Tag Archives: New York Yankees

10 Things I Loved This Week

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It was a very interesting week in the Wonderful World of Sports. Some funny things happened, some great things happened and some people decided to say the things that needed to be said.

Here’s the Top 10 of things I loved this week:

1) The City Council of Glendale did exactly what the government of Manitoba did in the 1990s and decided to pick up the losses of its National Hockey League franchise for another year. Of course, everyone around the game — especially Winnipeggers — called them idiots, but I don’t remember anyone calling Gary Filmon an idiot in 1991. That’s right, the Government of Manitoba paid the Jets losses for four years.

2) The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Boston Bruins 5-2 in the first game of the Eastern Conference final in Boston. Sean Bergenheim scored again. He has eight goals in the playoffs. Dwayne Roloson, at age 41, stopped 31 of 33 shots. I wouldn’t have believed it after watching them all season, but these Lightning might be the best team in the game right now. And head coach Guy Boucher might just be the smartest man in hockey.

3) Last week, Detroit Tigers righthander Justin Verlander threw a no-hitter at the Toronto Blue Jays. This past week, in his next start, he threw five no-hit innings at the Kansas City Royals. That’s 14 innings without giving up a hit. After a slow start, Verlander is now 4-3 with a 2.91 ERA and the Tigers have won seven straight games. Pitching is everything and in Detroit it all starts with a 28-year-old righthander who can get it into the 100s.

4) The Winnipeg Goldeyes scored two runs in their final at bat to beat the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks 3-2. That never happens. Fargo never gives up a game in the bottom of the final inning (in this case, the seventh, as the second game of a doubleheader) with the quality of closer(s) Doug Simunic brings in eery year. For the first time in a decade, the RedHawks look vulnerable.

5) Comedian Sarah Silverman  was invited into the FOX TV booth on Saturday and was, essentially, beamed in from another planet. For 5  1/2 minutes she nattered on about, well, nothing but jibber-jabber. It was truly awful. But it proved once again, something that my producer Jim McGregor and I have learned over the years in our own Shaw TV booth here in Winnipeg. If your guest knows nothing about baseball, don’t have them as a guest.

Or, a corollary to that would be: Don’t think you’re funny when you’re not. Joe Buck is a fine broadcaster but he’s not funny. Trying to be funny with Sarah Silverman’s brand of humour when you aren’t funny to begin with is an invitation to disaster. What we saw Saturday was an embarrassing 5 1/2 minutes of lousy TV.

6) Jose Bautista hit his 13th home run of the season during a six-run 11th inning that results in a 9-3 Blue Jays win over Minnesota. Bautista is now on a pace to hit 54 home runs again. This is weird. Here’s a guy who never hit more than 16 home runs in almost five years of big league baseball. He was a Pittsburgh Pirates castoff for goodness sake and now he’s going to hit 54 homers two years in a row. No wonder some members of the Toronto media thought he was on the juice last year. In a world where Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera and Alex Rodriguez don’t get close to 50, a 195-pound, 30-year-old is on pace to hit 54. You gotta love it, but you also have to wonder.

7) If Nick Lidstrom decides to retire, it’s safe to say he’s the second best defenceman ever to play in the NHL. Sorry, kids, there will never be another Bobby  Orr.

icon cool 10 Things I Loved This Week Here is the trouble with major league sports these days: On Thursday, player agent Scott Boras told Yahoo Sports that the Kansas City Royals had absolutely no chance of signing the next Baseball Jesus (Joe Mauer was the last), Eric Hosmer, to a long-term contract.

“There will be massive increases in television revenues over the next three years and that will change the landscape of baseball salaries,” Boras said.

Which should mean Kansas City will see some of that money. Trouble is, Boras was suggesting there will massive increases in New York, Boston and Chicago and not likely anywhere else.

Buy the way, remember the name Eric Hosmer. He will not reach his 22nd birthday until October and yet this 6-foot-4, 230-pound first baseman has two homers (both in new Yankee Stadium)  in seven games with the Royals  and has a career OPS of .987 (Fifth overall in MLB) . He also has two doubles, five RBI and a stolen base.

He will get a gigantic long-term contract one day. And it will be from the Yankees or Red Sox, not the Royals.

9) Saturday was a big day in Manchester, England.

Manchester United won its 19th English title by playing Blackburn to a 1-1 draw. United won the English Premier Division. Then Manchester City beat Stoke 1-nil to win the FA Cup.

10) And this announcement came out of Ottawa on Saturday:

“Football Canada is proud to announce the addition of defensive linemen Brian Guebert (Editor’s note: A former Blue Bomber) and Michaël Jean-Louis to the Senior Men’s National Team roster competing in Austria this summer at the 2011 International Federation of American Football (IFAF) Senior Men’s World Championship.”

We have a Senior Men’s National Team? Who knew?

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Musings After a Week in the Trenches

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It’s been a long week. For one thing we had to keep listening to the NHL’s rationale for keeping the Coyotes in Phoenix, Eric Belanger’s brain-dead comments about Winnipeg (until now, I didn’t think hockey players were that stupid) and the American media’s desperate screams about Barry Bonds.

On top of that I had to call three hockey games (none of which was in Winnipeg), finish a magazine, complete the sports section of a newspaper, do the sports every morning on two radio stations, start a new book (working title, Quiet Hero: The Ken Ploen Story) and try to get rid of this pleurisy/pneumonia/Black Plague thing I have going on. Not whining. Just tired.

In the meantime, there was no shortage of bat-shit crazy going on out there and that will make today’s posting a little easier.

1) Love the U.S. media trying to make Barry Bonds’ ex-lover Kimberly Bell some sort of saint. She was his mistress through two marriages. I can think of a word other than mistress, but I wouldn’t use it in mixed company.

I often listen to ESPN radio on my XM service and they had that guy Mark Fainaru-Wada on, talking about the salient points made by Bell during her testimony in the Bonds case. In case you’ve forgotten, Fainaru-Wada wrote a book about Bonds, The Game of Shadows, using more than 200 anonymous sources (believe it at your peril). Bell was one of the few people he actually quoted on the record. When your entire career clings to the veracity of the testimony of the former mistress of a big league baseball player, you’d better go on the radio and tell people she has an immense intellect and no bitterness ’cause anyone with a brain bigger than a walnut isn’t going to believe it.

As Fainaru-Wada tried to tell people, “ex-girlfriends never lie,” all I could do not to puke all over the steering wheel, was sing Winnipeg Most’s new song as loudly as possible. The American media wants Bonds to be convicted so badly, it no longer has any credibility whatsoever. In fact, anything a sportswriter tries to tell you about Barry Bonds is probably a lie.

2) My wonderful wife is a Cleveland girl, born and raised. As a result, her disposition is often dictated by the success of her beloved Browns and Indians. And that’s not a bad thing. The more her teams lose, the funnier she gets.

So on Friday, as the Indians were losing 14-0 to the White Sox after four innings in their 2011 season opener (they eventually lost 15-10), Sally decided to go to Facebook to vent her frustration.

“I wonder if there is a ‘Cleveland Indians Suck’ page,” she asked.

Moments later I hear, “Gee, that’s harsh.”

Sally found the “Cleveland Indians Suck Big Black Monkey —–,” page.

“No wonder I don’t like Facebook,” she said, and went back to watching her game.

3) Right now, I’m watching the Tigers-Yankees game on FOX. Commentator Ken Rosenthal is an idiot. Miguel Cabrera does not owe anyone a second or third apology for his February DUI —  in English or any other language. One apology is plenty. Rosenthal is far too self-centered, self-absorbed and self-important.

By the way, why doesn’t Joe Buck just wear a Yankees jersey when he calls a game? Gawd, his pro-Yankee game calls are insufferable. And Tim McCarver? He’s now blind as well as terrible.

Thank gawd for the mute button.

4) Here’s what’s wrong with baseball and with every sport that doesn’t have a salary cap. Alex Rodriguez will make $32 million playing for the Yankees this season. The Kansas City Royals’ entire payroll, including players on the DL, is $36.1 million.

The Yankees payroll is $2o1.7 million. They should win EVERY game.

Meanwhile, when Baltimore manager Buck Showalter went off on the Boston Red Sox, the American media all jumped to the defence of their beloved poster-child- for-all-things-holy, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein. Trouble was, Showalter’s comments might have been impolite, but they were also pretty close to true.

“I’d like to see how smart Theo Epstein is with the Tampa Bay payroll,” Showalter told Men’s Journal. “You got Carl Crawford ’cause you paid more than anyone else, and that’s what makes you smarter? That’s why I like whipping their butt. It’s great, knowing those guys with the $205 million payroll are saying, ‘How the hell are they beating us?’ ”

Actually Boston’s payroll is about $162 million, but really, what’s the difference?

Oh yeah, A-Rod.

5) This story was e-mailed to us from a reader of the Detroit News:

Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland is a crusty old soul who has little use for the media on a good day. But let’s just say he’s really pissed now.

Player X is an ESPN the Magazine blog written, allegedly, by unnamed players from the various sports. In his inaugural entry, the baseball Player X takes a few unflattering shots at Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera:

“In any group, there’s always the crazy uncle who just can’t seem to figure it out. Cabrera, who’s been charged with DUI, is that uncle. I guarantee any one of his teammates would have picked him up if he’d called. Ditto his GM. …

“But, really, why isn’t Cabrera paying a guy $100 a night to drive him around? Plenty of guys do that. That he didn’t is a slap in his teammates’ faces. Even if it costs $36,000 a year, we have watches worth more than that.”

Even though the remarks make good sense, the comments set Leyland off and I agree with him. Frankly, if you can’t put your name on it, if you won’t take ownership of what you say, you are a gutless swine.

“To me that’s a gutless (jerk) that doesn’t put his name to it,” Leyland said. “If somebody would have said, ‘Hey, this is Jim Leyland and this is what I say, he should do this or this, then that’s fine.

“But when you (another expletive) hide behind somebody else’s expense, that’s chicken (expletive) to me. But you guys know your business more than me. Maybe that’s ethical, I don’t really know. But I’d be (pissed off) if I was Cabrera.”

And that’s why I really, really doubt a player actually wrote it. My sense says ESPN wrote it and declared that a player wrote it. I follow a lot of players on Twitter and if a player wants to say something, he will, and he’ll put his name on it and he won’t care what people think.

I believe Player X is an anonymous blog made up by ESPN The Magazine so that spineless reporters can hide behind somebody else.

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Our Fearless MLB Predictions for 2011

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I will be the first to admit, these predictions aren’t that fearless. I mean, really. When you select the Boston Red Sox to meet the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2011 World Series, you ain’t goin’ too far out onto the limb.

However, I do believe the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins will challenge the BoSox, I believe the Orioles will finally get to .500 and the Colorado Rockies and Atlanta Braves will bettle it out for the National League Wild Card.

So without further adieu — after all, the first pitch is in about two hours — here are our annual Fearless Predictions for 2011.

THE AMERICAN LEAGUE

EAST

1)  Boston Red Sox – If the Red Sox stay healthy, this is the best team in the American League. Offensively, they have Carl Crawford, Jacoby Ellsbury, Adrian Gonzalez, J.D. Drew, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz. On the mound, it’s Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester, John Lackey, Diasuke Matsuzaka and Josh Beckett. Easily No. 1 in the East.

2) New York Yankees – We only pick the Yanks in two spot because they are the Yanks. After C.C. Sabathia, the pitching staff is a big question mark. A-Rod was sensational in the spring, Derek Jeter will be better than last year, Robinson Cano might be MVP and they will hit, but will they stop anybody else from hitting? Ivan Nova and Freddy Garcia are the fourth and fifth starters.

3) Baltimore Orioles – This team finished 34-23 down the stretch last season and improved big time in the off-season bringing in Valdimir Guerrero, Mark Reynolds, J.J. Hardy and Derrek Lee. If the young pitchers mature, the Orioles will challenge the Yanks for second. Buck Showalter might be the best manager in the game.

4) Tampa Bay Rays – If Manny Ramirez grows up and Johnny Damon stays healthy, the Rays will have some lineup help for Evan Longoria. For this team, it’s all about the pitching. If James Shields, David Price, Wade Davis and Jeff Niemann. That’s a lot of ‘ifs.’

5) Toronto Blue Jays – If Jose Bautista hits 54 home runs again, I’ll eat the Rogers Centre. Getting better, but just not good enough.

CENTRAL

1) Detroit Tigers – So much for a DUI ruining Miguel Cabrera’s career. He has been lights out this spring, hitting .357 with a .714 slugging percentage, six doubles, three homers and a team-high 12 RBI. With Magglio Ordonez hitting in front of him and Victor Martinez behind him, it will be a big year in Detroit.

2) Minnesota Twins – Justin Morneau is getting healthy and Joe Mauer is already back to form. Throw in a solid pitching staff and Minnesota and Detroit will battle for 1-2 in the Central.

3. Chicago White Sox – The Sox added Adam Dunn’s bat to a lineup that includes Paul Konerko, A.J. Pierzynski and Alexei Ramirez. But do they have enough pitching?

4. Kansas City Royals – The Royals might have the best farm system in the game but it won’t matter this year. Kansas City will hurt the contenders occasionally, but not often.

5. Cleveland Indians – Manager Manny Acta said if his young players show what they’re made of, the Indians will have a good team. They will eventually, I suppose, but it won’t be this year. I was told in Florida by someone who follows the Indians closely: “Anyone who thinks the Indians have a hope suffers from D & D – a case of dumb and delusional.”

WEST

1) Texas Rangers – These guys hit a ton as Josh Hamilton, Elvis Andrus, Nelson Cruz, David Murphy and Ian Kinsler lead the way. It certainly won’t hurt if Adrian Beltre gets healthy, too. The pitching will suffer without Cliff Lee, but that won’t stop the Rangers from repeating in the West.

2) Los Angeles Angels – Dan Haren, Jared Weaver, Scott Kazmir and Ervin Santana give the Angels a great rotation. The addition of Vernon Wells will help the order. L.A. will challenge Texas.

3) Oakland A’s – Can Hideki Matsui find happiness in Oakland? Can the A’s finish better than third? Look out for starter Trevor Cahill: 18-8 with 2.97 ERA last year.

4) Seattle Mariners – How can a team with Ichiro Suzuki and Cy Young winner Felix Hernandez go 61-101? That’s what they did last year and it’s hard to imagine the Ms will be any better this year.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST

1) Philadelphia Phillies – With a rotation that goes like this: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, Cole Hamels and Joe Blanton, it doesn‘t matter if they hit. However, if they can’t replace the injured Chase Utley and the gone Jayson Werth, there is a chance even the Phils won’t hit enough.

2) Atlanta Braves – If Chipper can still play (and stay healthy all year) and manager Fredi Gonzalez is as good a manager as we think, the Braves might threaten in the anemic East. Craig Kimbrel and Jonny Venters will share the closer’s duties and it’s hard not to like a lineup that includes Brian McCann, Martin Prado, Jason Heyward and big Freddie Freeman.

3) Florida Marlins – This is a typical Florida Marlins team: Young, promising and cheap. Rookie Mike Stanton is the player to watch.

4) New York Mets – All questions, not enough answers. Will Jason Bay adjust to Citi Field? Will Carlos Beltran get healthy? Will Johan Santana return to form? Will they be sold? If the answers are positive, this team could threaten.

5) Washington Nationals – Better than last year with Jayson Werth in the lineup to protect Ryan Zimmerman, but still an afterthought.

CENTRAL

1) Cincinnati Reds – With MVP Joey Votto and loads of offence, the Reds will score. A lot depends on the rotation of Edinson Volquez, Homer Bailey, Bronson Arroyo, Travis Wood and Mike Leake. Dusty Baker will keep them in the race.

2) Milwaukee Brewers – The addition of pitchers Zach Greinke and Shaun Marcum will make the Brewers better. They’ll win a lot more than 77 games (2010). Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun and Corey Hart give the Brewers a solid middle of the lineup.

3) St. Louis Cardinals – If Albert Pujols just goes nuts with his free-agent winter coming up, he could lead the Cards into the playoffs himself. However, with Adam Wainwright out for the season, the pitching staff suffers mightily. Pujols is clearly the player to watch in the Majors this year.

4) Chicago Cubs – Well, it’s “next year,” again. This is a team likely to win about 82 games and yet again, fail to win a title.

5) Houston Astros – This is a team that finished strongly in 2010 and then just didn’t get better. No threat. If Hunter Pence and Carlos Lee blow up, they could finish ahead of the Cubs.

6) Pittsburgh Pirates – This is a Triple A franchise. They scored only 587 runs last year while giving up 866. If they win 50 games it will be a miracle. Although I do love Andrew McCutchon.

WEST

1) San Francisco Giants – The Giants have enough pitching to prove the 2010 World Series was not a one-hit wonder. Tim Lincecum, Barry Zito, Jonathan Sanchez and Matt Cain will be fine. The only question is: Do the Giants have enough offence after Pablo (Kung Fu Panda) Sandoval.

2) Colorado Rockies – The Dodgers, Rockies and Giants will battle for No. 1 in the West all season long. With Dexter Fowler, Troy Tulowitzki, Todd Helton and Carlos Gonzalez, this team will score a lot of runs. Can Ubaldo Jimenez carry the worst pitching staff of the Top 3 teams in the West? I love them as the NL Wild Card team.

3) Los Angeles Dodgers – The pitching should be good enough, but players such as Juan Uribe, Andre Ethier and James Loney have to get more done over the long haul. Will new manager Don Mattingly do more with this bunch than Joe Torre?

4) San Diego Padres – Should have enough pitching, won’t have near enough hitting with the loss of Adrian Gonzalez to Boston.

5) Arizona Diamondbacks – Justin Upton and nobody else. Will be young and will be out of the race by June 1.

Playoff Teams:  AL — Boston, Detroit, Minnesota, Texas; NL — Philadelphia, Cincinnati, San Francisco and either Atlanta or Colorado.

AL Champions: Boston Red Sox

NL Champions: Philadelphia Phillies

World Series: Phillies over Boston in six games.

 

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Laughing ‘Till it Hurts at Half-Time of the Bomber Game

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The Bombers are trailing 17-5 at the half against a really lousy Toronto Argonauts team and I have to admit, I feel bad for Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice.

Not only is he Jeff Reinebold without the whimsy, but he’s lost his quarterback, his offense can’t do much of anything and his field goal team team has just been scorched for 108 yards and a touchdown. Maybe Alex Brink will pull off a miracle in the second half because, goodness, gracious, Eden Prairie High School might have been the best team to play at Canad Inns Stadium this year.

It’s amazing, you know. Not just here in Winnipeg, where a 4-12 record beckons (yes, we called 4-14 at the beginning of the season), but all over the 1,000-channel universe, sports has been more fun than a barrel of Mike Kelly radio interviews. From a quarterback who texts pictures of his junk to suite hostesses to helmet-to-helmet hits to the CFL’s decision to remove players from games who wear pink, to fans disguised as seats in Phoenix,  Planet Sports just gets loonier every day.

For instance:

(1) The Onion reports this week that the NFL will fine Monday Night Football for its helmet-to-helmet smash in the pre-game musical intro. Read it here: http://www.theonion.com/articles/nfl-fines-monday-night-football-for-helmettohelmet,18312/ I’m still laughing and it sheds all the light you need on the NFL’s sudden fear of head injuries.

(2) When the Texas Rangers eliminated the New York Yankees from post-season play on Friday night, I found it interesting that the final out was the Yanks Alex Rodriguez being called out on a third strike. I was surprised there wasn’t a riot.

It was Cleveland Indians play-by-play announcer Tom Hamilton who said this year, “No wonder Yankees and Red Sox games last four hours all the time. Every time a Yankee or Red Sox player has a strike called against him it’s like an affront to his senses. Every one of them steps out and argues on every single called strike. These games take forever because the umpires won’t say ‘Shut up and get back in the box.’”

Hamilton is right. There is nothing more annoying than watching the Yankees whine about every called strike (except maybe watching Daryl Johnston on an NFL telecast without a mute button). Games take forever because the umpires are too frightened of or awestruck by the Yankees’ pinstripes. When A-Rod went down on a called strike, the Rangers started to celebrate, the umpires walked off the field and A-Rod had no one to complain to.

It was a moment of pure baseball Zen.

(3) Rod Black just said the Bombers have the wind at their back to start the third quarter. Then he said Bomber punter Mike Renaud was kicking into the wind.

Right now, the wind is out of the east at 11 kilometres per hour. Canad Inns Stadium runs north/south.

Honey, where’s the remote, I need to find that mute button.

(4) This week, the Phoenix Coyotes played a National Hockey League game in front of 6,700 people. On the same night the Manitoba Moose played an American Hockey League game in front of 6,100.

When is Gary Bettman just going to admit that it’s over in Phoenix? Last year, Coyotes president Doug Moss said to my face, “I believe that if we put a winner on the ice here, people will come.” Moss — a tremendous hockey mind and a great guy — was fired, the Coyotes started winning and still, nobody bothered to drive to that rink out in the middle of nowhere.

We all know that the NHL won’t return to Winnipeg until Bettman has completely exhausted all of his options in Phoenix. Of course, if he finds someone with a billion dollars and a brain larger than a walnut to buy that team,  and keep it in the Arizona desert, he’ll be the greatest snake oil salesman in American history.

(5) Yes, I know it’s only pre-season, but I love watching the Cleveland Cavaliers win and the Miami Heat lose.

Sure, reality sets in on Tuesday when the regular season begins, but for now, watching LeBron score 30 and still lose gives me hope for the future of mankind.

(6) BTW, Montreal Alouettes head coach, Marc Trestman, the former Golden Gophers quarterback, would make a great coach at the University of Minnesota.

We’ll be back with a Bomber update in about an hour.

BOMBER POST SCIRPT

Final score: Toronto 27 Winnipeg 8.

The season is over for the Bombers. They’re 4-12 and all playoff hope is gone.

On the up-side, they probably have more built-in excuses than any losing team in history. In order:

(1) It’s Mike Kelly’s fault. He damaged the brand.

(2) Oh, damn, Buck Pierce got hurt.

(3) It’s the referee’s fault.

(4) It’s Steven Jyles fault.

(5) It’s Alex Brink’s fault.

(6) Oh damn, Steven Jyles got hurt.

(7) Oh damn, Alex Brink got hurt.

(8) It’s Joey Elliott’s fault.

Now that the Winnipeg mainstream media’s darlings are 4-12, Mike Kelly looks pretty good doesn’t he?

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Another Week Reading and Listening to… the Wrong Stuff

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

ORLANDO, Fla. — I’ve just spent a week reading that “Brett Favre had elbow tendonitis and would not play Sunday against Dallas.” Or “Brett Favre doesn’t want to be a distraction and might sit out Sunday’s game.”

It all seemed silly, but big time major media outlets reported it for seven days while fantasy players went crazy.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about Favre knew he was going to play. He might have had a sore arm, but he didn’t agree to return to the Vikings this season and NOT play. Sure, he plays behind the most porous offensive line in the NFL, but Favre has steel cojones and he was going to play. Period.

The media, however, wanted you to believe otherwise.

It’s becoming a disease. The mainstream media wants so badly to control the message — or just get something first — that it has resorted, over the past few years, to just making it up. I guess the new motto is: “Manufactured reporting is as good as real reporting.”

Let’s review another week in Crazyland:

(1) What is it about the New York Yankees? I like the Yanks, frankly. I think Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Nick Swisher , Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson etc. are among the classiest players in baseball.

But I just can’t listen to the TBS/Fox/ESPN announcers for one more minute. Cheerleading works if you’re Ken Harrelson in Chicago, Tom Hamilton in Cleveland, John Sterling in New York etc. You work for the team. I get that. But when you watch a national broadcast and these guys keep cheering for the Yanks, it drives me nuts.

Monday night, I lasted half an inning with the announcers. Then…click. The MUTE button. I would have felt a lot better if these guys would just show their true devotion and go down on the field and ask Andy Pettitte out. Date him, for gawd’s sake. But, please, quit fawning all over him on TV. It’s embarrassing.

(2) You just have to love the latest stadium battle here in Winnipeg. There are some media outlets who want you to believe that the new stadium out at the U of M, is going to cost so much money, it will never be built. Others are suggesting David Asper has been misleading the public for years. Others just don’t want it built at all.

While the local media has absolutely no idea what the final cost will be for the current plans for the stadium, they sure aren’t afraid to tell us that the stadium will turn into a “money pit” or that the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot more than $115 million. That’s confidence, my friends.

Now I have never doubted the stadium would cost more than $115 million and won’t be surprised in the least if it does cost more, but the question that needs to be answered is this: What earthly good does it do anyone to talk about what might be or what could be or what we might imagine it to be and then call it “news?”

As Winnipeggers, we also have to decide if we want a new stadium or if we want the old one to come falling down on top of us. Never forget, the provincial NDP government wants the new stadium built because it knows the old one hasn’t got a lot of life left. It certainly doesn’t have the required amenities to make the Bombers profitable. That’s why it’s prepared to float a loan to Asper to get it started. And it is under construction as we speak.

Recently, I talked to David Asper who, barring a disaster, will soon be the owner of the Blue Bombers, and who says his real estate firm, Creswin Properties, is going through all the tenders and coming to terms with a final cost. He still believes it will be around $115 million.

For its part, Creswin has lost patience with the local media geniuses, many of whom don’t even own a home, but apparently do know what a new stadium will cost.

Monday we should hear word. It will be good for the community to stop all the whining about what MIGHT happen and start whining about what WILL happen.

Because good news or bad, there will still be whining.

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The Response to A-Rod’s 600th Homer Has Me in a Quandary

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Watching Yankee fans and the Yankee announcers on the YES Network  this afternoon, made me wonder whatever happened to the American baseball media’s mob war against steroid users?

Both the fans and the announcers fawned all over Alex Rodriguez as he hit his 600th career home run against the Toronto Blue Jays. Indeed, A-Rod has hit 600 in his career, one of only seven to do so, and the fans had every right to be part of the celebration.

However, as the media honored Rodriguez today — as they certainly should have — I had to question why the feat is wonderful for Rodriguez, an admitted steroid user, but 600 homers wasn’t so wonderful for Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa? Remember, A-Rod is an admitted steroid user. In the meantime, the U.S. federal government has been trying to build a case against Bonds for almost a decade and yet they still have nothing. Sosa has said publicly that he as never used steroids. Still, both have been convicted by the American mainstream media mob as steroids abusers, even though there is no proof, only conjecture, rumour and innuendo.

So while Bonds and Sosa continue to be villified, Rodriguez, an admitted steroid user, is hailed as one of the sport’s all-time greats.

I’m in a quandary. Were steroids good for some heroes and not good for others? Is it because A-Rod is a Yankee and all things Yankee seem to be cheered in the U.S.? This is a strange one.

Personally? Good for A-Rod. 600 home runs at a time when there were as many pitchers (maybe more) on the juice as hitters, is quite an accomplishment.

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Lots of Stuff From a Week at Home and on the Road

Posted on June 12, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Sitting in the hotel room on a rainy Saturday waiting for the England-USA World Cup match and hoping tonight’s Twins-Braves game is not rained out…

1) Visited $545 million Target Field for the first time last night and it’s better than advertised. A small park with fewer than 40,00 seats, it’s an absolutely perfect place to watch Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau.

The press box is one of the best I’ve ever experienced. Great food — cheap, too — and tremendous working areas.

The concourses are spacious and the Twins Store is beyond belief.

Here are some things to keep in mind if you’re visiting:  (a) If you don’t stay at a downtown hotel so you can walk to the park, do your best to park at an LRT lot and take the train. Parking is crazy near the ballpark and if you pay the big bucks to park near the stadium, you might never get out. (b) Some high seats in the 300 level in left centerfield have obstructed views (you can’t see the warning track). Standing room is a better seat choice than high upper deck outfield seats. As long as you can stand for three hours. (c)  The concessions are expensive ($6 for a small bowl of soup), so eat before you go.

It’s a marvelously beautiful Mankato limestone ballpark that cannot be compared to any other major league stadium — past or present. It’s small, intimate and perfect for a place like Minnesota. Progressive Field in Cleveland used to be my favorite big league park, but it’s Target Field now.

2) Speaking of Cleveland, Indians radio announcer Tom Hamilton had the line of the year this past week. As the Indians were beating the Red Sox 11-0, David Ortiz was called out on strikes and, of course, Big Papi had words for the home plate umpire. Hamilton watched this go on and said, matter-of-factly, “Why is it that all Red Sox and Yankees hitters are in shock whenever an umpire calls a strike on them? Nobody whines as much as Red Sox and Yankees hitters.” Hear, hear.

3) Next weekend, the University of Winnipeg will announce that the brand new Wesmen men’s and women’s soccer programs will begin play in the Manitoba Colleges Athletic Conference this fall. The plan is to play in the MCAC for a year and then join the Canada West Universities Athletic Conference in 2011.

It will be great to have men’s and women’s soccer join men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball at Winnipeg’s downtown campus.

4) Gerrard just scored on Howard. The Liverpool captain scores on the Everton goalkeeper. Time to go watch the match.

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Why Are Steroids Bad For Athletes and Fans and Why is Using Them Called Cheating?

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

As Mark McGwire comes clean and the mutton-headed mainstream media allows Jose Canseco to take shots at him, my Grassroots News publisher Arnold Asham asked the following rhetorical questions (this is a re-working of a Scott Taylor column that was published in Grassroots News in 2008).

“What’s wrong with professional athletes using steroids? And who cares if they do?”

The questions are brilliant in their simplicity and I must admit, I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to come up with an honest, moral and ethical argument against either query.

Let’s start with Question 2: “Who cares if they do?” Evidently nobody. Recently, you couldn’t buy a decent Detroit Tigers ticket (for Grapefruit League or the regular-season schedule) even though four Tigers’ stars at the time, Gary Sheffield, Carlos Guillen, Magglio Ordonez and Ivan Rodriguez, had been linked to steroid use.

Now, on to Question 1: “What’s wrong with professional athletes using steroids?” Well, let me tell you, I’ve heard all the arguments:

“Steroids are bad for you.”

“Using performance enhancing drugs is cheating.”

“It’s not a level playing field if you use steroids.”

OK, but why? No one, not even the king of drug cops, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s former chair Dick Pound has ever been able to answer that question. Pound and his followers have created the bad rap, but they’ve never once given a clear indication as to why steroids are bad.

In November of 2005 in the publication “Virtual Mentor,” the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics, Dr. Norman Fost, director of the Program in Medical Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, wrote an article entitled “Steroid Hysteria: Unpacking the Claims.”

He answered the questions Pound and the mainstream media horde have never answered. Although, I would doubt neither Pound nor the mainstream media would have appreciated or agreed with his answers.

“The long campaign to demonize and prohibit the use of anabolic steroids in sports—in the press, by the United States Congress, and by the offices of the leaders of sports—has been so strident and one-sided that a literate person would have little reason to suspect there is another side to the story,” Dr. Fost wrote. “But it is the business of ethics to present justifications for actions, and the claims that have been made for prohibiting the use of anabolic steroids by competent adults appear to be incoherent, disingenuous, hypocritical, and based on bad facts.”

The worst excuse is the one that suggests that because of steroids, the playing field is not level and competition is unfair. That would be true if performance-enhancing drugs were not easily available and if big league athletes didn’t make enough money to pay for them. And these are the same big league athletes who often take “legal” cortisone shots or naproxen sodium pills in order to play while injured. These are the people who eat legal painkillers “like M & Ms” and make regular use of the legal muscle-building supplement, Creatine.

According to Fost, “Competition can be unfair if there is unequal access to such enhancements, but equal access can be achieved more predictably by deregulation than by prohibition. It is hypocritical for leaders in Major League Baseball to trumpet their concern about fair competition in a league that allows one team (the Yankees) to have a payroll three times larger than most of its competitors.”

For years, we’ve heard the argument that taking steroids causes acne on the back, a large, square forehead, loss of hair, shrinking of testicles and, eventually, an early death. As an ethicist, those claims confuse Fost.

“Good ethics starts with good facts, and the claims on this point are, to understate the case, seriously overstated,” he wrote. “Articles abound in the mass media on the life-threatening risks of anabolic steroids: cancer, heart disease, stroke, and so on. What is missing are peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals to support the claims.”

Fost loves to site the case of former Oakland Raiders linebacker Lyle Alzado. According to Fost: “So Lyle Alzado, the NFL all-star, is presented on the front page of the New York Times and the cover of Sports Illustrated because of an alleged steroid-related brain tumor. What is missing is a single article, or evidence, or even a quote from any authority on the topic to support any connection between steroids and Alzado’s tumor.”

Another argument that makes Fost laugh in disgust is the one that suggests anabolics are unnatural and “undermine the essence of sport.”

“This claim seems predicated on the notion that there is some essence of sport. Oh, spare me,” Fost says. “Sports are games, invented by humans, with arbitrary rules that are constantly changing. Since the beginning of recorded history, athletes have used an infinite variety of unnatural assists to enhance performance, from springy shoes to greasy swimsuits, bamboo poles to better bats, and endless chemicals from carb-filled diets to Gatorade drinks. Why is there not a ban on training in high altitudes, or sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, for the purpose of raising hemoglobin to unnatural levels?”

Here’s another one that gives our University of Wisconsin ethicist indigestion: “Steroids undermine the integrity of sports records.”

“Of all the proposed punishments for Rafael Palmeiro, the Baltimore Orioles slugger who was reported to have tested positive for steroids, the favorite seemed to be to abolish his home run records,” Fost recalled. “The implicit concern is that Babe Ruth or Roger Maris is being unfairly deprived of his place in history. But steroids are only one of many reasons why the old records keep falling. The fences are shorter, the pitching mound is lower, the ball is livelier, the strike zone keeps changing, and so on. The left field fence in Jacobs Field is more than 100 feet closer than it was in Municipal Stadium when it opened in the 1930s, so let’s have some asterisks for home runs at The Jake and every other stadium with shortened fences.”

Everyone will agree that kids shouldn’t use steroids. Kids shouldn’t use any drugs at all, frankly.

And don’t forget, scientific study provides clear proof that beverage alcohol is much worse for you – athlete or non-athlete – than steroids will ever be. Just ask former NHL all-star defenceman Rob Ramage who has gone to jail for four years because he drank too much and drove his car.

Strange but hypocritically true: Beverage alcohol is not only legal, our provincial government advertises it and encourages its use.

We live in a drug-centric society. All you have to do is watch the nightly news shows in the United States and you will see one drug advertisement after another. There is now a drug to get it up, take it down, wake up in the morning, go to sleep at night. There are drugs for acid reflux (burping), for restless leg syndrome (whatever) and too much cholesterol (change your diet). Our society now exists on drugs.

But as Dr. Fost maintains, the media has decided that the use of anabolic steroids in sport should be illegal. Trouble is, no one has made it very clear as to why. How is it that beverage alcohol and prescription painkillers are “good” for us, but muscle-building designer drugs are not?

Personally, I don’t doubt steroids should be outlawed in sport. I’m not sure our publisher, Mr. Asham, would argue that steroids should be outlawed. It’s just that we’d both like someone to give us a good reason why.

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Selena Roberts joins a growing list of “Let’s Make it All Up,” mainstream media superstars

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

In this space, we have long railed about the mainstream media mess that was the Duke Lacrosse Case. For those who have forgotten, the Duke Lacrosse Case was a tragic miscarriage of justice fueled and then perpetuated by the mainstream media — particularly the New York Times. In this sad story, an ambitious North Carolina prosecutor named Michael Nifong, railroaded a number of Duke University lacrosse players, by using his pals in the mainstream media to convict the kids long before the charges ever got to trial. He and the media, essentially destroyed their lives.

Of course, the case unravelled, the media looked like a foolish, ignorant mob and Nifong lost his job and his license to practice law.

In the middle of it all was a woman named Selena Roberts who, from her bully pulpit at the New York Times, convicted the young men long before any of the false charges ever reached a court of law. Roberts looked like a hateful, mindless idiot when the smoke cleared, but she never did apologize to the young men, whose lives she personally destroyed, or even to the public, which was duped into believing Nifong was right, the kids were monsters and the hooker at the heart of the phony charges was some saint sent to clean up the mess left by men.

There is a deep, dark, white-hot hole in hell for people like Selena Roberts, but like so many mainstream media monsters before her, she can’t quit spewing the fictional venom. 

Now, she’s decided to destroy the life of baseball player Alex Rodriguez and she’s done a pretty damn good job, too. In a book entitled “A-Rod,” this entitled journalist (how does a hate-filled hack like Roberts get jobs at the New York Times and Sports Illustrated?), Roberts has used more than 115 un-named sources to make Rodriguez look like the worst human being ever to play baseball.

Like her scummy predecessors, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Wlliams, who wrote the books Game of Shadows using more than 225 un-named sources, in their very successful effort to vilify Barry Bonds, Roberts appears to make it all up.

I don’t see any other way to phrase it. When you use that many un-named sources, the only thing you can call it is fiction. Like Fainaru-Wada and Williams, who created a novel so gripping it forced the United States justice department to make up charges against Bonds — charges that have hung in the air for years and have still not resulted in a trial — you’ve done a remarkable job. It was so good, in fact, that Fainaru-Wada got a high-paying job with ESPN as a reward.

Obviously, there is a real benefit to writing fiction and the passing it off as fact. Selena Roberts is the latest mainstream media darling to go down that road and be rewarded for it. I don’t get it, when I wrote my two books, Home Run: The History of the Winnipeg Goldeyes and Canwest Global Park (2005) and the Canadian bestseller, The Winnipeg Jets: A Celebration of Professional Hockey in Winnipeg (2007), my editor wanted nothing less than every quote to be attributed along with dates, times and places, in order to source them all. I guess, when you’re a mainstream media star you can make up quotes and American editors will just blow them off as “un-named sources.”

Fortunately, the American mainstream media, embarrassed by Roberts’ incredible gall, has answered back:

Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star wrote on May 2:

Not long ago, sports writer Selena Roberts compared the Duke lacrosse players to gang members and career criminals

She claimed that the players’ unwillingness to confess to or snitch about a rape (that did not happen) was the equivalent of drug dealers and gang members promoting antisnitching campaigns.

When since-disgraced district attorney Mike Nifong whipped up a media posse to rain justice on the drunken, male college students, Roberts jumped on the fastest, most influential horse, using her New York Times column to convict the players and the culture of privilege that created them.

Proven inaccurate, Roberts never wrote a retraction for the columns that contributed to the public lynching of Reade Seligmann, Colin Finnerty and David Evans.

Instead, she moved on to Sports Illustrated, a seat on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” and a new target, baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez…

Roberts’ book [about A-Rod] is a long-winded blog. Why it’s being treated as an unimpeachable piece of journalism can only be explained by the cushy position she’s been handed by the New York Times, ESPN and Sports Illustrated and the unchallenged institutional bias found within the elite sports media institutions.

Then, a day or two later, Josh Alper wrote on nbcnewyork.com:

Matt Lauer of “Today” didn’t touch on Roberts’ role in that miserable moment in rushing to judgment (on the Duke lacrosse players) on Monday morning, but he did ask her about the use of anonymous sources, especially if any of them might be telling tall tales to fulfill their own motivations of seeing Rodriguez taken down a peg. Roberts’ response is curious, to say the least.

“But I think there’s not so much jealously as disillusionment because he’s so great, he’s such a great player, he didn’t need any of this,” Roberts told Lauer. ”He didn’t need to embellish anything, he’s a great story in and of himself.”

If, as Roberts’ book alleges, Rodriguez was doing steroids in high school, how is it true that he didn’t need any of this? According to Roberts, he wasn’t embellishing anything. Rather, he was maintaining the steroid use that he started well before stepping foot on a big league diamond. Unless his sixth-grade Little League season was so good that he could have been in the majors right then and there, it is Roberts’ contention that he was never a great player because he was always taking steroids.

And a great story? That’s not evident in what’s been leaked from her book. Stories about A-Rod tipping pitches for the opposition or forcing clubhouse attendants to put toothpaste on his toothbrush are meant to make judgments about Rodriguez’s character. Judgments that all flow from the fact that he used steroids, something that Craig Calcaterra, who hit on Roberts’ Duke connections before Whitlock, quite rightly calls bogus

Those stories, all anonymously sourced, are being roundly rejected by A-Rod’s teammates. Those denials are from Doug Mientkiewicz and Michael Young, which we know because they were willing to put their name behind their words.

As Roberts told Lauer, her use of anonymous sources broke the report of A-Rod’s failed drug test. Every word she writes may be true, but it certainly appears that she’s just as interested in using them to judge A-Rod as a person as she is in finding out if he broke any laws or rules of baseball.  

Selena Roberts’ book on Rodriguez, just like the Bonds’ book before that, is sleazy and yellow and all too typical. Sadly — and Jason Whitlock, among others, know it’s sad — the princes and princesses of the mainstream media milk their hateful, sick fiction for all it’s worth.

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The New Yankee Stadium: A Band Box Joke.

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Canwest Park here in Winnipeg, is a gorgeous 7,000-seat minor league ballpark that cost $22 million. It’s dimensions are 325 down the leftfield line, 325 down the rightfield line, 375 to the gaps and 400 feet to straightaway centrefield.

 

The New Yankee Stadium is 318 feet down the leftfield line and 314 feet down the rightfield and that old fashioned “short porch” in right that contributed mightily — more than steroids ever would have — to Roger Maris’s 61 home runs in 1961, has been reconstructed for your historical enjoyment.

 

It is, for lack of a better term, a $1.5 million band box. In fact, in this day and age, it’s a joke and just like those geniuses who built Comerica Park in Detroit had to bring in the leftfield fence, the idiots in New York who built a “porch” that made sense in the dead-ball era will have to do something to make the new Yankee Stadium just a little more than a quirky little joke.

 

For $1.5 billion, the Yankees gave their players and fans all the amenities of a five-star hotel in a ballpark best suited for Senior Amateur Baseball.

 

In the first three games at the new Yankee Stadium, there have been 17 home runs. That could be a result of bad pitching, but as Tim McCarver so aptly put it on Saturday’s Fox broadcast, “It’s April. What’s going to happen in the home run months of July and August?” 

 

Here’s the real problem: Asdrubal Cabrera’s grand slam during Cleveland’s 22-4 shellacking of the Yankees on Saturday afternoon would have been a routine out in every other ballpark in the majors.

 

The new Yankee Stadium is obviously a beautiful piece of modern design and engineering. Outside the actual playing surface. The field’s dimensions make for a less-than-realistic major league stadium. In fact, the size of the playing field of the new Yankee Stadium has been designed for the low minors.

  

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