Hockey on TSN is like my baby

My baby gets a lot of applause from his Mama and me.

He holds his head up high during tummy time? Wild cheering. He rolls over? Happy dances. He burps? Woop-woop. He farts? Yeah boyyyy!

When my mother-in-law visits she gets a great kick out of watching me lose my shit anytime my baby loses his.

I think it started very early on: any sign of life — be it a tiny baby cry, finger squeeze or sticky black newborn poop — was affirmation that he was real and alive and not some cruel French ultrasound technician’s idea of a Juste Pour Rire gag.

Our little guy gets huge love not only for the big milestones but also for little things that nobody but his parents would find all that impressive.

It reminds me of how TSN makes a huge deal out of some hockey events, celebrating their every nuance like it was Neil Armstrong curing AIDS.

TSN started with the World Junior Hockey Championships, growing it from a nice little tournament played by the world’s best teenagers into a month-long orgy of analysis, speculation, selection shows, door knocking, hydration science, hype, flag-waving, dream shattering and cowboy hats. And that’s before the tournament even starts.

The latest event to get TSN’d was Friday’s all-star team draft, an idea that was dreamed up by Brendan Shannahan and Rob Blake, a couple of former players who now work for the league. The NHL, however, let TSN run the draft from overblown start (a pregame analysis show that revealed only that the TSN analysts cared way more about the drafting strategy than the players did) to awkward finish (Phil Kessel winning a pity car). In-between the proceedings were actually kind of fun — in an awkward way, like watching a cute kid try to tell jokes — but it was a little surprising that TSN was given free reign over the entire proceedings without anyone from the NHL or any American TV network involved.

Can you imagine an NBA event like this running without an appearance from the Godfather, David Stern? Then again, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman frightens children, so it was probably good that he wasn’t front and centre.

To TSN’s credit, their gushing over these events works. The World Junior Championships are now one of the biggest events on the sports calendar for most Canadians while in the rest of the world the tournament ranks in importance somewhere between cup stacking and the Illinois State Fair Hog Calling Contest.

And the fantasy draft format made this year’s all-star game a big hit as well, bringing relevance to a competition that no one has cared about since Eddie Shore almost killed Ace Bailey.

I’m hoping that our parental gushing has the same positive effect on our baby. I know it helped me.

My parents were always telling me how great I was, even after the piano festival where the adjudicator’s only compliment to me was that she was impressed that I was able to play at all with my hands shaking as much as they were.

My parents’ positive power gave me a lot of confidence. A lot. Like, Helen Hunt high on PCP confidence.

And look at me now. I have almost a dozen HD TV channels and I drive a Nissan Versa.

Actually, the greatest thing my self-confidence did for me was help me land a dazzling woman who is way better looking than me and trick her into falling in love with me. My wife says that one of the greatest gifts I could give my boy would be to pass on the confidence that I have to him.

Well, son, you’re the best baby burper I’ve ever met. You’re welcome.

Photo Dave Sandford/Getty Images

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Referees are like my baby

One great thing about living on the West Coast as opposed to the prairies where I grew up is that I don't have to worry so much about parts of my baby freezing and falling off. I certainly would be in some trouble with my wife, and perhaps the local health nurses, if I brought my baby home from a walk with, say, only eight fingers and one ear. Sure that might put him on a path to fame as an artist, but what happens when he flunks kindergarten because he can't count to 10?

Out here, however, winter temperatures still require some dressing up even if it's chilly rain we're battling rather than painful death. Now that I'm flying solo for a lot of my walks with my baby I've learned a universal truth: no matter where or how you put a toque on a baby, it will slide down over his eyes in five seconds or less. Physicists should be working on some sort of theory to explain this phenomenon. Something like the Pom Pom Principle or the Tiny Hoser Paradigm. They could use yarn theory. What's Stephen Hawking up to these days?

On Sunday I was out with my baby when I stopped to lift his toque off of his eyes for the 37th time, finally losing it and resting the brim of the toque comically high up on his brow so that it was barely even touching his head. Four seconds later it was back over his eyes. Enraged, I took off the toque, turned around and threw it over a fence. When I turned back around ANOTHER TOQUE had appeared on his head and was in the process of slipping over his eyes. Creepy.  

Why does this remind me of referees? Because referees are blind, bwa ha ha ha!

Sorry referees. I'm mostly only kidding. My first paying job was as a soccer referee. I never gave out any yellow or red cards because I didn't know how to fill out the paperwork.

I watch a lot of basketball and nothing makes me laugh and swear — except possibly watching Steve Nash trying to win with plumbers like Hakim Warrick catching his passes — as much as homer announcers complaining about how their team is getting jobbed. It's gotten so bad that even Mr. Stern has said it's a problem.

Refs aren't actually blind and only a few of them use their power to fix games, gamble on the outcomes and potentially cost superhero Steve Nash an NBA title. Argh! Burn in hell, you crooked sons of. . . . Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, defending referees.

In a recent Sports Illustrated article (published Jan. 17, 2011, not available online) entitled What's Really Behind Home Field Advantage, excerpted from the book Scorecasting, authors Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim argue that the main reason there is a proven home field advantage in nearly every sport is that officials are influenced by responses from the crowd to make calls that favour the home team. And all this time you thought it was the scoreboard telling you when to make NOISE. The article throws out a lot of numbers and uses words like deconstructed, isolate and evidence, so it's conclusions must be plausibly scientific. The authors found that home baseball players drew more walks, home soccer players received fewer cards and home Cleveland Cavaliers fans wanted their money back.

Of course if you give my dad a call he'll gladly explain his reverse-homerism theory in which those fancy-pantses down in the CFL office in Toronto and their crooked referees find ways to screw the hard working Saskatchewan Roughriders even when they're playing at home.

Anyway, the Sports Illustrated article won't shatter your world but it is interesting to see referee homerology spelt out so clearly.

So maybe referees are not blind, just weak-minded.

Photo www.talkhoops.net

Find me on Twitter @Sportsbaby

The NHL is like my baby

My baby is smart.

One of his favourite things to do is read books with us. I suppose technically he’s not reading the books — more like looking at, smacking and then chewing on them — but he pays rapt attention whenever we prop one up in front of him and start telling him the story.

I don’t know if he’s a lot smarter than your average baby — maybe the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee members and their lawyers had a point — but he amazes me with the things he learns every day. I guess that’s just how the growing mind of a baby works. It’s thrilling to watch up close.

My baby is also, or at least will be, bilingual. Somehow my wife learned how to speak French growing up in Medicine Hat, Alberta — something that seems about as likely to happen as someone learning how to hang-glide growing up in a submarine.

Nevertheless she is fluent in both English and French and speaks only French to our baby so that he will grow up knowing both languages. This arrangement made me nervous at first, envisioning linguistic confusion such as this happening throughout his life:

OPERATOR:

9-1-1, what's your emergency?

MY BABY AT SIX YEARS OLD:

C'est Mama, elle est dead!

OPER:

Mama, L.A. dead?

MBA6YO:

Oui!

OPER:

We? We who?

MBA6YO:

Mama! Elle est not moving!

OPER: 

L.A. not moving? Is there an earthquake? Are you in L.A.? This is Vancouver 9-1-1.

MBA6YO:

Yes, I sais!

OPER:

You say what?

MBA6YO:

I sais c'est Vancouver!

OPER:

You say say Vancouver? Well I say say prank calling 9-1-1 is a federal offense.

MBA6YO:

No! Elle est dying!

OPER:

L.A. is not dying. I was just there last month. There was a movie filming, I think I saw Tom Cruise getting into a golf cart with Nelson Mandela. Anyway, I've tracked your location and called the police. They're on their way to get you now.

MBA6YO:

Bon! Vite! Tell them all to give my Mama aide!

OPER:

You're sick (hangs up).

But apparently going the bilingual baby route actually gives kids more “cognitive flexibility,” according to a study by researchers from Concordia and York Universities. Très good.

Anyway, you’ll remember that this post is called the NHL is like my baby and I am writing that my baby is smart.

No, my two weeks of parental leave have not made me crazy — I am actually inferring that the NHL is smart. That’s a statement I never thought I’d make under Gary Bettman’s rule. After all, under his reign the league did bloat to an ungodly 30 teams — including ridiculous teams in places like Florida, Carolina and Tennessee — while still managing to lose teams in hockey hotbeds Winnipeg, Quebec and Minnesota. And a season was lost to a lockout. And now as Canadian cities that actually like hockey are bending backwards to get teams, it’s “Oh no, that team will never leave Phoenix. Not on my watch.” What a DB.

Anyway, someone else must be running the show these days because the NHL has had some truly inspired ideas and is suddenly as hot as wasabi eye-drops.

The first was allowing HBO to bring it’s fantastic 24/7 show to the rink, resulting in a series about the Capitals and the Penguins that is just f&#*ing incredible, to use the common parlance of the show. The series led up to this year’s Winter Classic outdoor game, another great NHL idea that is becoming such a popular New Year’s Day tradition that college football’s Cowboy Hat Bowl, Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski Bowl and Ball-peen Hammer Bowl are all considering moving to different days.

Now the NHL has come up with the idea of having captains pick teams in a fantasy draft for All-Star weekend. Brilliant, even if the idea was stolen from an old Bill Simmons column. It still took balls for the NHL to make that call, and it has raised the all-star game’s profile from flat-lining newt to frisky golden retriever recovering from surgery.

I still might not watch the game — after all, hockey all-star games are about as exciting as synchronized swimming in a fountain — but I will at least watch the draft and I am more interested in the game than I have been since I was 12 years old.

Smart work, NHL. Now can you please call the Rhodes people and tell them I was just kidding about the bomb threat. 

Photo Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images

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Archives: Life begins at home

Note: This is a story that I wrote for the North Shore News about my baby being born at home. The article is also online here. Sorry, there's no sports in there — here are some Blake Griffin dunks to tide you over.

Life begins at home

Reporter and wife choose home birth to the astonishment of many

By Andy Prest, North Shore News October 17, 2010

My wife is a reserved, polite woman and, as such, I was half expecting her to remain nearly silent during the birth of our first child for fear of upsetting anyone in earshot with any uncomfortable screaming.
After it was all over, she actually confirmed my suspicions: her plan was to keep it as quiet as possible. But in the heat of the moment that plan changed quickly. And noisily.
The beauty of contractions, as far as I can tell, is that there are breaks between each one that allow the mother to rest, regroup and set herself for the next one. It was during one of these lulls -- coming after an intense push that had her letting it all out -- that my wife turned to me and said something that I found hilarious.
"I guess we should have told the people upstairs that we were going to give birth down here," she said.
Well then.
- - -
The idea of having a home birth came fairly early on in the pregnancy. It was in the back of my mind but it probably would have stayed there because of our current living arrangements. Given the North Shore housing situation and our lack of a million dollars, we currently rent a garden suite -- our fancy name for a basement.
To me, the concept of home births normally conjures images of expansive country homes with claw-foot tubs, a four-post king-sized bed, the smell of patchouli hanging in the room and billowy white curtains tossed softly by a warm spring breeze. Nowhere in that image are there any six-foot-high ceilings, clanky furnaces or unsuspecting landlords sleeping upstairs.
But it was my wife who first asked the question: Why not a home birth? I didn't have a great answer to that question, aside from my hatred of patchouli and our lack of claw-foot tubs, so we looked into it.
We had already chosen a midwifery practice to be our primary caregiver throughout the pregnancy, so that meant that a home birth was a possibility (the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia advises against planned home births and does not allow its physicians to attend them). Our midwives never pushed the idea on us -- they simply supplied us with information about the pros and cons of home births and hospital births.
A 2009 article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal examined every planned home birth attended by a midwife in British Columbia from 2000-2004 -- 2,889 in total -- and compared the outcomes to all hospital births meeting the same eligibility requirements attended by a midwife as well as a matching sample of physician-attended hospital births. The results put home births in a very good light. The study concluded that "planned home birth attended by a registered midwife was associated with very low and comparable rates of perinatal death and reduced rates of obstetric interventions and adverse maternal outcomes compared with planned hospital birth attended by a midwife or physician."
The B.C. government began regulating and publicly funding midwives in 1998 -- the cost of midwifery care is now covered for all B.C. residents with a valid Carecard. There are approximately 145 practising midwives in the province, all registered with the College of Midwives of British Columbia. The University of British Columbia accepts 10 students per year into a four-year Midwifery Education Program within the Department of Family Practice, Faculty of Medicine that leads to a bachelor of midwifery degree. It's the only program of its kind in Western Canada.

According to the Midwives Association of British Columbia, B.C. midwives deliver nearly 10 per cent of the province's babies compared to two per cent in the rest of the country. Approximately 30 per cent of this province's midwifery clients choose to give birth at home, meaning approximately three per cent of all babies in the province are born at home.
Our midwives reported that home births generally resulted in shorter labours, lower infection rates for babies and moms, as well as greater client satisfaction due to the comfortable, familiar setting of the home as opposed to the sterile, unfamiliar hospital setting.
- - -
The information my wife and I uncovered about home births was very encouraging, but there was still that little nagging doubt about health and safety. What if something went wrong? What if we needed all those doctors and forceps and spinal taps and nurses and IV bags and drugs and wheelchairs and orderlies and little cups of Jell-O to keep mom and baby safe?
Our final fears were allayed when we attended a home-birth information night put on by a midwifery clinic in Vancouver. The midwife giving the presentation fielded all of our questions about safety as she unloaded three huge duffel bags full of medical supplies that every midwife takes to every home birth. It was like a magical travelling hospital; items such as a resuscitation bag and mask, oxygen tanks, suturing instruments and equipment for newborn intubation popping out.
Midwife protocol dictates that there be two trained attendants at every home birth. Among other benefits, this means that in the case of emergency mom and baby can be looked after simultaneously. There were also clear guidelines spelled out about what situations would lead to a midwife suggesting or strongly advising that the birth be moved to a hospital.
What wasn't included in the home birth package, aside from the cups of Jell-O, were any options for pain reduction. If this thing was happening at home, it was happening au naturel. Knowing this, we chose home anyway with my wife leading the charge. She may be polite but, as we would soon find out, she's one tough Mama.
Once we decided that home was our No. 1 plan, we had to pass the strict criteria laid out for home births. Only low risk, normal pregnancies are eligible for home birth. Midwives assess the situation throughout the pregnancy and into labour to make sure that the guidelines are continually met.
Mothers with serious medical conditions or who are giving birth to multiples are precluded from giving birth at home, as are women who go into labour very early or very late in their pregnancies. Factors such as the length of time required to travel to a hospital under current road and weather conditions are also considered in deciding on the suitability of a home birth.

My wife and I were given the green light (actually more like a yield sign -- proceed with caution) and then came the hard part: telling people our decision. On Day 1 of our pre-natal class -- held in the shiny new West Vancouver Community Centre -- all of the couples were asked what hospital they were going to give birth in. We were the only ones in the group to declare our home as our hospital of choice. Dropped jaws, nervous glances and even a few gasps greeted our announcement. It was a reaction we grew accustomed to over the next few months. Many of our friends and family members seemed equally concerned for our sanity as our safety. One well-meaning co-worker said he could not in good conscience hear about our home birth plans without relating the story of his own child's birth several years ago. A wrapped cord and sluggish heartbeat threatened brain damage for his son and was thankfully overcome by immediate intervention available only in a hospital, he said.
Another co-worker who recently gave birth offered some advice, not knowing we were planning on being at home.
"Your job is to make sure your wife gets all the drugs she wants," she told me. I responded with a nervous laugh and a quick change of subject.
Then there was my wife's visit with an old friend. He's an obstetrician/gynecologist. He's married to a labour and delivery nurse. He greeted my wife's home-birth declaration with a look of sheer dumbfounded disapproval.
"Why would you do that?" he said, his incredulousness completely unmasked as he began the uncomfortable process of trying to talk her out of her birth plan by relating the horrors he's seen when childbirth goes wrong. His wife the nurse, also a new mother, was only slightly more diplomatic.
"Obviously I would never do that, but it's your choice," she said as an awkward silence fell, an ideological chasm cleaving the room in two. If that figurative chasm had been an actual rocky cliff, I believe my wife would have seriously considered scaling down it to flee the scene.
- - -
The labour and birth were 19 of the most amazing, surreal, holy-shit-did-that-just-happen hours of my life. I awoke at 5 a.m. to find my wife sitting in bed playing with her iPod.
"Are you in labour?" I said.
"Yes," came the answer.
As the morning wore on we set up the room for the delivery -- a relatively quick process involving duct tape, absorbent pads and a stack of towels -- before visiting our local bakery and going for a walk around the neighbourhood. Back at home we ate our own food and lounged in our own comfortable surroundings.
"I may regret saying this, but this isn't so bad," my wife said.

By mid-afternoon it was pretty bad. When things got really intense my wife sat on the edge of our bed, wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my belly.
Stubborn even in pain, we strictly adhered to our midwife's directives not to call until the contractions reached a certain length and frequency for a sustained period of time. They never did reach the exact criteria but by the time we finally made the call and the midwife arrived she informed us that we were well underway. Within an hour my wife moved into the pushing phase and the second midwife arrived.
I will never forget the amazing things my wife did for our child over the next four hours. It was natural and raw and I spent the entire time perched on my bed inches away from my wife's face, my only duties to whisper encouragement, offer water through a bendy straw and brush the tension and heat from her face with a damp cloth.
The midwives quietly coached us, the repeated words "this is very safe" bringing me unimaginable peace and relief. We were prepared, but nothing can prepare you. My wife had no idea what to do and yet she did everything perfectly.
Finally came the miracle moment. The head out. The first cry from our baby's mouth. The body followed and, like magic, the thing that was a bump inside the belly was now lying on Mama's chest, the dull grey hue of seconds-old skin turning pink before our eyes as our son took his first breaths.
Wow.
- - -
"So how did it go?"
It's a question new mothers face that is almost always accompanied with a look of grimaced sympathy, the questioner bracing for a horror story of hours of pain and stress.
"It was great," my wife has replied on numerous occasions. "Well, as great as labour could be, I guess," she adds when the jaws of those within earshot fall to the ground.
Labour, great? Yes.
When it was all over my wife said she would not have had it any other way. It's a stance that has prompted a lot of interest, questions and curiosity -- not to mention serious kudos to my wife for her all-natural delivery -- from our friends as well as the other new parents we met through our pre-natal class. Even my co-worker with the brain damage warning was intrigued -- he was the one who encouraged me to write about the home-birth experience.
And shock of shocks, though they were home the whole time, our upstairs neighbours did not realize that our baby was born at home in their rented basement suite.
"When did you go in to the hospital?" our landlady asked when she dropped by to say a quick hello a few days later. Um, never. Surprise!
- - -
In the moments after the birth, the midwives discreetly attended to my wife while allowing plenty of time for family cuddling and bonding.
Once we were all nicely acquainted they conducted a few basic measurements, tests and procedures. To weigh him, they wrapped him in a sling and suspended him from a scale, much like you would do to weigh a prize fish. It's a favourite photo-op for home births, we were told.
Soon he was back in Mama's arms, alert and in search of his new favourite food source.
As we stared at our new wonder the midwives cleaned up the suite, leaving no trace of a birth except for one garbage bag full of waste, another full of dirty laundry and a placenta stored in a container in the freezer. With the house cleaned and Dad, Mom and baby all settled in, the midwives left.
Now it was just our little family. All three of us were tired, excited and scared. We were entering a whole new world but we were entering it together and it was the most amazing feeling in the world.
It felt like home.

© Copyright (c) North Shore News


Photo Cindy Goodman, North Shore News
Follow me on Twitter @Sportsbaby

The Seattle Seahawks are like my baby

This post is about the Seattle Seahawks so you know it’s got to have something to do with poop.

Here’s a scenario that is both a little bit funny and a lot aggravating that I’m sure every parent has experienced. You change your baby, applauding the big poop you find, and then put on a fresh new diaper. Within minutes, sometimes even as you are lifting your baby off the change table, he lets go another monster dump to fill up his sparkling clean fresh diaper. I’ve christened this sequence the “double doodie.”

The Seattle Seahawks dropped a huge double doodie on the NFL this season.

When I moved to Vancouver I realized to my horror that the Seahawks are the “local team” because Seattle is a lovely three- to 11-hour drive away, depending on border wait times. The Seahawks are one of the most boring franchises in the NFL despite experiencing some success in recent years. My real introduction to the team came in 2007, my first year playing fantasy football. I drafted Seattle's Shaun Alexander, one year removed from an 1,880-yard, 27-touchdown MVP season, with the fourth overall pick. He then perfected his patented play, running one or two yards before turning his back and squatting down on the field the moment a defender came into contact with him. He eventually lost his starting job to the immortal Maurice Morris and finished the season with 716 yards and five touchdowns, crapping all over my fantasy season and fouling me on the Seahawks for good.

Since then the Seahawks have continued to emanate stinkiness, their only redeeming quality being an amazing home crowd that lifts them to wins over teams they have no business beating.

This season was worse than ever. The Seahawks crapped up and down the field all year, filling their proverbial diaper with nuggets such as a 17-point loss to St. Louis, the Rams’ first win following a 10-game losing streak; a 30-point loss to Oakland and a 34-point home loss to the Giants. They bumbled to a 7-9 record but somehow won the putrid NFC West division, becoming what many people believed was the worst team to ever make the NFL playoffs.

But oh, those playoffs — a fresh diaper, a chance to wipe the bum clean and perhaps make it all the way to the big bowl. For the Seahawks, however, the playoffs were just another chance to make a mess of things.

To be fair, what Seattle did in the playoffs was not a true double doodie. They pulled off an upset in the opening round, riding their crowd and an unseasonably good performance from quarterback Matt Hasselbeck to a win, eliminating the banged-up New Orleans Saints and their beloved quarterback Drew Brees, a caring father, charity participant and bully-hater.   

Seattle waited until game 2 to drop a bum rumbler on the playoffs, getting blown out by iffy No. 2-seed Chicago — a team that suffered some bad defeats of their own this year, including a home loss to the foul Seattle Seahawks. The Bears, 21^st in the league during the regular season with a 20.9 point-per-game average, scored 21 points in the first 20 minutes against Seattle, eventually extending their lead to 28-0. And just to smear their playoff doodie in their fans’ faces, Seattle mounted a pointless comeback after the game was long out of reach, scoring 21 points in the final 12 minutes to make the final 35-24. That’s just mean.

At least when my baby does double doodie it puts a great big grin on his face.

Photo Todd Rosenberg/NFL. 

Follow me on Twitter @Sportsbaby 

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The Sedin twins are like my baby

I’m not 100 per cent certain, but I think that my baby is very good looking. I know I’m biased, but I’d like to think that I’d be able to admit it if he looked like a little gargoyle.

When he first came out he was an off-putting grey colour, but that went away within minutes. He also had a massive conehead — it actually freaked me out a little it was so long and pointy — but that amazingly was gone within eight hours.

Since then he’s been pretty darn adorable, in my opinion. I’m a little surprised because I’d say that most babies aren’t particularly comely. Many have blotches, acne or birth marks on their faces that recede over time. Some take a while to grow into their features. Others just have the bad luck of having ugly parents.

It’s not just me, however, who says my baby is adorable. Complete strangers say it too. Often they’ll see me and my wife approaching with our baby and they’ll offer a token, “Aw, isn’t that adorable,” before they actually see his face. When he comes into full view, however, they’ll take a breath in and say, “Wow, he really is a cutie,” as they take a step back and sneak a longer look, their mouths open a half inch more than is generally deemed acceptable.

So how are the Sedins like my baby? I think they’re pretty adorable too. There’s a Sportsnet commercial that airs in Vancouver with the two of them skating towards a camera in a darkened arena before they power-stop simultaneously while shooting identical confident gazes at the camera.

That commercial always makes me smile. To me they look like two big babies dressed up like hockey players. I don’t mean that in an insulting, “they’re helpless, puny crybabies” kind of way. I mean that they seem honest and pure and earnest and they look like they’d smell nice. They’ve also shown admirable perseverance in carving and maintaining their awesome red chinstrap-goatee beards for so long.

Ryan Kesler may be the heart of the Canucks, Roberto Luongo the spine and Kevin Bieksa the rectum, but Daniel and Henrik are the team’s steely and focused blue eyes.

The two of them have actually helped me grow to at first not despise, then tolerate, then perhaps even like the Canucks a little bit. As a kid growing up on the prairies, my allegiance was secured by the Calgary Flames when a tiny man named Theo Fleury went five-hole on Grant Fuhr to topple the mighty Edmonton Oilers at a time when Alberta hockey was the best in the world.

When I wasn’t ignoring the easily-forgettable Canucks of the 1980s I was growing to hate the Canucks of the 1990s and early 2000s. I moved to Vancouver in 2004 at a time when the offensively-inept Canucks of Marcus Naslund, Todd Bertuzzi, Matt Cooke and Ed Jovanovski were either boring you to death or sucker-punching you to paralysis. They were so easy to hate. The twins were there but they were a cute little sideshow.

Now the Sedins are the cute main attraction and I find it almost impossible to hate this team. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I’ve even resolved to make the ultimate fan sacrifice and let my kid cheer for a different team than me if he so chooses (the Sutterville Flames aren’t offering much to cheer about these days anyway). If my son chooses the Canucks, I won’t fight him. Who could, what with that adorable face of his.


Photo Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press
Follow me on Twitter @Sportsbaby
 Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press

The Auburn Tigers are like my baby

 Please note that the Auburn Tigers football team is not like my baby in that I love it or I care about anything it does or I would be the least bit perturbed if anything were to make it sad. In fact, I don’t have much time for the whole college football scene.

What with watching the NBA, NHL, NFL, CFL, MLB, college hoops, soccer, Olympics, tennis, golf, competitive eating and darts — not to mention a few minutes each day spent raising my kid — I just don’t have time to spend a Saturday watching college football.

I have about as much time for college football as I have for dentist appointments — once a year maximum, and that much only because of the national championship game in football and because of the chance that a cute dental hygienist will brush her business against the back of my head while cleaning my teeth.

Anyway, on Monday my baby rolled over from his back to his belly and back again. It was the first time he put that sequence together. Yay.

That same night the University of Auburn football team celebrated a rollover of its own. No, not a rollover like the Los Angeles Lakers in game 6 of the 2008 NBA finals (skip to 3:15 of the video to re-live the moment NBA championship celebrations jumped the shark).

For Auburn it was an actual person literally rolling over during a pivotal moment to help the Tigers claim the NCAA football national title with a 22-19 win over the University of Oregon Ducks. Here's the play.

You can see Auburn running back Michael Dyer get tackled, get back up and run for a big gain. The play set up the game-winning field goal kicked on the final play of the game. The key is that the ballcarrier’s knees never touch the ground as he rolls over his tackler. I don’t like it.

I suppose if a similar play helped my beloved Saskatchewan Roughriders defeat the Godless Edmonton Eskimos, then I’d be OK with it.

But in this case it just seems like a weird way to win a national title — and a slapshot-to-the-nuts way to lose one. I figure that if a defensive player goes to all the trouble of wrapping up a player, stopping all of his forward momentum and throwing him down, he should be rewarded with a tackle even if he has the misfortune of acting as a human landing pad (also known as a “Paris Hilton”). I know the rules say different, but aren’t rules made to be changed when enough bloggers complain about them?

I also hate those moments in sports when all of the players kind of stop, agreeing that the play is over, and then there’s that awkward instant when someone realizes that it isn’t over and starts playing by themselves.

It’s like when I’m doing my thing in my coed floor hockey league and one of the girls on the opposite teams trips over her own stick and falls down. At first my animal instinct always kicks in and my mind says, “Ha ha, sweet, two on one.” But then everyone kind of stops playing and waits to see if the girl is OK. If I keep going on the play and score one of my patented one-timer lifters from my off-wing wall, everyone will think I’m a big D-bag.

Well Auburn, I don’t blame you, but now you are that D-bag. Enjoy the two years that you’ll get with the national title before the NCAA strips it from you because, hypothetically, your Heisman-trophy winning quarterback’s father, a Pentacostal church bishop, is found to have taken a Hummer full of cash (in the name of the lord, of course) in exchange for getting his son to play at Auburn. Hypothetically.

That would make you sad, wouldn’t it Auburn.

In case you’re wondering, my son will not be displaying any of his already obvious rolling over skills on a football field. He won’t be allowed to play the sport due to the risk of suffering the equivalent of a seatbelt-less car crash several times a day during football season. Nothing so avoidable is going to scramble my baby’s brains unless it’s heading home a World Cup winning goal. For Canada. I think he’ll be safe.

Archives: The Olympics are like my unborn baby

I wrote this post about a year ago as I was mulling over the creation of this blog while also celebrating the creation of my baby. 

January, 2010

My back started to hurt today. It was weird -- I took one step out of the door of my basement suite on the way to work and midstride it felt like a piano tuner was changing my spinal cord from a low C to a high F.

I couldn't understand it. Am I so old (I'm only friggin 29!) that I can hurt myself just walking? Then it dawned on me: My back was hurting because I've been carrying my household on my shoulders for the past three months. Since my wife Sports Joanne and I found out we were going to have a baby she has turned from the healthy, happy, hard-working woman I married into a loafing, tooty, moody, whiny, sickly piece of couch furniture and now I'm doing all the work around here.

I'm not used to all this work around the house. I normally have two jobs: take care of all the garbage and do the dishes roughly half the time. I do job number one very well. Job number two takes longer so I often skip it and watch basketball instead.

The rest usually gets done by my super sweet wife. Not anymore. Smells make her sick so she doesn't go into the kitchen anymore. Cleaning products can hurt the baby so she doesn't keep our stuff clean anymore. Everything in the world makes her sick yet her immune system still allows her to watch One Tree Hill -- the swine flu of television dramas.

What's worse is she doesn't even have a hot little baby bump yet that I can play with incessantly and eat Nutella off of when I need a chocolate-hazelnut snack.

God, the sacrifices I make.

Of course, baby doll, I'm kidding. You're doing the magical work of making our beautiful baby and the two chapters of What to Expect When You're Expecting I've read say that what you're going through effing sucks big time. You're beautiful, I love you and you know I'm only kidding so don't fart on my pillow.

For the Sportses (that's us) it's all headed towards something that will be terrifying, poopy and amazing, and in this blog we're going to keep you posted on what that's like. And for those of you detectives out there who noticed our names and thought to yourself, "I wonder if these guys like sports?" and also "I wonder if Sports A is writing this at midnight while Sports J lies beside him on her back in a new, vomit-fighting sleeping position known as 'tiny baby, snoring dragon?'" The answer to both questions is yes, you Perry Mason mofo.

Sports will be a part of every one of these postings as we'll do our best to relate what's happening to our baby to what's happening to all the babies in the world of sport who make magic on the field of play, make memories that we all love and share, and make babies of their own with waitresses at Chili's.

Right now we're two weeks away from the start of the Olympic Games here in Vancouver and there's no snow on the mountain where freestyle skiing and snowboarding will be held. I'm sure the organizers are worried that maybe they shouldn't have put winter sports into a city that gets snow approximately 18 hours out of every year. I'm sure the organizers are thinking that there's too much at stake, that they can't F this thing up. I'm sure they're a little terrified, praying that Mother Nature takes pity on them and makes everything OK. As a soon-to-be first-time dad with a baby the size of a prune swimming two feet away from me, I think I know how they feel. 

The Philadelphia Eagles are like my baby

During the Christmas break my wife and I drove with our four-month-old son from Vancouver to several points across the prairies, subjecting him to long days strapped in the car seat, constantly changing routines and the possibility of sliding off a mountain cliff and plummeting to an early death alongside his dumbass parents in the name of family visiting.

I came away from the trip thinking three things:

1.     I’m not going to subject my child to 3,500 kilometres of icy-death highway again for at least 10 months.

2.     Valemount, B.C., is the redneck snowmobiler capital of the world. It’s like a NASCAR infield on ice. Redneck is not quite right though – can we call them whitenecks? Whatever they’re called, never miss a chance to share a continental breakfast with them at the Valemount Super 8 to hear the authentic chainsaw rasp of voices carved by years of cigarettes, exhaust fumes and shouts of ‘Git ‘er done!’

3.     The Philadelphia Eagles are like my baby.

For most of our holiday my baby was a champion traveler. Often he’d nod off to sleep soon after departure (cars really are God’s gift to parents—they’re like a triple shot of Nyquil). When he wasn’t sleeping he would giggle and play with Mama in the back or just watch out the back window as the mountain scenery rolled by.

The problems only came at the very end of long trips. As our trips rolled past six or seven hours and our final destinations neared, our baby eventually would lose it. It happened around the town of Brooks on one long trip from Revelstoke to Medicine Hat and around Chilliwack on another long haul from Valemount to Vancouver. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Brooks and Chilliwack both smell like the inside of a cow.

The Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Green Bay Packers 21-16 in a first round playoff game Sunday, ending a season in which they were one of the most explosive teams in the NFL and seemed to be a good bet to reach the Super Bowl. Despite their impressive regular season showing, the loss wasn’t a surprise to Eagles fans. Like the Phoenix Suns, the Buffalo Bills of the 1990s, the San Jose Sharks of the past decade or this bridge, the Eagles are doomed to collapse when the going gets really tough.

My advice to these teams, gleaned from my own experiences on the road to glory with temperamental would-be-champions about to crack, is to calm the situation down with a couple of nice boobs to latch on to.

Hey, it worked for Spain.  

Welcome -- Sports are like my baby.

My four-month-old baby isn’t allowed to watch TV until he is two. His Mama says it’ll give him ADD.

I don’t want him growing up selling weed or hosting Entertainment Tonight or anything horrible like that so obviously I’ve stopped watching sports when he is in the room.

Just kidding, I still watch sports all the time, a little something practically everyday. Sometimes a lot of something, like triple-header football Sundays.

My baby does everything in his power to see the screen. He’ll be sitting on my lap facing the complete opposite direction and if I look away for an instant he’ll spin his head around Linda Blair style to catch a few glimpses of the baby-brain scrambling awesomeness.

How do I solve this problem? Start growing dope in hopes that we can go into business together in a few years?

No. I plop him down right in front of the TV. Then I hang a blanket off his little play centre to block his view. Problem solved.

You see, science tells us the concern is with babies watching TV, not hearing TV. Our little guy hears a lot of TV. Apparently that's not as bad as watching a lot of TV.

So he’s learning English from Daddy, French from Mama, pick-and-roll defence from Charles Barkley and yelling from Gus Johnson. (“Time to fill this diaper, can he do it?! The clock is running out. Here comes Mom! She’s going for the change. Can he let it go?! OHHHHH!! Deuces are wild! You gotta love it! HA Haaaaaa!)

I think it’s fitting that one of the main introductions to language for my kid comes from sports. Sport for many people, myself included, is itself a language shared and understood in all kinds of social situations.

Now that my entire life consists of staying within 20 feet of my baby at all times to make sure that he does not die, sports is one of the main things that helps me feel connected to friends I don’t see any more and fun stuff I don’t do anymore.

Fantasy sports leagues give me a chance to connect with my friends, cheering for pretend teams and taunting each other for drafting quarterbacks who do things like this.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders unite my entire family, bringing us joy by winning three championships every 100 years in an eight-team league (it may be a form of child abuse but my baby will be a Rider fan too).

I’ve just started a six-month parental leave from my job as a sports reporter for the North Shore News and this blog is a way for me to keep people updated on the progresses of my baby, pass on parenting tips and make fun a Brett Favre and his recently-retired (hopefully) wang, all through the language of sport. Each post will compare something in the sports world to something in my baby’s world.

There will be a lot of joy and also a lot of poop. Hope you enjoy.