It's Tuesday afternoon, and rather than create more tension between local Toronto media and those dirty, filthy weblogzones which offer unsubstantial claims about the habits of athletes, we may as well drag some politics into the mix.
This is from a charity soccer game in Winnipeg, where the mayor Sam Katz got a bit of a high boot on some poor kid from the other team.
Five weeks after the company was supposed to have filed documents to the city, assumingly with financial details. Everybody and their grandmother think that the company doesn't have enough money to buy the team, otherwise it would have been done by now.
This is one of the strangest stories you'll read on the net today. A Lundar, Manitoba hockey fan dialed 911 multiple times in an effort to convince the RCMP to bring the Jets back to Winnipeg.
The emergency dispatcher politely told the angry caller there was nothing she could do to help him and reminded him that he was tying up a valuable resource before hanging up. But the man continued to phone back, claiming he had a lot on his mind.
How did this end?
The final straw came when the man began insulting the 911 operator, eventually calling her a crude name. She warned him that his number had been traced and police were being sent out to arrest him.
"If you’re coming to get me, can you bring me some smokes," was his reply.
A related story has a Toronto fan calling emergency dispatch demanding Brian Burke trade for a top-line centreman. Winnipeg should really count their blessings, knowing their shot at a Stanley Cup is just as good as Toronto's this year.
Well here's a mini-controversy piling up like empty beer cups over rows.
After the first two games of the season (both at home) saw Blue Bomber fans stack their empty watered-down Molson cups up rows and rows of seats, the team had to respond.
Unfortunately, the Winnipeg Football Club continues to face new challenges with respect to unruly and/or disorderly behavior in the stadium facility during the course of game day. Specifically, this behavior relates to the “beer snake” concept. Regretfully, we witnessed the beer cups being thrown at the conclusion of our home game of July 9th which resulted in several minor injuries to our fans as well as many emails and communications to our office voicing concern and displeasure from our fans.
There's probably good reason to ban it. According to the CBC article, the beer snake spanned 30 rows. I'm not a mathemagician, but if we conservatively estimate that a row of seats is a yard long (we're not accounting for incline or the curve of the cups) and it's about five cups to an inch of beer snake, then we're looking at a minimum 5400 cups located in one super-drunk area of the stadium to be used as ammunition when your team loses at home to Toronto.
-Somehow I think that Joey Votto has this 'Final Vote' All-Star thing locked up. Not only does Votto have the endorsement of former MVP Justin Morneau, but I'm pretty sure that Billy Wagner's campaign doesn't have a re-imagining of a Styx song going for it.
Votto went 0-for-2 tonight, but prior to yesterday's games he had the league lead in most important batting categories: Home runs, on-base percentage, slugging, and, by extension, OPS. Not only does this mean that Votto is turning into a player as good as Albert Pujols, but that the 'Eh' Factor now pretty much only recognizes statistics invented by Bill James. (Votto also lead Pujols in runs created. We needed to use our collective fingers and toes to figure that one out)
Then Ryan Zimmerman, also part of the 'Final Vote' decided to be a poor sport and hit a walkoff home run tonight. But, if Votto's 21 home runs didn't matter in determining who made the All-Star team, I doubt that one from Zimmerman will.
-We like some members of the St. Louis Cardinals. Like Blake Hawksworth, who started against Jeff Francis today. T..t..two!!! Two Canucks started on the mound tonight at Coors Field (In Canada, our Coors Field is stronger).
Unfortunately, the two combined for nine innings, 14 hits, seven earned runs and six strikeouts. Damn.
-Why Not Winnipeg? asks Dave Naylor (played by Aaron Eckhart) in a joint effort between TSN and the Globe and Mail. Well, here's why, Jason Brough of the Kurtenblog says. I guess that solves that.
