UPDATE: Gary Carter, the first player to go into baseball's Hall of Fame as a Montréal Expo, has died at the age of 57. Carter had been suffering from brain cancer for some time, and dealt with new tumors last month. Carter was a 2-time All-Star Game MVP, won 4 Gold Gloves, and finished with 324 HR. He also served as a broadcaster for the Expos and Marlins and worked as an ambassador for the game. He will be sorely missed.
We rarely talk about the Raptors because, well, there isn't much to say. But the Raptors got their second sell-out crowd of the season and the first since Opening Night all thanks to a guard from the New York Knicks named Jeremy Lin.
It didn't hurt that Lin has another great night capped off with a 3-point shot with less than a second left to give the Knicks a 3-point win.
Having an upstart 23-year-old from Harvard on a hot streak would be enough to draw bigger crowds. For Toronto, the fact that Lin is of Taiwanese descent and is one of the few Asian Americans in NBA history made a bigger difference. Outside of New York, San Francisco, and maybe Los Angeles, Toronto has the largest East Asian population of any NBA city.
One report estimated that 20% of the Raptors crowd was of Asian descent.
Leagues usually suffer attendance-wise after dealing with a strike. If Lin can bring more attendance magic to other cities, the Linsanity miracle will just get larger.
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"This season, the primetime stretch begins on May 19 and will continue through July 7. According to Fox, all teams excluding Toronto will be featured during that 8 week stretch at least twice."
Fang Bites summed that up well. The sentence is blunt about what Fox thinks of carrying the Blue Jays yet offers hope that maybe Toronto would get one appearance.
Nope. No Blue Jays telecasts on Fox. Not that we are surprised. The idea that the Pittsburgh Pirates, Houston Astros, Oakland A's, and Seattle Mariners have at least two telecasts in a 7-week stretch. Toronto has zero telecasts … for the whole year.
Toronto does end up on TBS Sunday afternoon telecasts, though their sole purpose is to play the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Fox covers East Coast and West Coast teams; TBS rarely gets west of St. Louis to carry a game.
Fox's argument is the lost ratings in the home market. A game that has only one market would have less overall ratings than a game with two markets. Pittsburgh is pretty small and has a perennially bad team. Oakland is small and isn't good. Toronto is the 5th largest city in North America. Buffalo and Western New York can't be much smaller than Pittsburgh. Fox won't show Jose Bautista, one of the most prolific home run hitters, and one of the most explosive offenses in baseball. Heck, Fox won't even show O Canada at the All-Star Game.
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Okay, one hockey note from Wednesday night's Boston-Montréal game. Goalie interference was a dominant part of the game, and the most egregious call came when Max Pacioretty got a 2-minute penalty for avoiding goalie interference. The Canadiens were then on the power play, and Boston scored when the teams were at 4 apiece, so Montréal suffered on the ice.
Louis Leblanc was called later for goalie interference, even though Boston goalie Tim Thomas was well outside the crease. Refs called 4 goalie interference penalties in the game, only 2 of them (1 Boston, Erik Cole for Montréal) were legit.
While the NBCSN announcers ignored the fact that Leblanc's "interference" came with Thomas nowhere near the crease, Ed Olczyk and Pierre McGuire were left dumbfounded about why Pacioretty was penalized. Olczyk was particularly loud about how horrible the call was.
Watching referees overcall goalie interference takes us back to the times when Chicago would bash Robert Luongo but the refs wouldn't call obvious goalie interference. And watching Max Pacioretty, of all people, get a bad call against Boston at the Bell Centre reminds us that Zdeno Chara never got punished for his deliberate massive hit. And to add insult to insult, McGuire noted that refs were now cracking down after Milan Lucic (also of Boston) hit Buffalo star goalie Ryan Miller who has not been the same since. Lucic, like Chara, suffered no suspension.
Watching Brad Marchand clip yet another Canadian-based player makes us cringe as he couldn't claim self-defense last night. His outrageous self-defense claim was at least denied as a Bruins player actually got a suspension. We'll see if Marchand faces more discipline. The punishment by the NHL needs to be very tough on such cheap shots, especially by Boston.
The ref were just AWFUL in that game. and for the record, the attempt to injure dirty hit by Marchand was NOT penalized by the league.. (what a surprise.. boston can do whatever they want and get no suspensions...) Even on RDS we were reminded of the same lucic hit on miller... just as another one happened now, cant recall which of the 4 it was however.
Posted by: Mario T | February 18, 2012 at 01:56 AM
There are so many cheap shots it is difficult to keep track. Then again, Boston players realize that since they won't get punished, they might as well keep doing them. It's the logic of a 10-year-old, but that seems to fit the Boston Bruins on-ice mentality.
Posted by: Chad | February 19, 2012 at 09:25 AM