Sports | Sarah Millar

Archive for Sports

Why it’s a great time to be a Blue Jays fan

August 9, 2010 Sports 2 comments

The night the Blue Jays won the pennant
I was sitting in the second row
And I thought of you all throughout the game
And how we’d curl up on the sofa on a Friday night
And holler at the players
Like they could hear what we were sayin’

— Fallin’ by Bruce Guthro

Full disclosure: I am a Blue Jays fan first. Before the Ottawa Senators captured my heart, even before the Hamilton Tiger Cats made me fill with hometown pride, I have loved the Toronto Blue Jays.

It started when I was a kid. I would watch Friday night baseball games with my mother (the sports fan of the house). Baseball moved slow enough that I could follow what was going on. That was 1991.

We all know what came after.

First came 1992.

Then came 1993 — and Joe Carter:

Since then, we all know how the Blue Jays have fared. It’s been a long 17 years since that final win.

But I still loved them after.

The Jays get a lot of guff from this city and sports fans in general. No one really goes to games anymore (at the start of this season, nightly attendance dipped to just around 10,000 — in a stadium that has around a 50,000 capacity.

Travis Snider is one of the young Jays who has brought a lot to the franchise.

But here’s where everyone gets it wrong: This year, the Jays don’t suck. This year, the Jays are even more a victim of circumstance.

Their biggest hurdle to overcome is their division. And by their division I mean the Yankees and the Red Sox. Two of the American League’s top teams are in their division. If one doesn’t top the AL East, then it’s the AL’s wild card when it comes playoff time.

And yes, the Rays did it. They overcame the two AL East powerhouses — but their year just happened to come on a year the Yankees sucked. When will that ever happen again?

Even if you use the Rays argument as proof the Jays can overcome their division rivals, well now there’s three. Because the Rays continue to be at their top level.

Why don’t the Jays suck? A few recent reasons:

They have won five of their last six — against the mighty Yankees they took two of three, and they swept the Rays
Attendance at the Rogers Centre this year has been dismal to say the least.
Saturday’s game: Rookie J.P. Arencebia in his first big-league at bat hit a homer. he went 4 for 5 on Saturday.
That whole game, the Jays alone hit eight homers as a team (they lead the league in home runs — a stat they have maintained all year).
Sunday’s amazing one-hit wonder by Brandon Morrow — one out away from being a no-hitter, but 17 strikeouts by this 26-year-old pitcher
They’re doing it all this year with no Roy Halladay — most people forgot about the Jays as soon as Halladay left for the Phillies.

If the Jays could get more guys on base, I have no doubt they could be leading their division right now. Yes, they lead the league in home runs, but most of those are solo homers — which doesn’t help the scoreboard.

And there’s still a remote chance they could make a playoff push. The majority of Toronto’s games for the rest of the year are against division rivals and they’re only eight games back from Tampa for the wild card. If they can take at least two out of three from Boston, they could make up even more ground.

In Toronto, it’s easy to say our sports teams suck. And a lot of times, they kind of do.

But as every kid is told, winning isn’t everything. Do I want to see the Jays bring home the World Series again? You betcha. But I had more fun this weekend watching the Jays than I have in a long time.

For a team that wasn’t supposed to do anything, it sure has done a heck of a lot this year.

(Photo of Travis Snider via tom sullivan on Flickr. See more of his images in his photostream. Photo of Rogers Centre via pechisbeque on Flickr. See more of his images in his photostream.)

Implications of Waterloo’s steroids scandal

June 15, 2010 News commentary, Sports 2 comments

On Monday, news broke everywhere that the University of Waterloo’s football team was sitting out the 2010 season after players tested positive for steroids.

I’m not going to rehash the entire story here (the links above fill you in nicely), but there’s one thing that I haven’t seen in the coverage yet.

The impact of this scandal is huge — for players at Waterloo, players at other CIS teams, the schools, the students, the administration and the general public.

However, what I feel could be most damaging from this report is how it looks on CIS football to the general public who doesn’t really care about university football — sorry, Canadian university football.

Most university athletics in Canada take a back seat. Unless you know someone on a team, or went to a school that performed well (for football in Ontario that would be Ottawa, Queen’s, Western), then you likely could care less about university athletics.

I know because I worked with the York University football team for a year when I went to university. York’s team is lacklustre to say the least (they are almost at two years straight without a win). And that is what they are known for.

As was the case in 2008 when U of T broke the losing streak (set by York), losing their 49h game. It is times like that when university sports makes news (and yes, I am guilty of that too).

It’s not right, but it’s the climate in Canada. My fear with this steroids scandal is it will send more of the general public away from supporting these teams, and send even more Canadian kids with real talent and promise to colleges in the States.

Yes, we need to be asking ourselves if the steroids problem is more widespread, or in other programs at other schools. But we also need to support our athletes who are clean, because there’s a pile of players at Waterloo who lost their season yesterday to no fault of their own.

For some great commentary on the suspensions, read Bruce Arthur’s column from the National Post here, and a great post from Out of Left Field here.

Wilner’s suspension not censorship

June 5, 2010 Media, Sports One comment

A Toronto radio station reporter has reportedly been given the weekend off after speaking his mind about Cito Gaston, the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, on his blog.

Mike Wilner of The Fan 590 (which, like the Blue Jays, is owned by Rogers Communications), wrote at length about what he perceived to be a slight by Gaston during a scrum with the rest of the media after Wednesday night’s game.

Basically, Wilner wanted a specific answer from Gaston about why he chose to use relievers Scott Downs and Shawn Camp too early. All Gaston would tell him was to check the stats. Wilner kept pushing until a Jays communications person told him the question had been answered and to move on.

You can read the whole thing here, but here are some highlights:

Cito went on to tell me that it’s a lot tougher in his seat and that he can’t just sit there and blurt out anything that comes into his head. That was enough of the discussion for me. I think he also suggested I should come down and try managing

It’s unfortunate that I can’t have a legitimate discussion about strategy with the manager without him feeling as though he’s being attacked.

I don’t need to be belittled by the skipper in front of the entire assemblage when I’m asking legitimate, rational questions about a situation that he brought up earlier in a conversation.

The National Post reports that the Toronto chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America have written a letter to the Blue Jays, saying that Wilner’s suspension basically amounts to censorship:

“The baseball writers association would like to officially voice its support of the right of Mr. Wilner or any other reporter to ask challenging questions,” president Richard Griffin wrote according to the Post.

“Similar lines of questioning in the wake of difficult losses are not uncommon in all pro sports. The concern of the BBWAA is that this amounts to an attempt to either censor or intimidate the media coverage that the Jays receive on a daily basis in all four newspapers and the wire services.”

Here’s the thing, I don’t think Wilner was suspended because he asked “challenging” questions of Gaston but because he blogged about it on a company blog. And blogged by making it about him.

Maybe that’s the talk radio thing, but I would never — not in a company blog or otherwise — talk about how someone I interviewed made me feel. If a story subject made me feel like an idiot, the public does not need to hear about it. I need to do my job better, or discuss it with the person in question, or my employer. I do not put it out for the entire worldwide web to read. But maybe that’s just me.

After all, many reporters in a scrum will continue to ask the same question if they are not getting the response they want from the person in the scrum — whether he be a politician or a sports figure. So I just can’t see that being the problem.

And sure, this whole situation raises a whole bunch of questions because the same company that owns the team owns the radio station which employs the journalist in question. But I don’t think that has anything to do with it.

If that were the case, then anyone who ever wrote anything disparaging about Gaston or the Jays would have gotten a call from the organization about it demanding action. And while I do not now, nor have I ever, covered the Blue Jays — I think if that was how the Jays operated, we’d know about it.

If Wilner was suspended for the comments on his blog, I don’t think it’s fair to blame Cito Gaston or the entire Blue Jays organization.

Maybe, just maybe, The Fan suspended Wilner for a justifiable reason that we the public are not privy to.

And nor should we be.

Leave Chris Bosh’s Twitter account alone!

May 7, 2010 Media, Sports No comments

Raptors Bosh speaks to the media after finishing the NBA season in Toronto

This week, the Toronto media (not just sports media either, but the news media as well) have been going crazy over tweets from Chris Bosh’s Twitter account.

The fury really hit the fan on Wednesday when one Toronto news radio station might as well have changed their name to “The Chris Bosh Twitter Monitor.” You’d think nothing else was happening in Toronto that day (I mean it’s not like mayoral candidate George Smitherman fought back against “disgusting” comments made by fellow mayoral candidate Rob Ford or anything).

Instead, every 10 minutes, they quoted from Bosh’s Twitter page — and they weren’t alone, here’s just a sampling from around the Toronto media this week doing the exact same thing (searching the words Chris Bosh and Twitter in Google News turns up nearly 200 results).

Here are some of the Twitter updates that caused the ruckus to begin with:

Been wanting to ask. Where should I go next season and why?

(April 30)

Ok… Let me rephrase the question. Should I stay or should I go?

(April 30)

Sitting here watching the games wishing I was playing. I wonder if that MVP trophy is heavy?

(May 4)

Just to be clear. I never said that I’m not considering staying in Toronto.

(May 6)

Oh and he changed his location from Toronto to “everywhere.” And on his bio, he took off the fact that he is the Raptors captain. What else do you really need to go with this story?

What’s that? You should actually try to talk to Bosh or his manager? Well why would you ever do that? It’s not like reporting on a story solely based on what you read online has never gotten anyone in trouble before.

The way the media has been reporting it, via Bosh’s Twitter account and his online activity, is more how like a teenage girl keeps an eye on the guy she has a crush on than real reporting. It’s like the “Will-Mats-Sundin-give-up-his-no-trade-clause?” of the NHL trade deadline from a couple years ago (which that summer turned into, “Will-Mats-Sundin-play-in-the-NHL/Toronto-this-year?”).

Sure, it’s likely Bosh would not have made a comment on his posts. But I’m sure someone in his management would have, or would have at least provided a no comment, which would have landed a bit of cred to the story actually being a story.

And it is important to remember, that sports journalism can be like this a lot — especially when it comes to what is going on with a favourite player (it’s much like celebrity entertainment journalism that way). And in the world of the Internet — no media outlet is going to want to wait until there actually is a decision to report on the story (see Favre, Brett for more examples of this).

This isn’t an attack on sports journalism at all, rather it’s a critique at how easy it can be to just use the Internet to make a story when one’s not really there — yet. And that can be tough water to tread (just ask Chicago’s NBC who fell for an online piece of sarcasm about the Vancouver Canucks).

But above all that, it’s lazy journalism. It’s giving the masses what they want when nothing is there. I don’t want to here about what is going on with Chris Bosh — until we know what is going on with Chris Bosh.

A Twitter feed is not the Holy Grail of information — even if he is CB4.

New NHL history will be made commercials

May 6, 2010 Sports No comments

For the last couple of years, it seems like the NHL promotions department has consistently hit the nail on the head when it comes to ads for the league.

For me, the ads really started to pop out with last year’s “Is this the year?” campaign (especially the one with Patrick Kane, it still gets me teary whenever I see it).

The commercials for this year’s playoffs featured the tagline “History will be made.” Basically, you take a key moment in NHL history, make it look like an old movie, hear the game commentary for the moment and then cut the audio, throw in a piano and slowly rewind the moment. Finish it off with a perfect catchphrase (“What if Bobby didn’t fly?”) and the tagline, history will be made, and you’re done.

Six commercials were made. They were all pretty great.

Then the whole thing went viral and everyone on the net started making their own versions of them.

I thought I had seen all six of them until Sunday night’s Detroit-San Jose game. One came on and my boyfriend asked which one it was. I saw it was the Red Wings, so assumed it was the one for Steve Yzerman.

But instead of, “What if Stevie Y. didn’t inspire Hockeytown?” another question stared back at us afterward: “What if the draft ended after the fifth round?” It was for Pavel Datsyuk — and the video was them playing the Phoenix Coyotes (who the Wings played in the first round of this year’s playoffs).

When I visited the NHL’s official YouTube channel I found more videos — from this year’s playoffs. Which makes me believe the NHL is doing more commercials with remarkable plays from this year’s playoffs — now that’s striking while the iron is hot!

Here are a couple of my favourites: