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.

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