Rating the tubeheads

Now here's some dog-days material: Chris Zelkovich's readers' poll of the best and worst in sports broadcasting.

AP PHOTO

Football gold. At least, the guy on the left.

Okay, I'll bite (it's either that or do a where's-Malkin post). And with nearly four decades of time wasted listening to this kind of stuff, here's my own choices drawing on all those dead brain cells:

Best baseball announcer: Vin Scully or Jon Miller. Take Scully, for longevity's sake.
Best baseball analyst: Tony Kubek was good for a number of years. Amazingly, he kept his mouth shut most of the time.
Best football announcer: Chris Cuthbert is the people's choice. I can't argue, although it's not a category where there are a lot of candidates. Pat Summerall for years was the gold standard in the U.S., and he fits too.
Best football analyst: I kind of like the stylings of Cris Collinsworth on the NFL -- okay, I tolerate him -- but again, it's football. Glen Suitor does a decent job on the CFL these days.
Best hockey announcer: Easy. Danny Gallivan. From today's lot, Jim Hughson by a mile.
Best hockey analyst: Before he became a best-selling author, Leafs president and parliamentarian, Ken Dryden was pretty good. Well, I liked him, anyway.
Best other announcer: It's a shame we don't get more of Kevin Calabro here.
Best radio host: Don Landry.
Best TV anchor: Is there such an animal?
Best TV host: Brian Williams. No one gives the time in Saskatoon like Brian.
Best hair: In his prime, Hubie Brown, including a highlighted perm that looked like bubble wrap on his head.
Most annoying anchor: Aren't they all?
Most irritating laugh: Oh c'mon. Joe Bowen in a slow trot.
Guy most in need of a microphone muffler: Howard Cosell. In his prime, he was a motormouth for all seasons, and had the requisite heightened sense of self-importance. For a little slice, check out this 1983 interview with the CBC's Barbara Frum.
Guy whose mouth should be duct-taped: Bill Walton and Tim McCarver. A tie. Can you imagine getting to your seat in the airplane and finding these two on either side of you?
Newspaper guy on TV who should stay in newspapers: All of 'em.

What a racket

After a reasonably successful men's version here, five of the top seeds have already pulled out of this week's women's Rogers Cup in Montreal because they couldn't care less of injuries or fatigue or whatever. Thus, having in the previous post here referred to the preseasons as one of pro sports' greatest swindles, lo, here comes another in the long line of sporting rip-offs.

I'm not much of a tennis fan, I confess, but I might give it more of a chance -- or not be so quick to dismiss it -- if these non-major, meat and potatoes events weren't so prone to the last-second owie. The same thing happens in big-time golf, where a long line of "entrants" are named in press releases and advertisements in the months and weeks leading up to PGA stops, but none of them are confirmed.

But at least in women's tennis, changes are on the way, as Paul Hunter reports:

A longer off-season and in-season schedule breaks to keep the athletes healthy, mandatory player attendance at fewer top-tier events and smarter travel schedules based on geography, are all part of the proposed solutions that might fix the women's game by the 2009 season, according to Stacey Allaster, president of the women's tour.
"It's unacceptable for a Tier 1 event like the Rogers Cup not to have a Tier 1 field," said Allaster, who, given her 15 years working for Tennis Canada, is particularly sensitive to some of the withdrawals that have plagued the women's game here and in Montreal.
"We need the top players to play the premier events."

So there you go. They're taking care of it. By the 2009 season.

Get rid of the exhibition 'season'

It's very quiet out there, but with the Leafs exactly one month away from opening training camp, it's a good time for -- an NFL collection, with opening night a little more than three weeks away:

AL BEHRMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Clinton Portis: Hors de combat. More to the point, hors de preseason.

The Washington Post's Michael Wilbon on the too-long, too-dangerous, otherwise nearly devoid of meaning NFL preseason, after Redskins' Clinton Portis was injured over the weekend:

Okay, it's not news that football players get hurt. And the Portis injury wasn't nearly as gruesome or as maddening as, say, the blast to the knee of Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer in that playoff game against the Steelers in January that still has Palmer on the sideline.
But it's worth getting hurt in the playoffs because it's the playoffs.
It's unspeakably unnecessary to get hurt in the preseason because it's nothing.
(Snip)
But the story here concerning the Redskins wasn't the way the team played or how Jason Campbell looked; it was the Portis injury. When I asked him what he thought about the number of preseason games and chances to be hurt, Portis looked into a bank of cameras and said, "Let's get rid of some of these games -- four games is ridiculous -- then you go out and have a 16-game season and the playoffs are after that."

In general, the preseason in any pro sport, with its regular-season ticket prices, its betting lines and its stars just one hit or one false step away from missing the real games, is one of the greatest swindles going. Give them 10 days or two weeks of workouts, a week of fine-tuning with the first team and the backups set and if you insist a game or even two without veteran players logging heavy minutes (and in some cases, no minutes at all), and turn them loose -- all tickets priced so low that no one comes out of it feeling burned, and casual fans have a way into buildings priced so high in the regular season they're all but unattainable.

(UPDATE: Just moved, Washington's Kerry Carter, from Vaughan, is out for the season with a knee injury suffered in the same exhibition game Sunday night.)

Good work from Vito Stellino in Jacksonville: This NFL that Roger Goodell is inheriting from Paul Tagliabue is not quite the unsinkable ship that it's made out to be, with small-market owners in Jacksonville (and in places like Buffalo, too) looking for a new economic model (via the Sports Law Blog):

If Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver had the right sense of his colleagues' feelings at the league meetings last week, when Goodell was elected on the fifth ballot, the new commissioner might soon find himself in a crisis mode.
Weaver said the consensus of owners is that they need a new business model. The old model is the agreement that owners passed by a 30-2 margin in March but hasn't even been finalized in written form.

From the weekend, this season's rule changes (now let's see how many are enforced. The 60-second replay review limit, down from 90 seconds and always ignored, is a case in point).

Weekend surprise VII

Three takes on the same insanely catchy tune:

First, the Pipettes' Pull Shapes.

Second, the clip from Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls cheez classic that inspired it.

Finally, Peter Crouch (remember him? Remember the dance?) liking to rock n roll (note the poignant slo-mo embrace with Beckham). Ah, the memories.

So long Becks, see you soon

Now that he's been dropped from the England team, what's the timeline on David Beckham riding off to the sunset with the L.A. Galaxy or the New York Red Bulls, first broached a little over a year ago?

TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Last night, a sellout crowd of 66,830 in Seattle givin' some love. And today, a pink slip from England.

Depending on your point of view, Becks is/was either a comet flaring across the sky or merely the latest in an assembly line of say-nothing, sell-lots corporate athletes. With his absence for England's exhibition match Wednesday against Greece confirmed, the roundup of young heirs to his lucrative throne as King of the Metrosexuals is a short list topped by Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo and including the likes of Lionel Messi, Alberto Gilardino, tennis's Rafael Nadal, and perhaps even the NBA's Tony Parker. Each of them carry global credentials, and are young enough to stick around for a while and pick up the requisite tattoos, endorsements and WAG accessories (unless the 31-year-old Beckham is truly a once-in-a-generation phenomenon whose departure from the largest stage will, a la contemporary-megastar template Michael Jordan, create a vacuum -- highly doubtful).

You can come up with other candidates, I'm sure. And Beckham's still playing, of course, readying for another season at Real Madrid, which last night played in front of a sellout crowd of 66,830 in Seattle. (Proving again that the appetite for soccer -- big-time soccer -- is there in the U.S.A.)

Deprived of the largest international stage now, the slow fade is beginning for Beckham and hotted-up talk of a move to MLS is just a matter of time. Meantime, I'll revive my favourite quote on the subject of Becks, from an unnamed Real Madrid director (the dear departed Galacticos architect Florentino Perez, presumably, or one of his flunkies) upon his signing there three years ago:

"Just look how handsome Beckham is, the class he has, the image. The whole of Asia has fallen in love with us, they all want to shag us, because of Beckham. Between Ronaldinho and Beckham, I'd go for Beckham a hundred times. Ronaldinho was too ugly to play for Madrid."

Famous last words.

Related: Beckham makes Page Six.

Annus horribilis

The Argos are in Hamilton Saturday with as much at stake for a game in August as you'll find. That is to say, not much. Third place in the east for the winner, with still more than half a season to go. Wow.

But there could be much more going on here, and as any seasoned Toronto observer knows it's never as bad as it looks. Usually, it's worse. No one I'm aware of has quite grasped how truly awful, how unprecentedly putrid this calendar year is starting to look like for Toronto's pro sports outfits. The Leafs and the Raptors missed the playoffs. The Blue Jays' recent nosedive and ongoing pitching woes have removed them from serious playoff contender status. And now it's the Argos' turn, finding that pinning your hopes and offence on a grandfather quarterback, however sterling, is chancey going.

TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Marching unknowingly into a new era in Toronto sports.

Here's the thing. Should the Jays and the Argos go on to miss the playoffs it will mark the first time EVER that Toronto is denied so much as a sniff those glorious horn-honking, gridlocking moments on Yonge Street that follow a Game 1 first-round victory -- at least since 1967, which is to me, anyway, the demarcation line between old world and new in Toronto sports, not to mention the history of this country.

They've come close to this across-the-board futility. When the Leafs missed back to back in '97 and '98 and the Raptors were soiling diapers, the Argos were winning the Grey Cup then climbing gently off Mount Flutie with a playoff appearance. When the Leafs missed the playoffs in '89, '91 and '92, the Blow Jays were progressing from matching AL bridesmaids in those first two years, to World Series champions in the last.

The Leafs, being this town's leading losing light, have missed the playoffs 12 times since 1967. But each time, someone's always bailed out Tronna, thus forestalling a total outbreak of cross-Canada schadenfreude. Here's each one of those years since that glorious day when our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers (and by now, maybe even a few great-grandmas and dads) were watching a Stanley Cup parade:

1968. Argos lose eastern final.
1970. Argos lose eastern semi.
1973. Argos lose eastern semi.
1982. Argos lose Grey Cup final. Jays miss playoffs.
1984. Argos lose Eastern final. Jays miss playoffs.
1985. Jays win AL East, lose American League Championship Series. Argos miss playoffs.
1989. Jays lose ALCS. Argos miss playoffs.
1991. Argos win Grey Cup. Jays lose ALCS (again). (Still, a banner year, eh? At least till 2002, when all four teams actually made the postseason).
1992. Jays win World Series. Argos miss playoffs.
1997. Argos win Grey Cup for second straight year. Jays miss playoffs. Raptors miss playoffs.
1998. Argos lose eastern semi. Jays, Raptors miss playoffs. In terms of ineptness, it's perhaps the worst year, until we move forward to...
2006. Leafs and Raptors miss playoffs. Jays, Argos still to come.

Of more importance than the question of whether the Jays, or more likely the Argos, can pull themselves out of this mess -- how hard can it be to finish in the top three of a four-team division? -- is the notion of who will be best equipped for next year, when FC Toronto join the group.

I know. I forgot the Rock, and the Lynx, and any one else I missed? One day back, and it's just a ray of sunshine eh? Looking ahead to 2007, who's got the best shot to rescue Toronto from sports purgatory? I still think the Jays are closer to that than anyone else, and the Leafs farthest away.

Related (a week old, but I've been away, remember?): Sporting News ranks Toronto No. 41 among North America's best sports cities for 2006.

Yes, It's back

Exactly one month later -- in blog years, that's akin to a millenium, and in Mundial years, let's just say the odometer on that car has rusted out -- like it or not, It is back.

So what'd I miss? Momentous stuff -- Floyd Landis, caught; Maurice Clarett, bucking for a CFL tryout; Wade Belak, re-signed.

TORONTO STAR PHOTO

Like it or not, JABS, and Wade Belak, are back.

For now, I'll throw out a few links have caught my eye just to ease back into things and maybe get these cold embers up to room temperature. I didn't do much surfing during the time off, but a couple hats go off to faves Vancouver Canucks OpEd and Sports Guy North for their 24-hour blogathon efforts. 24 hours of continuous blogging. No wonder us daily newspaper types are getting killed (and on the subject of SGN, I've been tagged with one of those meme type things. I'm not quite sure what it's all about, but will advise and yes Kent, perform my blogger-bro duty).

Now to some of those links:

I know these are the dog days, and some of you are afflicted by golf addiction. Here's The Morning News' Ralph Gamelli with some tips, because, you know, it's such a mental game:

Hitting Out of the Woods

1. You’ve never liked the woods, have you?
2. You don’t even have a good excuse. You were never lost in them or abducted by crazed mountain men. You never suffered any kind of trauma in them whatsoever. You’re just a sniveling coward, afraid of what animals could be lurking in there.
3. Snakes.
4. Coyotes.
5. Maybe even bears.
6. You’re 50 feet away and already you can sense a pair of inhuman eyes in there, staring at you. Hungrily. Don’t go in. You’ll never come back out.
7. Take a penalty stroke and drop another ball at the nearest relief point.
8. Swing, you pansy.

And still on golf, Dave Feschuk, this summer's hardest-working (and best) columnist, filed today on young Hamilton swinger Salimah Mussani, playing in this week's CN Canadian Women's Open in London despite suffering from lupus:

"It's scary," she said yesterday. "Before it happens, you can't hear anything. Everything goes mute. And then I'd slowly lose the sensation in my fingers. And then, suddenly, I was just out. It's happened a few times. And I know it's coming and I'll drink more water and sit down. ... But sometimes it's so intense, your body just shuts down."
Such is Mussani's ongoing battle with lupus, a decimator of the immune system for which there is no cure. Because lupus is triggered by sunlight and stress — a couple of golf's unavoidable occupational hazards — two doctors told her she would have to quit golf. But Mussani found a third doctor, at McMaster University's lupus clinic, who in turn found a drug that has, for the past couple of years, helped a rare athlete resume a promising career.

Good find over at Sportsfilter, with Foxsports' Randy Hill riffing on sports' biggest cheaters:

What level of personal protocol would you sacrifice to be the world's fastest human?
Thanks to the predicaments of cyclist Floyd Landis and sprinter Justin Gatlin, a culture of alleged cheating may have reached critical mess.
But breaking the rules is not unprecedented.

And one more, from a while back, sent along by e-mailer Robert Simpson and posted here in case you missed it -- O Canada coming in at No. 2 on SI's list of greatest sports songs. Never mind that No. 1 is the dreadful "We are the Champions". We're No. 2!:

TORONTO STAR PHOTO

Proud to be Canadian.

Yeah, it's a national anthem, but most national anthems sound like dirges and this one is lump-in-the-throat gorgeous. It summons images of gleaming ice and players on skates, heads bowed under Stanley Cup banners -- even when it's played in baseball stadiums.

I've never been all that keen on anthems, but there are exceptions and O Canada, at times rousing, at times butchered, always seems to provide them. This spring's Rexall Place singalong. Roger Doucet on New Year's Eve 1975 in Montreal. Mary O'Dowd at Yankee Stadium (reg. required). (Unfortunately, I can't find links to clips for those last two. If anyone can help, please do).

Best anthem memories, or some jock rock that moves you (with so much of that SI list -- and pro arenas -- stuck on stale numbers like Glory Days and Centre Field, of late I do like the Decemberists' "Sporting Life")? More golf tips? A cheater or two? Send 'em along. Like it or not, JABS is back.