THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE

1. NO, WE DON’T NEED A ROOF: I didn’t hear one complaint from anybody stranded around the concourse behind section 141 in the 3-hour-plus rain delay before Friday’s Garth Brooks concert. I do sympathize with the folks who needed to sit and couldn’t or had to lean on their walker because there was nowhere else to go. But aside from that, it was all one helluva good time.

And I’m not even a country music guy.

People will remember that concert forever and somehow I doubt a roof would’ve made it any more spectacular.  

2. WEATHER DELAYED FINISHES ARE THE BEST: I’ll never forget the summer night in 2007 when the Riders and Eskimos didn’t finish till around midnight. Taylor Field had cleared out, the lights had gone out and electronic camera cords everywhere on the sideline were under water.

And then the lights turned on and PA Announcer Evan Bray’s voice rang out “Any Rider fans still here?” The 5 thousand still left roared like a packed house and the Roughriders erased a 4^thquarter deficit to beat Danny Maciocia’s Esks.

The Canada Day win over the Argos had a weather delay and that seemed to work out okay, too.

If Major League Baseball can delay for several hours and still finish the game, then so too can the CFL. If the Riders took advantage of this silly loophole and their fans are still upset about the way Friday’s game at Montreal ended, then that should tell us all something right there.

3. GRAND SLAM WEEKEND: Felt like we’re really becoming a city. Did the Garth Brooks concert Friday and then pinballed back and forth from the Red Sox playoff games to the Folk Fest Saturday and Sunday. Colter Wall and Blue Rodeo were both spectacular and the crowds didn’t seem to be hurt all that bad by the Garth concert either. It’s encouraging to see our city handle so many events at once.

4. GARTH: Really soothed the crowd after that weather delay. You can tell this wasn’t his first rodeo. Joe Dimaggio and Wayne Gretzky lived by the motto “Somebody is always watching you for the first time and someone else is always watching for the last time and you don’t want to disappoint either.” I wouldn’t say that he wowed me but we expected a 5-star show and that’s what we got.

He didn’t disappoint.

5. COLTER WALL: Great musician! And also a really big baby.

Saw him Saturday night downtown and he’s a kid with a Johnny Cash-like legendary country music sound. Hilarious how he ripped the city for being ‘pretty damn disrespectful’ over booking Garth Brooks on the same weekend he (Colter) was to perform at Folk Fest.

Pretty ironic for someone who was raised by a free market capitalist to throw stones at the city of Regina for daring to think big.

Asking quite possibly the biggest country music star of all time to take a back seat to Colter Wall and the Folk Fest is about the equivalent to the Regina Pats or Regina Red Sox telling the Riders to move their schedule to accommodate their own.

Laughable!

No one person is bigger than Regina or Saskatchewan. Not Colter or Brad Wall, despite what they might think.

6. REGINA RED SOX PLAYOFF RUN: Wild ending to the first round in coming back to beat the Moose Jaw Miller Express with 5 runs in the 8^thinning Saturday night. Then did the webcast again in Sunday’s game 1 win over the Swift Current 57’s for the East Division final. A Sox win tonight would punch their ticket to the finals against the winner of Lethbridge-Okotoks. A Sox loss means do-or-die in game 3 at Currie Field Wednesday night.

Either way we get more ball in Regina this summer and the sun always shines a lot more brightly over this town when that happens.

7. SWIFT CURRENT 57’s SELF-DESTRUCT: The umping in game 1 wasn’t great but Speedy Creek losing had more to do with their own implosion than anything the umpires did.

Right after Swift got a game-tying 3-run homer from Kiel Krumwiede in the 7^thinning, 2^ndbaseman Alvin Alamo was called out at first base on a ground ball in which I thought he was safe. But I watched the replay over and over and it was pretty close.

Umpires make mistakes and so do the rest of us.

Swift Current’s 3^rdbase coach, Rueben Rodriguez, later spit toward the feet of home plate umpire Don Buskas during a scene in which Rodriguez was clearly out to get his 15 seconds of fame.

Disgusting and very grade 4-like. They’re a great organization but didn’t paint themselves with any glory Sunday night. 

8. XFL IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT: I sound like a broken record on this but if quarterbacks honestly want to try the XFL and give up whatever they have up here in Canada, good riddance. Then-Hamilton Head Coach June Jones was told by free agent quarterbacks about a year ago that they would rather try the Alliance of American Football before coming to Canada.

And we all know how well that turned out

9. WINNIPEG NOT BUYING NFL TICKETS: The more empty seats we see at IG Field in 9 days to see the Packers play the Raiders, the better. Another reminder that we Canadians are far too smart to fall for the NFL’s desperate money grabs. The Raiders and their laughingstock owner, Mark Davis, aren’t worthy of support in Oakland, Vegas or anywhere else.

Regina didn’t want the game all that bad and evidently, neither does Winnipeg.

10. ROB VANSTONE: A throwback to the era when newspaper truly was king. It was like Christmas morning to get the Rider/CFL special preview edition every June from my grandparents place. The writing was thorough and all packaged in one with great photos and all. What could be more perfect than that?

This internet thing is great but the scattering of audiences has kicked the crap out of the once almighty Regina Leader Post and replaced its coverage with talking heads and so-called “experts” (I might be one of them. LOL) But sometimes this new world gets so crowded with all this fake news that it takes a listen to Rob or Murray McCormick or Darrell Davis to cut through the B.S. and analyze the situation for what it is.

Rob’s right when he pointed out on The Rod Pedersen Show that Cody Fajardo is at just about the same life-cycle Darian Durant was when he took over the reigns as the Roughriders starting QB.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see Fajardo doing what he’s doing. He’s doing it an awful lot in the same way we saw Darian do it, not all that long ago.

(Follow Brendan McGuire on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)