Saturday, April 26, 2014





A quick quiz from Ian Hamilton of the Regina Leader-Post: “Something’s missing from the NHL post-season that actually makes playoff hockey more enjoyable than its regular-season cousin. Is it (a) Fighting? (b) The shootout? Or (c) The Toronto Maple Leafs?” . . . The ECHL’s Bakersfield Condors recently held an ‘Undie Sunday’ promotion, with fans invited to throw clothing onto the ice, all of which would be donated to the needy. Fans came through with about 6,000 pieces of clothing, including 2,773 pairs of underwear. “The delay that resulted was brief,” Hamilton noted, adding that “the Condors fans who threw 55 bras onto the ice also were thanked for their support.” . . .

You may have heard about the 16-year-old who stowed away in a wheel compartment belonging to a Hawaiian Airlines jet and made it from San Jose to Maui. Richmond blogger TC Chong writes: “The airline is holding him until someone steps forward and pays the one-person, wheel-well baggage fee of $25.” . . . “When Matt Cooke retires, he plans on opening a bar,” claims Chong. “That will effectively be the end of cheap shots from Cooke.” . . . More and more, tuning into ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, with Dan Shulman and John Kruk, is like slipping into your favourite kick-around clothes. . . .

After starter Michael Pineda of the New York Yankees got caught with pine tar on his neck, Mike Puma of the New York Post dragged Mets starter Bartolo Colon into the fray. “If the umpires searched Bartolo Colon’s neck for a foreign substance on Thursday,” Puma wrote, “chances are they only would have found peanut butter.” . . . When did Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic start chest-thumping like a two-bit thug? Or is some of the NBA starting to creep into Gary Bettman’s NHL? . . .

Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: “First, the Knicks sign Lamar Odom and then we start hearing Pau Gasol talk about how sweet he’d be on a reunion with Phil Jackson in New York. So I’m thinking that the artist formerly known as Ron Artest, he’s probably thinking that, well, it’s never over till it’s over.” . . . Lupica, again: “Being on that list of Lindsay Lohan’s — that’s really not the same as making Dean’s List in college, right?” . . .

So what did Bubba Watson do after he won the Masters a couple of weekends ago? Why, he, his wife and some friends went to a Waffle House near Augusta National. Noted comedy writer Alex Kaseberg: “It was a little awkward when they bumped into Tiger Woods, who was getting a waitress to go.” . . . Here’s Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel: “I love that fellow Orlandoan Bubba Watson celebrated his second green jacket by going to the Waffle House and ordering grilled cheese and hashbrowns. Not quite the same as former Orlandoan Tiger Woods celebrating his green jackets by going to Perkins and ordering eggs and legs.” . . .

Men’s curling in Canada has jumped the shark with the announcement this week that John Morris will skip Team Canada at the 2015 Brier. Was I dreaming or didn’t Kevin Koe’s rink beat Morris in the final of the 2014 Brier in Kamloops? . . . The Toronto Raptors’ first playoff game since 2008 drew an average audience of 539,000 on TSN, and was the most-watched Raptors game since 2002. As Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press tweeted: “That's best for Raptors in 12 years -- and a bad night at the Brier.” . . . Game 2 of the Raptors-Nets series, played on Tuesday night, averaged 610,000 viewers. . . .

Janice Hough (aka The Left Coast Sports Babe) wonders “how many Americans who profess complete disinterest in William, Kate and George’s Australia tour because they don’t believe in hereditary monarchy are really hoping Jeb runs against Hillary in 2016.” . . . According to US Weekly, Lindsey Vonn, Tiger Woods’ gal pal, and his ex-wife, Elin Nordegren, now are friends. “Word is Vonn gave Nordegren some autographed skis,” reports RJ Currie of SportsDeke.com, “and in return got a slightly used 9-iron.” . . . Hough chimed in with: “Makes sense. Elin wants to know about her kids’ potential stepmom, and Lindsey wants to know how to check Tiger’s cellphone.“

Jose Canseco, who blew the whistler on steroids in baseball back in the day, is to appear in a movie titled Piranha Sharks. The plot apparently involves bio-engineered mutations causing quite a stir. Or, as contributor Bill Littlejohn pointed out: “It’s sort of like him and McGwire back in 1988." . . . During a news conference to introduce Donnie Tyndall as the head coach of the U of Tennessee’s men’s basketball team, it was pointed out to him that he wasn’t the first choice. Tyndall pointed to his fiancee, who was in attendance, and offered: “Look at her and look at me. I probably wasn’t her first choice either.”

(Gregg Drinnan is a former sports editor of the Regina Leader-Post and the late Kamloops Daily News. He is at gdrinnan.blogspot.ca and twitter.com/gdrinnan. Keeping Score appears here on weekends, except when it doesn’t.)

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