Proud Husband/Dad | One doesn’t “believe” in Science | BLM | Every Child Matters | Sarcasm= Intelligence | Leafs | Jays | Boxing | Fantasy Sports | Good music
1. Hello friends. It’s been a little while. I hope you’ve been well. I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to tell stories here to try to help people feel better. I’ve written a book, and I hope it does the same. I hope it’s one of the antidotes.
The trade is one for none.
Which is to say I’m exchanging my semi-retired TSN life of the last five years — doing the World Junior Championships, NHL Draft Rankings, a handful of Toronto Maple Leaf broadcasts, TradeCentre and Free Agent Frenzy — for a fully-retired life of doing absolutely nothing.
Well, nothing work related anyway.
Today’s Free Agent Frenzy is the last working day in a 48-year professional career that included stops at The Sault Star, The Globe and Mail, The Hockey News (twice), The Toronto Star, TSN, ESPN and NBC, amongst others.
It’s been quite a ride.
I’ll be 69 years old in August. I decided a few months ago it’s as nice a time as any to call it a career with the expiry of my current contract. If I had been so inclined to continue doing the World Juniors and draft rankings etc. at TSN, the opportunity was certainly there for me to do so. And I’m so grateful to TSN for that.
Honestly, though, I am looking forward to waking up on Christmas morning this year and NOT flying to Minneapolis-St. Paul for the World Juniors.
I’m also looking forward to doing more travelling with my wife Cindy; having more time to give my sons Mike and Shawn unwanted (and unneeded) advice; playing even more golf than I am now; and having my two wonderful grandchildren Blake and Gunnar running my show on a full-time basis.
After almost 50 years in the business, there are far too many people to thank individually, so I won’t even try to name any lest I leave some out.
Just know that I’ve been blessed to work for, work with and work against so many great people who gave me boundless opportunity, incredible support and intense motivation. The nearly five decades have gone by in the blink of an eye.
I certainly never set out to be the TSN Hockey Insider. It never occurred to me that I would work in television. All I wanted to be when I grew up was a hockey writer, to have a “job” to watch, write and talk about the game. You know, tell a few stories and try to capture the spirit of the thing.
Mission accomplished, I guess.
I couldn’t say goodbye now without a special thanks to everyone at TSN, past and present.
I first started showing up on the network in or around 1986-87. In the 1990s, I was working full-time hours at TSN but still had a full time newspaper job, too. Since 2000, 25 years ago, TSN has been my primary professional home.
It’s been a very special place on so many levels. The best part of TSN has always been the people. The best people doing the best work. What an honour to be one small part of the unsurpassed excellence that is TSN. Every time I’ve walked out of Studio Six at the end of Free Agent Frenzy on July 1, I’ve said to myself: “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
And it doesn’t. That’s especially true on this Canada Day because I’m so very proud to be a Canadian. 🇨🇦
I’m a very lucky guy. I owe the game of hockey, and all the people within it — the players, coaches, managers, executives, scouts, agents et al — so much; I owe my family and friends even more.
Finally, thank you to anyone who has ever read, watched or listened to any of my work in any form at any outlet over the last 48 years. It’s been a privilege to share some information with you all, and try to have a few laughs along the way on social media or whatever they’re calling it these days.
I’ve cherished it all.
Fully Completely.
✌️and 💕
-30-
In 1922, a group of scientists went to the Toronto General Hospital where diabetic children were kept in wards, often 50 or more at a time. Most of them were comatose and dying from diabetic ketoacidosis. Others were being treated by being placed on an extremely strict diet, which inevitably led to starvation.
This is known as one of medicine's most incredible moments. Imagine a room full of parents sitting at the bedside waiting for the inevitable death of their child.
The scientists went from bed to bed and injected the children with a new purified extract: it was called insulin.
As they began to inject the last comatose child, the first child injected began to awaken. Then one by one, all the children awoke from their diabetic comas. A room of death and gloom became a place of joy and hope.
In the early 1920s Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin under the directorship of John Macleod at the University of Toronto. With the help of James Collip insulin was purified, making it available for the successful treatment of diabetes.
In the same year, Banting, Collip, and Best decided to sell the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for $1.
Banting and Macleod earned a Nobel Prize for their work in 1923.
Photo Credits: Library and Archives Canada
The hard truth is that a lot of people having been living in a fantasy about American politics and America in general.
Last night was a brutal wake-up call. It’s time to face reality, adjust, and get ready for the life-or-death struggle that’s ahead.
https://t.co/z433skILzt
Nelson Mandela: “Honour belongs to those who never forsake the truth even when things seem dark and grim, who try over and over again, who are never discouraged by insults, humiliation and even defeat.”
As domestic politics and the world situation revulses me to the point of distraction, I have instead thought long and hard about the legacy of Pete Rose and where baseball should go from here and my brooding and Solomonic efforts have arrived at a just and coherent solution. Be advised: As a manager, he bet on baseball. It doesn't matter in any sense that he bet on his own team -- unless he bet a simple W-L bet without regard to the line (because shaving runs would still be within his reach as a manager) and unless he bet the same amount on every single game (else he could husband resources for games in which he had more interest). So fuck any effort to rationalize the scumbaggery of what he did as a manager. Ergo, his lifetime ban from the game was entirely justified, all the moreso in the wake of his abject lying and his inability to deliver a shard of remorse. But: As a player, he was genuinely magnificent, and he is the game's all-time hits leader and there is nothing to suggest that he compromised his role as a player in any way. Quite the opposite. And here's the guts of it: His was a lifetime ban. That lifetime ban is now, de facto, at an end. He should be in the Hall of Fame as a player with an open acknowledgment that his role as a manager has nothing to do with the honor.
You are all welcome. Having cleanly solved this dilemma, I stand refreshed and ready to advise the Democratic Party on exactly how to hone its campaign rhetoric and truly marginalize Trumpism and all of its authoritarian threat, or to mediate the crisis in the Middle East and restore a path to a two-state solution that is the only hope of ending the grievous generational bloodletting, but I will require a moderately longer essay than the above.
Yours in a lifetime of service and giving,