Category Archives: Sports

Graeme the guitar god?

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Not bloody likely, but I did have my first guitar lesson last Thursday. Gail bought me a month of free guitar lessons at the school silent auction back in February (for which we paid full price, so it’s not like we got a deal or anything, but the money went to the school, so that’s fine), and I couldn’t get a convenient time until now. So I get 5 Thursday-at-7:30 lessons before I have to start paying, which I probably will. I’m very glad to be getting back into playing guitar – I’ve picked the thing up probably once or twice a year since Gail and I got married, so it’s kind of too bad. If I had been playing a couple of times a week during those ten years, I might be pretty darn good by now.

Anyway, I’ll get some one-on-one instruction, plus it’ll force me to play more often, so it’s all good. My first couple of songs are “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Green Day and the intro to “Sweet Home Alabama”, both of which use the same chords (G5, C, and D, and Good Riddance has an Em in there too). I played for about a half-hour tonight, and also dug out a couple of other old books as well – I played Stairway to Heaven for the first time in ages. I used to know that one pretty well, but forgot most of it. I did get it back pretty quickly though. My instructor tells me that he’s not a great guitar player, but a good teacher, though he seems like a pretty decent guitarist to my untrained ears.

Edmonton and Portland have already been added to the NLL for next season, but with the good comes the bad. It was announced this weekend that Anaheim has suspended operations for next season, so there will be a dispersal draft as well as an expansion draft. Don’t know when for either one. Man, the GMs in this league must really be getting used to these drafts, with teams coming and going all the time. Most leagues have to deal with one draft per year — the entry draft. NLL GMs have to deal with at least two and sometimes three drafts every year. It was also announced that there will be no more new teams next season, so the teams that will be playing are now set, unless someone pulls a Vancouver and pulls out at the last second.

John and Jackie (Gail’s dad and stepmom) moved this past weekend, up to a house near Sundridge, about 3 1/2 hours north of here, and an hour north of my parents. Nice place – on Hwy 124 about 3km from Hwy 11, lots of land, right next to a farm (kids would probably love a tour – next visit), with a pond in the back, though John says he’s going to have that filled. Not a bad idea – big time mosquito breeding ground. The house itself is a little bigger than their old place in Beachville, with a really nice sun room off the back. We went up on Friday to help move, though the moving part was way less work than the cleaning part – I must have cleaned about 12 windows, inside and out, including three huge picture windows (though Gail’s brother did the outside of those). Plus cleaning light fixtures and other stuff, and occasionally making sure the boys weren’t in the process of killing themselves or each other. Busy weekend – hopefully this coming week isn’t as busy as last week.

With all the cleaning, referreeing, and not sleeping very well, not to mention driving 700 km on Friday and today, I’m bushed. Night all.

NHL Lockout over?

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There are rumours that the NHL lockout may be close to over – that the owners and players are close to reaching a deal, possibly as early as this week. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I guess that’s good news. Good to see they’re finally taking my advice. I said months ago that (at least) two things would have to happen before any kind of deal gets done.

First, the two sides have to meet regularly for significant periods of time – none of this “we met for 3 hours on Tuesday, and we’re meeting again for another 3 hours in two weeks” crap. It has to be at least a few times a week, every week. If they need a day or two to converse with their constituents or whatever, fine, that makes sense, but as long as the lockout continues, negotiating the new CBA should be a full-time job for both sides. They had a couple of marathon sessions (14-16 hours each) a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t think that would have happened if they were still at the “We must have a cap” / “We refuse to have a cap” stage. They must really be talking.

Second, both sides need to, pardon my French, shut the fuck up with regards to the press. When the press conferences after the meetings are longer than the meetings themselves, that’s not good. The press does not need to know the details of every meeting, every proposal, every counterproposal, etc. Just get in the room, shut the doors, and don’t say anything to the press until the deal is done. This seems to have started once the season was cancelled – the entire press release after a meeting was “We had a good meeting, and we’re meeting again tomorrow”. That’s it. Now, maybe that’s because once the season was officially cancelled, people lost interest in the negotiations, but regardless, the information coming out of the negitiations is way less than it was before the cancellation, and I think that’s a good thing. Ignore the press, get a deal done, and then let the press analyze the hell out of it.

I heard a bit of an interview this morning with Bryan McCabe, the Leafs’ player rep, who said that the players may have to accept less than what they were offered in February. Boy, would that be too bad. Sorry Bryan, but the lowest paid player in the NHL makes significantly more than I do, and I make pretty good money. I find it very hard to feel sorry for the players when they’re talking about how to divvy up that many millions of dollars. The owners are obviously millionaires as well, but they all had to pony up a significant amount of money to buy the team in the first place, and none of them became a millionaire through owning an NHL team. They are all business people, who have taken a considerable risk with this investment. The players are getting paid mega-bucks to play a game.

Anyway, on a lighter note, a big Happy Birthday to my little munchkin! My son Nicholas turns 3 today. We bought him a scooter and a little T-ball thing that can also toss balls into the air, for batting practice. I’m looking forward to trying it out (with Nicholas!) in the backyard. Busy week though – we may not have a chance. Ryan starts soccer tonight, I have baseball tomorrow night, I have my first of four guitar lessons on Thursday night, and then we head up to Sundridge on Friday to help Gail’s dad move into his new place.

Softball season

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I played in my first softball game of the season last night. I’ve been playing in a Stelco league for about 10 years now – Gail used to play too, but hasn’t since she was pregnant with Ryan. I threw the first pitch of the season! I went 3-4 at the plate with one cheap little foul out to third base, and three hits to exactly the same place – right between 1st and 2nd. Two went for doubles, and the other was a triple because the fielder bobbled the ball. I played OK in the field – one inning in centre field, two at shortstop (only booted the ball once!), and I sat for one. We only played 5 innings because the teams are going to be shuffled around, so this was just an exhibition game. In fact, we only played 4 1/2, since we were the away team and we lost.

I’m not having as much fun in this league as I used to. Because it’s a Stelco league, and Stelco hasn’t hired all that many people in a number of years, there haven’t been many new players, other than friends and relatives of existing players. As a result, I, at 35, am one of the youngest people in the league. There are probably more retired people than people under 40.

Another issue is that many of the players in the league use the league as an excuse to just go drinking. I enjoy a beer after the game as much as anyone, but half the league just wants to sit in the parking lot after the game and drink beer, and then drive home. Since I always drive to the game, I limit myself to one beer at the bar afterwards. Craig (the convener) is cracking down on drinking in the parking lot though, since he’s been warned that if the police catch anyone in the league drinking there, the league will be shut down permanently. Why we don’t all just go to the bar right after the game is beyond me – my team does, but the rest of the league doesn’t show up for at least an hour, if they show up at all. If you want to drink after the game, fine, but I thought that the idea of picking a bar that we all go to was for socialization after the game. I end up socializing with my own team – which is fine, my team is full of cool people – but we never see half the league there.

I did look into a men’s league in Waterdown a few years ago, but you had to be 35 to join, and I was only 31 or 32 at the time. Maybe next year I’ll look into that again.

Rock are Champions

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It wasn’t pretty, but the Rock are NLL Champions once again. The first half of the game was back and forth, with no team having more than a two-goal lead, and the lead changed hands several times. The Rock went on a four-goal run to lead 10-6 at the half. Arizona, as expected, did not give up, and clawed their way back to 12-11 before the Rock went on a 5 goal run to put the game away. Colin Doyle was named game MVP with 5 goals and 3 assists. I can’t really argue with those numbers, though I think Bob Watson played an awesome game in goal, and made lots of amazing stops. I would have given Whipper the MVP award, but as I said, Doyle was also deserving.

As recently as last year, I was not Colin Doyle’s biggest fan. He’s great offensively, and always works hard, but was a bit of a hot-dogger, and tended to embellish hits a little too often. This year, though, he’s really impressed me. Maybe he’s not getting pounded near the net as much, because the defenders also need to worry about Josh Sanderson now, so he doesn’t get as pissed off as he used to. Anyway, as I said he’s a hard worker, and he’s not selfish – the team means everything to him. He says that all the time in interviews, and you can really tell that he means it by his play on the floor. AND he stands completely still during the national anthem, and actually sings along, which impressed the hell out of me the first time I saw it.

Anyway, nice job boys! Five championships in seven years is damned impressive. This one was for Les.

NLL Awards

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Colin Doyle was named league MVP this year (actually, “Hummer Most Valuable Player”). I would have voted for Josh Sanderson, myself, but I can’t say that Doyle is a bad choice, seeing as how he led the league in scoring. Amazingly, Doyle is the first person not named Gait or Tavares to lead the league in scoring since 1990. Unbelievable.

Steve Dietrich was named goalie of the year (“Acquis Goaltender of the Year”) – another good choice, though I think I would have voted for Whipper.

This Saturday is the “2005 Edge NLL Championship Game”. What’s up with all these corporate sponsors? Part of me doesn’t like the sell-out idea, but mostly, it’s probably a good thing for the league. Brings in money, and more sponsors means more advertising, and more advertising means more potential fans, and more potential fans means a better league.

What’s next? The Toronto “Q107 Toronto’s Best” Rock?

The big hockey loss

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No, I don’t mean that Canada lost in the IIHF World Hockey Championships. In fact, they won today. The loss is the thousands of hockey fans around North America, of which I am one, who are slowly losing interest in hockey thanks to the lockout.

I grew up a Leaf fan, and loved to watch Leaf games with my dad as long as I can remember. When the Leafs won their first round playoff series in about 1986, I even painted my hair blue before going to school. (Some friends said they were going to as well, but chickened out, saying that they meant the second round. Whatever.) I lost interest in university for some reason, but then started getting back into it in the mid-90’s, and became a rabid Leaf fan once again a year or two after that. When the lockout first started, I was quite distraught – how was I going to make it through the winter with no hockey?! I have lacrosse, which I loved even more than hockey even before the lockout, but that’s only 16 weeks plus playoffs (and that ends two days from now). Gradually, I discovered that I would survive just fine without hockey. I missed it, no question, but not as much as I thought I would. Right now, we’d be into the second round of the playoffs, the time of year that I thought I’d really miss hockey, but, meh, not really. The Jays are playing well and as I mentioned in a previous entry, I’m more excited about baseball this year than I have been in a few years, so lacrosse got me through the winter, and baseball will get me through the summer.

I am hoping the lockout gets resolved and we have a real NHL season this fall, but right now, I almost don’t care. If the NHL completely vanishes, I’m sure another league will pop up to take its place. That would be a real shame though – all the history of the NHL will be lost.

I just cannot get interested in the World championships though. Maybe it’s because Canada has been a powerhouse in international hockey for a few years so it’s not unlikely that they’ll win it all, but it’s more that this seems like a made-up tournament. It’s not the Olympics, it’s not the Canada Cup (or is it? The Canada Cup tournament hasn’t existed for years, but I don’t know what replaced it), it’s yet another world championship, similar to the World Cup of Hockey they had in the fall, which I wasn’t all that interested in either. It just seems like (a) a cash grab for the promoters, and (b) something to do for a bunch of bored currently-unemployed hockey players.

Do I hope Canada wins? Sure, but I doubt I’ll watch the final game even if they’re in it, and if they don’t win, I won’t lose any sleep over it.

Haaaapy Anniversary

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Today is the 5-year anniversary of my laser eye surgery. It was a lot of money ($1000/eye), but it was definitely worth it. I now have better than 20:20 vision, and have had zero side effects. I’ve heard of people who have problems seeing at night, or other things like that, but I’ve had no problems at all.

You’d think that my insurance company would be willing to pay for at least part of the surgery, since I will no longer be making $200/year claims for new glasses or contacts, but no such luck. Gail’s looked into it, as have my other almost-blind friends Faisal and Jeff, and none of them is a candidate for the surgery. Of course, all of them have far worse eyesight than I did (I was about -4 to -5 in each eye; Gail is -15 in one and -13 in the other). Faisal has talked about corneal replacement, though it’s kind of experimental now. Gail has also been told that this is an option for her, but not until she’s about 50 (though I don’t remember why).

The NLL has announced expansion (yet again) – Edmonton and Portland will have teams next year. The last time the NLL had two consecutive years with exactly the same teams was 1992 and 1993: the list of changes is here. I’m not sure how I feel about this – expansion is good, though I’m not sure that there’s enough NLL-caliber talent out there to fill up two more rosters. The constant changing of teams may also indicate instability in the league, which is the last thing potential investors would want. Then again, the league just got two more investors in the Edmonton and Portland ownership groups, so they’re obviously OK with it. The strange thing is that commissioner Jim Jennings has stated that the league was primarily interested in joint ownership with NHL teams, and then they grant franchises to two non-NHL-related owners. He did say that potential owners must not only pay the franchise fee ($3 million, I think $1.5 million), but must also have about $10 million in cash available, to avoid another Vancouver, so I guess even if the new owners aren’t involved in the NHL, they have buckets of money, so that’s a good thing.

Rock head to the final

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For the 6th time in the past seven years, the Toronto Rock are heading to the NLL finals. The Rock beat Rochester 12-10 last night in the eastern division final. Pretty close game – the Knighthawks were leading 7-6 at halftime, but Whipper shut them down in the second half. John Grant was invisible in the second half, Shawn Williams got a couple, but Mike Accursi was shut down completely. The Rochester offense just didn’t get it done. Pat O’Toole played a really good game, but he was just the difference between a 12-10 loss and a 18-10 loss. Funny stat – O’Toole had 4 points (all assists), which is more than Manning, Doyle, or Williams. In fact, only John Grant had more than 4 points.

Right now I’m watching the Calgary/Arizona game, which Calgary is currently winning 9-7 in the 3rd. I figured at the beginning that the final would be Calgary in Toronto. Lewis Ratcliff just scored to make it 10-7, but 3 goals in lacrosse ain’t much, especially with over a quarter and a half left. Another one for Ratcliff, now 11-7.

Gail was away scrapbooking today, so it was just me and the boys until dinner. The weather sucked so we were stuck in the house all day, but I decided this morning that we wouldn’t just watch TV all day – in fact, the TV went off at 9:30, and didn’t go on again until after dinner. Not sure if this was a good move or not – neither one listened to anything I said all day. Ryan’s goal in life seems to be to annoy Nicholas as much as possible, then laugh at him when he’s upset, and Nicholas just doesn’t give a shit about anything, particularly me asking him not to do something. Now, he’s not even three yet, so that’s to be expected, but Ryan should know better — he sometimes strikes me as the kid who’s bullied at school, so he comes home and bullies his younger siblings. However, I’ve seen him at school when I volunteer there, and I know that if anything, he’s either the bully himself, or he hangs out with the bullies. It’s funny though — he’ll bug the crap out of Nicholas, laughing the whole time, then Nicholas will get tired of it and pound him, and Ryan will start to cry and come and tell me that Nicholas hit him “for no reason”. Our rule has always been “we don’t hit for any reason”, but you can hardly fault Nicholas for getting pissed off.

11-10 now with a minute left in the third. I think the Rock will have an easier time beating Arizona than facing Calgary again (not that Arizona will be a cakewalk either), so GO STING!

Eastern final set

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The NLL Eastern division final is now set – Toronto hosts Rochester at the ACC on Friday, after Rochester held on to beat Buffalo 19-14 on Saturday night. The game was a lot closer than the final score indicates, sort of — Rochester dominated for a while (it was 10-3 at one point), then let Buffalo catch up, getting as close as down by one (12-11). Then Rochester got 4 goals in under 2 minutes and put the game away. Former Bandit Mike Accursi was on fire, scoring 7 goals and adding an assist, while John Grant scored 4 and assisted on 4 others, and Shawn Williams got 3 and 2. Steenhuis scored 5 for Buffalo.

Rochester dominated the face-offs, and Steve Toll was back to his old self on transition – even the speedy Mark Steenhuis couldn’t quite catch up to him. Pat O’Toole wasn’t outstanding in net, but was better than Chugger, though it wasn’t all his fault either. Buffalo swapped between him and Derek General a couple of times, but General was no better, and Buffalo fans weren’t happy with his lack of hustle in getting to the bench on delayed penalties and such.

So Rochester will play Toronto on Friday, which is probably better for the Rock, in that Rochester has only won twice in Toronto – once in a meaningless game last year, and then there was the blowout earlier this year, but we don’t like to talk about that one.

Predictions:
Toronto 17 Rochester 12
Calgary 15 Arizona 13

Toronto 18 Calgary 11

Graeme on the radio

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I made my major market radio debut this afternoon on the FAN 590 during Prime Time with Bob McCown. Bob was talking about Monday Night Football moving from ABC (where it’s been for 30 35 years) to ESPN. He mentioned that ABC has been losing money over the years, but it was worth it to them because it allowed them to advertise other ABC shows during football. He also mentioned that back in the 70’s when there were only a handful of stations to watch, having people fall asleep while the football game was on was good for ABC, in that when they turned the TV back on the next day, it was already on ABC. Anyway, they decided that it was no longer worth it to them, and ESPN decided it was. Bob said that ESPN figures that they have plateau’ed in terms of subscribers, so changing their programming is the only way to get more subscribers. This is where I come in.

I was driving home from work at the time, so I called in on my cell and was very surprised when the phone actually started ringing (I’ve called in a couple of times before, but always got busy signals). They took my name, then put me on hold for about 10 minutes, then suddenly I heard Bob say “Graeme in Kitchener, go”. I asked him how many people does he think watch Monday Night Football with any regularity that don’t already have ESPN, and consequently, how many new subscribers do they figure this will get them? I figure that anyone who watches Monday Night Football often enough that they’re willing to start paying for it, when they didn’t have to before, then they’re probably enough of a football fan that they’ve already got ESPN. Not only did he say it was an interesting question, but he said he agreed with me.

Anyway, it was my first time ever on the radio, so that was very cool.