Buck Me Frettly

OK . I admit it. The Green Bay Packers made a grave mistake in not welcoming their grand diva Brett Favre back on whatever terms he wanted in August 2008. True confession time – I’ve been a Packer fan since I was a boy. In that point of a previous millennium, ‘The Pack’, under legendary coach Vince Lombardi was defeating the likes of the New York Giants for NFL championships. Last summmer I agreed with Packer management who did not guarantee Favre his starter’s job after a bizarrre five month on-off-on-and off again dalliance with retirement.

Yesterday, Favre sliced and diced his former team on its own turf, Lambeau Field. Combine yesterday’s performance with a game in Minnesota last month and Favre hurled seven touchdown passes in two Viking victories over the Packers. OUCH!!

The Packers’ choice to lead their team, Aaron Rodgers played another terribly   inconsistent, sometimes flashy, but ultimately losing game.  Rodgers, as if haunted by Favre interceptions of the past, repeatedly held on to the ball too long allowing the Vikings to sack him. The fourty year old Favre meanwhile gamboled about like a teenager while showing arm strength and accuracy easily the match of his glory years with the Packers. Burnt out? Finished? Prone to giveaways? Uh…not so much.

The Vikings just may win the NFC championship and head to the Super Bowl under a rejuvenated Favre. Packer GM Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy were one game from The Big Show with Favre as QB in the 2007 season. If Favre was still their starter today, they would have a stronger team. The moral of this story appears to be that sometimes superstars, even when they behave erratically, must be indulged.

A

The Marvels of Testosterone

The worst start in the history of the franchise. That would be ZERO wins in seven games to date. That’s what big Brian Burke’s injection of “pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence” has wrought for the pathetic Toronto Maple Leafs hockey club. Pugnacity, male hormones and idiotic fighting on skates aside, the ‘Loafs’ just plain bite. Their goalkeeping is sub-standard. They have no scorers. (Woe to them if the next promised saviour Phil Kessel turns out to be another Jason Blake.) They have a defenceman Tomas Kaberle who would star for most teams, but Burke and his coach Ron Wilson spent the best part of a year denigrating Kaberle for his sophisticated approach to the position. Kaberle now appears confused. Last year’s promising rookie Luke Schenn is this year’s dull-witted, slow-footed sophomore. Maybe the startlingly handsome Schenn’s modeling assignments during the off season wore him out.

It has been a rude awakening for The Loaf Nation. The collective boy crush that the ‘sports media’ of Toronto had on Burke during the pre-season led many to predict that the Leafs were playoff bound for the first time in five years. A Toronto daily even ran a feature with admiring photos of Burke  surrounded by the supposed worthies with whom he has filled the executive suites at the ACC. Perhaps that brain trust will produce a win before November.

I’d bet that the likes of Don Cherry is delighted that almost all Leaf games feature a contrived display of fisticuffs at some point. NHL management is no doubt quietly satisfied that such displays often lead the highlight package in what passes for sports broadcast journalism. (Gary Bettman is sufficiently cynical to know that selling fighting is in fact a critical part of marketing the NHL.)

Hey, let the testosterone flow! This hockey fan will eschew the Loafs and the absurdist,  fight-riddled NHL while looking forward to some real hockey when the women’s Olympic tourney begins in February.

The New Ballard? J.P. - It's no contest!

Those familiar with these musings will recall that last month I posed the existential question: ‘who is most likely to qualify as Toronto’s next Harold Ballard – Brian ‘Testosterone’ Burke of the Loafs or J.P. Ricciardi of the Jays ?’

As the Jays limp towards the golf courses of October for which they have been clearly pining since early July, the answer is clear. It’s J.P all the way.

Ricciardi the fellow who managed to finish fourth last year in the A.L. East when Roy Halladay and A.J. Burnett combined for 38 wins, has simply outdone himself in 2009. Alex Rios? Gone..for nothing. That’s NOTHING as in nada, zilch, S.F.A. B.J. Ryan? A  franchise cornerstone who is out of Major League Baseball three years into a multi-year contract. Vernon Wells? Well unfortunately the Jays still have him, but he’s a burnt out husk; the most expensive failure playing everyday in major league baseball. It says here Wells will never again actually amount to more than the fourth outfielder on a good team.

Ricciardi has been kind of circumspect this year. I miss the days when he would come on the radio to routinely insult Jays’ fans for their lack of intelligence. Remember last year when he went off on a caller who wondered why the Jays would not go after Adam Dunn when they were still close enough to compete for the Wild Card? J.P. dismissed that fan and insulted Dunn for “not really liking baseball”. This year to date Dunn has disliked baseball enough to hit 38 home runs. That is 8 home runs more  than the spent Wells and the similarly unproductive Lyle Overbay combined.

You are a terrific judge of talent and character, J.P.!  For all of this and more, I happily reward you the title of Toronto’s Next Ballard. Only you could reduce Blue Jays’ attendance to 11,000; only you could dangle Roy Halladay in July like stale bait when the Jays had the same record as the still competitive Minnesota Twins. Take a bow, Dude. Then get back to Boston on October 4 and never return. Please. Pretty please.

Michael Jackson - one month on

A great artist died on June 25, 2009. For many days afterward, we witnessed a media spectacle devoted to the life and work of Michael Jackson. Television, radio, the Internet, newspapers and magazines joined in an instant canonization. In Canada, the alleged weekly news magazineMaclean’s proffered an embarrassingly shallow instant ‘tribute’ edition. Overall, I found the sum of the coverage very alienating.

Some great artists die young. In popular music, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain are among those that perished tragically young with drug related problems. Jackson’s life was also very troubled but uniquely so. He certainly had a terrible drug problem. More importantly, and what was under emphasized in the coverage that sang his praises as both a great artist and a great human, Jackson had extremely troubling relationships with children – he was quite possibly a pedophile. Yes, he was acquitted of a criminal charge. It is also true that he settled out of court with a significant payment to the family of a young boy who had been in his company. In an interview, he said that he enjoyed having children in his bed.

The general media silence about Jackson’s problem with children troubles me. There were a few worthy exceptions. On July 4, 2009, Bob Herbert, a columnist with the New York Times, wrote a column that featured a chilling portrait of the Jackson that he had met and some sombre thoughts about the cult of celebrity in America. As is often the case, the British magazineThe Economist in its July 2 edition outshone its print competitors with an eloquent, brief, crystalline obituary of Jackson.

In the days and weeks ahead, we will learn more details about Jackson’s autopsy. Some media reports suggest there may be manslaughter charges in the works. We will also learn the outcome of the current bidding war for rights to the video footage of Jackson rehearsals for the tour he was planning. It is safe to predict that the release of the finished production will be one of the television and/or cinematic  events of 2010. I wonder at what stage the media might engage in a responsible, thoughtful discussion and investigation into the true nature of Jackson’s relationships with children. That’s hard to do at a canonization.

Jam