I can’t even tell who’s happier that this daring jump high-five worked — the little kid who survived the Oklahoma City tornado or the wheelchair-bound Russell Westbrook. Either way, this is the best.
Gary Carter played for the Montreal Expos for a long time. He also played for the New York Mets for a long time. But he played for the Expos and was beloved there so now, after his death, Gary Carter has been memorialized with a street in beautiful downtown Montreal.
The former Faillon St. was renamed Gary Carter street in a ceremony yesterfday. Faillon runs near the former site of Jarry Park, the Expos home field when they first arrived in Montreal. According to the Associated Press, there is another ceremony planned for June 15th when a local baseball field will be renamed for The Kid.
We’re now down to the semi-finals of the NHL 14 Cover Vote campaign and it’s down to the final 4: Pavel Datsyuk, Martin Brodeur, John Tavares and Sergei Bobrovsky.
We say farewell to 2 Toronto Maple Leafs who made it far into the campaign. Pavel Datsyuk narrowly defeated Joffrey Lupul in what was the tightest matchup of the last round. James van Riemsdyk made things interesting for Martin Brodeur as they battled for a spot in the semi’s, but Brodeur’s increased social media activity got him the W.
Semi-final voting runs until May 26th at 11:59 PM ET. The winner of the cover vote will be revealed during the Stanley Cup Finals.
I’d like to say that when I look back on this offseason, the highlight will be a humble man trying to sell socks. Unfortunately, nature and the evil hand of time has stepped in, and over a stretch of just a few months two of the league’s greatest middle linebackers have retired. First, it was Ray Lewis, and now Brian Urlacher.
After Urlacher wasn’t retained by the Bears, there was only mild interest in his services on the open market. Ultimately, that along with his decline over the past few seasons led to Urlacher’s decision to retire which he announced today. It’s a decision that’s felt inevitable for a while.
Here’s his statement:
“After spending a lot time this spring thinking about my NFL future, I have made the decision to retire. Although I could continue playing, I’m not sure I would bring a level of performance or passion that’s up to my standards. When considering this, along with the fact that I could retire after 13-year career wearing only one jersey for such a storied franchise, my decision became pretty clear.
“I want to thank all the people in my life that have help me along the way. I will miss my teammates, my coaches, and the great Bears fans. I’m proud to say that I gave all of you everything I had every time I took the field. I will miss the great game, but I leave with no regrets.”
More words shortly.
So the new director of football operations at New York City FC is American playing legend Claudio Reyna:
Reyna, 39, has strong ties to both MLS and Manchester City, and is one of the most decorated figures in American soccer history. He spent four seasons playing for Manchester City from 2003-07 before returning to MLS, where he joined the New York Red Bulls as the franchise’s first Designated Player. He appeared in 29 matches for the club before injuries forced him to retire midway through the 2008 season.
Reyna is leaving his position with the US Soccer Federation as Youth Technical director. This is as pitch-perfect appointment as Man City and MLS could envision. An former American international who featured in four World Cups, an ex-City midfielder, and a person with experience in youth development. That’s the appearance of course, and MLS has staged managed this with consummate professionalism.
Politically though, it was also an intelligent way to ingratiate City with the local football scene. I’m still waiting to see the chips starting to fall with regard to City’s owners, once the cable news cabal gets wind of it. But until then, smiles all around!
Sergio Garcia would like to remind us that racism still exists. Unfortunately, his method for doing so was not a public service announcement, but a joke aimed at Tiger Woods that referred to fried chicken. There are two things that are awful about this: 1) The public reinforcement of an incredibly demeaning stereotype that the majority of us would love to do away with; and 2) His attempt at irreverence wasn’t even remotely funny.
It all started two weeks ago during the Third Round at The Players Championship at Sawgrass. Tiger Woods decided to take a wood out of his bag – signifying to the crowd that he was going for the green on the par-five second hole – just as Sergio Garcia was taking his swing. The crowd cheered Woods’s decision, causing Garcia to slice his shot.
During a rain delay, Garcia vented some of his frustration while speaking with the Golf Channel:
Well, obviously Tiger was on the left and it was my turn to hit. He moved all the crowd that he needed to move, I waited for that. You do have a feel when the other guy is going to hit and right as I was in the top of the back-swing, he must have pulled a wood and everybody started screaming. So that didn’t help very much.
… and so it began.
“Jarome, can you please answer the question in such a way that it fits what I’ve already decided to write?”
The problem with the Stanley Cup Playoffs, in a way, is they focus greater attention on a smaller number of teams. This means writers who were previously writing things about the Avalanche or Flyers, for instance, are now writing about the Blackhawks or Rangers. National writers in particular, who have been paying attention to the various comings and goings of teams league-wide, descend on cities throughout North America like a plague of locusts and analyze everything with the most powerful microscopes known to man.
This, in and of itself, isn’t strictly a bad thing all of the time. National writers tend to be the very best in the business, well-connected and intelligent and insightful and knowledgable, much more so than, say, someone who just covers the Bruins all year long. But the problem is that in the ongoing pursuit of angles from which to view such-and-such a series necessarily leads to some rather silly observations, from national and local writers alike, to take hold and become part of the national hockey conversation to the point where it can dominate the zeitgeist.
Take the San Jose Sharks. They are good this year. Well, they’re good every year. But they’re good this year too. This in and of itself is no real surprise, especially because they’re not, like, exceptionally good. They finished sixth in the West, not great or anything, but up one spot from last year. That’s also down from winning-the-division-every-year. But the media’s narrative is that this year’s Sharks are different, likely because they swept the Canucks. The reason for this difference seemingly had very little to do with half of Vancouver’s roster being out injured, but everything to do with The Coming Of Age Of Logan Couture.
The number of times you’ve heard “The Sharks are Logan Couture’s team now” is near-astronomical and it must be said that he is indeed very, very good and probably, at age 23 and a multiple-year veteran, becoming a more vocal leader. But the way people talk about this team, you would think Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau — LOSERS WHO STINK AND CAN’T WIN — have been left by the curb with the bottles and cans to be picked up by the local sanitation department. This was only reinforced when Couture was the one who happened to score the overtime game-winner in Game 3 to help the Sharks avoid going down 3-0 in their series. This was one of 25 goals Couture has scored since the season began in late January, but this more or less random event, the result of a lengthy power play opportunity in overtime, lent credibility to the idea that he’s The Leader now. Thornton and Marleau, meanwhile, shuffle around in the background, mere point-a-game players in this postseason because, again, they are losers. And Couture is not, no matter how many games his team is down in this series with Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »
With the bevy of rumours, reports and general speculation over Bryan Colangelo’s job status running rampant over the last few weeks, we’ve already had plenty of time to assess Colangelo’s actions and words recently. On that note, I’m not going to spend any time on Colangelo’s conference call with the media from earlier today after it was announced that he was being relieved of his General Manager duties.
Having said that, new Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment CEO Tim Leiweke held a much more candid media call on Tuesday morning that is worth talking about, so here are some talking points from that call..
