Category: Sports

Cover photo by Chris Riebschlager, used under Creative Commons license

SweepingJay

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Last night I, and the rest of Toronto, watched the Jays beat the Texas Rangers in the bottom of the 10th inning, in just about the most dramatic and poetic way possible. That the winning run was scored on a throwing error by Rougned Odor, infamous for punching out Jose Bautista earlier this year (in retaliation for a hard slide into second, but really for the bat flip in last year’s playoffs), was just about the best possible way for the Jays to complete their first-ever series sweep.

Bring on Cleveland. Or Boston. Or whoever.

.:.

Cover photo by Chris Riebschlager, used under Creative Commons license

We the north

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Last night the Cleveland Cavaliers finally finished off the Toronto Raptors, after the Raps extended them to six games. I’d hoped for a game seven, but the Cavs just put the hammer down last night, the same hammer I really thought would sweep the Raps this round. But the Raptors are the Raptors, and they don’t go quietly. And that’s why we love them.

Disappointment over getting manhandled by the Cavs aside, no one views this year as anything but a success for the Raptors. They finished second, and made it to the third round of the playoffs, extending a true contender to six games after they swept their first two opponents. And let’s face it: the Raps weren’t considered a true title contender. This team wasn’t built to win a title; after the Raptors were swept out of the first round last year by a weaker opponent, this year’s team was built to not get swept again. The season was a check mark when the Raps won their direct round series against Indiana. It was a bigger checkmark when they beat Miami in 7, Miami being exactly the kind of team they would have folded to in the past.

So now, the challenge shifts to becoming a true contending team. If they can re-sign DeMar DeRozan they’ll have the core every top team needs: 2 all-stars (DeRozan and Kyle Lowry) and a strong third option (Jonas Valanciunas), but top teams surround those guys with strong bit players and good shooters who can extend the opposition’s defense. The Raps simply didn’t have that last night, or throughout the playoffs. Terence Ross disappears in the playoffs. Luis Scola might as well not be there. DeMarre Carroll’s a good defender but probably isn’t a reliable enough outside threat. Norman Powell’s still developing.

The Raps don’t have much cap room, but they do have a high draft pick (thanks Andrea Bargnani!) so I’m hoping they can add a good power forward or backup centre to replace Bismack Biyombo, who they almost certainly won’t be able to re-sign, and manage to sign (or, more likely, trade for) some veteran shooters.

Cover photo by Tom Maglieri, used under Creative Commons license

The second round

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The last (and only) time the Toronto Raptors won a playoff series, I wasn’t even writing this blog. And I’ve been writing this blog for almost fifteen years. So.

Actually, the Raps had never won a 7-game playoff series — in 2001 they beat the Knicks in 5 before losing to Philadelphia in 7. Then came a 4-year drought, then 2 straight first-round exits, then another 5-year drought. The last two years have seen hugely disappointing first-round losses to lower-ranked opponents.

This year, finally, and barely, the Raptors survived the first round. On paper they should have beaten Indiana handily, but it took 7 games. You could see this team almost thinking they’re jinxed, but they held on, and the proverbial monkey alighted from their shoulders.

Now, in the second round, they play Miami. Again, on paper, they should win this, but Miami stole home court advantage in game 1. The Raps won game 2 and I’m hopeful that maybe they can regain their regular-season form, but…I don’t know. So far they seem tentative, almost cursed a little. Who knows, maybe they’ll pull out this series too and move on to the 3rd round and we’ll celebrate that milestone.

Right up until they play LeBron and the Cavs.

[UPDATE] They did indeed pull out that series win over the Heat and moved on to the 3rd round, and we all celebrated that milestone.

And then they played game 1 against LeBron and the Cavs.

God be with you tonight, Raptors.

.:.

Cover photo by Tom Maglieri, used under Creative Commons license

Chimps Batch Jays Owen

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That was a busy-ass week. Fun too.

On Tuesday we grabbed some dinner at Wine Bar and then went to see a talk by one of Nellie’s heroes, Jane Goodall. Such an impressive human being, and her final story of the night (shown below) pretty much says it all.

On Wednesday we grabbed dinner at Batch with our buddy GB, visiting for the week.

On Thursday I met my buddy Joe at the new Bar Hop (my first visit, believe it or not) where I had an excellent Burdock session saison and then availed myself of one of his Jays tickets, with which we watched the Jays beat the Yankees. Labatt’s acquisition of Mill Street at least meant I could have a 100th Meridian to go with this view:

Last night we went over to our friends A+A’s place and had a seemingly Dan-tailored evening: grilled meat and charcuterie, stellar beer (including a Gueuze Tilquin they brought back from Brussels, bless their little hearts), cool music that made me want to start collecting LPs again, and a cat named Owen who blithely tolerated my attention. We turned into pumpkins on their couch. It was, after all, a busy-ass week.

Cover photo by marnie webb, used under Creative Commons license

Chrash

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Back in October I blogged about the amazing start to the Montreal Canadiens season: eight wins in eight games. That had never happened, even during the dynasty years. Things looked promising.

Then things went in the shitter. Carey Price got hurt, and ended up sitting out the entire season. He wasn’t the only long-term injury: the Canadiens are third in man-games lost this year, and as this chart from mangamelost.com shows, more injuries tends to equal fewer wins.

They were effectively out of the playoff race months ago. They didn’t even finish the season that badly — they didn’t tank so much that they’ll get a top-5 draft pick.

It could be worse though. I could be a Leafs fan.

.:.

Cover photo by marnie webb, used under Creative Commons license

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!!!!!!!!***”

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

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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

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

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