By Ami Angelwings
4pm hour – Listener calls with Bob McCown
- Callers are about the Blue Jays, whether Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods is the best golfer, whether Peyton Manning should be MVP, Vince Carter
- One caller thinks that Dave Perkins should be on the hiring committee for the new manager
5pm hour – Bob McCown hosting, Stephen Brunt co-hosting
First segment: Talk segment
- Bob and Brunt talk about the US election
- Bob talks about Molson-Coors saying publicly that they will be seeking compensation from the NHL for lost beer sales due to the lockout
- Bob and Brunt discuss Eugene Melnyk escaping a fine from the NHL for comments he made on PTS
Second segment: Interview with Rob Becker, lawyer, PTS legal analyst
- Becker discusses Penn State’s cover up of their sex abuse scandal, and whether their lawyer is culpable or honestly didn’t know what was going on
- Becker talks about Roger Clemen’s assertion that because he was found not guilty of purjury, that the BBWAA must treat him as innocent of steroid use in hall of fame voting
- Becker says that simply because he was found not guilty under a criminal law standard doesn’t mean that regular people can’t decide for themselves on the evidence whether he did or not
- Brunt and Becker proceed to get into a really heated argument about steroid use and whether you can judge from evidence if players have used
- Bob asks them if Pete Rose should be in the hall of fame, Becker and Brunt both say no
Third segment: Interview with Jon Paul Morosi, FOX Sports baseball writer
- Morosi talks about baseball free agency, believes the Jays should get Anibal Sanchez
6pm hour – Bob McCown hosting, Stephen Brunt co-hosting
First segment: Interview with John Shannon, Sportsnet hockey analyst
- Shannon is at the secret location where the NHL and NHLPA are having discussions, can’t reveal where they are
- Shannon still thinks it’s a possibility that there could be a deal and the season will be saved
Second segment: Interview with Ken King, Calgary Flames CEO and President
- King talks about the lockout’s effect on the other properties the Flames operates including the Stampeders
- King says that while other teams have benefited, he obviously wants the lockout to be over
Third segment: Interview with Paul Jones and Eric Smith, Toronto Raptors radio commentary team
- Jones and Smith talk about the upcoming game with the Mavericks, and the injuries to key Mavericks players
- Smith thinks that having Jose Calderon as the starting point guard instead of Kyle Lowry will help Bargnani’s game
- Bob and Brunt bring up the recent story that Vince Carter wanted to stay in Toronto
- Bob wonders that if this is true, why didn’t Vince speak out about this before when the fans in Toronto thought he didn’t want to stay, Smith says it might not be his personality to protest
Thoughts:
Wow. That Becker/Brunt argument was passionate and I think Brunt was a bit mean to Becker. Not like he called him names, but he was incredibly dismissive of his arguments. Becker did bring up that “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” is only a criminal standard, but he should have brought up that he “preponderance of evidence” standard is used in many aspects of life too, such as civil courts and university tribunals. That would make a stronger case for him to say that baseball writers could judge whether a player did steroids by a preponderance of evidence, which is what Becker was saying to articulate, but didn’t get out. It didn’t help that Brunt wouldn’t let him finish his sentences. What is with people doing that on PTS lately?
On this issue, I don’t agree with Brunt, at least not with the argument he’s trying to make, which is that you can’t make your own decisions about a collection of evidence. Of course you can, we do this all the time in society. Lots of people have made their decisions about OJ Simpson, and Casey Anthony. We do it in real life. If we know that somebody’s a thief, we might not want to associate with them even if they’ve never been caught. And we might not want to nominate or vote for them in say, a community award, if we believe they’ve done bad things. Nobody’s saying the baseball writers should punch Clemens in the face, but they don’t have to vote for him either.
What’s the point of sending Shannon to find the secret location of the meetings if he’s not allowed to report where it is? I hope this is like the “unnamed sources” thing where you’ve agreed to be told the location in exchange for not revealing it, and not Shannon’s NHL secret handshake thing. I’d be annoyed if Shannon wasn’t naming the location because of his loyalty to the NHL. With other reporters, I wouldn’t necessarily assume that, with Shannon and how much he still seems tied to the NHL and loyal to Bettman, I’m not sure.
Everybody on PTS seems so agitated lately, even Brunt. Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight with the time switch.
Photo available here
