Pass on the Dutchie (and the Hedger too)

It might be a little early in the season for this rant, but we'll launch into it nevertheless.

Last night, as we settled down for our evening slumber, we flipped on the tube and headed up to the 400's on our digital dial to see if we could catch some baseball highlights. What we encountered was the following: Hockeycentral, Hockeycentral, blacked out hockey game, blacked out hockey game, Sportscentre and WWE Raw.

(Oh, and in case you were needing to find out which half of the NHL teams are going to the playoffs, you could always check in the 24-hour hockey channel, the NHL Network. But we'll come back to that point in a moment.)

Left with little other choice, we sat through a good twenty minutes of Sportscentre, or roughly just short of the amount of time that it would take for our head to explode as a result of watching TSN's signature clipdown.

Look, we get it. Canadians love hockey, and they just can't possibly get enough of it. That's fine. We can live with that. But what kills us is the way that the sports channels in Canada deal with baseball. You're lucky if you get more than a handful of games in the run of a show, and most of them are cut into 45 second packs that remove everything except for a scoring play, a strikeout and an error and give you little or no sense of what actually happened in the game.

Frankly, a meaningless scripted punch-up between two palookas who toil on the fourth lines of NHL teams gets more screen time than most ball games. And of course, we always get the full analysis of said fight from the Hedger-o-Matic Fight Highlight Script Generator:

"The two heavyweights square off...Palooka gets in a couple of solid rights before Jabroni gets back into it...We'll give the decision to Palooka, and that scrap inspires his team..."

And of course, you have to throw from this nonsense over to the panel of a half dozen hockey analysts and "insiders", who fill the air with so much blah-blah-blah, ultimately signifying nothing.

So fine. If TSN and Sportsnet and the Score and everyone else feels this is the only way that they can continue to sell putrid beer and pickup trucks to the throngs of latent homosexual hockey fans, then so be it. But how about an option for those of us who want to see some in-depth coverage of baseball? How about something for those of us who want to see what's going on around the Majors, along with some real honest to goodness analysis?

Of course, there is the promise that some time in the future, we might possibly get the MLB Network, or Rogers' Canadian version, the already licensed Baseball Channel. But given the current state of Canada's media industry and the dried up advertising resources, the chances of Rogers moving forward on a launch for their service seems remote, and unfortunately, the MLB Network won't get carried here until Rogers gives up on their license. That could literally take years.

And not that we want to be that guy who rails against the CRTC for denying us the pleasures of ESPN, but seriously, what we wouldn't give to sit down and watch Baseball Tonight. To our American readers, who are probably sick to death of listening to John Kruk's inanities on the World Wide Leader, you have no idea how much we envy you. Yours is truly a land of plenty.

Sadly, we have to come to grips with the fact that we'll have to wait until the Stanley Cup playoffs conclude sometime in mid-June before we get anything resembling actual baseball coverage in Canada. Groan.

A few quick thoughts on last night's game come-from-behind barnburner
-It's interesting to watch Scott Rolen dig in with his subtly tweaked batting stance. He looks a bit more upright in the box, and seems to be getting to the ball as quickly as ever, as evidenced by his eighth inning blast last night. Now if only we could dissuade him from the Coldplay entrance music.

-We keep waiting for Aaron Hill to show signs of...well, something less than good. Thankfully, he has looked great in the field (notwithstanding last night's botched tag play), and he's hitting the ball as hard as he did in his 47-double 2007 campaign.

-When B.J. Ryan struck out Marcus Thames in the ninth last night, Jerry Howarth made the call that he threw a "country fastball" by the Tigers' DH. We're not exactly sure what a country fastball is, but we like the sound of it. And if for the Beej, a country fastball is one that comes close to 90 MPH, then all the better.

Walkoffs, playoffs and brushoffs

Walkoffs
What's not to love about an 11-inning walkoff win? Especially one where your most dreamy hitting prospect ever comes up with a big two-out two-strike bottom-of-the-ninth hit against one of the best two or three closers in the game to tie the game up. Rosy-cheeked Travis Snider might not be hammering tape measure shots into the 500 Level (yet), but he's looked like he can fit in this lineup, in spite of being the youngest position player in the big leagues.

Oh, and don't forget Johnny McDonald driving in the winning run. That's always good for the soul.

Playoffs
We were all excited yesterday when we discovered that the Advanced A Dunedin Blue Jays had made the Florida State League playoffs. Playoffs! Then this morning, we come to find out that the D-Jays have already been sent packing by the Fort Myers Miracle...who just happen to be the affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. So what goes around...

But don't be too discouraged, faithful Blue Jays Single-A affiliate fans! The Lansing Lugnuts of the Midwest League started their playoff drive last night, albeit with a 3-1 loss to the Dayton Dragons, the Reds' affiliate in the circuit.

Brushoffs
We were listening to the game on the radio last night with a head full of NyQuil, so we missed the visuals of Travis Snider's first at bat in Toronto. From the sounds of things (via two outstanding posts from Neate at Out of Left Field and the Drunks), it's just as well that we didn't see it.

Forget it, Jake. It's Hockeytown.

Reason # 42,145 that we've grown to hate hockey

We fastidiously stay away from talking hockey, mostly because there is more than enough puckheads out there who can and do blather on about it 12 months out of the year. Plus, talking about hockey with hockey fans is a bit like talking about fire with cavemen: You can tell it's important to them, but they have a hard time expressing themselves in anything but grunts and howls.

But our ire was raised this week when we read the comments of Canadian Press and Sportsnet.ca columnist Pierre LeBrun, who waxed oh-so-eloquently about the Roy Family Debacle in the Quebec League playoffs last week.

"When did the tree huggers take over this bloody country? When did we all become such bleeding hearts that a junior hockey brawl shocked our collective senses so badly we became outraged?

Cripes, if anyone should be criticized it should be Chicoutimi goalie Bobby Nadeau for standing there like a Nancy Boy and not trying to defend himself when Roy came after him?"

So if we're understanding this correctly, LeBrun is saying that he's disappointed at the fact that the country doesn't share his creepy desire to watch teenage boys beat each other up. That this 19 year-old kid from Chicoutimi, who makes a paltry $50 per week, is a coward for not fighting the rampaging lunatic kid who was being egged on by his father (who has a reputation for domestic abuse that includes calls to the Denver police and ripping doors off their hinges, presumably in front of said same kid).

And why should this young man fight? Why should he, when he has his entire life in front of him, and one that probably doesn't include hockey beyond the next couple of years? Why should he tempt fate to see if he's the first person to die in a hockey fight?

Because some creepy, goateed, corpulent middle aged white guy wants his blood lust to be satiated by watching boys beat each other up.

Yeah. Hockey's not fucked at all.

Splitsville

So that's that. Another frustrating evening at the plate, topped with three Jays errors lead to a 6-2 loss and a split against the mighty mighty Royals.

Wilner, unleashed
We haven't had much of a chance this year to listen to Mike Wilner's postgame Jays Talk program this year, but decided in our frustration last night to tune in. Wilner was every bit as good as the fellas at Drunk Jays Fans describe, while the callers were just brutal. If you've never listened, just imagine a bunch of puckheads spewing the inanities that they use all year in their frustrations at the Leafs latest defeat, but trying to impose that axiomatic bunk onto baseball. "The Jays, they just don't got any heart." "They need some veteran leadership." We were half expecting someone to break out the idea that if the Jays were going to win, they need more Canadian players. (Maybe they can sign Gary Roberts.)

Oh, and one more thing
Odalis F'ing Perez? You've got to be kidding.