THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE
1. THE BASEBALL SEASON: I think any professional sports league trying to play through the new world order we’re all living in is nuts. But I don’t expect Major League Baseball to care what I think and so I’m prepared to tune in, when/if it happens. A 60-game schedule will come with an asterisk but it’s still plenty long enough to pull off a season. Traveling city to city will make it impossible to protect everyone from the coronavirus and I’ll be very surprised if they actually get through the season without a major wave of infections sweeping through the Majors. This is a bad choice being made by a group of owners who don’t know how to react to this most unusual situation.
2. SHORTER CFL SEASON MAKES NO SENSE: The expense of transporting players in from all over North America, finding them places to live and train, is onerous enough in preparing for a 6-month schedule. It would be pretty well pointless to try and pull that off for a shortened, truncated season. No one should be faulting CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie for trying to find solutions. But it’s pretty clear to this bigmouth that no scenario is available that could possibly include a 2020 CFL season. This is a year all about survival. And there just isn’t room for football.
3. CHRISTION JONES’ HOMOPHOBIC TWEETS: I’m all about zero tolerance for homophobia but this goes a little overboard. The Edmonton Eskimos displayed the right message over the weekend in releasing kick returner Christion Jones for saying men shouldn’t be with men and women shouldn’t be with women. But he did later apologize. Did the Esks give Jones the opportunity to walk his comments back before cutting him loose? Not that I’m aware of. I really hope that people like Jones, who grew up surrounded by bigotry in Alabama, aren’t thrown under the bus and losing their jobs without at least getting a chance to explain themselves.
4. JAMES WILDER JR: Always thought he was more talk than action and someone who dined off a good 2nd half to his 2017 season. That’s it. The End. But at the same time, he was a good showman for the league and nobody deserves to have their career cut short by a disaster like COVID-19. He’s kept the door open a crack to play again in 2021 or beyond but it sounds like the coronavirus has ended his career. And that’s a shame.
5. CFLPA CONTINUES TO EMBARRASS ITSELF: Players are talking about giving Randy Ambrosie an ultimatum within the next week to make up his mind on a 2020 season. None of these bigmouths seem to offer a solution of their own. Therefore, everyone should just operate under the assumption there won’t be a season. If the Commissioner pulls a rabbit out of his hat, great! Otherwise, we’ll just have to batten down the hatches for this year and shoot for 2021.
6. CORONAVIRUS RECOVERY: There’s been a tonne of government spending and that’s not going to stop between now and the time we’re out of this mess. Part of the economic recovery will require stimulus packages to undertake major infrastructure projects. There’s no reason that cannot or should not include stadiums for a CFL team in Halifax or a Major League Baseball team in Montreal. Sport has a very uplifting impact on the spirits of a society and a post COVID-19 boost, which I fully expect within the next year, can help move these efforts along. The future is as bright now as it has ever been. We just have to get through this, first.
7. NBA RETURN PLAN MAKES THE MOST SENSE: A bubble city is the only way this can work. Testing people going in and out of that Disney World resort is the only way to do this safely. Otherwise, the health and legal ramifications are just too great.
8.cNFL PLAYERS WORKING OUT: Nobody should care about this. Athletes can work out. We should all be working out. If Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski want to work out together in Florida, that’s their business and nocone else’s.
9. BUSINESS DESPARATELY NEEDING OUR SUPPORT: Please, please, please support local businesses and there’s no one needing our help more desperately than local gyms. Regina has a smorgasbord of great fitness centres and that is all at risk right now with the coronavirus. If personal wellness is important to you and you can socially distance at your local fitness centre, please don’t cancel your membership. If you’re the landlord of a fitness centre, you owe it to everybody to work with your tenant to obtain government and bank leniency so that the gym is able to stay in business. Nobody deserves to have their livelihood destroyed by this and gym operators are no exception. A lot of people are getting the crap kicked out of them with all of this and nobody is getting it worse than these gym operators.
10. FILM OF THE WEEK: Taped our first MLB the Show simulation of the 2020 Western Canada Baseball League season for Access Communications Monday night. Check your local listings and the Access facebook page for more details.
(Follow Brendan on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)
