Finally, I mean FINALLY someone took notice of the piece of crap daily column that appears in the Toronto Sun sports section!! For the longest time I really thought it was only me!

“From the Department of What Might Have Been:

Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum were the starters in baseball’s all-star game last night.

Imagine them as teammates.

It almost happened 19 months ago, when the San Francisco Giants offered Lincecum to the Blue Jays for outfielder Alex Rios.”

No, that isnt how this went down Mr. Loewen, it was the other way around! It wasn’t JP (whom you all know how much I love) who had to be talked into this, he pitched this deal to the Giants. The implication from reading Loewne is that it was JP who blew this one and that is entirely unfair. Greg Brady, FINALLY called Loewen out for his ummmm “reporting”, going so far as calling Loewen a liar and suggesting that perhaps Loewen needs to both apologize to JP! It was classic radio this evening. I say it again, For the good work that the good writers do, it only takes on Loewen to spoil the lot.

So I asked the question about the Marlie head coaching gig and a few people emailed me that Dallas Eakins got the gig. If that is the case, it isn’t anywhere publicly. Eakins is the director of player development on team Burke. At least so far, no one is listed anywhere as the Marlies coach.

So I see where the NHL has re-upped it’s deal with NBC. Are those of you stateside pissed? Here, in Canada it doesn’t really matter that much, we get every game every second, everywhere. What it does mean is that come playoff time, an NHL game will likely be moved from one network to another “because of that damned horse race!”. For my 2 cents, you can’t have a viable sports product in the USA and not be on ESPN is some way shape or form. If this NBC deal prevents that, then it is a mistake.

I also see where Bettman told the world today that all is fine in his little world. Hell yes it is, if you brought home 7 million extra large, wouldn’t you be telling everyone just how great things are????

Anyone surprised by this news?

“A federal judge Wednesday sentenced former NFL player Travis Henry to three years in prison for financing a drug ring that moved cocaine between Colorado and Montana.

Henry, 30, of Frostproof, Fla., was arrested by federal drug agents last October – just a few months after the running back’s release from the Denver Broncos”

Didn’t think so.

Great stuff in today’s Chicago Tribune on les affairs Tallon. Get a load of this:

“And then there was Hawks Chairman Rocky Wirtz weighing in on what Stan Bowman brings to the job that Tallon couldn’t.

“He’s 36, Dale’s 58,” Wirtz said. “We always want younger people, so what he brings is a system in place to get better. It’s nothing that Dale was doing, but also Dale’s at the tail end of his business career. I’m at the tail end. I’m 56. I want my son and cousins to do better than I am. I have a son who’s 32. I hope they are constantly pushing me.

“We constantly want to bring younger people up in the organization. We don’t want a bunch of players that are 42 years of age on the ice. There’s a reason for that.”

Paging Dale Tallon: Your attorney is on line 2 talking excitedly about an age-discrimination suit.”

Of all the asanine things for an owner to say, that has to be right up there as numero uno. I mean Ballard had the whole Soviet Airplane thing, but what the hell was going on in Wirtz’s head when he said this?? Clearly things have been smoothed over as Tallon was forced to speak to the press today and predictably said all the right things. Remember the story about the Blackkhawks players going to his dad’s funeral??? Tallon is a class act. He got a 2 year extension, probably at decent coin and the ability to take another job with another team should the opportunity arise. However, the truth, will come out.

2 things of interest here, 1. The blackhawks are in deep trouble cap wise, all the experts are saying, yet they just promoted their capologist to GM! 2. More importantly, Wirtz wants younger guys in the office, why did he just hire Scotty freaking Bowman!!!!

Sports news tonight is hard to come by, so I provide you this tale of a missing parrot:

“there’s a missing talking African Grey Parrot from Niagara Falls that knows how to use the F-word, asks for a beer when she’s thirsty, and chants “go leafs go” whenever there’s a hockey game on television.

It also knows how to sing Frosty the Snowman, can count numbers from one to 10, and when someone turns on the vacuum cleaner it reminds everyone in the room “don’t make a mess, don’t make a mess.”

The four-year-old parrot, who goes by the name of Biscuit, went missing on Sunday from Bill Brown’s home on Fairfield Place near Kalar Road in Niagara Falls.

“It’s a very smart bird,” said Brown, adding everyone has been devastated because Biscuit is just like one of the family. They’ve had her since she was six months old and it would cost about $2,400 to get another one.

The African Grey Parrot has a beautiful and majestic appearance and is considered by experts to be one of the most intelligent birds. It is often referred to as a bird that has both “brains and beauty.” Because of their level of intelligence, they require a great deal of attention and patience.

Biscuit is grey in color, is about 14 inch high and has a red tail.

The family has put up posters, talked to people in the neighbourhood and notified the humane society, but they’ve had no luck.

Brown said they have a big dog named Chevy and what might of happened is that a car outside caused the dog to bark, that frightened the parrot which managed to escape through a screen door.

“We didn’t realize she was missing until I went looking for her. We found her about three hours later but she flew over the house toward the hydro field near Pitton Road,” said Brown.

He placed her cage in the field for a day hoping she might return looking for food, but that didn’t happen.

Biscuit had her wings clipped so the family didn’t think she could fly. They wonder if the wings managed to grow back.”

That really sucks. But friggin cool is it to have a bird that chants go leafs go…It’s the avian version of Howard Berger!!!!! Seriously folks, if you see a Grey Bird chanting go leafs go, call Nelson Millman, I mean 905-380-0662. For more on the beer drinking, potty mouthed maple leaf rabid bird click here

Speaking of Howie, who is drinking some colored kool aide while up north, in his blog he implies that one Tomas Kaberle will be dealt before the middle of August when the window to do so closes. I still say he goes to Boston, but what the hell do I know?

Jeff Blair, @globlair tweeted tonight that he thinks there is only a 40% chance of Roy Halladay getting traded. FYI.

Oh, and the NHL Schedule game out today……in other news, the sun came up today too.

Fairly reliable sources are telling TSM tonight that it is looking less and less likely that the Indiana Pacers will match the Raptors offer sheet to Jarret Jack. No of course Bird (see a theme here, Jeff Parrot, missing bird, larry bird?) could pull a 180 (that never happens in basketball) and decide otherwise, but it appears that Jack will be a Raptor sooner rather than later. To those on either the Fan or 640 who read this, go get him signed up for a weekly spot- the guy is good.

Also good? Richard Griffin on 640 with Brady and Watters, if they were smart they would try to go exclusive with him because he is very good on the radio.

Have a good night folks, TSM

Here’s your bikini of the day from bikinibeat.org:

On Fan 590 Tonight- thanks to Mike S.

- open phones with McCown from 4:05 to 4:40
- co-host from 5:00 to 7:00 is Jeff Blair
- director of CFL officiating Tom Higgins

- Peter Keating, ESPN The Magazine senior writer

- Michael Boone of the Montreal Gazette on the Habs

- Jamie Campbell of Sportsnet on baseball

On 640 with Brady and Watters:

440 – Dale Tallon
5:40 – Garnet Exelby – new leaf dman
6:10 – Darren Dreger
6:45 – David Naylor – Globe & Mail CFL writer

TSM Take- I like Tallon, I liked him more before yesterday, however GM’s with no time left on a contract have been known to do strange things. Exelby, one of the more interesting names in sports. I can’t wait to see him play Heatley and the Sens ( ) Dreger is on, Darren, can you share your new found love and admiration for one Dwayne Eklund? David Naylor is on to talk CFL- Little Watters may be out of the game, but pops sure loves his CFL. Speaking of CFL I have to admit I had to google Higgins to see who he is. IF you are curious why the director of officiating is on look below. Keating isn’t my cup of tea, sorry. The Habs spent a lot of money on small guys. Curious to see what beat writer has to say. Blue Jays playing like we expected, what’s Campbell got to say?

We are surrounded by bad news. Don’t dare watch the nightly news these days without a handful of Tums. From coast to coast, north to south, and east to west there just isn’t too much to smile about out there. This appears to be especially true in the world of sports. Players entering rehab, shooting themselves, making lewd comments about ex-girlfriends etc. are easy front news stories. History will remember this time if for nothing else as the train wreck generation. We love bad news about someone else. A crash on the highway stops traffic the other direction so people can stop and take a real good look. Enough, you get the point.

2 stories recently involving NHL clubs caught my eye and in the spirit of the holidays i thought it was a good time to share with those out there not familiar.

The obvious one involves the Chicago Blackhawks. The team was in town to play the Buds and were supposed to fly back to Chicago the next morning. However, the team’s general manger Dale Tallon was heading to northern Ontario to attend the wake for his father who had just died. The players, acting on their own accord altered the plans to return to Chicago. Instead they were able to arrange for a practice in Toronto the next morning and pay out of their own pockets for 2 buses to drive them north to attend the wake.

“I thought to myself, ‘What is this? Am I back in Chicago?’ ” Tallon said. “They started coming in and, wow. My mother, she gets the hockey package and watches all the games, it was so great for her. She was having such a hard time with it, we all were, but to see that, it was so heartwarming and it really took the edge off everything. That was the buzz the rest of the night. My dad was a hockey player and there were pictures of him when he was a young player, so the guys were looking at all the pictures and stuff. It was really cool.
It makes you feel good about the character of our team and the homework we’ve done as a staff in drafting and getting these players. They’re genuinely good kids. It makes you feel good about our young population, to make the decision they did.”

The story doesn’t end there. Not sure how many of you have been up to Gravenhurst, where the wake was, but at 9pm on a Sunday night there just isn’t a whole of choice when it comes to dining options. The players headed for the golden arches and the coaches to Harvey’s.

“There weren’t a lot of people in the restaurant and the players said they barely were recognized as they ordered. “I’d say there were about 10 people there, maybe,” Sharp said. “I don’t know if they were surprised and knew we were an NHL team, or if they were just surprised a bus load of guys came in in their suits.” What did happen was the players acted like kids when they saw a display of hockey cards that McDonald’s was giving with the purchase of meals.”It was cool when you walked in, there were all these hockey cards on the wall because it was a giveaway and if you bought a Happy Meal you got a set of cards,” Sharp said. “So right away everyone was looking to see if they were in this set of cards. But it was just Kane and (Jonathan) Toews and maybe (Nikolai) Khabibulin. I think it was just the three of them.” The players filled the restaurant, eating their burgers and fries as people in the store finally began to sense this was the Chicago Blackhawks eating in their little town. “It was pretty funny because most guys don’t eat McDonald’s,” Bolland said. “The last time I had McDonald’s was, I think, last summer.”"Not to sound like I’m a health nut or anything, but I haven’t eaten at McDonald’s in years,” Sharp said. “It was funny to see guys like Dunc (Keith) and Ben Eager, guys that really, really take care of themselves and watch what they eat, sitting there eating chicken nuggets and Big Macs.”

Try to imagine the scene of that Mcdonald’s on that Sunday night in cottage country. It’s 9pm and there are 10 people in the restaurant. Suddenly 2 greyhound buses unload and a ton of guys in suits enter the um, restaurant and end up ordering happy meals so they can get the hockey cards! Grown men, making serious coin, buying happy meals so they can play with hockey cards. This is what the game should be. It is nice to hear that beneath it all, the business can step aside if only for a day and the guys can be the decent people we always hear about and then be kids at heart loving the game they play as much as we who watch it do.

You can read more from the story here

The second story happened in Washington DC. Imagine you are 26 years old, working for an NHL club when you are sitting in your cubicle, doing your job producing the team’s website when the GM appears at your desk to tell you that you need to get suited up for the game that night. Now I am sure many of us out there have had a similar dream (save for the web producer part). I am sure we have all at one point in our lives envisioned the GM of our team asking us (why us?) to suit up for the big game. Well, Brett Leonhardt lived the dream for all of us. The pride of Waterloo Ontario has been fortunate enough to play goal the for the caps when needed in practice. However, with Jose Theodore out with an injury and the third-string goalie Simeon Varlamov stuck in air transit McPhee was stuck. What else is a GM to do but walk down the hall and tap the 6′7 web producer on the shoulder?

“Before the game, (the players) were telling me, ‘Be yourself. You’ve been doing this your whole life. They made me feel really comfortable. In the warmup, I didn’t want them to not shoot their hardest because it was me. I tried to challenge them and help them get them ready for the game. (The players) were awesome. They couldn’t have been better. I’ve practiced a couple times with the team, so the guys were familiar with me, and I travel with the team because I do the Web site. The guys were cheering and high-fiving me.”

Brett got to sit on the bench in full equipment, jersey on for about 30 minutes of real time, just over 10 minutes of the first period when Varlamov showed up. What did the 26 year old do when he got relieved? Showered, dressed and headed up to the press box to do his job!

Can you imagine a better holiday present then that. Here is hoping someone took lots of pictures and video for him to show his kids and grand kids. One that day, Brett Leonhardt was able to live the dream so many of us lived. Quite a lesson for all of us this time of year to teach our kids. Keep dreaming, you never know who is going to come tap you on the shoulder at your cubicle to get ready for the big game.

TSM is trying to confirm whether he had to sign a contract and got paid for one day as an NHler. If not I am hoping that Glen Healy steps in and gets the kid his due!

Happy Monday to all…