, would have been written off early as losses – and may find themselves winning some of these close games!

Go Jays Go!