Sports media picked wrong guy
A quick note to my brethren in the Canadian sports media who voted for Denis Shapovalov as Canadian Press male athlete of the year earlier this week. You’re kidding, right? You don’t really believe the 18year-old tennis player was our best in 2017.
Your vote was cast accidentally by computer error. Or sent after a staff Christmas party when you’d had six too many eggnogs.
Or perhaps made at gunpoint, held hostage by some maniacal tennis fan roaming the country forcing sports editors to vote for him.
Because, while he’s an exciting player who had a nice year — maybe even a really good one — no selfrespecting sports expert could possibly say it was the best.
Consider the evidence. Which should have been done before you voted.
Your choice as the cream of the Canadian sporting landscape (male version) won zero titles in 2017. He went 12-13 in pro events leaving him with a losing record. He finished the year as the 51stranked player in the world.
And, while he memorably beat Rafael Nadal in a thriller in Montreal, he just-as-memorably smashed a ball into the eye of a chair umpire costing his country a Davis Cup victory.
There were certainly enough high points to make this an intriguing season, too. But athlete-of-the-year material? No.
Some would suggest his sudden emergence from obscurity pushed him to the prize.
Fair enough. But if that’s the criteria for winning awards then Macauley Culkin should’ve won the 1990 best actor Oscar instead of Daniel Day-Lewis because he really burst onto the scene that year with Home Alone.
So who should have earned the title?
Joey Votto — who has yet to win one of these awards despite probably being the greatest position player in Canadian baseball history — posted ridiculous numbers for a miserable Cincinnati Reds team. The future hall of famer finished just a hair behind a guy who hit 59 home runs in the race for National League MVP.
His performance was so remarkable the much-clearer-thinking folks who choose the Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s top athlete (male or female) tapped him for that a few weeks back. He would’ve been a fine selection here, too. Yet, in this contest, he garnered just an embarrassing 17 per cent of the vote.
Then there’s Sidney Crosby. I know it gets tiring to vote for the same guy again and again. But there’s a reason that happens. He’s that good year after year, which is why The Spectator’s sports department voted for him.
He just won his third Stanley Cup, his second Conn Smythe Trophy, his second Rocket Richard Trophy and finished second in scoring and in voting for the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP. To top it off, he landed in the top-10 in voting for the Selke Trophy as best defensive forward.
And, of course, we can’t ignore Connor McDavid. In just his second NHL season, the 20-year-old won the Hart, won the Art Ross Trophy as scoring leader, won the Ted Lindsay Award as best player as voted on by his peers, and led the Edmonton Oilers on a terrific-and-unexpected playoff run. Making him the best hockey player anywhere.
So, let’s see. We have a choice between the second-best player in the world this year in one sport, the first- and second-best players in the world in another sport, and the 51stbest player in the world in a third. Argue all you want about who wins that contest but there’s not much doubt about who doesn’t come out on top. Yet that’s who you gave the award to? Seriously? Making it three years out of the past five for tennis players?
This isn’t to dump on Shapovalov. The guy they call Shapo is a rising star in a terrific sport. His day will certainly come if he continues on the trajectory he’s riding.
But now? This year? Compared to those other three?
Uh, no.