Weekly Banter - ... Major League 3, Toronto Maple Leafs

BOD - Viva Bianca ("I didn't recognize her with all those clothes on")

CSzem:

Of course, I’m talking about that guy who played “Wild Thing” Rick Vaughn (can’t place his name at the moment). Is it sad that out of the whole crazy series of interviews, the thing that has me most excited is that he says they’re making “Major League 3”…? Never mind that they actually already made Major League 3 (How pissed is Scott Bakula right now? He’s still alive, right?), or the fact that “Wild Thing” could probably barely crack a senior-ball game at this point, or the fact that he’s likely completely delusional and it’s not even happening……I’m still excited. “I want….Parkman.”

Slow news week in the world of sports. The NHL trade deadline came and went Monday, with barely a whimper. Basically TSN’s worst nightmare came true, with all of the trades leading up to deadline day making for a ridiculously dull 8+ hours of coverage. Evidently that didn’t stop record numbers of viewers from tuning in. How about scrapping Family Day, and replacing it with Deadline Day as a stat holiday? Although, really that’s like “Anti-Family Day” since I (along with millions of other men in Canada) would literally be ignoring our familial responsibilities for an entire day in favour of watching Bob McKenzie check his Blackberry and Pierre McGuire close-talking with everyone on the set.

Quick hit NHL thoughts:

1) Who has a better shot of getting in the playoffs: NJ Devils or Leafs? (I say neither, but you’ve gotta pick one)

2) Cup Finals will be _______ v. ________, with the winner being ________.

3) Surprise playoff team (a la my Habs last year) will be __________.

Gretzpo:

I'm excited to see what will happen to Charlie Sheen ... will he go the way of Robert Downey Jr, get sober, and re-invent his career? Or will he just keep spiralling downward until he finally implodes ... let's be honest here... it wouldn't shock anyone if tomorrow's headline was "Sheen Found Dead in Cocaine Haze with 14 Prostitutes"

"I tell you what - if you can hit it, you can name it."

"How about 'The Masturbator'?"

The only thing that could have been funnier than the Major League 3 comment is if he would have come out and said "We're making a sequel to 'Hot Shots'." Which, of course, was already done... and starred Charlie Sheen...

If Major League 3/4 were to happen, I'd be just as intrigued to see who they'd bring back to play Willie Mays Hayes. Would Wesley Snipes trade in his superhero costume? Or would Omar Epps trade in his labcoat?

That and Jake Taylor ... did you see Tom Berenger in "Inception"? I legitimately thought he was wearing a fat suit and that was part of the whole 'dream-like sequence':

"In the 4th level of the dream, the guy from Platoon and Major League weighs 300 pounds."

One thing's for sure... everyone can agree they could use more Roger Dorn back in their lives... "enough of this olay bullshit!"

I follow the trade deadline now purely for the over-reaction of Leafs fans to every move. Will they be "buyers" or "sellers"? The fact that this team is fooling anyone into labelling them anything other than "awful" is a miracle. With the exception of their win over the Habs, all of their points have come against substandard/injury plagued teams, and when they meet Philly this week they're going to get blown out. I'm going with the hot hand and say the Devils have more of a shot ... but at the end of the day the Sabres will pass the Hurricanes, and it will be Buffalo and NYR in the 7th and 8th seeds, respectively.

Cup Finals will be: Vancouver vs. Philadelphia ... with the winner being Philadelphia.

Surprise playoff team will be: Buffalo.

CSzem:

The thing about Sheen right now (and I find this hilarious, by the way) is that unlike every other famous person who’s been “caught” in these types of situations, he’s not even remotely showing any sense of remorse or desire to “get better”. He’s not even saying that he wishes he could change. He literally just wants to live this way until he’s 90. Let’s put our Devil’s Advocate hat on for a second: Is it really THAT crazy for a person – who clearly has the means to do so – to live however they choose, regardless of society’s view on the immorality of it all? Obviously, the question of legalities is relevant, but assuming (for the sake of the argument) no laws are broken, is it our job to tell him to change? If you had all the money you could ever need to support whatever lifestyle you chose, how would you live? I’m not suggesting you’d live your life exactly the way he does (although I’m not NOT suggesting that), but wouldn’t you only do things that you really, really enjoyed? Obviously, for Sheen that list is headed up by hookers, cocaine….and winning.

No one who is actively working is coming back for Major League 3, so that means Epps and (I guess) Snipes are out. So we’ll have a replacement Willie, once again. Roger Dorn seems like a lock to come back, unless he’s upset about it being called Major League 3, since y’know, he was already in that movie once.

I agree with your assessment on who will end up in the playoffs, as the Sabres are playing better than Carolina, Atlanta, and the rest right now. Your call of them as a “surprise” team makes no sense though, when you’re picking the Flyers to win the Cup. That means that (at best) the Sabres upset the #2 seed (looking like Boston or TB), and then lose to the Flyers. Obviously that first round series would be an upset, but I don’t think it would be earth-shattering. It’s pretty much a fact of life in the NHL that at least one (most likely more than one) division winner is going down in the first round.

With that said, it does seem like we’re due for a “chalk” type year, so I’m not arguing with your Vancouver v. Philly Cup Finals. Those have been the clear-cut best two teams all year, and I think they’re both equipped for the run. I’ll take the Canucks, though.

Gretzpo:

That was certainly a lot of words ... you're pulling your weight a lot more than me this week.

Quick hitter:

Prediction for tonight's Leafs / Flyers game?

I think the Flyers are going to knock the Leafs down a peg. They haven't played a team the calibre of the Flyers in weeks, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Flyers won by 3-4 goals.

CSzem:

Amazingly enough, I’m going to disagree. I just don’t see it. The Leafs have been a tough out for EVERYONE for the past little while. They haven’t lost in regulation since February 12^th (8 games), and while they may not have beaten a team on the Flyers’ level during this run, we just established that only the Flyers and Canucks exist on that level. They HAVE beaten a number of playoff teams including my beloved Habs, the Penguins (injury-ridden yes, but still 4^th in the East), Boston (who looks a lot like the 3^rd best team in the league), and Buffalo. So it hasn’t been all Islanders, Thrashers, Panthers.

If the Leafs DO get smoked tonight, I’ll say it has more to do with going on the road, in a back-to-back situation, to play against the best team in the conference. There’s lots of teams that would get killed in that scenario. (I can’t believe those paragraphs just happened)

The best (worst?) part of this is that we’re posting it after the game has happened. How did it seem like a good idea to get onto this line of questioning? We’re almost guaranteed to look like idiots. Although, I think I managed to set things up so that if:

a) The Leafs win, I can say “See, I said they were playing well.”

b) They lose a close game, I can say “I told you they’d play them tough.”

c) They get shelled, I can say “Well, I said that might happen.”

So I think I’m covered.

Gretzpo:

The correct answer for a prediction of tonight's game was "pain".

Lovin' those streaking Habs right now. Considering the Bruins are only a season removed from one of the greatest sports embarrassments in history (blowing that 3-0 lead against the Flyers last season) you can't really put much confidence in their ability to close that Northeast Division.

Is James Reimer for real?

It appears as though I ask more questions than I answer in these banters ... probably because outside of baseball (and football) my sports knowledge and interest is actually quite limited.

"What do you know about Gretzpo? Do you know he doesn't even really like sports?"

I've also recently been watching 3 hours of "Spartacus" a night. And I know that you're not looking to pick up any new shows... because you have real life responsibilities like a wife and a child... but this show is fantastic. Every episode is the same:

Graphic Battle / Female Nudity / Graphic Sex Scene / Sword fight / Tough Guy Talk / Flashback Sex Scene / Revenge Kill

Plus you get to see a whole lot of naked Lucy Lawless. Which, honestly, would have excited me a lot more ten years ago... but she's still got it.

*** Update at time of posting - the Leafs (much like Ivan Drago) are for real.

Drunk on the Job

(BOD - Jenny from the Block. She used to have a little, now she has a lot.)

As a self-proclaimed athlete who possesses absolutely zero transcendent talents or abilities, I really want to hate Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers. I want to hate that he is, by all intents and purposes, a raging alcoholic with the soft doughy physique of a frat boy still trying to relive his university party days by drinking a 2-4 every weekend and hitting on girls born after 1990.


And yet, despite all of his extracurricular activities and the musculature of Buddha, he is still one of the best hitters in the game of baseball. Even in my dreams I am not as good a baseball player as Cabrera is after an all night bender and that’s a very tough pill for me to swallow. I literally cannot comprehend how talented the man is at his job.

When I’m wasted or hungover, I barely have enough mental acuity and coordination to turn on the TV to watch Saved by the Bell reruns, let alone try to hit a major league calibre fastball.

After Cabrera’s latest run-in with the police—where he was pulled over with an open bottle of scotch on the front seat, pulled the “Don’t you know who I am?” card and refused a breathalyser test—there was a groundswell of support in the media and from fans that Miggy seek professional help for his addiction to alcohol.

The last time Cabrera’s out of control drinking was made public was two years ago when he pulled an all-nighter getting lathered up before the most important game of the 2009 season for the Tigers.

I sincerely doubt that these are isolated incidents and I’m sure Cabrera has been boozing heavily since then out of the prying eyes of the 24 hour news cycle.

Interestingly, the call for Miggy to enter a rehabilitation program ended after he reported to spring training and proceeded to crush balls all over Lakeland, Florida in batting practice. I hadn’t heard Cabrera’s name in the news for a few days until he hit a screaming double to the base of the wall against the Blue Jays.

This led me to a thought: will anyone truly force Cabrera to seek help if his on-field performance doesn’t suffer?

There is a litany of baseball players who played great while assisted by a variety of recreational substances (Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle immediately spring to mind).

Do the Detroit Tigers really care about Cabrera’s well-being or do they care solely about his production on the field? It appears as though Detroit will turn a blind eye if Miggy goes for 30, .300, 100 this year. Of course, if he hits .250 and leaves a legion of runners stranded on the basepaths, then it’s time to seek treatment. Until that time, the drinks are on the house.

Now was the above discussion on Miguel Cabrera just a thinly-veiled excuse to talk some sports before weighing in on the delightfully entertaining train wreck that is Charlie Sheen? Maybe.

Over the past week, Sheen has provided sound bite after sound bite of just pure comedy gold. Besides the fact that he looks like a 65 year old man, his assaults on everyone and everything and his claims that he’s fuelled not by drugs, but by Tiger blood and Adonis DNA (hey, me too!), have me breathlessly checking cyberspace for the next update.

Apparently, he’s been clean and sober for a couple of weeks now, but it’s evident that the cornucopia of drugs he’s snorted, injected and tasted over the years has permanently crossed his mental wiring.

It’s really too bad he has kids because otherwise this would be a great story of a man living the dream. He lives in a mansion, makes ungodly sums of money, does whatever he wants with zero consequences and enjoys the company of two skanks half his age. Why am I not a famous actor again?

The call for Charlie to seek help by CBS et al. rings hollow to me and is similar to the trials of Miggy Cabrera. No one said anything about Sheen’s rampant drug use and partying when he was turning Two and a Half Men into ratings gold and making huge gobs of money for everyone involved.

But now that the show’s been cancelled and the gravy train has stopped, everyone is concerned about his well-being? I call bullshit.

It’s amazing that guys like Cabrera and Sheen can perform their jobs at such a high level when intoxicated and it’s shameful that their bosses only want them to get actual help if there’s a chance of their performances suffering.

Talkin' with Tewks Live - Survivor and Jersey Shore

(BOD - My favourite Spartacus slave)

Wanting to depart from the confines of the sports world, Gretzpo and I discuss our passion for reality television with a dissection of the newest season of Survivor and the apparent freefall of Jersey Shore over the past few weeks.

We also weigh in on CSzem's curious absence.

Talkin' with Tewks Live - Survivor and Jersey Shore

Enjoy.