Toronto Sportswriters are Sick

I've long suspected there was something punky about Toronto's sportswriters, but today my suspicions were more than confirmed. Boomer Wells was right about these guys. With a few notable exceptions, they are nothing but nasty hot air balloons filled with crap.

Dave Feschuk, a guy who's never seen a great player he didn't want to trade away, revealed himself as a shallow, spiteful, smarmy bag of dirt today. In a Toronto Star rant entitled NHL and the Yawn Factor, tough-talkin' Dave compared the ho-hum quality of the Leafless NHL playoffs to other yawn-inducing sports. Oddly, all his examples of yawn-inducing sports involved women and girls.

"You'd like to think," Dave smirked, "hockey is bigger than, if not women's gymnastics, than women's basketball."

He goes on to spew his ideological stomach contents on our shoes:

"Watching women run layups is considerably less exciting than watching someone walk dogs."

Ho! Hoo! Excuse me?

I haven't heard such gonad-sucking crap since the '80s, when I had to share space with a knuckle-dragging Sudbury Star sports editor who refused to run ringette or figure skating news because "they aren't real sports."

So, does Dave think the NHL is boring because there are women's sports on TV? Or because women play basketball? Or is he pissed with Americans because they're such whoosies that they let the little women distract them from important things -- like watching real men play a real sport? What particular hate is he trying to monger here?

When I was a kid, I loved hockey. I watched it. I played it. I actually played on a team that won the Canadian Senior Women's Championship. But, at some point in the past decades, I stopped watching hockey or caring about it. I now prefer baseball, basketball, soccer, even rugby. I used to wonder why. Why do I no longer care about a game that used to play such a big part of my life?

I wonder no more.

NHL hockey in Toronto, as represented by guys like Dave Feschuk, is a game played by white male jerks for other white male jerks. They smirk a lot. They like to belch and fart and make jokes about the rest of us. They probably make rude sounds with their armpits. They are extremely unattractive to people who live in this century.

They sicken everything they drip on, and they're infecting other professional sports in Toronto.

Sit in the bleachers at a Jays game and you'll make an unpleasant acquaintance with some of their friends. Frat boys filled with too much beer, too little respect for the game and way too good an opinion of themselves. They'd like to turn the Jays into a good old boy team with no place for talented black or Latino players. They've sucked the life out of the Raptors by riding talent out of town. They are racist, sexist, ignorant and ugly.

If Dave and his pals are not dragged out into the streets and flogged, they will eventually destroy professional sports in Toronto. Talented black and Latino players will feel uncomfortable here. No one with self-respect will want to play here.

A Little Muscular Optimism Please

Life is good.

We have food on the table, the sun in the sky, birds in the trees and an infinite array of possibilities stretching out before us.

There is much to do, folks, to make the world better.

And we are just the folks to do it.

We are healthy, well-educated, motivated and creative. We should be brimming with piss and vinegar. With a little bit of effort, we can have some exciting ideas. With a bit more effort, we can begin to implement them.

Banish the neuroses. Chase away the angst. Kick aside the moral paralysis. Trust in whatever god you follow and have a little faith in the future of this tough, resilient home planet of ours.

All we need is a dollop of confidence and a smack of muscular optimism.

So let's roll up the sleeves and dig in.