"You're outta there!!" by Apollo

A quieter, more pensive column today for the passing of the enigma that was the Montreal Expos. Today, as has been reported by several media outlets, the Expos are due to play their final home game before Major League Baseball sends them to Washington, D.C. next season. Now, given the recent history of management and administration in the Bud Selig era, anything is possible and the Expos could very well spend yet another vagabond season in Montreal before shipping out to some other destination, but all indications and reports are that Major League Baseball has secured a group of investors who will purchase the Expos for somewhere in the $300 million USD range, charge the taxpayers of Washington an even higher tax rate to build an even more expensive stadium to house the new renamed club and "America's Game" will continue. Appropriate then, that we take a small moment to reminisce on a ball club that both Wongoz and I have a fond affection for.

It's probably useless and futile to go over all the "could have been's" and "should have been's" in the Expos saga. Suffice it to say that it is highly unlikely such a debacle as the Expos' past few seasons have been would have occurred in any American city, in any other professional sport, or have been as under reported as this one was. As the proverbial and literal "wards of baseball" the Expos saw fan support predictably drop into the low thousands over the last three years, with a significant portion of their "home games" played in San Juan, Puerto Rico. While the end of pro baseball in Montreal is only becoming official now, the city of Montreal essentially gave up on this team years ago when it was patently obvious that baseball had abandoned them.

Contrary to popular belief, Montreal is a passionate sports town beyond simply hockey. I suppose we'll see just how passionate they are with no NHL games this year. The Expos were Canada's first major league baseball franchise, appearing on the map several years before the Toronto Blue Jays. Over the years, the franchise developed a reputation for developing young players, scouting exceptionally well, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean where the future stars of baseball were discovered, and having a plethora of talent that kept coming up from the minors. Every season the Expos seemed to be loaded with young players who would one day be stars. All of this talent culminated in 1994 when Montreal boasted the best record in baseball, featuring a lineup that included current Boston Red Sox superstar Pedro Martinez as well as Larry Walker, Moises Alou, Mark Grudzielanek, Marquis Grissom and Kirk Rueter, all of whom are still in the majors. I remember going to games that season, when the Expos gave the Atlanta Braves all they could handle, the same Atlanta Braves who have gone on to win every National League East pennant since that year.

Back then, fans showed up. They showed up in droves. They showed up to a decaying antiquated embarrassment of a stadium that was built in 1976 and was hardly adequate for baseball. The Expos were so consistently good up to that point that there was talk, even among American media, that the Blue Jays and Expos could conceivably meet in an All-Canadian World Series. Then the collective bargaining nightmare hit and baseball never recovered in Montreal. The star players were all shipped out in the following years in order to trim payroll. Ownership was never consistent nor supportive, and once the vaunted development system was purged, the Expos became a joke. Despite the tease of a new throwback downtown stadium, the shocking superstardom of Vladimir Guerrero and the lukewarm pennant run which brought Bartolo Colon in for a brief stint, Expos fans and indeed Montrealers have known for about six years that baseball had already died in the city. So it is that on their last day, few are actually sad, and the promise of Washington is what's on the minds of most media and baseball fans, who long ago either forgot about the Expos, or never really cared about them in the first place.

Recently, in an interview reflecting on what could have been, Pedro Martinez, the only Cy Young award winner in Expos history, passionately said that Montreal was the best city he had ever played in. The Red Sox ace said he would have taken far less money to stay in Montreal than he eventually received in Boston. He even went so far as to say that if the 1994 Expos had stayed together, they would have surely challenged the New York Yankees for baseball supremacy over the last decade. While a lot of what Martinez says is likely just good sound bites designed to be exaggerated, the fact that a foreign born player, with no remaining connection to Montreal, and who currently plays for a playoff team in one of the biggest baseball markets in the world, would continue to profess loyalty for a city he left years ago is the personification of why fans are both frustrated and sad at the loss of their Expos. The city shows indifference or even anger at recent events where the Expos are concerned, but I suspect that for most, these feelings are designed to mask a profound sadness and even bitterness. How could baseball first deny us a championship in the one year we were actually good enough to win, and then tear our franchise apart over the subsequent years.

In the coming months and years, baseball will celebrate its return to the American capital, which was once a thriving baseball market in the early years of the sport's long history. The players who once won for the Expos will retire and the Expos will fall somewhere behind the Brooklyn Dodgers and even the Winnipeg Jets in the annals of transplanted teams in sports history. Wongoz will take out his Delino DeShields jersey every once in a while and we'll spend some time saying "What if?" as we always do about a multitude of topics, including the Expos. But until sufficient time has passed, and as long as some former Expos continue to play and shine in major league baseball, there will be reminders. There will be small hints of what could have been. So today isn't actually an end to a sad story of professional baseball in Montreal. It's rather the tired beginning of a series of sad memories that will linger for a while longer. Montreal and Major League Baseball are both better off without each other, but that alone probably isn't enough for most to get over this debacle. Je me souviens.

There's also an "I" in "$12 MILLION" by wongoz

I am the blogging equivalent of Vince Carter. My blogging superiority is quite clear, and yet I only show up to blog once a month, if even that. If only he would try harder, you might say. If only he wanted to be the best, you might think. Well, let me tell you something, missy, I've got other priorities and apparently, so does Vince.

Except we already know that. He thinks that what he's shown us to date has been nothing but heroic play, selfless effort and unquestionable loyalty, but his actions show otherwise. Apollo will probably defend VC to his dying breath (Apollo's or VC's, either one will suffice), but I can see past all the pretense and all the facetiousness and I know what Vince really is: just another selfish, coddled, millionaire athlete. Wait, check that: a lazy, selfish, coddled, millionaire athlete.

It's time to get rid of his sorry ass. I'm sorry to have to tell it like it is, but the man clearly doesn't want to be here. I'm not even sure he has wanted to be here since the criticism he endured, unwarranted in this mind, for his decision to skip out for his college graduation. Has he been flat-out the best player the Toronto Raptors have ever had? Yes. Has he posterized countless players and inflamed the fan base to raucous heights that no one had done before? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

But this man claims that he has to think about himself now? That he's got to look out for #1? That he's gotta be more selfish? And let's get things straight - he doesn't want to go to the superior Western Conference, and he doesn't mind if he doesn't get traded to a playoff-contender? You know what that is? That's Derrick Coleman (ie. a lazy, sorry-ass, waste of talent). That's a guy just collecting the checks, who wants the spotlight and the cizzash of superstardom, but none of the accompanying responsibilities.

He has shown no inclination to become a leader in the Michael Jordan mold. He has shown no willingness to exert his will to be the best, a la Kobe Bryant. He has shown no desire to take over a game in clutch time like MJ did. He has shown no determination to play hurt like Allen Iverson does. Heck, he hasn't even shown annual improvement like Kevin Garnett.

And now he wants to take his ball and go home? Sorry buddy. You're gonna have to face the music like the rest of us who earn a normal paycheck. If you don't like your dead-end job, then you either quit and bail on the rest of the money, or you suck it up and deal with it. Then when you've finally shown that you can indeed play nicely even when mommy isn't pulling the strings in the front office, maybe, just maybe, you might get your wish and get out.

There's an "I" in "WIN" by Apollo

A big reason why the general public is so enthralled by sports is the dramatic aspect. Sports presents us with a view of human nature and human drama all pre-packaged and beamed right to our television sets. Sports are not subject to a planned script like movies or television programs, they're real - and certainly more real than an episode of Fear Factor. We love watching our heroes rise and fall and win and lose. In a way, we feel a part of that experience, even though we actually have very little to do with the actual performance.

There were a number of dramas happening in the sports world this past weekend. The NHL Lockout continued, with most American fans having already forgotten what hockey is days ago, and Canadian fans growing more and more bored and annoyed with local media devoting hours of coverage to the fact that nothing newsworthy had happened since the lockout began. The European team destroyed the U.S.A. in the Ryder Cup, embarrassing Tiger Woods and company on American soil, which apparently makes the accomplishment more important, even though half the European team lives in the United States. On a more international note, Spanish superclub Real Madrid was blanked 3-0 by Bayer Leverkusen in their first group match of the UEFA Champions' League, which in turn caused their coach, Jose Antonio Camacho, to quit following an equally embarrassing 1-0 defeat to lightly regarded Spanish club Espanyol. Meanwhile, the NFL and Major League Baseball seasons continued.

Part of the drama of sports is watching individuals, even individuals in team sports, rise and fall. We are thrilled by the last-second game winning shot, the seemingly impossible touchdown catch, the towering home run. These are the actions that make legends of individual players. While we certainly know which teams they play for (especially if its our own favourite teams), we're more likely to say "Curtis Martin had a huge day for the New York Jets" as opposed to "The Jets won. Oh, and by the way, Curtis Martin had a good game." And yet, for all this focus on individual achievement, there's still the old adages that teams win championships, teams are only as strong as their weakest player, teams are greater than the individuals. Usually this sort of rhetoric and cliche is reserved for media types and people who want to keep sports simple and ignore the personalities and the drama of the individual competitors. But the fact remains that true sports achievement, the kind that makes us stand up and take notice, remains with the individual. No one bothers to remember the intricate details of the Jacksonville Jaguars beating the Denver Broncos 7-6 in a snoozer of a game where no particular individual shines. But Barry Bonds' 700th home run dominates the highlight shows.

Which leads me to the Ryder Cup and the reason I think that the USA has consistently been beaten over the last few times it has been contested, despite having a team of superior individual golfers. While everyone talks about the Europeans having greater camaraderie and playing more relaxed, I think it instead comes down to the fact that the American players woefully underachieve trying to create some false sense of team spirit. The format of the Ryder Cup of course encourages team play, which is unheard of in golf, which is about going out on the course and shooting a better score than every other individual out there. However, the Ryder Cup is comprised of 8 alternate shot matches, 8 four ball matches and 12 singles matches. That means that 20 of a possible 28 points are decided by which individual happens to be playing the best in that particular match. If anything, the Americans should focus not on playing as a team, but trying to just beat every other golfer on the course, teammate or not. I've always found it sad and depressing to watch players like Woods and Phil Mickelson smile for the camera and talk about how much the love playing with a group of teammates. That may in fact be true, and hey, hanging out with a bunch of guys is what sports is all about. However, I think if Tiger ever forgot about trying to fit in with his teammates and instead focused on dominating his matches to the point where he could bring home 5 points for the USA, his teammates would quickly follow suit and Europe would not win another one of these competitions for decades.

It's incredible how human nature can work in a team sports environment. When one player establishes himself as the top athlete, the top performer, the rest of the team, even if they absolutely despise this guy, usually fall into their roles rather comfortably. Now, if the purported best player is in fact not the best player but tries to act like he is, or if the best player doesn't stand up and impose his will on the team, then you've got problems. If the best player just plain isn't too good, you've got the Golden State Warriors. But, when the best player truly leads, then you have the whole "he makes his teammates better" nonsense that gets spewed about from time to time. As Michael Jordan once said "There's no 'I' in team, but there is in 'Win'". Of course, Jordan said this when the Chicago Bulls were quite mediocre, but you get the point.

Athletes are creatures of habit. They spend their lives trying to learn how to do a particular action one way and trying to repeat that process as closely as possible every time. Athletes tend not to like innovation or change, or the unknown. That's why there's coaches around to teach them how to get used to it. While the fans love Michael Vick, I bet it's extremely frustrating to block for him cause nobody knows where he is or where he plans on running. Thankfully, he's so clearly the most exciting athlete in football that his teammates probably love him anyway, and you bet they love him now that they're 2-0 to start the season. As long as Vick is scrambling for 100 yards, throwing the ball for touchdowns and leading Atlanta to wins, it doesn't matter that Warrick Dunn only gets a handful of carries a game, or that Peerless Price had only 2 receptions, or that the Falcons offensive linemen need their heads on swivels all game long. Vick is the number one guy, and the rest of the team has chosen to follow his lead.

One of the reasons that overpriced, talent-laden teams like the New York Rangers, Real Madrid, and the Washington Redskins always seem to underachieve is because they have very little leadership, very little direction and very little clue how to use all their incredible talent. You don't win soccer games trying to figure out whether Michael Owen is better than Raul when your defence depends on whether Iker Casillas is playing out of this world goaltending or not. It amazes me that players like Ronaldo or David Beckham or Zinedine Zidane, who are so clearly the leaders of their national teams, suddenly become passive and quiet on the club side. When players refuse or cannot establish the proper roles for everyone, you need a coach who can do so for them. Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Mike Keenan, Larry Brown, Arsene Wegner. Until Real finds the player who will assert himself or the coach who will tell the players how to do so, they're destined for another underachieving season.

Perhaps we look for drama in sports to replace something in our own lives. Perhaps we find sports interesting and riveting because of the potential to see something great with each play. It is always so strange to me when an athlete who is so obviously talented and superior to those around him cannot for whatever reason dominate. I have forgotten what I enjoy watching more - the domination itself or the effort to get there. Being a sports fan, I have the luxury of being able to watch the entire thing play out from my couch.

Are you ready for some hockey, football, basketball and baseball? by Apollo

Well it appears that the frequency of posts is beginning to dwindle, which I suppose I should have foreseen given the lack of timely posts on Wongoz's own website. I myself was away for a while but with the coming of September, expect a lot of sports related posts as it is now, arguably, the best time of the year in sports.

There's always a debate between what time of the year is the best in sports and it generally varies between fall and late spring. The fall boasts the season openers of european football, or soccer as it is called here in North America, american college football, the NFL, the NBA, and normally the NHL. In addition, the fall enjoys playoff and season ending contests in baseball and tennis. This fall is all the more special with the World Cup of Hockey, the Ryder Cup and World Cup 2006 soccer qualification matches in the mix.

The spring brings the beginning of the baseball season, playoffs in basketball, soccer and hockey (usually) and major tennis and golf tournaments. In any event, it's indisputable that the fall is a good time for sports, and leads to increased debate and discussion on sports related topics.

Which leads me to the World Cup of Hockey currently being played here in Toronto. While normally I would be rather excited about this event, and admittedly I've been following it pretty closely, the fact that the NHL lockout is looming does take something away from this tournament. I can suspend my disbelief long enough to watch the games without thinking that this tournament is really just a cash grab by the players and owners before the league is shut down. A beautiful 5-0 Canadian victory over Slovakia can go a long way to restoring my faith in this tournament though. A few things I've noted during the last two weeks:

1) The European group: Forget for a moment how wrong it is that both Russia and Slovakia were forced to play their round robin group games in North America while the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and Germany all enjoyed home games in Europe, it is a far departure from past international professional hockey tournaments where all teams would play games in Canada and be subjected to pro-Canadian crowds and venues. I find it almost amazing that any of the European teams were allowed to play in their home countries at all. A long overdue move which hopefully will lead toward further European based games in the future. Now, if they could only do something about the CIBC ads placed on the boards in Helsinki and Stockholm.

2) The fickle Toronto fans: I've said it once and I'll say it again: Montreal rules! The first few round robin games were played to loud sold-out crowds at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the largest arena in the NHL. The last few games have been before non-sell out crowds at the smaller Air Canada Centre in Toronto and even the Toronto-centric media have gone out of their way to note the difference in atmosphere. Now, the games are technically sold out, however the corporate customers who own the preciously overpriced World Cup tickets are either not showing up or passing the tickets off to people who aren't bothering to show up. This is a pure travesty. How can anyone justify empty seats at the Air Canada Centre when there are fans across eight countries who would love to be there? The corporate model has made the Maple Leafs rich and usually guarantees standing room only crowds, but hopefully for Toronto's sake the semi-final and final will be sold out.

3) Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky: Team Canada is undefeated when these two men are both involved. Lemieux was deemed too old and too injured to be effective at this tournament, and while the effort and heart were obviously there, the lack of production from him and linemates Joe Sakic and Jarome Iginla led some to speculate that the Magnificent One just did not have another great tournament in him. Two unbelievable backhand saucer passes later, Mario & Co. are looking like one of the most talented lines Canada has ever seen. One need only point to Sakic's gorgeous wrist shot goal last night off pinpoint passes from Iginla and Lemieux as evidence that Gretzky once again made the correct decisions with his staff. Prior to the tournament, many, including some of my close friends, were bemoaning the Team Canada lineup. Kirk Maltby? Brendan Morrow? Robyn Regehr? Jay Bouwmeester? What was Gretzky and his staff thinking? Where was Paul Kariya and Bryan McCabe and Keith Primeau? So far so good for Gretzky's management team once again, although they really should be thanking Steve Yzerman for his eye injury, otherwise Vincent Lecavalier would be watching this tournament from his cottage and Canada would likely not be undefeated.

4) Jose Theodore's "Dragon" mask: Martin Brodeur has a beautiful red Maple Leaf mask but you have to admire Theodore, the third string goalie, for customizing his own mask featuring a red Dragon head and the Team Canada logo, despite the fact he probably isn't going to play.

5) Team Sweden losses again: Wait a minute, you mean if we stack a team with a bunch of amazing forwards and one outstanding defencemen but goaltenders who don't even start in the NHL, we won't win (again)?

Enjoy the tournament while you can, even if you have to watch it on ESPN2, it will be the last pro hockey we see for a long time, unless you have satellite and want to watch Joe Thornton highlights from Switzerland or Peter Forsberg and Markus Naslund play together again in Sweden.

On a follow up to my last post about spending on amateur sports in Canada, the Canadian Men's Soccer Team is likely not going to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. Not only will this deprive Wongoz of seeing the national team in Germany that year, it will mark the 20th year since the 1986 World Cup in Mexico since Canada last qualified for sport's greatest spectacle. Now, I realize soccer isn't the most popular sport (or even close) in Canada, but not being able to score goals against Costa Rica and Guatemala is bordering on the ridiculous. Soccer is the highest participation sport in Canada and while the national team program is hardly on par with the European and South American countries, there is no reason why Canada cannot be a consistent Top 50 nation in soccer. As it is now, Canada is in danger of dropping out of the Top 100 in the FIFA rankings. Recently, the only legitimate Canadian professional player, striker Tomas Radzinski, complained that players had to fly coach class from Europe back to Canada because Soccer Canada was too cheap to pay for them to fly first class. Now, while that might sound like whining, some Canadian players had to spend over 16 hours in transit from Europe to Canada for the recent World Cup qualification matches. It's bad enough we barely have enough quality players to field a competitive team, but to take the few decent players we have and not give them the tools and resources to be successful is inexcusable. When's the last time you heard Ronaldo or Thierry Henry fly coach to play for their countries? I don't even think that those players even fly on commercial airlines! As the government tries to purge funding from some fringe sports in order to spur greater athletic success for Canadian athletes, there's no reason why soccer should not be one of the more heavily funded sports. If Soccer Canada is getting appropriate funding, then there's a systemic problem that ought to be fixed immediately. The Canadian Women's Team is among the world's best, there's no reason why the men's team cannot be put in a position to duplicate that success.