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.
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?