Olympic Thoughts, Blue Jays Faltering as Expected & Buttman At it Again

The Olympics are nearly over and my personal opinion of certain athletes aside, there have been some great moments and some controversial moments that have left people scratching their heads. There were some great tennis matches, electric moments on the track and some shocking results on the soccer pitch (both good and bad).

Before I get into it, someone has to tell me how some sports are still in the Olympics while some other, more commonly played sports around the world are not. For example, how the hell are table tennis and Trampoline events in the Summer Olympics as medal sports yet Baseball and Softball are not? The rationale behind the exclusion of Baseball and Softball at the time was the argument by the IOC that not enough people around the world were playing the two sports on a high enough level to warrant them as Olympic sports. It's the same argument that the Winter Olympics keeps throwing at the Women's Hockey event since the winner of the Gold and Silver Medals in every single Winter Olympics since the sports inclusion has been Canada and the USA.

But to me that argument could be used against a lot of sports that are dominated by certain nations. You don't hear people saying that basketball should be be booted because the US has dominated the tournament since they went to the "Dream Team" model in 1992 do you? What about table tennis, the sport I already question. It's dominated by China and has been for a good 20-25 years yet no one (for whatever reason) questions its' inclusion. So why was Baseball and Softball booted?

It's quite easy to figure out actually. The sports were kicked out because Major League Baseball refused to "play ball" with the IOC with regards to shutting down the MLB season for the 2 to 3 week period that it would require to fulfill an Olympic commitment. Plus, they would have to release all the stars to play for all of their respective national teams and given how much money some of these owners have invested in some of these stars, and how they would have to share the profits from such a tournament, it would never happen.

There were 2 record setting marathon tennis matches that went way past the normal amount of time to complete the 3rd and final set. In Olympic Tennis, the men and women both play a best 2 out 3 sets which means that the final set has to be won by 2 games. Typically, if each player wins a set then that means that the first player to get to 6 games won in the set would win the set and advance except that in both the Milos Raonic vs. Willy Tsonga (3-6, 6-3, 23-25) and the Roger Federer vs. Juan Martin Del Potro (3-6, 7-6 (5), 19-17) both of which took over 4 hours to complete, the final set (as you can see from the scores) went well past the norm.

Usain Bolt showed the world that he is still the fastest man on earth as he defended both his 100 and 200 meter titles from 4 years ago by, once again, obliterating the field on the way to a Gold in each event. Displaying his typical playful nature in the lead up to each event (by chatting with field attendants, flirting with female athletes and attendants as well both in the lead up to his events and in his down time), Bolt was everything a Champion should be.

Now the negative stuff. Boxing matches where the winner (by unanimous judges decision) had to be carried out of the ring by his trainers (overturned on appeal). Athletes tweeting racial stuff on their twitter accounts, being booted out of the games before they even started and still other ones being booted out for having pictures up on their facebook profile from 4 years ago that didn't jive with their country's Olympic committee's ethics.And of course, the controversy over the pathetic officiating in some sports, particularly the Women's Soccer Semi-final between Canada and the USA 3 days ago.

The fact that the ref called a delay of game foul on the Canadian Keeper (for holding the ball for 6 seconds) without giving her a warning, then she calls a penalty shot on a hand ball resulting from that same free kick in the Canadian box when a Canadian player was only about 3 feet away from the ball (she should have blown the play dead and forced the Americans to re-kick their indirect free kick, but instead opted to compound her error) demonstrated to everyone that this official simply had no idea of what she was doing (when you add to that the fact that the US also got away with a hand ball not being called against them in the gold medal game against Japan, you really have to wonder about these soccer officials in this women's tournament).

The Olympics wrap up in a couple of days but there have been a ton of unforgettable moments, including a couple of cool scenes from the opening ceremonies featuring Mr. Bean and James Bond taking the Queen up in a helicopter. The best part about these Olympics? The fact that they have made Mitt Romney look like and even bigger fool on the World stage. Classic.

I really thought that after the scorching pre-season the Jays had they would be a bonafide contender this year in the American League. While they did look like they were possibly going to be the beneficiaries of an off year by the Red Sox and parody finally starting to creep into the sport, ultimately a 4 day stretch in June was the key turning point in this season as 3 of their starting pitchers went down (2 of them having had to have Tommy John Elbow Ligament replacement surgery and will be out of action for up to a year each).

Even though many will point to the fact that the team was able to maintain a .500 record up until recently, and still others will point to Bautista going down, having 3 young starters go out like they did was clearly the key turning point to the whole year. They currently sit at 53-58, within striking distance of the 2nd Wild Card but with their injuries mounting (Luis Perez and Jason Frasor are also out not to mention Adam Lind with a bad back, JP Arencibia broke his hand, now Brett Lawrie going out with tightness in his oblique and, of course, Bautista and his wrist injury from hell), and their offense now running on fumes, it appears the team is now in free fall.

They were swept in Seattle (against a feisty team that traded away Ichiro), split a 4 game series in Oakland and then got swept in their own personal hell known to everyone else as Tropicana Field in Tampa. Now they start a 10 game home stand against the Yankees, the White Sox and the Texas Rangers. Anything short of winning 7 of those 10 games and the season is pretty much over. Stranger things have happened but I won't be counting on it.

Just a side note on Bautista. I have had to go through the exact same injury on the exact same wrist he has had to endure since the last time the Jays played the Yankees. About 8 weeks ago I also sprained my wrist while playing ball hockey and it has taken me all the way until this week to finally have the ability to swing a baseball bat without any pain. It has taken 8 weeks for me to go through a 3rd degree sprain, then tendonitis and finally now just having nominal pain when I attempt to use it more then I should. When he got hurt that night in New York, I knew it would take an awful lot longer then the Jays were letting on because at that point, I had been hurt for a month or so and it was still very painful.

A 2 to 3 week timetable was unrealistic when first announced but necessary to try and coax the remaining Jays to play above their heads for a few weeks without their star until he returned. Maybe in a year or 2 this team will be in a position where they can compensate for such a loss but as of right now they are too young and inexperienced to do anything other then fight with until the 27th out is recorded against them. They will be better for having gone through this experience, especially the younger players like Anthony Gose (who is looking more and more like he will be a stronger version of Kenny Loften with each game he plays) and Edeiny Hechevaria (who reminds me of a young Tony Fernandez when he bats and fields and should make the transition to 2nd base so that they can just release the strikeout machine known as Kelly Johnson ).

Even their pitching depth, which has been severely tested this season, will be better for it over the next couple of years as the young guys have had a baptism under fire of sorts and can go back to the minors knowing exactly what it takes to stay in the big leagues (here's a hint; it's not just throwing the ball over the plate, the key is throwing quality strikes). Many Blue Jays fans were hoping against hope that the Jays would have been able to make a move and get an arm or 2 (like a Ryan Dempster or a Matt Garza....or both) to help them make that final push and actually make the playoffs for the first time since 1993. All the pitching depth in the world won't help you if you can't score enough runs to win the game and without their starting Catcher, 3rd baseman, All-World Right fielder and DH, they really have no shot at doing a whole hell of a lot right now do they?

Plus, the added bonus is that they get to keep those young assets that everyone was trying to pry away from them in any kind of trade so maybe, just maybe, these injuries were a blessing in disguise in several senses. Young players filling in at the Major League level gain experience against the top competition in the world which will hopefully speed up their development curve significantly and the young pitchers in "A" ball that everyone loves so much, are still members of the team that may end up being more ready to start the spring of 2013 then anyone realizes. One can only hope.

On to Buttman. Somebody needs to smack this guy around a bit and show him the numbers after the first 2 labour stoppages that have occurred on his watch. 1994 we hockey fans had to endure a strike shortened season that lasted a total of 48 games and was the main reason that New Jersey Devils' styled trapping (re: BORING) hockey was brought into the sport. Then, the entire 2004-2005 season was wiped out when the League and its' retarded owners (I use that term in the sense that anyone with a mental handicapped should be embarrassed to be associated with people this incredibly stupid) and, in some areas, the league has never fully recovered.

The only good thing to come out of the wiped out season were some of the rule changes. The Salary cap, while good for the owners (as they try to control the lunacy of some of their own brethren) has done nothing for the sport and has instead kept teams like Nashville and Phoenix in non-hockey markets where they don't belong. It took the owners of the Thrashers going through an 8 year court battle before one of them was finally saddled with being the owner of the sad sack franchise and that lasted all of 8 months before he went screaming for the hills allowing True North to swoop in and buy the team moving them back to a Canadian city that was craving the return of the NHL for nearly 16 years.

And guess what happened? In it's first year in Winnipeg, the re-born Jets went from the lowest attendance in the League in Atlanta the year before, to a playing in front of a loud, sold out, hockey mad crowd each and every night, pushing the Jets into the top 10 in the league in both attendance and revenue. How many US based owners of NHL teams aren't incredibly jealous of True North right now of what they have going on in Winnipeg?

Buttman is a target for me once again because of his statement he made on Thursday when he went on the record as saying that the owners would once again lock out the players if there was no new CBA agreed to by September 15th. Given some of the details that have been made public about the first "offer" the league made the players a few weeks ago and how truly pathetic it was, his comments today and the position he and the league are clearly starting to take with the players shows us all that those 5-8 morons who own teams in cities that simply will not support the game and continue to bleed money left, right and center, have WAAAAAYYYY too much control over the process right now and need to be pushed out of the conversation entirely. If you are too stupid to realize you are losing money in one location and that you best bet is to move to another one, then you don't deserve to be in business. It's that simple.

I just realized how late it was so I will wrap this one up and turn it over to you. Let me know what you think about any of this or any other of my blog posts.

Until next time....