Despite recent hullabaloo, this article is not about Brian Burke and his Toronto Maple Leaf’s clear prejudices against Ontario-born hockey players. Wait…what?
No, this is about his son Patrick’s launch of You Can Play, a non-profit project dedicated to promoting equality, respect and safety for all athletes, regardless of sexual orientation.
Things got a little squirrely just before Christmas as lanky Persian-Japanese pitching phenom Yu Darvish was set to announce which Major League baseball team he would be joining. Scratch that, his previous team would make the announcement of who had won bidding rights: the awesomely named Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.
Whiffs of rumours and outright lies worked Toronto Blue Jays’ fans into a social media frenzy, as they hoped that their dreams would be answered, and that Brett Cecil would be pushed from the starting rotation by the tall, handsome hurler. Then, he posted with Texas. And Jays’ fans got mad.
Of course it wasn’t all Yu’s fault. Yu’re fault? No, Yu’s fault. Star slugger Prince Fielder had also been out there, looking for a team to back up a truck filled with money and an 8-year contract to his house. He received that truck full of money, and a 9-year contract from the Tigers yesterday.
Photo Stuart Seeger
Let me start by saying I was never a natural athlete. Not terrible per se, but it certainly didn’t come easy to me.
Basketball, I was definitely mediocre at, getting started with it the summer after I graduated from high school. I love the game though, having played it with all kinds of people, in all kinds of places.
Essentially, they were all beer league teams: made up of one-time stars, former athletes looking to capture that lost excitement of competition, and late-arriving aficionados like me. There was always that thrill leading up to a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday night game: it’s the closest feeling I’ll ever get to real athletic team competition, even though the stands were always empty.
Indulge me while I indulge myself with a look back at a career in the beer leagues.
Photo CBC
Something strange happened back in November 2004. The CBC had a much-ballyhooed television extravaganza to crown the greatest Canadian of all time, as voted on by real, live Canadians. The top 10 was a who’s who of Canuck icons like scientist Dr. Frederick Banting and athletic and cultural hero Terry Fox.
There was also a spot for Don Cherry, at seventh overall no less: ahead of Alexander Graham Bell and Sir John A. Macdonald. Clearly, the man has his fans. So does Nickelback. There’s probably a bit of overlap between those two lists.
I run, but most certainly am not a runner. Hip surgeries as a child and comically flat feet have resulted in many injuries over multiple failed marathon training attempts. At least there have been five semi-successful half marathons for me.
One hundred year old Fauja Singh though, now there’s a runner. The “Turbaned Tornado” began his running career at the age of 80 following the deaths of his wife and son. Earlier this month, he became the first centenarian to run a full 42.1095 kilometre marathon, completing the event in Toronto.
I’ve trained for a marathon four times… getting closest to the event’s distance last year with a 30-kilometre run around my home town in the mountainous interior of B.C. I woke up the following day with crippling achilles tendonitis.
I’m 36. The Turbaned Tornado, while certainly an inspiration, kind of pisses me off.
I had been in Mongolia for all of two weeks, when on a frosty January afternoon my coworkers and I were rounded up and driven to a hilly area about 30 minutes outside of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.
It was not unlike a Calgary winter’s day, about minus 20 degrees, but bright and cheery enough. There were 60 of us, huddled together in a form of pit. Someone got a fire going, and we cooked up fatty mutton dumplings called buuz and drank straight vodka from a Mongolian drinking bowl.
I was only kidding when I wrote in my first post about the things I learned from Pat Borders that this might be the start of a semi-regular piece on the formative life lessons to be gleaned from the early-90s Toronto Blue Jays.
That said, after much (some) reflection, I think there’s a little more in that well. I had alluded to writing about Manny Lee, but in retrospect, I learned nothing from Manny Lee. He was an extremely poor baseball player.
No, this week I turn my eyes on scrappy Todd Stottlemyre: the fourth starter on the Jays’ championship teams of 1992 and 1993.
Photo Geoff Heith
It seems like just yesterday the Vancouver Canucks were losing Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Actually, it was more like three and a half days ago.
I wasn’t sure I was going to do this. You know, sit down and watch them play. It all seems a bit too soon, and far too inconsequential. Really… how much does an October 6th game matter to a strong team that is pretty much guaranteed a playoff berth, and whose problems are more of the mental-playoff-not-choking-not-diving-deflated-tire-chronically-injured variety?
That being said, last night at 8 p.m. Calgary time, I found myself on my couch eating pumpkin pie and switching over to CBC like a chump. Some observations on the game against the Crosby-less Penguins follow.
Photo Chris Breikss
“Marx was wrong: The opiate of the masses isn’t religion, but spectator sports.”
– David P. Barash
I don’t own any jerseys. I have a Jays cap, but it’s black on black, and from a bit of a distance looks like a simple black hat.
Sometimes I struggle with fandom. I love sports, and I cheer as hard as the next person for the teams I support. Sometimes though, I’m a bit bothered by us all putting on the same clothes, marching to arenas, and yelling at grown men and women as they play children’s games.
I understand the allure. I love the allure. Inside though, I know that what we’re all experiencing is some form of tribalism. Strength in numbers, enemies vanquished, more wooly mammoths killed, etc.
Give up your identity for three hours and revel in the collective joy, shame or anger of the thousands of people that you might not share a meal with, but you’ll happily share the experiences of a sporting event.