Of easy signings and a weird date for home runs

The best news for the Maple Leafs with the signing of yet another goaltender, this time Finn Jussi Rynnas, is that all it costs them is money -- and they have no shortage of that.

He didn’t cost them a draft choice, which means the Leafs can direct whatever picks they have this time at the other necessities, and he provides depth at a vital position, even though he is likely to start off with the Marlies. If the plan goes according to the early estimates, and J.S. Giguere is attractive to someone at the trade deadline, a year from now the Leafs will have two cost-efficient young goalies in tandem, with Jonas Gustavsson having had a pretty good taste of the NHL by that time. And if he struggles, Rynnas will get his opportunity.

In any sport, you win when you have a lot of good players. He still needs to prove himself an NHL-calibre goalie, but even if he doesn’t, all they’re out will be the dollars.

I’m always in favour of this kind of signing, like the one the Blue Jays did with the Cuban shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, a player scouted and pursued to some degree by other clubs. When there’s no significant cost beyond money, and when he doesn’t roadblock another prospect by taking away playing time, there’s no real down side to this kind of addition.

Switching gears completely, make sure to scan the boxscores for Friday night’s ball games and look to see if there’s anyone hitting his first major league home run tonight. It might mean something.

That’s because April 23 has a bit of a strange history concerning first taters. On this date in 1939, Ted Williams hit his first career home run. That would be the first of 521.

On April 23, 1954, Henry Aaron hit his first career home run. Another 754 would follow.

Two years before that, on April 23, 1952, Hall of Fame relief pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm won his first game as a pitcher and also hit his first home run. The difference in Hoyt’s case? In a career that lasted through 1972, he never hit another home run.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

How many Overbays would be enough?

This almost slipped between the cracks, but Sunday after the ball game the Blue Jays held their annual barbecue for season-ticket holders and, eventually, the team came out to sit at a long table and sign autographs for what looked like a very long line.

Four or five of the Jays, including Vernon Wells and Ricky Romero, came out wearing a Lyle Overbay uniform top turned around, with his name and number on the front.

Overbay, as everyone knows, is wildly overdue to break out of a terrible slump. He also had made a costly error in Sunday’s ninth inning during the eventual 3-1 loss to the Angels. One Blue jay official suggested this was a good team-type thing, that players were rallying around a teammate going through tough times.

The cynical among us thought it was their way of maybe avoiding signing too many autographs. Anyway, with all the whining and moaning about Blue Jays attendance, there weren’t even 15,000 in the park Sunday. Not to belabour this point, because these things go in cycles, but Baltimore drew 9,000 at home and Sunday afternoon in Cleveland, they didn’t even draw 11,000 – and nobody is saying the teams are finished there.

Go back to the 90s and the three toughest tickets in the league were Toronto, which sold out every night; Baltimore, after Camden Yards was opened; and Cleveland, which sold out the Jake constantly. They’re down now, but they’ll come back when the teams do.

And if you really want to cry about lousy attendance, wait and see what the Jays draw for these games this week at home to the Kansas City Royals. It won’t be pretty.

Westwood narrow favourite as leaders wait to tee off

AUGUSTA, Ga. – It’s another near-perfect day in terms of weather at Augusta National, with bright sunshine and, at this point, negligible winds. A couple of hours before the leaders tee off for what might well be an exceptional final round, if Saturday’s spectacular third is any indication, a check of the betting odds is in order.

Internet wagering sites still have Lee Westwood a very slight favourite at 7 to 5, with Phil Mickelson next at 3 to 2 and Tiger Woods third choice at 9 to 2. K.J. Choi, tied in third with Woods four shots behind Westwood, is listed at 14 to 1, and 50-year-old Fred Couples, five shots back, is 40 to 1.

In terms of hole locations, according to the official pin sheet, there are some traditional spots picked out for the back nine, including far right (four yards from the edge) on No. 12, right at No. 13 (six yards from the edge) and back right at No. 15 (17 yards from the front edge).

The deep pin at No. 5, which is 28 yards back from the front edge of the very large green, makes a difficult hole that much tougher; in the early returns, six of the first 10 golfers bogeyed that hole and the other four parred it.

The second hole has its usual Sunday location, well on the right side behind the bunker.

Creepy ad? Woods doesn't think so

AUGUSTA, Ga. – With Tiger Woods only a couple of shots out of the lead at the midpoint of the Masters, there's a chance his take on the strange -- some say creepy -- new Nike TV commercial, the one in which he allegedly is being talked to by his late father, Earl, could get lost in the shuffle going forward.

But Woods, for what it's worth, is proud of it even though Earl's message, lifted from a documentary made several years ago, happened to be directed at his wife Kultida, Tiger's mother, from whom he was separated at the time.

No matter, at least to Woods.

"I think it's very apropos. I think that's what my dad would say," he said about the ad. "It's amazing how it – how my dad can speak to me from different ways, even when he's long gone. He's still helping me."

Then Woods went the populist route: "I think any son who has lost a father . . . who meant do much in their life, I think they would understand the spot."

Well, perhaps. It's all about rebuilding the damaged brand at this point and Woods has been doing very well in that regard here and not only by shooting an opening-round 68, the best first round at Augusta in his career, and following it with a solid three-birdie, one-bogey 70 on a much more difficult day of scoring.

"It feels really good to be in contention," he said, as he always does, noting that Ian Poulter was in the clubhouse two shots ahead and Lee Westwood was out on the course one shot better than that at the time.

Nor did Woods even blink, at least in his public response, to the whacking Augusta National chairman Billy Payne gave him here Wednesday. Woods acknowledged that the two men "did have a conversation" and when asked for his opinion of what Payne said, Woods responded, "I was disappointed in myself, too."

He said "absolutely not" when asked if he had heard even one negative remark from the gallery and that's easy to understand; nobody else heard any, either. Friday;s gallery, too, was much smaller than the throng that went every step with him Thursday.

He also said he didn't see the airplane towing the banners taking shots at him Thursday. (That plane, by the way, was reported to have been grounded Friday for mechanical reasons.) About someone some going to all that trouble and expense to zing him, Woods simply shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time."

He might have been referring to a banner towed by an airplane at Torrey Pines when he missed that PGA Tour stop. It said something like "Tiger, we miss you" and was from a local strip club.

Of peach cobbler, Nicklaus and moral lectures

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Every visitor to Augusta National finds his or her own favourite spot, whether it’s on the patio, sampling the peach cobbler, or at the putting green, or the gift shop, or the grandstand at the 16th, watching the pros skip balls off the water in practice.

My own particular favourite tends to be the tiny press stand beside the 12th tee, all the way down there at Amen Corner, where it’s always nice to sit with pal Arturo Fuente and contemplate life as it goes past, slowly and, apparently, without a care in the world.

That 12th hole is the diabolical little par-three when the Masters toona-mint often turns on its head. It’s the same hole where my friend Chris Smith from Carnoustie once hit his 8-iron to six feet and holed the putt, although he never, ever mentions that sort of thing to a guy who made 5 and 6 the two times he played there, once after skulling a sand shot back into Rae’s Creek (the horror, the horror).

This day, it was the place to sit and contemplate the wit and wisdom of Jack Nicklaus, who had come into the press room Tuesday evening for his annual palaver with the writers. Now, most athletes would rather jab hot needles into their eyes than open up with scribblers. We are a necessary evil for them and sometimes we’re not even necessary. Fine.

Nicklaus, though, likes to sit around and shoot the breeze. He's amiable, has a good sense of humour and always has some valuable insights gained from his decades of experience. For instance, here is his advice for Masters rookies.

“Watch, observe. I go back to my first Masters. I played pretty well from tee to green. I hit 31 of 36 greens (in regulation). That obviously means I didn’t play 72,’’ he said. “I shot (150) and had eight three-putt greens in 36 holes. Arnold (Palmer) was leading the tournament at 141 and he’d hit 19 greens in regulation. I said, ‘You’d better learn how to chip and putt and understand what happens on this golf course’,’’ he said. “That’s what I learned, by watching and seeing what people did.’’

He relayed a conversation he had with Tom Watson a half hour after Watson’s final-hole bogey cost him a miracle victory at age 59 in the British Open.

“He said he felt bad and I said, ‘Tom, how many 59-year-olds have shot 65 in the first round of the British Open?’

“I can’t think of any.’’

“How many have led after two rounds? After three rounds? After four roounds? I can’t think of any.’’

“But I didn’t finish.’’

“I said, ‘Tom, you played a great tee shot on 18 and you played what appeared to be a great second shot. Just happened to be that much too long.’ I said, ‘Tom, you picked the right club for your third shot’.’’

“He said, ‘I’m glad to hear you say that. I’m getting a lot of flak on that. But I goosed it.’

“I said, ‘So what? You had to get the ball on the green’. Then I said, ‘But then you hit the putt like the rest of us.’’

That got laughs. He almost always does. Pound for pound, Jack Nicklaus remains the best press-room visitor in sports, at least in this opinion.

Speaking of the press room, by now everybody knows that Billy Payne went off on Tiger Woods Wednesday morning, speaking of his “egregious behaviour’’ and laying into him pretty good for being a lousy role model for kids and so on.

That’s totally fine and Payne is entitled to his opinion, the same as everybody else. And you can see he is trying to show the club doesn't condone Woods's actions, nor is it complicit in helping him find a soft landing. But here’s someone who is slightly squeamish when it comes to hearing any high sheriff from Augusta National lay a morals lecture on anyone else. Given this club’s history and some of its woeful practices – such as barring blacks until three decades ago and still barring women as members today – it’s somewhat surprising (at least here) that the chairman didn’t adopt the same glass-house policy that most of Woods’s fellow pros did.

Like magic, full-sized trees simply appear at Augusta

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Much of the joy of returning to this beautiful place every spring, other than the celebration of waking up 365 more times, is coming back to discover what is new.

There’s a certain natural elegance about Augusta National, the sheer (manufactured) beauty of nature in its flowering glory and the impossibly green grass and so on. Every year, it seems, they change a hole or three, mostly lengthening them by pushing the tees deeper into the pine woods.

This year, the major renovation has come not in further lengthening an already long golf course, but in the incredible practice area, an 18-acre facility that, one year ago, was a flat gravel parking lot with its entrance off Washington Road.

Now? It’s golf heaven, a wide arc of practice tees that allow 400-yard drives, which renders an unsightly net unnecessary at the other end. There are target bunkers in the landing, plus a small forest of pine trees, 30 and 40 feet tall, that were brought in at that height and planted. There are practice bunkers and a chipping green and the whole area appears to have been there 30 years, awaiting its manicure.

That’s the thing about Augusta. Trees show up in places they’ve never been before and they’re not the little staked fellows that your grandchildren will see mature one day long after we’ve been patted on the face with a spade. They’re brought in as mature individuals from a nursery somewhere that the club owns and replanted.

Great care – meaning zero expense is spared – is exercised everywhere. For instance, when a small flash-quotes media facility was erected near the practice area, a lighting expert was brought in from a TV sports network to show them the best way to light it for the TV cameras.

With the new practice grounds (closed to members, by the way, and therefore used one week a year) in place, the necessity became finding a replacement parking lot. They solved this problem over the years by buying up the surrounding neighbourhood, house by house, over the years, flattening them and planting, or should we say relocating, a few more trees. Presto. There’s now an 8,500-car lot directly across the road from the brand new entranceway, where every ticket holder will be processed and screened.

It all appears like magic, where a year before had stood scrub land and a couple of driving sheds. It’s how they do things down here and, almost as much as the golf, is a portion of the anticipation of returning every year.

Tiger talks, but still won't say much

AUGUSTA, Ga.—Tiger Woods is letting out information, slowly and gradually, but certainly not about the sordid antics that precipitated his long and humbling free-fall from grace.

Woods was back on familiar turf at Augusta National Monday, first playing golf for 18 practice holes, during which he said he was “blown away’’ by the friendly reception he received from a large but mostly quiet gallery. “It touched my heart pretty good,’’ he said.

Then he got back on to more familiar turf, a half-hour bob-and-weave with the press at a Q&A in which he once again admitted to doing “terrible things’’ and “living a lie’’ that hurt his family and jeopardized his marriage.

The world’s top-ranked golfer has always been guarded in his dealings with the press, or at least has been for more than a decade. Monday was no different. Other than saying he cut his lip for five stitches and “had a pretty sore neck,’’ he wouldn’t give any more information about his mysterious car crash the night of Nov. 27 – “I got (a ticket for) 166 bucks and that’s case closed,’’ he said.

Neither would he go into any of the juicy details of his many extra-marital affairs, nor say why he recently underwent 45 days of in-patient therapy – “it’s personal, thanks’’ – or whether his wife Elin was behind his decision to return to competitive golf at this week’s Masters.

Which is fine; that is his business, his and his wife’s, even though there is a 24-hour celebrity news machine that requires feeding and once again Woods didn’t give it much to digest.

But he did let a few morsels escape.

For instance, he readily acknowledges being treated by Dr. Anthony Galea, the Toronto doctor currently under investigation for allegedly prescribing or providing illegal or performance-enhancing drugs to several clients, including high-performance athletes. He said his agent had been approached by federal investigators and Woods promised “full co-operation.’’

Woods said he had a torn Achilles tendon in early 2009, while he was in rehab for what he called his fourth knee surgery, and used Galea’s blood-spinning treatments. He denied again ever taking performance enhancing drugs or human growth hormone, two substances allegedly linked to Galea, and said he used the Toronto doctor “because he has treated so many athletes.’’

Woods admitted to using both Ambien and Vicodan, two powerful prescription drugs, but denied he had ever required treatment for dependence on either. He said he used Ambien to sleep around the time his father got terminally ill with cancer, then died.

The only other revelation might have been his admission that “golf wasn’t fun any more’’ even though he was winning so often, because of the sex-driven double life he was leading away from the course.

Which is the stuff plenty of people want to know about and the stuff he simply won’t talk about.

By the way, Augusta National restricted access to the room to one reporter for each media outlet. There was a master list of those allowed to attend and reporters were checked off at the door one by one as they arrived. There was only a handful of empty seats among the 207 chairs reserved for reporters.

Woods practices mostly in silence at Augusta

AUGUSTA, Ga. – A large but mostly quiet and reserved gallery is watching Tiger Woods play a practice round at Augusta National Monday morning.

In advance of his 2 p.m. press conference, Woods was going through 18 test holes, playing with Fred Couples. There weren’t many other golfers out on the course, although there was a helicopter hovering high over Augusta and, presumably, Woods during part of his front nine.

No one walking with Woods could detect any insults from the crowd; there were a few “welcome back’’ shouts but it was more gawking than noise-making.

Meanwhile, in what seems to be an unprecedented move, Augusta National has pre-approved certain media outlets, including The Star, for attendance at the 2 p.m. shindig. The press room holds about 225 reporters, plus a few more standing room, and there has been a limit put on the number of attendees. For instance, a wire service with three reporters here might get one or two seats, but not three. A paper with two writers present likely will get one seat. It’s that kind of winnowing.

Reporters on “the list’’ were given a numbered ticket – somebody bet me a 3-9-5 trifecta at Woodbine whenever they can get a nine-horse field – and that brought back memories of showing up at Augusta and being given a numbered ticket for the lottery to play the course the Monday after the final round. (Those who have won within the past seven years are ineligible to enter again.)

All seats for the 2 p.m. show are on a first-come, first-served basis, with doors opening at 1:15 p.m. and closing at 1:50. Why all these rules are in effect remains a mystery, considering Woods isn’t likely to say anything of earth-shattering consequence about his car wreck of last Nov. 27, or his marital situation, absence from competitive golf or 45 days of treatment for an undisclosed condition or problem. But we all shall see.

Woods arrived at Augusta Sunday and played nine holes with Mark O’Meara, his close friend and also a former champion, but did not take any questions.

Jays leave Florida with their running shoes on

DUNEDIN, Fla.

The go-go Blue Jays?

No way, but as they break camp in Florida and head for Houston and the final two exhibition games Friday and Saturday, the game plan on offence this season is to run a little more than last year.

The Jays ended their Grapefruit League season against the Yankees, or at least many of the Yankees, at Grant Field Thursday with a 5-2 loss and they did indeed hot-foot it on the basepaths, with three steals. This, along with what seems to be daily error from Edwin Encarnacion at third base, were the more predictable parts of the game and Encarnacion actually had two boots, leading to two unearned runs.

“I think it’s important to manage to what you have,’’ Cito Gaston had said before the game, laying out the grand plan for what will be a long season in terms of wins and losses. “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken (feathers) – and that’s not to say we have chicken (feathers) – it’s just that you can’t do it. I would not have a steal on for (glacial catcher Jose) Molina. I’m not going to do anything crazy, but we might open it up a little more.

“If it’s successful, fine. If it’s not, you’ve got to shut it down and find something else to do. What else can you do except increase your running game, the hit and run? Otherwise there’s not a whole lot else to day except sit there and wait for the three-run home run.’’

They have some power, but not the kind to wait on.

Aaron Hill stole a base in the third inning with two out and scored on Adam Lind’s double. Vernon Wells then beat out and infield single and he likewise stole second. Get used to it, although Lyle Overbay struck out to end the inning with the runners at second and third and people are already used to that.

A.J. Burnett was pitching for New York so, naturally, Jorge Posada was scratched at catcher shortly before game time. Burnett didn’t like pitching to Posada last season. He lasted 4 2/3 and looked so-so, touched for five hits and two runs. But it’s only spring training, even the end of it.