News you need to get through the day …
Some random thoughts for a Saturday morning after a waterlogged week …
Memorable for the wrong reasons
So, Randy Ambrosie, let’s recap your first week on the job as new CFL commissioner.
A player who grabs an official gets a mere one-game suspension (yuck), a quarterback trying to connect with the young fans you’re after via social media gets fined for an innocuous tweet (double yuck) and, to cap it off, an official throws a flag on the ticky-tackiest of ticky-tack infractions, eliminating a kickoff return for a touchdown which causes a Winnipeg woman to lose $1 million in a TV contest (yikes) and angering fans from coast to coast.
Maybe Week Two will be easier.
How much?
If a penalty flag hadn’t prevented Karen Kuldys from receiving that $1 million, she would’ve made more this season than 18 players at the CFL minimum salary.
We love Bob Ross
The Daytona Tortugas Class A team will host Bob Ross Night this evening in honour of the perpetually upbeat and massively afro’d PBS painting legend. There will be bobbleheads, painting lessons, T-shirts with the late artist’s image and the Bob Ross Happy Little 5k race. Brilliant.
The three most-creative minor-league promotions prior to this? Drum roll, please, as we count them down.
3. Awful Night (Altoona Curve)
The free handout for fans entering the park was a plastic spork, the PA announcer intentionally mangled the names of all the players and all music played was intentionally terrible and annoying. 2. Seinfeld Night (Brooklyn Cyclones)
The park was renamed Vandelay Industries Park, Andrea Doria survivors got in free, all babies shown on the video screen were described as ‘breathtaking’ and there was an Elaine dance contest. 1. Prostate Cancer Awareness Night (Myrtle Beach Pelicans)
Men entering the park received a foam finger. During the seventh inning stretch, the team’s general manager sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” over the PA system while getting a prostate exam.
Mr. One Dimensional
Milos Raonic was eliminated from Wimbledon this week in the quarter-final by Roger Federer. If you’re wondering why Canada’s top player can’t seem to get over the hump against the world’s great players, consider this.
So far this season, Raonic has won 91 per cent of his service games. That’s great. Trouble is, he’s lost 84 per cent of his return games. That’s not great. Put another way, his game is mostly all about his devastating serve. By comparison, Federer has lost only 73 per cent of his return games, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have lost 68 per cent, and Rafael Nadal has lost 67 per cent. It’s always going to be hard to beat the big boys if you can’t break them more often than that.
Where are the easy sets?
Further proof Raonic is too reliant on his booming serve? Even when he’s winning matches, many of his sets are close because he’s not claiming return games. He’s won just four sets all year by a score of 6-1 and zero at 6-0.
You could hear him from here
If you were at John C. Munro airport on Wednesday and thought, Gee that guy over
there looks a lot like Conor McGregor, you were bang on. The colourful UFC star flew in and out of Hamilton for his Toronto press conference to hype his Aug. 29 boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.
Behave yourself
A day after Tiger-Cat defensive back Will Hill was suspended a game for grabbing an official — a penalty that was far too light for an offence that is unacceptable in any sport at any level, anywhere — his head coach acknowledged his player had broken the rules.
“He was clearly in the wrong on one issue and he can’t lose his temper,” Kent Austin said, just hours after saying “undisciplined players aren’t going to play for us.”
This, of course, is the same Kent Austin who had to spend a game in the press box last season for losing his temper and slapping an official’s hand and the same Kent Austin who was fined the year before for intentionally bumping into Toronto receiver Dave Stala.
But for heaven’s sake, players, control yourselves.
Zing
Best line of the week? No contest. Comes from Peyton Manning who was hosting the ESPYs.
“(America’s) gymnastics team was so dominant that Kevin Durant told me he wants to play for
them next year.”
That’s a long way
Lots of buzz about Aaron Judge’s performance in the home run derby at the all-star game this week. The 6-foot-7, 285-pound New York Yankee won easily, with his longest shot going 507 feet.
How does that compare to the longest home run ever?
Hard to know if the numbers are legit since it was so long ago and the technology that measures distance today has only been in use since 2006, but Babe Ruth is said to have hit one 575 feet at Navin Field in Detroit in 1921.
The longest one in a game since the technology was implemented came from Giancarlo Stanton, who launched a 504-foot bomb last season at Coors Field in Colorado.