A look into the team’s ascension to greatness and its heydays Part 5: Reaching the pinnacle (Part 1 of Double Truck) After Toronto became the first ever non-U.S.-based team to win the Fall Classic on 24 October 1992, GM Pat Gillick intended to keep as much of the team together as possible. Since the Blue Jays’ championship window was still open, it would have been foolish to dismantle...
The Maple Leafs haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967. The Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since 1993. Most people reading this likely don’t remember the last time these teams were truly successful. So why do we care so much? Why are we fans? I asked myself these questions this past week after one of the Blue Jays’ best pitchers was unexpectedly injured. He will likely miss the entire...
A look into the team’s ascension to greatness and its heydays Part 4: Putting the finishing touch on the masterpiece The signing of Morris and Winfield after the 1991 season was of ample significance. For the longest time, it was inconceivable to envision that elite unrestricted free agents would be willing to sign in Toronto. One reason is because in the eyes of these top-end unrestricted...
Reexamining Baseball’s Steroid Era In the summer of 2013, a New York Times investigation revealed that Alex Rodriguez had been obtaining steroids from a man in Miami for several years. This eventually resulted in Rodriguez being suspended for the entire 2014 season, the longest steroids suspension ever passed down in baseball. As Rodriguez prepares to return to the New York Yankees this season, I...
A look into the team’s ascension to greatness and its heydays Part 3: Major surgery on the roster for the perennial winner After the 86-76 Toronto Blue Jays finished the 1990 season in second place (two games behind the division winning Boston Red Sox), GM Pat Gillick pulled off arguably the most significant trade in the history of the franchise. It would soon pay huge dividends to the team...
The Past, Present, and Future of the Toronto Raptors on its 20th Anniversary PART 3 OF 3: A TRUE BREATH OF FRESH AIR As I watched the 2014 to 2015 edition of the Toronto Raptors secure a convincing 109 to 102 victory in their October 29th season opener at home against the Atlanta Hawks, I couldn’t help but feel that the lone-Canadian franchise in the National Basketball Association (NBA) has...
The Past, Present, and Future of the Toronto Raptors on its 20th Anniversary PART 2: MISSING THAT 3RD ELEMENT I can still recall the date in which Vince Carter put the Toronto Raptors on the NBA Map: February 12, 2000. On this date in NBA history, Carter, known as “Air Canada,” “Half-Man, Half-Amazing,” and “Vinsanity,” put on a show when he electrified the...
What impact will current economic circumstances have on Canadian professional sports? In just over six months, the price of oil has dropped from over one hundred dollars per barrel to under fifty dollars per barrel. A significant portion of the Canadian economy is dependent on oil. Over the same period of time, the Canadian dollar has dropped from a high of over ninety-four US cents to a low of...
A look into the team’s ascension to greatness and its heydays Staying competitive while passing the torch I always felt that the 99-62 Toronto Blue Jays were cheated out of a World Series appearance in 1985, as the team was leading with three games to one over the Kansas City Royals before losing the series in seven games in heartbreaking fashion. It was especially devastating since 1985...
A look into the team’s ascension to greatness and its heydays Part 1: Establishing an identity and a winning culture As a die-hard supporter of the Toronto Blue Jays who has followed the baseball club for nearly three decades, I believe they have come a long way since playing their first ever regular season game at Exhibition Stadium on April 7, 1977 when the field was covered with snow...
Donald Sterling’s NBA ban There had long been rumors that Donald Sterling was a racist. People who worked for him, or even simply crossed paths with him, all knew it. The NBA always knew it. But until the events of 2014 it seemed as if there was nothing that could be done about it. In February 2014 NBA commissioner David Stern retired, and was replaced by Adam Silver. Soon after taking over as...
The Past, Present, and Future of the Toronto Raptors on its 20th Anniversary Part 1: The Revolving Door As the Raptors enter their twentieth season, long-time armchair GMs like myself and faithful fans of the franchise can recall the painful journey that the team has taken since Toronto was awarded a National Basketball Association (NBA) team back in 1995. Over the past two decades, we had...
Part Three of Three If the Leafs are serious about changing their fortune, management needs to endure a painful full-scale rebuild. I am not suggesting that the Leafs should tank intentionally (particularly since finishing last will not ensure getting the 1st overall selection with the implementation of the draft lottery); rather, I am preaching that the organization should be patient and focus...
What the Experience of One Sports Journalist Can Tell Us About Media in Canada On February 15th 2014, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punched his fiancée in the head in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino, knocking her unconscious. The casino’s cameras captured the incident, the details of which became known to the Ravens mere hours later. Sometime thereafter, the National Football...
Are sports leagues going to continue the current pattern of ever-increasing revenues, or will the current sports economic system come crashing down under its own weight? There is no denying that sports is big business. The NBA just signed a new television deal for 24 billion dollars over nine years. The NHL Canadian television deal was for 5.2 billion dollars, and is now suggested to have been...
Part two of three Prior to the cancelled 2004 to 2005 season, the Leafs had an ill-advised pattern of trading away 1st-round selections for unproven and/or unspectacular (and sometimes rental) players in order to make a run (albeit a short one at best) in the playoffs. They would also opt for band-aid solutions in the form of signing relatively-big names but past-their-prime unrestricted/Group...
How much are sports figures being paid, and who controls their salaries? Having recently participated in the Hockey Arbitration Competition of Canada, I realized I knew almost nothing about the NHL salary caps. Below is my “idiots guide to salary caps,” for anyone else who might have been living under a rock. A salary cap is an agreement or rule that puts a limit on the amount of...
With the recently commenced 2014-2015 National Hockey League (NHL) season, Leafs Nation can’t help but think about the question that seems to keep resurfacing since 1967: Why can’t their beloved Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup even though the team is the most valued franchise in the NHL (at $1.15 billion) according to the most recent Forbes list of “The World’s 50 Most...
Both Roger Goodell and Adam Silver have recently had to deal with public relations disasters. Former NBA owner Donald Sterling’s phone conversation with his then-“friend” V. Stiviano revealed him to be a racist. A particular hot button issue bothering Sterling was Stiviano having taken a photo with former Laker Magic Johnson and posting the photo on Instagram. Sterling was apparently outraged...
A group of former National Football League (NFL) players made headlines in April 2011, when they filed a federal lawsuit against the league alleging that the league’s negligence contributed to their suffering repeated concussions over the course of their careers. Since then, over 4,800 former players have joined the suit, including former stars such as Jim McMahon and Bruce Smith. The players’...
With television and movie producers increasingly turning to the Internet to reach audiences, and the music industry in a state of chaos as they lose hold of the proprietary value once held in their product, it is clear that major changes to the entertainment industry are underway. Significant shifts in the expectations of audiences, the makeup of that audience, and the availability of services...
This is the second of two parts of an Olympic post-mortem (read the first part here), in which I arbitrarily assign ranks to the participating countries. Following the 2012 Summer Games in London, I published a story in the Obiter declaring Grenada to be the Winner of the Olympics. I realize that this was an arbitrary designation, but it was not entirely unfounded. I developed a method of...
In this, the first of a two-part Olympic post-mortem, I take a historic opportunity to bloviate at length about Canada’s forgotten talent. I’m not going to explain the game. If you want to know how to curl, take the 90 seconds to look it up on Wikipedia. To an outsider, cricket and American football are difficult to understand, but there’s no use pretending that the roaring game is hard to learn...
A few weeks ago, Citlally Maciel wrote an article on these pages describing, among other things, the National Football League’s (NFL) history of condoning “acts of homophobia, bullying and discrimination” amongst its executives and players. No one could have predicted how timely this article would prove to be, as the league’s collective attitude towards tolerance, respect, and acceptance is...
To be honest, I am not a fan of football. I have tried getting into it, but I just do not have the attention span necessary to sit through even one entire game, let alone an entire season. In fact, being a true fan requires more than watching one’s favourite team play. One must also watch all the other teams play to know how they compare to one’s favourite team. The idea behind this...