A tweet from Michael Landsberg tells you all you need to know about Mike Babcock: “He represents the intersection of two of my worlds; sports and mental health. Mike called me six years ago and said, ‘I want to help’ and he has. He’s become a huge voice in destigmatizing mental illness. He’s a really good man.”
• How much do you think it cost Auston Matthews to make gotch-gate go away?
• Glamour Magazine found that 75 to 80 per cent of people pee in the shower. As one person on Twitter said: “Not me. I am so horrible at multi-tasking.”
• Former Riders play-by-play announcer Rod Pedersen, on CFL MOP voting: “Would the Ticats have won the East without Brandon Banks? Yes. Would the Riders have won the West pennant without Cody Fajardo? No.” A case can be made for Banks being the MOP, but he certainly wasn’t the MVP. That’s Fajardo, hands down.
• Janice Hough, on increasing allegations of cheating emerging against Houston Astros: “Trump may be thinking he invited the wrong team to the White House.”
• We have likely seen the last of Duron Carter in the CFL. That’s too bad.
• Replacing Babcock with Sheldon Keefe is like replacing Bill Belichick with Jason Maas.
• If you have 15 minutes or so, search Keefe and Bob McKenzie. You should get a great story on Keefe’s life. There are few, if any, like it. It is nice to see him getting a chance to coach at this level, but not win, of course.
• An oops moment in a Christmas ad in the Comox Valley newspaper in British Columbia: “Pictures with Satan.”
• Bob McCown, the dean of sports talk radio, on the state of the industry: “It is filled with people who like to talk but have nothing to say. Please
motivate us to think!”
• If it was based on likeability, Derek Jeter wouldn’t be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• Hockey Canada has dropped the names novice, atom, peewee, bantam and midget from its lexicon. Divisions will now be known by age groups: U-7, U-9 etc. Sounds better to me.
• My three favourite teams in women’s curling, in no particular order: Team Hasselborg, Team Fleury and Team Silvernagle.
• From comedy writer Alex Kaseberg: “For a woman who projects an image of farting unicorn pixie dust, Taylor Swift sure does have a lot of feuds, enemies and bitter ex boyfriends.”
• A lump-in-your-throat moment from Cody Fajardo: “One of the best things was when I was told by a little boy that he was out in his front yard with his football pretending to be Cody Fajardo. My wife was with me and started to cry when she heard that.”
• From sports agent Allan Walsh: “There is nothing like being in line to board a plane at 6 a.m. and having the person in front of you Facetiming a very uninterested-looking dog and loudly professing her love and making loud kissing noises at her phone.” #NeedAnotherCoffee
• Hough, on what Steve Kerr could have said after his Warriors lost by 48 to the Mavericks: “With a few breaks, we would have lost by 42.”
• Another from Hough, on the same topic: “Who would have thought struggling NBA teams would be thinking this sentence in 2019: ‘At least we’re not the Warriors.’”
• What Trump has done makes Watergate a dripping faucet.
• Would Leafs fans trade Matthews and Marner for Marchand, Pastrnak and Bergeron? The correct answer is yes if you want to win a Stanley Cup in the next couple of years.
• From the Twitter account of Krista_B_85: “My kid told me he is asking Santa for a Giant Woody for Christmas which I feel may be high risk to mistakenly land him on the naughty list.”
• Hough, on ticket prices for the Patriots-Cowboys and Lions-Washington: “Tickets on Stubhub for the game at Gillette Stadium started at $236. Lions-Washington at Fed Cup Field had tickets as low as $9. Was Washington charging that or playing it?”
-Cam Hutchinson