Beer is like my baby

The column I'm posting here first appeared in the North Shore News as a fill-in for vacationing humourist and all-around tall person James Weldon. If you haven't read James' work, please don't so I can fool you into thinking I'm the funniest writer at the paper. Ah crap, I forgot about Brendan McAleer too. Also, our arts and crafts lady is a riot.
Seriously though, if you have an afternoon to kill read through James' stuff here — especially if you enjoy movies with explosions, zombies, or exploding zombies in them — and Brendan's stuff here — especially if you enjoy talking about cars and teasing the Germans.
My column is about beer. I wrote another one which I'll post in a few days. It was about the budget ceiling crisis in the States. Just kidding, it was about TV. I'm tackling all the major issues of our time.
One of these days I'll post something original here too. What day, you ask? I don't know, get off my back. Some of us work for a living instead of sitting around all day drinking beer and watching baseball while occasionally throwing bits of pork butt at babies. God I miss parental leave.

It's over

 

it's not you, it's me

 

BY ANDY PREST, NORTH SHORE NEWSJUNE 3, 2011

 

 

Dear Beer:

I don't know where to start -- this is one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. I'm just going to come out and say it: I think we need to spend some time apart.

You know I've loved you ever since I was 16 -- erm, I mean 19.

I never thought the day would come when I would have to write this letter to you. The truth is, there's someone else. A man, in fact. Well, a very small man. A baby, actually.

When I went on parental leave five months ago I thought you and I would become closer than ever. I envisioned us hanging out all day watching afternoon baseball. Maybe you'd be my booze-muse while I banged out my novel as the baby did what I thought babies do best -- not move.

I was wrong -- babies are hard work. It turns out babies are best at being adorable, getting other people to take them places and getting everything dirty. I know the health nurses at the drop-in centre would frown upon me showing up with a six-pack of you to share with all the mamas. And remember when I always used to drop stuff on the ground, including you, after a few hours of us hanging out together? Well, that's not cool anymore for various legal, ethical and familial reasons. Being a dad demands my un-woozy attention, which is why I think we need to slow things down for a while.

Please don't take this the wrong way and do something crazy like de-alcoholizing yourself or trying to make yourself more attractive by drinking a bunch of lime. It's not you, it's me.

In fact, you're better than ever. Here in British Columbia, caring, alcoholic nerds are craft-brewing you with rich, delicious flavours. You're so hoppy these days you should be selling Trix cereal.

Sorry, I shouldn't be joking at a time like this. I hope you're not too upset.

Remember all those great times we had together? I don't either. But I have seen the pictures and it looks like there were some great parties. And usually a lot of barbecued meats. And why am I always wearing some sort of household item on my head as a makeshift hat? And where are my sunglasses?

Last weekend you introduced me to tastes I've never experienced before when we met up at Howe Sound Brewing in Squamish. An extra special bitter, a black IPA with a touch of grapefruit, even a mystery weiss beer that managed to pull off a subtle hint of gummy bear. It was all so beautiful.

But where were you at 6:30 the next morning when my boy was up and kicking at the foot of my bed and I couldn't get up to play with him? I'll tell you where you were. You were inside my brain playing racquetball with my hypothalamus.

I don't want to sound harsh, but the fact is my baby is just more fun than you are. And that's saying something because I think you're better than a go-kart that shoots fireworks.

Did you know that my baby is barely nine months old and he has already learned to give high fives and to flirt with pretty girls? Not the kind of flirting you always got me to do, which I've come to accept was mostly just shouting. No, my baby loves the blondes and I'm not talking pale ale.

He also loves Cheerios, banging his head into things and giving his mama and daddy hilarious, slow-motion open-mouth kisses. I'm sorry beer, but there's nothing in the world that will stop me from enjoying every minute I can with my little guy. And I want to remember every moment, not hear about it the next morning after my wife finds me passed out in the bathtub.

I know, without you there would be no baby because I wouldn't have had the courage to plop down on his future mama's lap in the middle of that crowded Quebec City pub -- love the work you're doing in la belle province, by the way. But we've all changed since then.

I'm going to miss you. The switch to dreadfully boring beverages has been hard for me. There's a reason water is free.

It's not like we'll never see each other again. I'll probably bump into you at my sister-in-law's wedding next week, but I'll be in charge of the little guy again so I'll have to keep my hands off of you. I'm sure it would be fine for me to bring you as a +1. The problem is you always turn into a +7.

Please know that my baby will eventually turn eight and be able to fend for himself. When he does you'll be the first one I'll call, opener in hand. Don't think of this as goodbye -- it's more like . . . taste ya later.

Sincerely,

Andy

PS. Seriously, I think you grabbed my sunglasses, by mistake of course. I'll be by to pick them up tomorrow. I don't want it to be weird so it would be great if you could just leave them outside your flat.

© Copyright (c) North Shore News

Vancouver Canuck fans are not like my baby?

One of my earlier Sports Baby blog posts was titled "Vancouver Canuck fans are like my baby."

When my wife remembered that title she was horrified, what with last month's downtown bonfire and all. She was also horrified by the riot itself, frowning away and eventually choosing to leave the room rather than watch people act so boorishly.

I was the opposite. I couldn't get enough of it. It was a lot more entertaining than the damn game 7, wasn't it?

I feel a little funny writing about the riot so long after it happened but 1) I work for a newspaper that only publishes two sports sections a week so I'm used to reheating cold chicken from time to time; and 2) we're now one month removed from the riot and everyone still seems to be talking about it, so what the hell. Somewhere a Hummer still smoulders.  

As I watched the riot I was thinking:

1. Rob Brown is awesome;

2. Those rioters suck at building barricades; and

3. The claims coming from the cops and mayor — that this was not the work of hockey fans but rather the devil deeds of criminals and "anarchists" — were as silly as the world's tallest jockey. 

Of course a lot of people called bullshit on the mayor and it very quickly became clear that these weren't anarchists at all. They were hockey fans. They were our friends and neighbours. They were Vancouverites. They were car salesmen. They were UBC students. They were water polo players.

Back to my wife. Her horror stemmed from her relatively new designation as "mother." As the drugstore cowboys smashed their way through London Drugs, no doubt stealing Gold Bond powder and other people's vacation photos, my wife couldn't help but repeat the refrain: "those are someone's kids doing this."

And she wasn't thinking about Ma and Pa Anarchist watching on stolen cable TV as they tore the labels off unsold mattresses. The rioters, and their parents, came from all walks of life. A dread passed over my wife as she thought of one day seeing our little guy all grown up and playing air guitar with a smashed up mannequin's leg on the 11 o'clock news. Oh, the shame.

The riot wound down and amazingly no one was killed. But then things got really bad. The public shaming, rage, threats and judgment that followed the riot as seemingly limitless photographic and video evidence emerged was much more frightening to me than people kicking Sears.  

Here's the thing: young people are idiots. I grew up in a very loving, respectable middle-class, two-parent family. I was a good kid. And while I never had physical altercations with the local police force, I can certainly remember my friends and I running and hiding from them on occasion following some idiot teenager shenanigans. Fire may or may not have been involved at some point. Transplant those shenanigans to Robson Street after watching a hockey team lose game 7 and it's not ridiculous to think that my actions could have led me to become one of the famous riot idiots outed by online evidence and anger, the shame following me for life. That would not have been cool.

Back to my son, idiots, and shame. I'm a daddy now so everything I think about revolves around my boy. Here's the question: what if my son had been there? What if I saw him on some grainy news video doing something that looked really bad? What if it ruined his life long before things like the judicial system or facts could be introduced?

Here's a hypothetical: Let's say it's 2029 and the Canucks have finally made it back to the Stanley Cup finals. My boy, now a young man, wants to be a part of the downtown celebration. The following stuff happens. The question is, when should I feel the shame of raising a rioting monster:

Step 1: My son and his friends from his basketball team go to watch game 7 as the Canucks take on expansion franchise the Mexico City Sombreros. (I already feel shame. I can't believe my son is a Canucks fan.)

Step 2: He and his friends are 18 so they're old enough to vote and go to war but not old enough to drink alcohol in B.C. Instead they drink six Red Bulls each.

Step 3: The Canucks, worn out from a long team walk on the Seawall to "find themselves," lose. Trouble starts. Someone burns a stuffed Speedy Gonzalez doll. A nearby hover car is lit on fire. My son and his friends see a young family trying to get away as a mob fight starts nearby. They rush over to help the family leave the area.

Step 4: Though awkward and pimply, the boys are all tall so they become targets for hopped up water polo thugs looking to fight. To keep his friends from getting pummeled, my son says "no no no no no no no" over and over and pushes some dudes back to clear some space. The police barge in with clubs.  

Step 5: Things start to get really dicey so my son and his friends make for a SkyTrain station. On their way out the team's resident jackass (every sports team has one), pissed off about getting clubbed, kicks a store window.

Step 6: Free Holograph Phones! A shower of phones rains out of one of the 168 telecommunication retailers on Robson Street. As wild-eyed water polo players stuff phones down their Speedos all around him, my son scoops up what he can and brings it to a cop who is standing nearby doing nothing. "Eff off," the cop says.

Step 7: My son stuffs a pair of retro skinny jeans into the gas tank of a police car and lights them on fire. Then he punches a police horse in the mouth and runs to Stanley Park and chops down the tallest tree.

As I said, this is a hypothetical. Obviously grown up Sports Baby would never put himself in any of those situations. He'd be off with the Intergalactic Peace Corp saving baby space pandas from Martians or something.

But say it did happen like that. I'd say there's nothing in the first six steps (except cheering for the Canucks) that I could get really upset about and be forced to take away his used, piece of junk 2016 Toyota Prius.

Until Step 7, the token ridiculous joke step, there's not much to really kill a kid over. A little bad judgment mixed in with wrong place at the wrong time. But it's conceivable that at any point between Step 3 and Step 6 a camera or a video recorder or a brand new iHat could have captured him doing what may have appeared to be hardcore rioting. Facebook tag, story in The Province, basketball scholarship to Ball State revoked, poop thrown at our front door, life ruined.

It's not all that far fetched.

Let's come back to 2011 — Awwww, my baby is so cute and such a good boy. Kisses for daddy? High five? Alright! Sorry, I had to reset his future.

Anyway, a coworker of mine has a 15-year-old son whose first time ever venturing downtown with his buds without parental supervision was for game 7 of the Canucks vs. Bruins series. A car flipped and burned right next to them and, because they're good kids who were scared shitless, they ran straight to the nearest cop, told him about the car and asked how they could get out of there. Take that kid one year later and maybe he sticks around a little, laughs with his buds and snaps a few cellphone picks. A camera catches him at the wrong angle and all of a sudden he's another one of the criminals to be tried and convicted on Facebook.

The thought that I was ultimately left with after the riot and its aftermath is that my wife was right. In cases like this — and with the explosion of social media this is only just the beginning — we'd do well to remember that those are people's children out there. I'm not the first to say it and I won't be the last, but before we start doling out online, vigilante justice we all need to realize that every picture does not necessarily tell the whole truth. If the Internet brands you as evil, the sting of that will likely burn your whole life.

As a parent, that would be a pretty horrible thing to see your kid go through. One of my baby's favourite things to do is to knock down toy towers. We build them up and he slams them down with glee. When he does it we all watch and cheer. Uh oh.

What's that slogan? We are all Canucks? Maybe that's not so far from the truth.

Photo: Andy Clark/Reuters

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

Dirk Nowitzki is like my baby

"Know this; It gets better every day. As cool as your kids are when they are 5, it's even better when they are 6. As great as that is, it's even better when they are 7. And so on.

"So if you are about to embark on the journey of parenthood, I hope you embrace it. Whenever a friend tells me they are going to have their first child I say the same thing, 'Welcome to the greatest club in the world, parenthood.'"

The two little paragraphs above made me feel all warm inside, kind of like how Vancouver Canucks fans can make a Smart Car feel all warm inside. They were part of a Father's Day blog post by Gus Ramsey, one of the tamer characters from Sports Guy Bill Simmons' circle of funny friends.

My experience with parenthood so far has been a mini version of what Gus is talking about: every month, heck every week, seems better than the last. I feel a little weird talking smack about two-minute-old Sports Baby but it's true — nine-month-old Sports Baby is just way cooler. Granted, two-minute-old Sports Baby had just gone through the wacky waterslide of life, but still, he wasn't exactly cracking off one-liners (eg. "Hey Doc, could you leave the cord for a little while, I just figured out how to do cat's cradle.")

But after we washed the little birth canal bits and bobs off his head, Sports Baby got down to the business of getting more and more awesome with each passing day.

He has already figured out a whack of physical things like babbling, sleeping, crawling, eating and Skyping — now he's developing his own little personality. Right now I'd call his personality "loveable rascal." He's got a great move where he'll crawl toward something he's not supposed to touch, look back at us mischievously, then turn back and double his speed while laughing hysterically. He drinks from a regular cup — no sissy sippy for him — and when he's had enough he'll blow bubbles up his nose. He's a hilarious handful already and I can't wait to see where he goes from here.

His development reminds me a bit of the career of Dirk Nowitzki. Always regarded as a talented basketball player, Dirk finally joined the game's elite this season, guiding his Dallas Mavericks to his and their first NBA title with a six-game win over the super villains from Miami last week. To get to this point he has continually worked on and improved his game, getting harder and harder to guard. Here's how he looked when he came into the league:

 Yikes! That's him on the left, looking like a friendly German lesbian, alongside former Dallas coach Don Nelson and Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath. Dirk came into the league as a seven-foot-tall 19-year-old who had a nice scoring touch but who also was, very understandably, a little terrified.

Since that time he has continually added to his arsenal while also becoming a team leader. Working with former German national team player Holger Geschwinder, Nowitzki added new moves every summer, eventually earning a title reserved for a select few: unguardable.

He's like Lebron James except the total opposite. Lebron seems a bit like a basketball Benjamin Button — he came into the league as a fully formed basketball man and has since regressed into a confused, mean-spirited little boy. Meanwhile Dirk has just gotten better and better.

Is it a coincidence that Lebron has no father in the picture and Dirk, if you count coach Holger, has two? Probably.

Happy Father's Day!

Photo (Nowitzki MVP) Roland Martinez/Getty Images

Photo (Nowitzki, Nelson, Nash) Carolyn Herter/NBAE/Getty Images

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

Vancouver Canuck fans are like my baby

Finally something at a sporting event that my baby is really interested in — boobies!

In case you missed it — or haven't gone back in your DVR to rewatch, then pause, then slo-mo forward, then slo-mo backward, then pause, then regular time forward, then pause again — a tanned Vancouver fan punctuated her team's victory Wednesday by flashing her breasts at San Jose thug Ben Eager as he sat in the penalty box, an act that was broadcast across the nation on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.

As you know, Sports Baby is still too young to watch TV and it's probably for the best as this random boobing likely would have confused him into thinking it was time for a late-night snack. Not sure what he would have made of the piercings, though.

This spirited young gal, however, clinched it for me as I am now fully onboard with this Canucks playoff run. With the Sedins back performing their creepy magic and Ryan Kesler playing with more grit than an ice cream cone dropped on the beach, there's a lot to like about the team these days (except for Bieksa. Who are you going to fight next? The goalie? The masseuse?) Throw in the Green Men and their chesty one-game replacement and you've got yourself an interesting team. An Albertan by birth and blood-beef level, I'm ready to get behind the team of my adopted home at least for these playoffs.     

It's not the first time I've dabbled in Canuck-ism.

Back in 2009 I wrote this in a North Shore News column:

"I'm not going to jump on your bandwagon just yet, but let's just say I hear the music and am not recoiling in disgust. Another series win and maybe I'll start wearing more green and blue (and orange and yellow and red and brown and purple — gosh you've had some horrible uniforms)."

The weird thing is Canuck fans don't seem to want me. Back in 2009 I got a strongly worded response from a gentleman from Surrey suggesting that, and I'm paraphrasing, "the followers of the Vancouver Canucks hockey club will not be needing your rooting interest and you might be better served to go somewhere else and have sexual relations with yourself."

Odd, I thought. But then this year's playoff run heated up with the thrilling Blackhawks series and the Nashville beatdown and Canucks fans started to voice the same kind of opinion.

"The bandwagon is quickly losing passengers!!" one of my Vancouver friends wrote on Facebook as the Canucks struggled to close out Chicago. "All y'all should just get off and STAY OFF." The post was accompanied by a lot of congratulatory harumphing plus the obligatory Maple Leafs fan reminding us why we all hate Toronto the most.

The we-don't-need-your-support argument even made it into the Vancouver Sun where a columnist wrote this, an opinion piece, titled Dear Rest of Canada - Please Get Your Own Hockey Team, that reads like a 15-year-old's first crack at the humour module of his Grade 10 language arts class. 

I don't quite get the thought process here. This isn't some indie band that you can claim you discovered first and then get all moody and backstabby when your dumb friend Monique claims she heard them before you and your bike courier boyfriend ends up dumping you for that big fake Monique and then proposing to her at Burning Man as that very band wraps up their Songwriter Series set.

This is the NHL. This is the only Canadian team left in the playoffs and, along with Boston, the only team with any sort of history that goes beyond "a brief history of fans not knowing anything about hockey."

How are you going to put together a proper riot after the Canucks lose the finals if only fans who have been with them since the Stan "Steamer" Smyl days are invited?

Canuck fans have gotten to my wife. She's refusing to go anywhere near the bandwagon. She may look sweet but she holds grudges — if a few fans tell her they don't want her support for the team, she's taking that to the grave.

I'm not so hardcore. Tampa Bay broke my little Flames-loving heart back in 2004 so I'd love to see the Canucks beat them. San Jose's Patrick Marleau broke the record for world's glumest face so he and his buddy Joe can take a hike too. (I say this even with Marleau on my playoff pool team. That's how serious I am.)

What does this have to do with my baby? Well, as judged by the Twitter-gasms going on Wednesday night, it seems Canuck fans like boobies. Sports Baby likes boobies too. Heck, who doesn't like boobies? It's a party!

Let's end with a video that made me laugh and laugh (and no, it's not the boobies. If you want to see those try everywhereontheinternet.com).

It's baseball players goofing around during a rain delay. Outstanding.


Photo: Getty Images
Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

The playoffs are like my baby

I'm going to start with what is likely the first piece of actual, legitimate parenting advice found on the Sports Baby blog: sleep training works.

In a previous post I lamented that our sleep training program which was meant to get Sports Baby on a consistent and comforting schedule of naps and sleeps was instead putting him onto a consistent schedule of heartbreaking wailing. Nothing goes better with a crisp spring morning than a confused seven-month-old dropping salty tears on his crib sheets as he stares after the father who has put him down and walked away. It sucked more than Donald Trump's latest dinner date (bravo Seth Myers — I'd recommend watching all of the video in that link but you can fast forward to the 12-minute mark for the Trump evisceration if you like).

Anyway, after two weeks the wailing stopped and the napping started. We used the strategy we found in a book called The Sleep Sense Program written by Dana Obleman who is, I would guess, some sort of powerful She-wizard.

Sports Baby figured the sleeping thing out just in time too, because with him on a regular schedule I've been able to catch a lot of the amazing must-see playoff action going on right now. I can say, with mild exaggeration, that these were the greatest combo NBA/NHL playoff first rounds ever.

In the NBA none of the first-round series went to seven games and yet they were all pretty fantastic with some twists and turns and, most of all, star players putting on a show.

The only sweep was Boston over New York but it had to be the closest four-game sweep I've ever seen, if that makes any sense. The Knicks could have, perhaps should have, won the first two in Boston including game 2, which saw Carmelo Anthony put up 42 points, 17 rebounds and six assists in a losing effort. The Atlanta Hawks upset the Magic in six games even though Orlando's Dwight Howard averaged 27 points and 15.5 rebounds per game. Miami and Chicago took care of business against Philadelphia and Indiana, respectively, in five games but both the 76ers and Pacers put up frisky fights. Toronto hosted a clinic for local seventh graders who then went on to defeat the Raptors in a high scoring affair. "They were just making shots," said head coach Jay Triano. "We maybe needed a little more urgency on defence."

In the Western Conference the Lakers beat the Hornets in six even though Chris Paul nearly stole the show by doing his best Jack Layton impression — the leading a team of nobodies to a very respectable finish part, not the having cancer part. In a game 4 win Paul led all players from both teams in points with 27, assists with 15 and rebounds with 13.

Memphis, the No. 8 seed, toppled No. 1 San Antonio in an upset that would have been shocking if it wasn't so thorough — the Spurs never really had a chance against big men Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, two former immoveable objects (due to fatness) turned unstoppable forces. Oklahoma versus Denver should have been a thrilling speed race but the Nuggets were unfortunately slowed by injuries. Even so, four of the five games were decided by four points or less as the young Thunder moved on.

And then there was Portland vs. Dallas, a series that featured one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen. Portland's Brandon Roy is a three-time all-star who should be in the prime of his career but instead has become a fringe player due to the fact that his knees retired two years ago. In game 2 of the Dallas series Roy played only eight minutes, scoring zero points, and was reduced to tears as he watched the entire second half from the bench. In game 4, however, Roy returned to glory, scoring 18 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Blazers to a two-point victory after they trailed by 23. If you like sports at all and you haven't seen his amazing performance yet, just watch this video. It may be you with tears in your eyes now. And by the way, the Blazers lost the series in six games.

Now, could you imagine, the NHL playoffs were even better. They may not have had the same star power — that's what happens when you let jackal third-liners cripple the careers of stars like Sidney Crosby — but four of the eight matchups went to game 7. Here in Vancouver it was like a Leonard Cohen song: "The whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ."

The devil seeped in when the Canuck-killing Chicago Blackhawks won games 4, 5 and 6 to force game 7 after losing the first three games of the series. Christ appeared just in time for this to happen, saving top-seeded Vancouver the embarrassment of being the first ever city to riot following an opening round loss. As they say, the Luongo works in mysterious ways.

In the end there were no major upsets in the NHL, but every team except for Detroit had to work for their series victories (thanks Coyotes — why can't you be doing all this sucking in a place where somewhere will care that you suck so much?).

Not to be outdone, Sports Baby has put on some must-watch performances of his own. Last week he started crawling and he hasn't stopped since. It's pretty adorable. And when I say he's a must-watch I mean it literally as we now can't take our eyes off him for fear he will crawl over to an electrical outlet and discover what burnt toast feels like.  

Looks like I'll be doing some baby proofing this weekend. I don't mind — the playoff second rounds pale so far in comparison to round one-derful (yeah, that's right — I've already fully embraced the terrible daddy puns).

Happy Mother's Day!

Photo: iamatrailblazersfan.com

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy 

Fantasy sports are like my baby

If there's one thing that has held me back from writing the Great Canadian Novel it's my stupid, happy, fulfilled, non-tortured, nourished life that has kept me from grasping the loneliness and isolation needed to make Quill and Quire quiver.

If there's another thing it is fantasy sports.

As I write this I am toggling back and forth every minute or so to a Stattracker webpage and secretly cheering against my favourite baseball team — the Jays, natch — because I own a relief pitcher for their opponent and he is currently in line to record a save.

I've had a fantasy flurry lately, drafting two baseball teams and a playoff hockey squad while also completing stretch runs in basketball and hockey. I know what you're thinking: "Wow Sports Andy, that's a lot of fake teams. You're the coolest person in the world."

Even so, as a husband and now father I sometimes wonder if fantasy sports takes up too much of my time. And now that my friends are rich enough to drink artisanal beers rather than mass-produced swill, they've decided to bump up the league entry fees from zero to something.

I'm not in any $150,000 leagues — yet — but it still does feel kind of odd coughing up 20 or 25 bucks several times a year for fake sports when I have a baby I could be buying books or salmon or replica basketball jerseys for. On the plus side, more often than not I tend to finish in the money in these things so I have actually made more than I've spent. If I were to hazard a guess as to what kind of return I'm getting for my time spent managing my teams, I'd say I make about $0.0000000000001 per week.

I'm very happy to report, however, that I've never left my baby alone in the crib or bathtub or whatever to go and tend to my teams. I wasn't sure this would be the case. Now that I'm on parental leave and home all day I find that I actually have a lot less time to compulsively scan the Internet looking for info on players and matchups and what the weather is like in Baltimore and such. When I was at work with a computer right in front of me it was much easier to sneak a quick peek for one or two hours a day. (Haha, my boss reads this blog — I'm only kidding of course. It was more like one or two minutes a day. Haha. Moving on.)

The one thing I say about fantasy sports to keep myself from feeling like a maladjusted, obsessed addict is that it does help me stay up-to-date on all of the Big Four sports. As someone who writes about sports for a living I feel like this is a good thing.

If not for my playoff hockey pool I'd have no idea who Teddy Purcell is. If you asked me last week who Teddy Purcell is I probably would have guessed that he's a recovering alcoholic lounge singer who briefly made a name for himself in 1997 with a recording of hilariously crooned 2 Live Crew songs. Now I know that Teddy Purcell, one of those guys whose name always should be said in full, plays hockey in the NHL for the Tampa Bay Lightning. I know that this year was his first as a full-time big leaguer and he did quite well, scoring 51 points in 81 games. I know that he went undrafted and hails from St. John's, NL. Important stuff.

I also know that Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ted Lilly gives up a lot of dingers but always has a pretty good WHIP, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Ramon Sessions played a lot better at home than on the road this year and Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice still does not get all of his team's goal line touches. Scandalous, I know.

How does this help me cover the local sports scene for my job with a community newspaper? I'll get to that later. (Note: by later I mean never.)

Those little details that I learn playing fantasy sports remind me a little bit about having a baby and the little things that I notice now that I never did before.

Walking with a stroller is one activity that introduces you to a whole other world known only to parents and perhaps people riding Segways. Recently while taking Sports Baby on his first ride on Vancouver's Skytrain we joined the little parade of strollers heading for the elevator. I'd never noticed it before but it's an adorable little line that gets tucked away from the dead eyes of the rest of the commuters. At the Marine Drive stop we took one slow elevator up one floor before transferring to another slow elevator to get to the platform. Kind of fun if you have the time to enjoy the view of the Fraser River out of the windows of the elevator. Not so fun if you're rushing downtown for an important sit down with the head of the Vancouver Police Department's anti-gang unit. (We weren't. Why would we take a baby to a business meeting?)

The baby-less have also probably not noticed the swarm of strollers that converge on community centres and libraries like little cup holder-equipped sharks whenever a free class is offered. Thankfully I haven't yet witnessed any stroller rage incidents.

The same little stroller jams can form at malls as parents search out the one washroom equipped with a change table. God forbid there could ever be a nice place that doesn't smell like broccoli farts where I wouldn't have to wait forever and then feel rushed while I changed my baby's diaper.

Wow, my fantasies really are changing.

Photo Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

Being a sports fan is like raising my baby

Frequent readers of the Sports Baby blog might be under the impression that raising a baby is the coolest, easiest thing in the world.

Teething is no big whoop. Adding solid foods is as natural as hemp shoes. Sports Baby is cuter than homemade undies and even his sicknesses are cherry-coated.

Probably the only person who will see right through this is my dentist. I haven't been to see him since Sports Baby was born but when I do finally hit the chair I can envision him taking one look at my grille and declaring, "New parent I see."

"Haaaaa iiiiiiiii huuuuuuu oooooooo aaaaaaaa?" I'll blurt out in response.

"You've been clenching you're jaw a lot, grinding your teeth. And I also see you're related to Vikings."

Actually, he says that every time I see him. Not the clenching part, the Viking thing. He won't shut up about the Vikings. Apparently my mandibular tori are a dead giveaway. Plus I pillaged like three boxes of floss from him.

Anyway, I have noticed recently that I am unconsciously clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth a lot when I am around my baby. It often happens when I am carrying him or holding him or spotting him so that he doesn't slam the back of his head into the floor while he works on sitting up. I certainly wouldn't want that to happen. Again.

Sorry Buddy.

I think the clenching is just part of the overall worry, anxiety and stress that arrives at the exact same moment that the baby does. Every second that I am in charge of his wellbeing is a beautiful gift from God and/or Buddha but every second is also terrifying. Every second is one more moment that I could lose focus and he could do a header off the change table, putting me on the front page of The Province under a huge headline "Daddy's worst nightmare!" I don't remember grinding my teeth very much when I used to spend an entire Sunday afternoon tinkering with my fantasy baseball lineup in between naps while "watching" golf. 

Now on top of the constant fear of breaking my baby there are things like sleep training to worry about. Sports Baby knocks out his night sleeps but still has trouble napping. The baby books say he is sleep deprived and if he doesn't get a good nap soon his development will be stunted and he'll end up at some third-rate kindergarten that doesn't even have a Latin teacher.

The sleep program will help put him on a consistent schedule and give him good sleep habits for the rest of his life, they say. It's tough going, however, and the only thing it seems to have added to his schedule so far is a good hour or two of puzzled whimpering. Grind grind grind.

It kind of reminds me of what it can be like to be a devoted fan of a sports team. In every league in every season the fans of all but one team end up disappointed. While the ride can be thrilling, there's also constant dread about when and how the whole thing will come crashing down.

As a young boy I was won over by the slap shot of Al MacInnis and the moustache of Lanny McDonald and became a Calgary Flames fan. I don't live and die with their every move anymore but my gut still churns deepest for them. This season I've followed their playoff drive from afar, even listening to one important game on the radio.

For those of you under 20, a radio is a thing that airs music that you don't like and gassy windbags that don't like you. It also plays the Flames games that you can't watch on Sportsnet West in Vancouver because of some ridiculous blackout rules enforced by the ridiculous NHL — what better way to build up a following for your league than massive blackouts!? (See my Twitter rant on March 21 for an elaboration on my thoughts about this arrangement.)

Of course, this meant that I got to listen to my team lose on the radio. Fun.

Somehow the Flames are still alive in the playoff race, leaving just enough hope for fans so that they'll sit through a few more molar-mashing games before finally getting their teeth punched out once and for all.

There's a difference between being a fan and being a parent though. Unless you're a 70-year-old fan of the Montreal Canadiens or the New York Yankees or a five-year-old fan of the San Francisco Giants, most of your sports seasons have come to a grinding halt at some point.

As a parent, however, I find that the teeth clenching is far outweighed by every little awesome thing Sports Baby does from laughing at my funny faces to barfing on my shoes.

There isn't a Stanley Cup at the end of this journey. There's something infinitely better. 

Photo: CP Photo/Bill Grimshaw

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The NHL is sort of like my baby

Sports Baby has started teething and it is not at all what I expected.

At some point in my life I got the idea that teething is a horrible process that causes unspeakable suffering for babies and heartbreaking aggravation for parents.

I envisioned unwitting babies pushed to the end of their tiny little ropes by crippling pain brought on by their toothy terrors bursting from their subterranean hiding holes by tearing through baby's poor, defenseless gums like a vicious mutant worm blasting through a foot-wide brick wall. And oh the blood.

Then I learned that teething takes more than six months, sometimes close to a year, and I wondered how babies handled it all without crawling to the nearest bridge and scooching off the edge just to end the suffering.

Finally it came time for my little guy to start the dreaded process. One day his first little tooth bubbled just below the surface of his gums ready to wreak its havoc. The next day came and phew, no havoc, just a cute little tooth peeking out of Sports Baby's adorable smiling mouth. The day after that a second one popped up.

What? No blood? No fever? No baby sneaking into the liquor cabinet to douse the fires with a dram of whiskey?

Apparently I've been misled about teething. "Cutting teeth" is in fact a misnomer. Baby teeth do not, in fact, cut through the flesh, but rather a chemical released by the body causes the gums to open, allowing the teeth to glide on through.

Relieved that Sports Baby won't be suffering horrible pain, I've downgraded his suicide watch from a Charlie Sheen to a Will Smith.

Teething can have some uncomfortable symptoms but so far Sports Baby is taking it all like a champ.

The NHL is teething too but it appears that its brains have been so battered by rogue stanchions, flying elbows and blind assassins that it has lost the ability to release that chemical to soften the sting of the process. No, it's a bloody mess out there.

Just two months ago I wrote another blog post praising the NHL for gaining attention with some clever ideas. But since then a Sidney Crosby concussion (the "blind assassins" link above will take you to a video of the play), a Zdeno Chara near decapitation (see "rogue stanchions" above) and a dirty hit from Matt Cooke (see "flying elbows") have been the biggest stories coming out of the NHL.

The league, however, may finally be putting some teeth into its disciplinary rules to punish players for hits to the head.

Cooke was suspended for the rest of the regular season and, somewhat surprisingly, for the first round of the playoffs for his recent elbow to the head of New York's Ryan McDonagh. This after Cooke skated away without any penalty or suspension for this eerily similar hit on Marc Savard last season. Savard suffered a concussion and now his future in the game is in doubt after receiving another concussion two months ago.

That the NHL gave Cooke a lengthy suspension, including playoff games, this time around is a sign that the league may finally be taking these hits seriously. Cooke, however, was an easy target. The hit was a blatant blindside brain bash and Cooke is a repeat offender who has been suspended by the league before.

But as many hockey commentators are pointing out, the test will come when a star player does something like this. Would Alex Ovechkin, himself a repeat offender, get a lengthy suspension for an elbow to the head delivered in the playoffs? This handy and hilarious NHL suspension flow chart from the Down Goes Brown blog predicts that he wouldn't.

Regardless, tougher suspension guidelines are apparently on the way for next season and maybe the Cooke suspension will send the message that the league is not fooling around anymore. Then again, maybe it won't.

Wasn't the 25-game suspension to Chris Simon for this March 2007 slash to the face of Ryan Hollweg supposed to send a message that the league was serious?

Wasn't the 20-game suspension to Todd Bertuzzi for breaking Steve Moore's neck in 2004 supposed to send a message?

Wasn't the 21-game suspension to Dale Hunter in 1993 for nailing Pierre Turgeon after Turgeon scored a goal supposed to send a message?

Wasn't the 16-game suspension to Eddie Shore for almost killing Ace Bailey with a stick to the head in 1933 supposed to send a message?

Wasn't the 11-game suspension to Killer McSlashface in aught-six for inventing the Zamboni and then using it to run over an opponent supposed to send a message?

I guess teething is not always painless.

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NFL owners are like my baby

You may have heard that babies put everything into their mouths, but unless you have a kid, you won't quite grasp the scope of that statement.

Imagine I'm a sassy teenage mother wagging my finger back and forth to emphasize the statement: "Guurrrrrl, you don't even know. My baby eat EV-ERR-EEE-THANG."

Here are some things that have gone into Sports Baby's mouth: my glasses; his own diaper, unused; broccoli; his own shoe, still on his foot; our kitchen table; my nose.

He has a heavy plastic cookie jar toy that sings songs. Oh yes, he tries to eat the fake cookies, but he'll also grab the whole damn jar, pick it up with his super baby strength and then drop it on his face as he tries to eat it too.

Our family doctor, a nice fellow with a motorcycle calendar in each one of his patient rooms, advised us to avoid giving our baby fruit for awhile because, the theory goes, if he tastes that sweet goodness he'll never want anything else.

We've disproven this. He's eaten bananas, he's tasted apple and yet everything else in the world still looks appealing enough to go into his mouth, including yams and, get this, broccoli (sorry, did I mention broccoli already? It's just that I think broccoli tastes like a tree fart.)

The theory was put to the ultimate test this weekend when a friend brought over some pineapple and we gave the little guy a piece to chew. I don't know if crackhead is too strong a description, but he lost it like he was the Cookie Monster getting his first taste of triple chocolate macaroon.

But even after that he still put a nasty-looking chick-peas-and-greens combo into his mouth and swallowed it down.

Whether it's food or furniture, pants or poison, anything that is within a baby's reach is headed straight for the mouth.

Tweak that sentence just a little and you get a great description of NFL owners: Whether it belongs to players or fans, employees or taxpayer, any money that is within an owner's reach is headed straight for their pocket.

If you haven't yet picked a side in the NFL labour dispute and you wish to do so, pick the players. If you've already picked the owners, change your mind. If you don't care, please continue to not care.

But if you enjoy getting your football fix on NFL Sundays or, more likely, getting your fantasy football fix on NFL Sundays, the blame should land squarely on the lint-free shoulders of the owners if the season is delayed or cancelled this fall.

On Friday the union decertified and several players sued the league for violating anti-trust laws. Soon after that the owners locked out the players.

It might appear that the players walked away first but the fault lies with the owners.

The NFL is thriving, crushing the other North American pro sports and becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the United States. Everyone is making money, but the owners just want more of it. And they want their profits guaranteed.

Their demands during this labour dispute are such things as "We want even more money!" and "we know you're all getting brutally injured out there, but why don't you play even more games for us. More money!" A judge has already ruled that the owners and league acted in bad faith when they negotiated new television contracts that included stipulations that the league and owners would get paid by the networks even if a labour dispute forced the cancellation of games. They even took less money per season to get this included in the deal.

Describing his findings about the NFL's attitude towards TV contracts, U.S. District Judge David Doty said that the league "consistently characterized gaining control over labor as a short-term objective and maximizing revenue as a long-term objective . . . advancing its negotiating position at the expense of using best efforts to maximize total revenues for the joint benefit of the NFL and the Players."

The players, on the other hand, are asking for things like more money for those retired players who have not yet died tragic early deaths; no added regular season games; some health and safety measures and no additional free money for the owners.

You can argue the old millionaires vs. billionaires if you like, but with all the information coming out about the injuries the millionaires sustain, the nasty lives they lead after football and the short amount of time most of them actually spend in the NFL, it's clear who is sacrificing the most for the league.

Meanwhile the owners blah blah silver spoon blah blah old money blah blah corporate jets blah blah never visit their parents in the nursing home blah blah greedy.

If you still need convincing, the arguments against the owners have been stated nicely in several places, including poetically by The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins, hypothetically by ESPN's Bill Simmons, politically by author/blogger Dave Zirin and, um, profanely by Deadspin's Drew Magary.

One of my concerns with my baby now that he is rolling around more is that his movement range is expanding and we have to be more careful of where we put things. I always envision him rolling across the room and happening upon something like a pile of change left on a shelf we didn't think he could get to. If that happened it wouldn't take long for him to gobble up more than enough coin to buy a Slurpee. I'd pick him up and give him a shake and he'd sound just like a piggy bank. 

Funny — that's how the NFL owners sound too.

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Steve Nash is like my baby

In the movie As Good As It Gets, Jack Nicholson says to Helen Hunt, "You make me want to be a better man."

Then he takes a stiff swig of Jim Beam just before she jumps out of a window (sorry, I've used this link before. I just love watching Helen Hunt jump out of a window. It's also a stellar demonstration of peer pressure).

I may be getting a few different movies mixed up but the important thing is Jack's "better man" compliment. It's lovely, as long as you don't look directly into Jack's crazy, crazy eyes.

I think about that quote a lot that these days as my baby's odometer clicks past six months. My life has changed drastically since he was born. Some of the changes are out of necessity — FYI babies aren't cool with Wu-Tang Clan played at full blast in the car — but many of the lifestyle choices I have made are voluntary changes made with the little guy in mind.

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that babies aren't supposed to watch TV until they are at least two (it's to prevent them from glimpsing Charlie Sheen) but I got around this by watching sports with the baby safely stashed behind a blanket so that he could not see the screen. Since I wrote that, however, things have changed. I no longer watch much TV at all when Sports Baby is awake and aware, meaning I watch a lot less TV these days than I used to. I'm not sure how, but somehow this makes me a better person.

I'm also theoretically a better man because I drink less beer. Given that I could at any time be called upon to pick my baby up without dropping him or perhaps even drive him to the hospital after he eats a used Ricola wrapper, I like to limit myself to two beers maximum. Most days I settle for zero beers. Again the intricacies of the cost-benefit gains of this decision are a little hard to pinpoint but somehow this makes me a better person, or at least a slightly less beer-gutty one. And boy am I going through Scotch by the barrel.

When sober I do love to pick Sports Baby up and fly him dangerously close to our six-foot-high Hobbit ceilings. And though he's no fatty, he is gaining weight at an incredible rate — he's already doubled his birth weight, providing progressive weight training that may finally help me get some of that "old man strength" to go along with my "old man shoulders that dislocate whenever I try to reach into the backseat to grab something."

Now that Sports Baby is eating solid foods my diet has improved as well. We make him steamed vegetables and I sometimes have a bite or two — I no longer need all of my vegetables to be smothered in Caesar dressing. I'm also constantly looking for places to buy "unmedicated chicken." I don't really know what chickens that are off their meds looks like but I imagine them wandering around downtown muttering "they're out to get me, they're trying to kill me, they're going to steal my babies, they want to eat me limb by limb. THE FARMERS, that's who!"

All of these changes are because of my baby, his mere presence driving me to be a better man and a better daddy. He's like a tiny, male version of Helen Hunt. Soon he'll be jumping through little baby windows.

That brings me to Steve Nash. Regular readers of the blog (PS thank you, and sorry for the wait since the last post) will likely have surmised that Nash carries a lot of water in this household. My baby is not named Steve Nash Prest, but let's just say the name made our long list.

The reason that Nash is a two-time NBA MVP is that he makes those around him better. Even at the age of 37 Nash is still passing the ball as well as anyone in the sport, his 11.3 assists per game placing him second in the league.

And it's not just his dazzling playmaking that makes him such a positive figure. Teammates credit Nash with inspiring them to improve their training and diet because they see all of the things he has done off the court to help him be one of the best older players in league history.

A couple of years ago the "Nash diet" became a bit of a craze after teammates Shaquille O'Neal, Grant Hill and Jared Dudley talked about copying Nash's disciplined eating habits. Dudley in particular, a younger player who battled weight problems as a kid, credits Nash's influence with helping him lose weight and improve his game. Nash describes his diet on his Facebook page.

It's a great testament to his leadership and charisma that he can inspire his teammates in so many ways. He's like a grown up, male, basketball-playing version of Helen Hunt, except with better hair.

Now if only he would stop being so damn honourable and demand that Phoenix trade his ass to an organization that is interested in winning the title. You hear me Phoenix? Open up the window! Don't make him crash through it.

Photo Getty Images

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NBA dunk contest participants are like my baby

I'm probably going to say this every couple of weeks for the next 24 years, but I think my baby is getting it.

Can he walk? No. Crawl? No. Sing Justin Bieber songs? Yes, but that's age appropriate. Can he talk? No. Can he toss out witty bons mots . . . Hey! Shut up already with the questions. He's just a frickin' baby.

Last week a fever followed by a cold increased his wah-wah quotient but when the heat subsided and the boogers dried he perked right up and became pretty with it for a five-month-old.

He turned himself into a human bowling ball, rolling halfway across a room to get to something he wanted (never mind that it was a used Kleenex tissue lying beside a garbage can). We started him on solid foods and he's already a pro, gumming down a more varied diet than I eat:

Sports Baby: salmon and broccoli

Daddy: beer and that sticky white cheddar popcorn with the ironic* name Smart Food

The biggest and best change is in the smiles and laughs. It used to be that finding his giggle button to release a laugh was a lot like a drunken freshman stumbling upon his girlfriend's bingo button and unleashing all heaven on the unsuspecting lass — total fluke and one-and-done, the same steps the following night yielding nothing more than awkward stares, crying, and eventually a wet diaper (I'm talking about the baby now again, I think). 

But now Sports Baby laughs when you tickle underneath his chin. He smiles back whenever we smile at him. He scopes out pretty girls, saving the biggest grins for them.

He's no longer a little ball of snot, as my cousin recently called a friend's baby. He's a little ball of awesome.

And speaking of ballers, I thought that Saturday night's NBA slam dunk contest was really good. All of those guys were brining it.

Blake Griffin won with his now famous Kia commercial with Baron Davis throwing him an alley-oop through the car's sunroof as Blake jumped over the hood. Showmanship aside, I actually thought it was one of the weaker dunks of the night and Blake's dunk coach Kenny (the Jet) Smith blamed Baron's pass for messing up the slam (they should have known that the best guy to make a pass inside a car is Stephon Marbury).

Blake had the buzz, but all four of the participants pulled off fantastic dunks. Usually there are at least a couple of duds in there but not this year (accepting the now-inevitable missed attempts that come before many of the makes). In fact, some have argued that DeMar DeRozan and Serge Ibaka, the two guys who didn't make the cut for the finals, had the best dunks of the night.

Check out Ibaka's legit free throw line dunk:

And DeRozan's "Showstopper":    

Like Sports Baby, all of the the contestants are finally getting it after several hit-and-miss years. Now if only the NBA would get it too. Here comes the part where this blog becomes like every other sports blog as I offer a solution that no one will care about to a problem that probably doesn't even exist. Anyway, if dunkers are going to bring it like they did on Saturday I think the contest needs a new format.

First of all, it's stupid that DeRozan and Ibaka didn't get to do as many dunks as Griffin and Javale McGee because their "scores" weren't as high after the first round. The scoring is bupkis (more on that in a second), so there's no way it should be used to eliminate dunkers before the end of the show. There are only four of them anyway. Give them all three dunks so they know what they are preparing for and can bring their best stuff out when they want to.

As for the scoring, the whole Table of Judges throwing up an 8, 9 or 10 thing isn't working anymore, not when all of the dunkers are doing good stuff.

Here's my solution: have the judges rank all of the dunks from best to worst and give the trophy to the person whose cumulative total rank for all of their dunks (or two of their dunks) is the best.

The math would be a little more complicated but all it would come down to is the person with the most dunks favoured by the most judges would win. After every dunk each judge would just have to decide where it fit in. Was Ibaka's free throw line dunk better than Blake's arm in rim dunk? Was the Showstopper (seen here again, but this time in beautiful super slo mo) better than McGee's two balls, two hoops (also in slo mo) dunk?

A cool offshoot would be that on top of having one person win there would also be one particular dunk that would be crowned dunk of the night. Another benefit would be that the first guy to go wouldn't get screwed because the judges have nothing to compare him to. This happened to DeRozan, who criminally got a 44 out of 50, one of the worst scores of the night, for this bit of awesomeness.  

The whole process would give the contest more of a narrative arc as well because each dunk would be compared and contrasted to those which came before it.

Problem solved.

Now if you'll excuse me my dinner is served. And poured.

*Sorry to my Dad, an English prof, if this is the wrong use of the word ironic. I feel like he's the only person on earth who has it nailed. You should have heard him rip that Alanis Morissette a new one. "Those are just coincidences! No wonder your boyfriend dumped you!"

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