Category: Sports

Cover photo by Loaded Dog, used under Creative Commons

What a week-ish

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It’s been a busy 8 days, considering I haven’t been traveling or anything. The mother in law visited for about a week. We had a huge dinner at Jacobs & Co. I spent Saturday, including a Fieramosca dinner, involved in a work conference. Good Jays games and bad Jays games. Absolutely insane amounts of work.

I spent tonight eating dinner at Hawthorne with Nellie, planning my attack on Cask Days tomorrow, and watching the Jays’ season end in game 6 against the Royals, in a game they probably could (should) have won. But hey, at least the Habs are 8-0 to start the season. So there’s that.

.:.

Cover photo by Loaded Dog, used under Creative Commons

Elemental

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

I have an emotional hangover. I sportsed too hard last night.

Plenty of ink has already been spilled about the Blue Jays game 5 win over Texas to advance to the American League Championship series. (Cathal Kelly’s story in the Globe was the best, I thought.) All I can say is that it was definitely one of the highlights of my sports-fan life…to go from so low to so high, to sprout a profuse belief in the sporting gods, all in the space of a single epic inning of baseball, was mildly profound. I can’t imagine actually being at the Rogers Centre Skydome for the game, as some of my friends were.

We’d had tickets for the Toronto FC game last night, but given how long the Jays game ran over we really didn’t think we’d make it over to BMO Field. But after Jose’s bat flip we figured we’d make a break for it: we assumed the Jays would win, and if they relinquished the lead, I didn’t want to watch it. So in the middle of the 8th we jumped in a cab and beat it west before the mayhem began. As it turned out, the mayhem began at the corner of Queens Quay and Bathurst, when every car around us at the traffic light began honking wildly.

Despite it being freezing cold, we’re glad we made it to the TFC game. They clinched the first playoff berth in team history last night, on a highlight-reel goal from the incomparable Giovinco, who’d gotten off a plane from Italy just a few hours before. For at least this one night the sports gods were on Toronto’s side.

All in all, a pretty good evening. Oh, and as I type this, the Canadiens are about to win their fifth straight game to start the NHL season, the first (!) time in their storied history that’s happened.

Sports!

“But he’s not even a very good Prime Minister.” “***WHO CARES HE’S FAMOUS OUTTA THE WAY LITTLE GIRL!!!!!!!!***”

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I stared at this a lot last night. I mean, not this particular guy’s sweatpants-covered junk, but rather crowds of people all but standing on top of me.

See, Nellie and I went to the Raptors game last night. We hadn’t seen one in a while, and we decided to buy good tickets. After all, it was Andrew Wiggins’ first game in Canada, and against the T-Wolves the Raps were all but guaranteed a win. They did win, but it was closer than it should have been.

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Anyway, we discovered when we arrived (after it took us ten minutes just to walk the last 30 feet to our seats) that his gloriousness Stephen Harper was sitting across the aisle from us. That’s his head and torso (and, uh, son) in the bottom right of the picture. The crowds that were clogging up an entire section of the ACC weren’t his entourage, they were — and I still have a hard time even believing this — people lining up to have their picture taken with him.

*Sigh.*

Now, I’ll give the security guys credit: they actually tried to keep the aisle clear during play, as did the ushers. But the selfie-seekers are idiots, and would stand, gape-mouthed and blocking traffic, with Blackberries in hands until they could get a picture with that magnificent head of hair. As such we couldn’t see some of the game, and missed the entirety of the half-time show and on-court entertainment, including Raptor antics which, as everyone knows, are at least 15% of the reason to attend a game.

I actually felt a little bad for Harper…I think he just wanted to watch a basketball game with his kids. But then again, he decided to sit in a place which afforded maximum photo ops. Maybe he should have sat in a box where people wouldn’t bother him and where, oh I don’t know, crowds of people wouldn’t have trampled and blocked the thirty people nearest him who paid good money for their tickets.

The very best part? At some point in the evening he did a photo op with some actual players, and his social media lackey tagged the wrong player.

Oh, and the idiots next to us had a Wand of Narcissism, which just kind of capped off the evening.

11069260_10153062412070673_3175115648376994575_nMaybe the only thing salvaging the evening was meeting up with Kaylea, Jenna, and Jordan over some pizzas at Libretto. We used beer to wash away the distaste.

Cover photo by Rob Nguyen, used under Creative Commons license

Rocky Mountain Horseshit

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As you might have seen in previous posts, we spent a lot of time at the Air Canada Centre between Christmas and last Monday. We watched about a dozen World Jr games there, which means we saw the same people, watched the same between-periods entertainment, and heard the same terrible in-arena songs. It also means we had no options for good beer.

I’ve never understood the need that some people have to drink beer while watching sports. I mean, if it’s good beer, or even moderately decent beer, then yeah, great. But I can’t imagine what madness seizes the brains of the people who paid $15.25 for a glass of Coors Light, Molson Canadian, or MGD. I mean, maybe a Creemore (which cost $17), but those weren’t even very easy to find. I’d wait and drink real beer at Cork’s between games, like Black Oak Nut Brown or Great Lakes Winter Ale. Bonus: I didn’t spend 20 minutes lining up to piss.

It’s not like the ACC is the only Toronto arena serving shitty macro beer though. Skydome Rogers Centre has taken flack for not serving any craft beer at Jays games after severing ties with Steam Whistle — which brews their beer literally next door. That practice led to Toronto being rated near the bottom of all MLB teams by the Washington Post, and from what I can tell saved from being dead-last only because the Post gives them a better uniqueness score than other teams, presumably because other teams don’t carry Keith’s.

But back to the ACC: given all the beer nearby, and in province, and in Canada, it’s inexcusable that they’re still serving the mass produced foreign-owned (or half-foreign-owned) crap. The Canucks now serve craft beer at their games. Nashville has an annual craft beer festival for Predators fans. Nashville, fer chrissakes. We may not be in Quebec (speaking of which: get on it, Canadiens, you have world-class beer on your doorstep) but we do have breweries like Beau’s, Muskoka, Nickel Brook, Sawdust City, and Wellington in Ontario and the likes of Bellwoods, Black Oak, Great Lakes, Left Field, and Steam Whistle right here in the GTA.

All I’m saying is that it would have been nice to drink a real Canadian craft beer while watching Canada win gold. Who knows, maybe when the tournament returns in two year it’ll happen. Hey, the beer store monopoly appears to be in the midst of death throes, so anything’s possible, right?

.:.

Cover photo by Rob Nguyen, used under Creative Commons license

#HereWeGo

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It’s an annual Christmastime tradition to me, watching the World Junior hockey tournament. Since this year’s tournament is being split between Toronto and Montreal we bought four ticket packages — two for us, two for CBJ+M. We won’t see Canada play any preliminary round games, but we’ll see them in the playoffs. Assuming they make the playoffs. *gulp*

We missed the exhibition game against Russia last week while we were in NS, so our tournament started with the official games. We watched Russia barely squeak past Denmark in what turned out to be a very exciting game. Apart from pockets of Russian fans the entirety of the ACC was cheering for the underdog Danes, and with a 2-0 lead they nearly pulled it off. Alas, by the time it got to a shootout the Russian skill took over.

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We had almost two hours to kill before our second game, so we wandered over to Maple Leaf Square. The Real Sports Bar was predictably packed, so we went in search of Corks, a rumoured craft beer bar in the back corner of a Longo’s supermarket…no, seriously. We found it, and chose from a very solid list of local craft beer and wine. I had a Black Oak Nut Brown; Nellie had a Collective Arts Rhyme & Reason pale. Nellie was full from her earlier bucket of Coors Light at the game but I had an additional half pint — alas, the Great Lakes Winter Ale special tap was off, tasting flat & watery. Still, at $6 for a pint of craft and with local wines from Tawse, Fielding, Malivoire, etc. on tap I can see this being a regular hangout during the tournament.

We got back to the ACC in time for game 2, wherein Sweden thumped the Czechs. The Toronto fans were delighted when their prospect, William Nylander, scored a goal. Shortly thereafter a “Go Leafs Go!” chant went up, which was as sad and painful as it sounds. With the game safely in hand we left ahead of the crowd and found some dinner.

We found it in the latest outpost of Pizzeria Libretto, which we’d never visited on Ossington or the Danforth. The lineups at the original when it opened put us off for a long time, but the hype is real: the plain old pepperoni special was a perfect pizza. I can see this place becoming a new favourite. We left for home, full but not too full, and watched Canada destroy Slovakia 8-0.

Today we’ll head back to the ACC to see whether Denmark can make a game of it with Sweden, and to see Switzerland make their debut.

Photo by woody1778a, used under Creative Commons license

20 years ago today

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This day twenty years ago was one of the happiest of my life. I watched my Montreal Canadiens defeat the Los Angeles Kings 4-1 to win the Stanley Cup in five games. Sure I’d been alive for five Canadiens cup wins up to that point, but don’t remember ’76 through ’79, and was only vaguely aware of the 1986 cup win. I didn’t become a hardcore fan until the early 90s, and by 1993 I was obsessed.

It’s all stuck with me so clearly. I can still remember the results of each game in order. I can still name the forward line combinations and defense pairings to a man. I can picture all the crucial points in the playoffs. Vincent Damphousse winning game 3 of the first round against Quebec, the only time the Habs were really threatened. All those overtimes against Buffalo and the Islanders. Guy Carbonneau asking to shadow Gretzky after 99 ran roughshod over Kirk Muller in game 1 of the final. Eric Desjardins’ improbable hat trick in game 2 after coach Jacques Demers rolled the dice with an illegal stick call. Patrick Roy winking at Tomas Sandstrom. John LeClair owning overtime in LA. Demers dressing Donald Dufresne for the final game so he could get his name on the cup. Carbonneau, the captain, letting Denis Savard lift the cup first.

Until that point the Canadiens had never gone more than seven years without a cup win. While it’s nice to celebrate the 20th anniversary of an unexpected win, it’s sobering to think of how much the team, and the league, have changed. Not just for the Habs: no Canadian team has lifted the cup since that night in Montreal, two decades past.

.:.

Photo by woody1778a, used under Creative Commons license

Photo by Hockadilly, used under Creative Commons license

Honorary assist to Brant Blackned

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19 years ago when I was a university sophomore in Halifax (side note: I AM OLD) the city got an exciting new sports team: The Mooseheads. They were the first team from the Maritime provinces to join the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (there are now six) and it was the first opportunity I’d had to watch the primary feeder league to the NHL.

I confess, I didn’t follow the team too much after I left Halifax, but was excited to see them win the 2013 Memorial Cup — the  tournament between the top major junior teams in the country — tonight in Saskatoon. Well done lads, and congratulations to Halifax. I surely wish I could be there tonight.

.:.

Photo by Hockadilly, used under Creative Commons license