Monthly Archives: May 2008

Canadian Sports Personalities – Best and Worst

Leave a reply

I read an article on another blog on the best Canadian non-hockey sports announcers. There were also specific articles on the hockey people and the anchor desk people. I thought I’d put together my own list of Canadian sports announcers, writers and broadcasters, good and bad. These are in no particular order.

Best

  • Bob McCown — simply the best. Host of Prime Time Sports on the FAN 590, one of my favourite podcasts and according to Bob, “the country’s most listened-to sports talk presentation”. Says what he thinks, doesn’t care if he offends anyone, doesn’t (usually) pull punches during interviews, knows his stuff inside and out, and he’s funny too.
  • Stephen Brunt — he writes for the Globe and Mail, which I don’t read, so I only know him from his appearances on Prime Time Sports, but he’s very knowledgable. And he’s from Hamilton.
  • Jim Kelley — writes for sportsnet.ca, and also appears on Prime Time Sports. He’s in the Hockey Hall of Fame as a writer, and for good reason. He knows more than just hockey though. He, Brunt, and McCown make PTS the best sports show there is.
  • Dan Shulman — Used to do play-by-play for the Blue Jays. Smart guy, and just an all-around great broadcaster. So good, ESPN grabbed him and hasn’t let go.
  • Rob Faulds — I didn’t like him much when I first heard him on Jays telecasts, but he used to host Prime Time Sports when McCown was away, and I grew to respect him. Listening to him on the radio doesn’t feel like listening to the radio, it feels like talking sports over a couple of beers with your buddy.
  • Jennifer Hedger — smart, knows her stuff, and easy on the eyes. Married to Sean McCormick (see the worst list below), but nobody’s perfect.
  • Eliot Friedman — another former guest host on Prime Time Sports, but haven’t heard him for a while. Works on HNIC, though I think he’s underused there.
  • Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth — Cheek called every single Blue Jays game, including pre- and post-season, from their first day in 1977 until 2004, a streak of over 4,300 consecutive games. I grew up listening to him and Jerry calling Jays games on the radio.
  • Don Chevrier and Buck Martinez — called Jays games on TV in the 80’s and 90’s. Buck went on to manage the Jays, and I was disappointed when he didn’t return to the broadcast booth afterwards.
  • Jay Onrait — host of SportsCentre on TSN. Not particularly insightful, since he’s just reporting the sports news, but he’s pretty funny. The last couple of years, he’s done a real-time blog on trade deadline day which was very funny.

Worst

  • Mike Toth — I used to really hate this guy, but he’s growing on me. Now I only hate him a little bit. He hosts Prime Time Sports when Bob McCown is away, and he’s OK, but I prefer when Rob Faulds used to guest-host.
  • Sean McCormick — they call him The Dude. Or perhaps he calls himself that. Just seems a little too full of himself.
  • Michael Landsberg — speaking of full of himself…
  • Warren Sawkiw — did Jays broadcasts for a year after Tom Cheek passed away, then they fired him. Haven’t seen him since. Didn’t seem to add much to the broadcast, and had too much of a “golly gee whiz, I’m in the big league!” air about him.
  • Don Cherry — very entertaining and I enjoy watching Coach’s Corner because of him, but what an idiot. Thinks that any hockey game without a fight is a waste of time. Thinks that wearing helmets and visors to protect your head and face makes you a pussy. Hey Don, the truth is that it just makes you smart.
  • Nick Kypreos — thinks along Don Cherry’s lines. He was a goon when he played, and thinks that players who don’t know one end of the stick from the other but are great fighters make a valuable contribution. News flash Nick — the ’94 Rangers would have won the Cup even without you. He’s so pro-player anti-owners it’s not funny, which was particularly annoying during the lockout.
  • Fergie Olver and Tony Kubek — both worked for the Jays in the ’80s. To be honest, I don’t remember what it was I didn’t like about these guys, I just remember that when watching a game on TV where these guys were broadcasting, I’d turn the sound down on the TV and turn the radio on. I do remember that Fergie also hosted a kids game show called Just Like Mom where kids and their moms competed as a team against other kids and their moms. Fergie’s wife was the co-host.

A bit of both

  • Pierre McGuire — Most of the time, he’s fine, though he talks really quickly. (I do too, but I’m not a professional broadcaster.) He knows the fine points of hockey very well. However, when he gets excited about something, he talks a mile a minute and STARTS TO YELL. Then I can’t listen to him anymore.

Them cops is smart

Leave a reply

I’m watching an episode of CSI: New York. On the show, someone is blogging, and the police are trying to find out where he’s blogging from. One of them comes up with the following bit of brilliance:

I’ll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic. It might give us an IP address.

Gail and I both literally laughed out loud. Even better, a few minutes later the same person is seen manipulating a smoothly scrolling 3-D detailed map of NYC. Sure, you can throw one of those together in minutes with VB.

NLL Championship prediction

1 Reply

There is only one game left in the NLL season. It’ll be in Buffalo, but we’re going up north this weekend so I won’t be going. Luckily, the game is televised, so I plan on watching it at my parents’ place on Saturday night.

I went 1-1 in my second round predictions, slightly better than the 1-3 in the first round, so I’m 2-4 overall. Buffalo beat New York as I predicted, even though Mark Steenhuis did not learn how to pass the ball, only getting a single assist. Didn’t matter much though, since he scored seven, and John “ageless” Tavares had 10 assists to go with his two goals. It was an intense game as I predicted as well, with each team racking up 65 minutes in penalties.

I got the Calgary-Portland game wrong, though I did wonder if Dan Dawson could carry Portland for another game, and with five goals and five assists, I guess the answer is “yes”.

I’m going to stick with my previous statement that nobody will stop the Bandits, and predict a Buffalo championship. Championship game MVP is a tough one — Tavares is always a good bet and Mike Accursi has been great since returning to the Bandits, but I think I will say Steenhuis.

As for league MVP, which will be announced tomorrow, it’s a no-brainer. Athan Iannucci beat Gary Gait’s goal-scoring record by 10, and over a 16 game season that’s pretty significant, especially for a player in only his second season in the league. It’s possible that this year was a fluke (like Brady Anderson hitting 50 home runs, though that was more likely chemically-induced), but I think this guy’s the real deal. It would not surprise me if in ten years, we’ll be saying Iannucci’s name in the same breath as names like Gait, Tavares, Marechek, and Veltman as one of the best in league history.

The new lawnmower smell

Leave a reply

After a couple of years of frustration with my old lawn mower, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new one. The old one was a gas mower, but over the last couple of years, it got quite difficult to start. I got tired of yanking on the starter cord over and over, almost putting my shoulder out, only to have to borrow my neighbour’s mower to get the job done. It had a side chute, and I bought a side bagger attachment for it, which was OK, but I really wanted a rear-bagger.

I read somewhere earlier this year that an old two-stroke lawnmower dumps as much pollution into the air in one hour as the average car does over a 600 km trip. Since I had changed the oil in that mower exactly once in the eleven years that I owned it, I suspect it was probably even worse than that (and that probably explains the engine trouble I had with it too). So I did a bit of research, and although the newer four-stroke engines are much more efficient and less polluting than the old ones, I decided to go electric. The one I bought was a cordless model from Canadian Tire (Yardworks 24V, 20″ — sorry, couldn’t find a functional link), so I have the advantage of electric (no emissions, no gas or oil, instant start) with no extension cord to drag around. I charged the battery overnight and then cut the lawn on Sunday.

My dad always had gas mowers, and as I said mine was gas as well. In fact, I’ve only used an electric mower once in my life, when mowing my neighbour’s lawn back when I was a teenager — and that one time I used it I ran over his extension cord and cut it in half. So when I started this new one by pressing a button and holding down a bar rather than yanking on the starter cord, I was very excited. It’s quieter than the old mower, though not by much. The mower itself is very light, but the battery is a monster. I was worried that it would be heavier and harder to push around because of that, but it wasn’t noticeably different. Being able to adjust the height of the mower with one lever rather than one per wheel is very nice. There’s also a battery level meter which is kind of hard to see, and even a drink holder that will probably never be used.

The battery can be easily removed from the mower, which is good since the mower lives in the shed which has no electricity. According to some online reviews, I will probably have to charge the battery about once a month or so, and I’m supposed to charge it up every couple of weeks in the winter as well. Right now I’m all gung ho to do just that, but we’ll see next winter. I was all set to empty and clean the humidifier every week or so last winter, and I think I did it twice.

Update: One thing I didn’t think about — if your gas mower runs out of gas when you’re halfway done, you can just put more gas in it. You may need to run to the gas station. But if your battery dies halfway through, you’re stuck. Nothing to do but wait. This didn’t actually happen to me (the battery died just as I was finishing), but I hadn’t thought about it before.

The Seeing Eye speaks

Leave a reply

I had a dream last night. In my dream, I saw Cliff Fletcher announcing that Ken Hitchcock was the next GM of the Leafs. I don’t have dreams about sports very often; heck, I don’t have dreams that I remember all that often, so I’m taking this as a sign. Note that this was literally a dream — I’m not saying that I hope it happens, just that I dreamed it would.

I know Hitchcock is currently the coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets, but the Seeing Eye just tells the future; it doesn’t explain it.

Third round picks

Leave a reply

The second round is now over, and I went 2-2 in my predictions. I got the Pittsburgh series winner right, but they took out the Rangers in 5, not the 6 or 7 I said, and I thought Montreal was for real and Philly wasn’t, turned out to be the other way around. I’m now 8-4 overall this year.

Third round:

  • Pittsburgh over Philly
  • Detroit over Dallas

NLL Second Round Picks

Leave a reply

OK, so my hockey predictions (8-4 after 2 rounds) are slightly better than my lacrosse predictions (1-3 after one round). As I said as I updated the previous post, I nailed the Buffalo game completely, and was totally wrong on the other three. Since there are only three games left, the best I can do is 4-3, so let’s try for that:

  • Buffalo over New York — The one word that best describes Darris Kilgour is intensity. If there’s anyone who can get his team fired up, it’s Darris, whether that’s through an inspiring speech or just being afraid that if you don’t step up your game he’ll beat the snot out of you. Bob McMahon just doesn’t have that kind of presence. Anyway, they’ve been getting great goaltending from both Thompson and Montour, and if Steenhuis can learn that passing the ball is a good thing, I don’t see New York, or anyone from the west, stopping the Bandits.
  • Calgary over Portland — Dan Dawson has the ability to carry a team for one game, and since this is single-game elimination, that’s a big deal. But he did that in the win over San Jose — can he do it two games in a row? Calgary played well enough to make it to the playoffs without Tracey Kelusky for most of the season. But he’s back now, and if there’s one goalie whose name isn’t Bob Watson that I want between the pipes in a critical game, it’s Chugger.

One more thing I need to say: I’ve never been a big fan of Billy Dee Smith. He generally takes too many dumb penalties and I haven’t yet forgiven him for the nasty cross-check to Colin Doyle’s head about five years ago. But he played a great game in Buffalo on Friday. The Bandits in general played smart, stayed out of the box (an old nemesis of theirs — stupid penalties have cost the Bandits a number of games over the last few years), and Smith played a hard but smart game and even scored a couple. A few people on the lacrosse message boards have talked about Smith in the past as a good solid player with a bad reputation, but I never saw it. On Friday I did.

I’m also wondering if John Tavares will retire after this season if Buffalo wins it all. He’s still playing at a high enough level that he doesn’t have to, but he may want to retire before he gets to be one of those players who still hangs on and doesn’t want to admit that their playing days are over even though they are a shadow of their former selves. Jim Veltman could probably have played another year, but he wanted to retire before he became that guy that should have retired, and Tom Marechek and Gary and Paul Gait all did the same thing. It would be kind of too bad if Tavares does retire after this year, since Veltman, Gary Gait, and Marechek all had the whole “final season” celebration thing, and Tavares deserves that as well. It would be too bad for the fans if he finished the season and then just didn’t come back.

Cool Tool: drop.io

Leave a reply

I found a very cool site called drop.io through Lifehacker this morning, just when I needed it. I needed to send a fax yesterday, but I was at home and I don’t have a fax machine. I have a modem for my computer upstairs, but it’s not connected to the phone line (it may not even be physically installed anymore), and I don’t know if I have any fax software. I did a quick google search on free email-to-fax services, and found very little, so I was planning on waiting until Monday and just sending it from work. And then I read a posting on Lifehacker called “drop.io Adds Free, Simple Faxing”. I checked it out, and it’s just what I need.

There is no registration and they don’t ask for your email address. You just create a “drop” and you can add files to the drop by uploading them, emailing them, or faxing them (you print off a special cover page and make that the first page of the fax, then fax it to drop.io and they figure out which drop it’s for and add a pdf to that drop). Once you’ve got a drop, you can email it or fax it out, or you can give the address to other people and they can see the files from there. It’s private in that there is no directory of drops anywhere and no way to search, so to get to the drop, you have to know the name of it.

There are no fees for any of this (though you can upgrade for $10 to get 1 GB of storage, otherwise each drop is limited to 100 MB), and no advertising on the web site, so I’m not sure how they make any money at this, but it’s very slick.