If you aren’t aware, Gary Bettman, the commissioner of lockouts, was paid US$7.98 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011. Sports Business Daily notes that were Bettman a player, he would have been the fifth-highest paid in the NHL, behind Alex Ovechkin ($9,538,462), Evgeni Malkin ($8.7 million), Sidney Crosby ($8.7 million) and Eric Staal ($8.25 million). . . . And the commissioner says the owners are paying too much money to the players! . . . A tweet from Montreal Canadiens forward Brandon Prust: “I wonder how many blocked shots, hits, fights, stitches, broken bones, concussions, and surgerys gary has had?” . . . When the news came that Evelyn Lozada had filed for divorce from footballer Chad Johnson, after just 41 days of marriage, Janice Hough, the Left Coast Sports Babe, wondered: “Does this make her an honourary Kardashian?” . . .
Defenceman Logan Hawgood of Kamloops, whose father Greg is a former Blazers star and head coach, is in camp with the BCHL’s Victoria Grizzlies. Logan, 19, played last season with the Helena Bighorns in the American West League. . . . Last week, Bob Brookover of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a feature on outfielder Tyson Gillies of Kamloops, who is with the Class AA Reading Phillies. . . . “He can be an everyday centerfielder and a leadoff-type hitter,” Benny Looper, an assistant general manager with the Philadelphia Phillies, told Brookover. . . . Dusty Wathan, the manager in Reading, told Brookover: “There is no doubt in my mind that if he progresses like we expect him to, and from what I’ve seen in short spurts, he can be an everyday centerfielder in the major leagues for a championship team.” . . . Going into last night, Gillies, in his last six games, was 13-for-25 and was hitting .304 on the season. . . . Sounds like it’s all up to Gillies now. . . .
Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: “I’m usually a silly old romantic, but I always had this feeling that the Jenny McCarthy-Brian Urlacher deal wasn’t going to last.” . . . One more from Lupica: “Who told Hope Solo she’s the world’s most interesting person?” . . . “The Guardian reports three kangaroos escaped from a zoo near Frankfurt,” notes R.J. Currie of SportsDeke.com. “That’s today’s hop story.” . . . One more from Currie: “A $33-million restaurant is slated to be opened 10,000 feet up Wildspitze Mountain in the Austrian Alps. It’s expected to have great food, but not much atmosphere.” . . . Headline at The Onion: Lance Armstrong Lets Down Single Person Who Still Believed Him. . . .
After outfielder Melky Cabrera got a 50-game suspension for PEDs, Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle noted: “Anything the Giants might do in the playoffs is now tainted. If they win the World Series, when they raise their championship flag, it will have a giant invisible asterisk, bigger than the Giants’ logo.” . . . Ostler also points out that before testing positive, Cabrera had rejected a three-year contract offer from the Giants. Must have been the drugs. . . . Victor Conte — yes, that Victor Conte — has told USA TODAY that, in his estimation, “half of baseball” is doping. . . . “It’s so easy to circumvent,” he said of Major League’s Baseball drug-testing efforts. “I call it the ‘duck-and-dodge’ system. The only people that get caught are the dumb, and the dumber.” . . . Mr. Cabrera, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Mr. Cabrera. . . . Paging Mr. Colon. Mr. Bartolo Colon. . . .
When the Nebraska Cornhuskers revealed that offensive lineman Tyler Moore had left the team, Fark.com went with this headline: He’s not going to make it after all. . . . Steve Schrader of the Detroit Free Press has seen enough. “It’s only two weeks old,” he wrote last week of the NFL exhibition season, “and I’m already sick of four things besides exhibition games: replacement refs, commercials with Peyton Manning in them, commercials with Eli Manning in them and commercials with both Peyton Manning and Eli Manning in them. It’s going to be a long season.” . . . Good thing Schrader isn’t in these parts where CFJC-TV’s NFL promo features a still photo of Peyton Manning in an Indianapolis Colts uniform. . . .
Jack Todd, in the Montreal Gazette: “The more we see of the regrettable Sir Paul McCartney, the more certain we are that without John Lennon, the Beatles would have been the Monkees.” . . . “State environmental officials are threatening to fine a barge company for a series of small oil spills in Bellingham Bay,” writes Ron Judd of the Seattle Times. “The spills have come from the Arctic Challenger, an oil-containment vessel.” . . . A Monday tweet from Ian Hamilton of the Regina Leader-Post: “Augusta National announces first two female members. Ladies Day is set for Wednesdays from 7 a.m. to 7:01 a.m. No carts.” . . .
You may have seen Canada’s Olympic king, Brian Williams, when Princes William and Harry came calling. Williams tells Bruce Dowbiggin of The Globe and Mail that he asked off-camera how they felt watching that video in which it was made to appear that Queen Elizabeth, their grandmother, was parachuting out of a helicopter. “Harry joked that he was flying the chopper,” Williams said, “and William pushed his grandmother out the door.” . . . The aforementioned Ostler gets the last word, and it’s on the London Olympics: “Time to end it, so let’s all utter the Olympics’ closing motto: Satis est satis. Enough is enough.”
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