Oiler alert: real fan likes a good game

Boston Pizza posted “Let’s Go Oilers” on a mobile sign in Penticton. How could a B.C. restaurant imply they are cheering for the Oilers?

Quick, call in the National Guard. Revoke Boston Pizza’s business licence. Put them in Facebook jail for a month.

Memo to those who were offended – rivalries are what makes sports fun.

In Windsor, Ont., sports fans are equally divided between Red Wings/Maple Leafs and Blue Jays/ Tigers. In the case of Major League Baseball, most Oldtimers in Windsor prefer the Tigers because the Jays have only been around since 1977. In other parts of Southern Ontario there are still some Cleveland fans because they were the only games radio could pick up in those days.

In the mid-1980s, I worked in an office where there was an equal number of Detroit Tigers to Toronto Blue Jays fans and the two were in a pennant race for a couple of years. To me, it seemed as though everyone cool was cheering for the Tigers. The nerds were all Jays fans. It didn’t matter, it made things a lot of fun especially the year the Jays blew a comfortable lead to Detroit and lost on the last game of the season.

London, Ont., which is geographically halfway between Detroit and Toronto, was featured in a USA Today article in 1987 on this very subject. Sports bars try to remain neutral in London, but there are unofficial “Leafs bars” and “Wings bars.”

It must be very boring when everyone is cheering for the same team. I think I’d enjoy living in Chicago where they have two Major League Baseball teams.

If you’re still angered by Boston Pizza, please remember, the Oilers are also a Canadian franchise. Good for Boston Pizza for stirring things up a bit. As for my own personal favourites, for selfish reasons I hope Vancouver goes all the way because we sell more copies on the newsstand when Canadian teams are doing well, especially Vancouver. With the Canucks, it’s hard for me to cheer for the ownership after the shabby treatment they gave Bruce Boudreau. (I realize the players didn’t make that decision.)

In all honesty, I’m a bigger fan of a good game or good series, not necessarily of any one team.

I’ve gone to Major League Baseball games before where the score was 8-0 by the end of the second inning for the visiting team. That’s not a lot of fun.

Go Canucks go!

I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from Tom Isherwood for a while. His name hadn’t been in my mailbox for a few weeks.

The regular (some could argue he was too regular) in letters to the editor was in hospital and died two weeks later. He was 85.

As a child of the Second World War, he was sent from the UK to Canada while his three siblings went to Australia. Every child psychologist knows to never split up siblings. Apparently, they didn’t understand this in the 1940s.

Tom was outspoken about the injustices of children of war and finally penned an autobiography because there’s very little written on this chapter in history. For a self-published book, it sold well.

I met Tom face-to-face only once. His brother Joe came from Australia. They hadn’t seen each other since childhood. I felt honoured when they shared their story with us.

Tom and I both love animals. He helped put Olalla on the map. He disliked most politicians, but notable exceptions were MPs Dan Albas and Alex Atamanenko. Why did he like them? Because they returned his calls.

His letter writing, although far from polished, was sometimes sarcastic and funny. He recommended that former premier Christy Clark run for the regional district and said in response to a proposed user pay system for Penticton that the only “facilities” he will use here are if he has to go to the bathroom.

Last Christmas, he vowed to take a self-imposed exile from the letters page. That lasted nine days.

Tom was a huge cheerleader for the newspaper and I greatly appreciate that.

Plug: The best open mic that I’ve attended on a frequent basis is at Highway 97 Brewing Co. in Penticton on Tuesdays from 6-8 p.m.

James Miller is valley editor of Okanagan Newspaper Group.