For one of the games, we splurged on StubHub and picked up some very expensive tickets in row G, right by the visitors’ dugout. What resulted are some awesome close-up shots of some Jays, most notably Cito Gaston and Travis Snider, including this gem.

This is Cito, out of the dugout, presumably to confirm John McDonald’s entrance into the game at SS after coming on as a pinch runner for the injured Marco Scutaro. In the background, Canadian right-hander Scott Richmond is warming up.

Anyways, with a little bit of photoshopping: a tighter crop, some slight levelling to darken it a bit and a little less magenta and more yellow to bring out the green of the field, and you get this.

Cito Edit

Also, the Internet ruins my photos. This looked a lot better in photoshop.

Dan Carcillo is the most valuable player in fantasy hockey this year (at least in Yahoo leagues that count PIM). How is it possible that a guy your father has probably never heard of be more important than Crosby, Ovechkin or Malkin? It comes down to one number: 324. Or, more specifically, 5.7. That’s how many PIMs Carcillo racked up last year. Carcillo is the only player in the league (except Roberto Luongo on one of his doesn’t-give-up-a-goal-for-a-fortnight streaks) who can guarantee a roto win in a statistical category—whether it’s weekly in a head-to-head match-up or over the course of a season. The difference between Ovechkin and Malkin in points last year was 6: 112–106. The difference between Carcillo and Jared Boll was 324–226. And that was with the 25 games Carcillo missed thanks to his “rage issues”.

Moreover, Carcillo isn’t completely useless on the hockey rink with the exception of his fists. in his 57 games last year, Carcillo racked up 13 goals and 11 assists, was plus one, and had 8 powerplay points, essentially making him a rich man’s Sean Avery without the metrosexualness and douchebaggery and more anger.

Some argue that Carcillo will fight less this year with the addition of Todd Fedoruk and Brian McGrattan, but the key to Carcillo’s brilliance wasn’t his fighting ability; it was the way he went the extra mile to get the extra minutes. By my very rough count, he was kicked out of five games last season and suspended twice. And he had five more misconducts beyond that. The guy is insane, and he’ll keep calling opponents, fans, officials, the team owner, whoever a cock-sucking motherfucker, even if he’s not fighting as much this time.

So yeah, drafting Carcillo is the key to success this season, just as picking him up off wiavers was the key to winning last year. I’m not saying take him first overall or anything like that, but if he’s around in the 8th-ish round (you should have 5–6 scorers and at least 1 goalie before picking him up) pounce on him in a hurry. You can thank me later.

I have nothing to say about this other than that I’m upset that Comcast won’t let me embed it. Anyways, send everyone you know here. Do it now. Make sure they watch the video.

Apparently the pressure of having his number retired by the Longhorns this year has gotten to Tennessee Titans QB Vince Young, who apparently has such a thin skin that a booing by the hometown fans that he almost refused to reenter a game and then went AWOL Monday night, with the Titans calling in police help to find him. Now his mom says that he might not want to play football anymore.

So yeah, it’s weird that the last two big-time Texas stars have both wound up being extraordinarily thin-skinned players with amazing abilities and questionable dedication. And while this currently seems like more of a temper tantrum from Young than a full-on meltdown a la Williams, it’s still an odd coincidence.

The other thing odd about this is how a guy who has been so good at all levels can all of a sudden after one bad game decide he doens’t like football. And this isn’t a big-nosed know-it-all spouting off about how he doesn’t like his sport on an out-of-town radio show; this is his own mother doubting his passion for the game.

So I guess it’s time to chalk Vince Young up in the ever-growing ranks of professional athletes that I just don’t get. I imagine Tennessee fans won’t get him either, and that could prove troublesome when he eventually comes back and is ready to play.

Jennie Finch here is my favourite Olympic athlete ever. When she showed up to the ESPYs that year in that black dress and went about her business of being all hot and stuff, I was intrigued. When she struck out Mike Cameron on a softball field, I decided that she would forever be the unobtainable love of my life. I also decided I wished I had gone to  a Pac-10 school.

Anyways, in Finch’s honour, here are the stars of the 2008 Olympics in this man’s opinion. Let’s keep in mind that this list is in no particular order, that it’s based purely on aesthetics, and that I’m a pig. Also, this only rule I’m going to go by is that these can’t be people that have been gushed over on ESPN before—so bye-bye to Maria Sharapova, Amy Acuff, Heather Mitts or Amanda Beard. Let’s dig in.

Nastia Liukin

I’ve gone to great lengths to describe my love for this spunky gymnastic queen. I don’t want to turn this into me verbally masturbating over a bunch of chicks, so that, as they say, is that.

Lolo Jones

The American hurdler was well on her way to winning the 100m hurdles in Beijing before she fell out of history and into disgrace. It wasn’t all bad though: it meant Priscilla Lopes-Schliep got the bronze, and Jones still looked good, even if she couldn’t perform well.

Danielle Lawrie

A pitcher for Canada’s softball team, I don’t think she ever saw the field with all the innings Lauren Bay-Regula (who didn’t quite make the list) pitched, which left her plenty of time to look good in the bullpen. Bonus points here for being Brett Lawrie’s sister; Brett Lawrie is awesome.

Jodie Bowering

Sticking with softball, Bowering comes from down under, which means not only is she a cute blonde (you’ll notice the theme), but she’s a cute blonde with a funny accent who calls a garage a “carpark”.

Martina Guiggi

Guiggi is a really tall Italian lady who enjoys long walks on the beach, chianti by candlelight, and smacking balls at other chicks really hard. Bonus points for the sexy accent and a presumed propensity for going topless on the beach.

Hope Solo

Apparently she’s a world class bitch who was actually kicked off the US national team after that outburst, but she’s forgiven because she’s, you know, attractive and all that.

Gail Emms

I’m not sure if she should count because she plays such a lame almost-not-a-sport sport, but she probably single-handedly drove up the BBC’s ratings during the badminton tournament. Great Britain doesn’t show up on these lists often, but Emms definitely belongs.

Leryn Franco

The Parguayan model/javelin thrower (which is the best slash job ever) should be the next Amy Acuff, and win all those “hottest athlete alive ever?” contests that male oriented websites like hosting.

Erin Phillips

You see her with her dishevelled hair and she looks like she’s cute with a bit of spunk. Then she shows up in Alpha magazine, and this point guard from Down Under comes across as a kinky submissive with a great ass and good fashion sense when it comes to lingerie.

Alicia Sacramone

Overshadowed in both talent and looks by Nastia Liukin, Sacramone winds up on this list for two reasons: 1) Her low self-confidence after her epic fail in Beijiing makes her the most available person on this list, and 2) She has a wicked left hook. Also, she goes to like Harvard or Yale or one of those big fancy schools.

Emma Snowsill

Yet an other Aussie, I don’t really have a lot to saw about her, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking. She does have a great last name, though.

Marie-Pierre Gagné

I didn’t watch synchronized swimming, but I did like her Rona commercial, and it’s hard not to have a thing for Quebecois girls.

Megan Imrie

Okay, Imrie doesn’t technically count as she didn’t participate in Beijing, but I saw her Petro-Can commercial like 18 000 times. She’s right about one thing: shooting can be beautiful—or at least sort of cute.

First off, the obvious statement: New England is fucked. I’m not convinced that Laurence Maroney and Sammy Morris are good enough runners to carry an offence that is dealing with a quarterback as inexperienced as Matt Cassel. It seems like everyone thinks he might be good, but there’s no proof of that other than the idea that the better part of a decade spent holding Tom Brady’s clipboard can make someone into a good quarterback. Maybe that’s true, but I’m not willing to bet on it. And he’s certainly not throwing 40–50 tourchdowns this year.

Anyways, I like Morris and Maroney, and believe they make an excellent running tandem, but their limited successes have always come with Brady putting up big numbers through the air, and I don’t believe that they will be able to be feature backs in an offence that doesn’t put up record numbers through the air—at least not yet. Further confounding this issue is that New England’s offensive line was absolutely putrid in the Super Bowl against the Giants and looked no better in the preseason. They were solid against KC, but that’s also a terrible team, and solid isn’t outstanding.

Secondly, what a shitty pair of games the Patriots have had: first they lose the Super Bowl on the flukiest catch on the lamest duck throw since the invention of the forward pass, then they lose their all-everything QB, the most popular player in team history, for the season in the first game of the year. Of course, with the way the Celtics, Red Sox and Patriots have played in the past 7 years, the city of Boston was kind of due for something to go wrong. Of course, there couldn’t have been a worse something to have happen. As I said, Brady is easily the most beloved Patriot of all time (why else would Bostonians not only put up with but also outwardly enjoy his metrosexual, media-whoring ways?), but he’s also the most popular Boston athlete period since probably Larry Bird (though I’m willing to hear arguments in favour of both Pedro and Cam Neely).

Finally, perhaps the only good thing to come about from Brady’s injury is that I won’t spend another football season gushing about how great his hair is. Seriously, I don’t know how a guy can spend three hours sweating in the mud with 21 300-pound dudes and still come out the other end smelling like lollipops and looking better than he did when he went in.

Anyways, in a shocking and unprecedented showing of provincial unity, Edmonton and Calgary banded together to earn the right to host the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championships.

And while the only potential hiccup in this plan (where to host the gold medal game) is already settled (Calgary, which makes perfect sense because they have the better arena), and the sting of that is offset for Edmontonians by giving them the Canada pool games, I still have two mini-beefs with this.

The first is that what happens if Edmonton has a new, 20 000-seat downtown arena by January ’12? I know that’s kind of short to get it done (but not /that/ short), but there really should be a contingency in place should this happen (where the schedules essentially flip).

The second is that while giving the finals to the city with the biggest arena makes so much sense and I’m totally for it, they could have found a more amusing way to decide that. Keep in mind that it’s not like the schedules need to be set tomorrow for this thing, and that even if tickets don’t go on sale until summer ’11, they’d still sell out in record time, and hotels would still get booked and all that stuff would be done with relative ease.

Anyways, with that in mind, I wish that they’d done something like “Best record in 2010/11 between the Oilers and Flames gets the final” or the same thing with the Hitmen and Oil Kings, or even some mutant hybrid of the two (“Best City Record”). Of course, there all other things you could do as well, like mae it cumulative instead of just for the one season or whatever.

Of course, I like novelty, so I like the idea of a novelty exhibition series between the Flames and Oilers, best-of-three, with the winner deciding who gets the medal round: one game in Edmonton, one in Calgary and one in Red Deer. Or, if the players won’t buy into that, what about a team skills competition to determine the winner? Or an oldtimers’ game between the Oilers legends and the Flames legends?

I think that last one is my favourite, especially with the added revenue a Battle of Alberta Classic would drag in, but mainly because it would give us another chance to see Dave Hunter on skates—that guy’s reached the point in his retirement where he looks like he ate post-retirement Grant Fuhr. The last time I saw he, he was playing in a charity ringette game at the U of A and basically trying to outfat everyone on the ice (which is a difficult task when Bob Stauffer is on your line) and grope presumably sexy coeds (the full facemasks made it hard to tell).

So, in honour of the NFL’s decision to allow him to wear “Ocho Cinco” on the back of his jersey, here are my top five memories of the future first-ballot Crazytown Sports Hall of Fame inductee:

5. Chad Johnson races a horse

This was nowhere near as awesome as when Ben Johnson raced a horse and a car (and nowhere near as legit), Johnson legged it out against a thoroughbred for charity. The whole thing was bullshit, with Johnson getting a halfway head start, but at least Chad was doing it for a good cause and not because he is a disgraced national hero or anything like that.

4. Who covered 85 in ’05

Johnson evaluated the defensive backs who attempted to cover him over the season. And this wasn’t some sort of serious scouting list to be used to see what guys were doing to stay with him; this was a pure ego boost to mock his opponents. Johnson became superstitiously attached to his list, leading to number three.

3. Did 85 do everything he could to lead his team to victory?

Bengals bench boss Marvin Lewis, who has to be the most patient man in the world to put up with all the shit Johnson has thrown at him over the years (seriously, most coaches who have receivers who spend the better part of a decade behaving like an idiot get fed up and either snap, bench the guy, or just demand he be traded. Lewis just shrugs off all of Johnson’s shit, and didn’t even blanch at his half-hearted trade demand this offseason, even convincing him to come to mini-camps.) replaced Johnson’s list with a mocking on of his own, asking questions that evaluated Johnson’s performance on and off the field. Johnson, grown attached to his list, was very upset about this. I think it’s funny.

2. Chad Johnson becomes Chad Ocho Cinco

The first time, when he was honouring Hispanic Heritage month and he taped “Ocho Cinco” over “C. Johnson” on his back for the warmups of one game, I thought it was kind of lame. Even now, I don’t know how a guy by the name of “Chad Johnson” who went to school in Oregon (okay, so he was born in Miami, shut up) has such an affinity for the Latin community, but it went from lame to hilarious when Chad officially changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco. My favourite part is the NFL’s reaction to allowing him to put his new name on the back of his jersey: “It’s his legal name.” It just seems like NFL spokesman Greg Aiello wants nothing more than to not be having that interview, or anything to do with the entire situation.

1. PLEASE don’t fine me AGAIN!!!!!

After being hit with a fine for excessive celebration following a touchdown, Johnson celebrated a touchdown by holding up a sign requesting he not be fined again for excessive celebration. Of course, fittingly, he was fined. Sometimes the NFL is so predictable.

And since I’ll probably never talk about it again, this whole excessive celebration thing is the NFL’s fault in the first place. If they hadn’t outlawed the throat slash gesture, everyone would hagve just stuck with the Ickey Shuffle.