Hockey Hall of Fame ghost revealed at last: The Hockey Hall of Fame moved into the historic building that had been a Bank of Montreal branch for close to 100 years. For more than 50 years a ghost known only as "Dorothy" has haunted the Hockey Hall of Fame. In the early 1990s, Toronto musician Joanna Jordan saw a female ghost looking down on her from a second-floor ceiling. Jordan, who was playing the harp at an event being held in the building's Great Hall, was unaware at the time that a ghost purportedly haunted the space. "I remember it so vividly," she says, "because it's one of those things you'll never forget." Jordan refused to go up to the second floor by herself when she played at the Hall, which opened in 1993. "It was just too spooky up there."

posted by tommytrump to culture at 12:57 PM - 2 comments

The Fall and Rise of Theo Fleury: With a "tell-all" book hitting the shelves this week (Playing with Fire, HarperCollins Canada), Fleury goes on the record with the fifth estate and candidly discusses the dark issues that haunted him during the glory years, including the sexual abuse he experienced as a teenager at the hand of the now notorious junior hockey coach, Graham James. Behind the public bravado was a man struggling to shake off his demons. He found his release in increasingly erratic behaviour on and off the ice, fuelled by addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex. The fifth estate's Bob McKeown talks to those who know Fleury best -- both personally and professionally. We'll meet Sheldon Kennedy -- Fleury's childhood friend, Calgary Flames teammate, and a victim of the same junior hockey coach. And the fifth estate talks with Fleury's wife, Jennifer, who married Theo in September 2006, following a year of sobriety, and with whom he credits turning his life around.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 10:51 PM - 3 comments

Dan Snyder's dream to come true in Elmira: It's been six years. Sunday, the Atlanta Thrashers honor their former player by skating at the new Dan Snyder Memorial Arena in his hometown 90 minutes west of Toronto, Graham Snyder will no doubt have a heavy heart, but he will also know that his son will be looking down with a big smile on his face.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 08:20 PM - 1 comment

Yankees yank Ronan Tynan from lineup after anti-Semitic remark: First the Yankees told Challenger the Eagle to take a hike after almost divebombing Derek Jeter and Jason Giambi during the '03 World Series. Now the team is telling another Yankee Stadium postseason tradition that he'd be better off staying at home for Game 1 of the ALCS. ....the team has canceled the appearance of singer Ronan Tynan after the Irish tenor made an anti-Semitic remark to a Jewish doctor who was looking at an apartment in his building on Manhattan's East Side.
"The trouble started when Tynan, 49, bumped into a real estate agent showing an apartment in his East Side apartment building to a doctor from NYU Medical Center."The agent told Tynan, 'Don't worry, they are not Red Sox fans,' according to apartment-hunter Gabrielle Gold-von Simson. "I don't care about that, as long as they are not Jewish' was Tynan's reply."

posted by tommytrump to culture at 04:29 PM - 42 comments

Axe comes down on Ricciardi : The Toronto Blue Jays fired general manager J.P. Ricciardi on Saturday, ending an eventful eight-year reign marked by frequent controversy and mediocre teams never good enough to reach the postseason. Many fans will wonder what took so long as Ricciardi, along with centre-fielder Vernon Wells, had become the lightning rod for those most frustrated with the team's playoff drought, which dates back to 1993 when the Blue Jays won their second consecutive World Series. Wells has five years remaining on his $127-million, seven-year deal, an albatross contract that will handcuff the club for many seasons to come. The team managed to escape the $60-million remaining on Rios's deal when he was claimed off waivers by the White Sox, but Ricciardi got nothing in return. Ricciardi twice caused spats by publicly wondering if former pitcher A.J. Burnett's injuries were simply in his head.

He had countless memorable quotes over the years, perhaps the definitive one coming during a radio show while taking calls from fans.

"It's not a lie if we know the truth," he said about the back injury story concocted for B.J. Ryan when the left-hander was actually having elbow issues in 2007.

posted by tommytrump to baseball at 12:48 PM - 13 comments

Artificial turf goes way of the dead ball : After the Twins play their Metrodome finale, just two non-grass fields will remain in the major leagues: the Rogers Centre and Tropicana Field. That's down from a high of 10 artificial surfaces, in 1977-78 and again from 1982-94. Maury Wills remembered back 43 years ago to that April night when he became the first batter to hit on artificial turf in a major-league game. "I'm a traditionalist," said the Los Angeles Dodgers speedster, who opened that night at Houston's Astrodome with a single off Hall of Famer Robin Roberts. "I'm still an old-school guy. I believe baseball was meant to be played outdoors and be played in the daytime." Turns out, most others think baseball is better on grass, too. The sport's turf wars are nearing an end.

posted by tommytrump to baseball at 09:17 AM - 5 comments

Gretzky leaving the Coyotes: 99 Done in Desert: Gretzky announced that he was stepping down as the Coyotes' coach, effective immediately. In a statement he released on his own website, Gretzky.com, the Great One said he thought "long and hard" about his decision and had hoped for an earlier resolution to the Coyotes' ongoing ownership woes. However, Gretzky said he was able to read the writing on the wall, noting that "since both remaining bidders made it clear that I don't fit into their future plans, I approached Don Maloney and suggested he begin looking for someone to replace me as coach. The Coyotes missed the playoffs in each of Gretzky's four years as a coach, although last year, showed signs of life and were firmly in the playoff mix at the All-Star Game at the end of January. The team faded in the final third of the season, in part because of injuries to key young players; in part because of the decision to jettison expensive contracts, such as those of Olli Jokinen and Derek Morris.Curiously, Gretzky concluded by saying: "I'm confident the best is yet to come for hockey in Phoenix."

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 01:11 PM - 3 comments

Canada Protects Home Advantage at Olympics : Count the American speedskater Catherine Raney among the athletes, coaches and officials of several sports surprised by Canada's approach to hosting the Winter Games in February. Raney, who spent more than 7 years living in Canada and training with the Canadian national team, was told after the 2006 Olympics that the Canadians did not want foreign athletes training with them leading to the 2010 Games in Vancouver. She and many other foreign athletes had expected to spend quite a bit of time practicing at the Olympic sites, but have been granted only minimal access. "They're playing nasty," said Raney, now living and training in Utah. "I think every one of us would love to prove to them that what they did wasn't right, and we're ready to show it on the ice." A decades-old open-access agreement between the luge teams of the United States and Canada has come undone. Americans said that most Canadian athletes took 60 to 100 extra practice runs in Utah before the 2002 Salt Lake Games. Canada offered the United States 18 this time, in a trade for 18 Canadian runs at this year's world championships in Lake Placid, N.Y. The Americans refused. "It just doesn't seem like it's in the Olympic spirit," said Derek Parra, who won gold and silver speedskating medals for the United States in 2002 and now coaches the team. "It's un-Olympic." Among Parra's charges is Raney, who remains close friends with Canadians whom she will race against in February. She might have provided the sharpest rebuke to her neighbors to the north. "It's Un-Canadian," Raney said, laughing. "Isn't it?"

posted by tommytrump to olympics at 09:08 PM - 9 comments

Wade: Right time for Astros to make managerial change: Cecil Cooper fired : Cecil Cooper was fired Monday as Astros manager, falling victim to an underachieving, injury-plagued team with a bloated payroll and one of the worst starting rotations in baseball. Pressed after using the team’s payroll as a defense for higher expectations, Astros owner Drayton McLane also vowed to evaluate the front office personnel who are getting him such dismal returns on a $107 million payroll.

posted by tommytrump to baseball at 11:15 PM - 1 comment

Soccer theatrics debunked : The theatrics and ruses used by soccer stars "diving" to draw a penalty are being exposed by a British professor who specializes in the study of people's intentions and deceit. Frauds take unnatural swan dives and consciously do not protect their bodies in order to look like victims, he says.

posted by tommytrump to soccer at 10:38 AM - 15 comments

Ravens' Foxworth Is Building Home Museum to the Civil Rights Movement : With each step down his basement stairs, Domonique Foxworth descends into his own private bomb shelter. Above ground, he earns millions covering the N.F.L.'s top receivers for the Baltimore Ravens. Below it in his cellar, he seeks different company. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has a dream in the cover of an autographed memoir. Malcolm X defies a detractor in a typed letter from 1963. Rosa Parks sits, Tommie Smith clenches and Thurgood Marshall reasons in framed and signed artifacts that form Foxworth's growing museum of the civil rights movement. "Other players around the league, their basements are all jerseys of themselves and friends in the N.F.L. and the N.B.A." "I feel more comfortable with these people around me." "When this player shoots from the hip, it ain't with a Glock in a nightclub. Foxworth's passion for civil rights will inform his handling of the league's coming labor negotiations, in which he will participate as a member of the union's executive committee. "This is the Little Rock Nine," Foxworth said, pointing to an autographed print of the black students who in 1957 were blocked from attending a segregated school in Arkansas. "All this stuff is really powerful to me. It motivates me. Football and community work and just day to day. To not waste."

posted by tommytrump to culture at 10:46 AM - 10 comments

Heatley traded to Sharks : The Ottawa Senators have thrown disgruntled winger Dany Heatley to the Sharks. San Jose gave up Milan Michalek, Jonathan Cheechoo and a second-round pick for Heatley. Ottawa, which confirmed the deal Saturday, threw in a fifth-round pick on its side of the deal. The trade — on the opening day of training camp — ends a festering dispute that has overshadowed the Sens in recent months.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 03:17 PM - 4 comments

Too dainty to hit : The GM Place crowd roared with approval when Canadian players Gillian Apps and Becky Kellar slammed opponents into the boards in the first period of their game against the United States on Wednesday. But the cheers turned suddenly to jeers after the referee's whistle, as the Canadians sulked to the penalty box. The Norwegian referee made the proper call in both instances, yet, to the crowd and to a small but growing number of critics inside the women's game, the penalties appeared to contravene the spirit of hockey. With the sport struggling to build a fan base, some insiders are beginning to ask whether the time has come for women's hockey to amend its rules and allow bodychecking. Many believe that allowing bodychecking would address the inconsistent officiating that plagues the women's game, and reduce the number of penalties. Canadian captain Hayley Wickenheiser, who has played in a men's professional league in Finland, says she "would love" to experiment with bodychecking, particularly in a game against the rival Americans.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 11:41 PM - 4 comments

'We're really ecstatic': Roberto Luongo, Canucks agree to 12-year contract extension: An "ecstatic" Roberto Luongo has agreed to a 12-year contract extension through the 2021-22 National Hockey League season worth $64 million US with the Vancouver Canucks, saying he looks forward to the opportunity to bring a Stanley Cup title to the West Coast. The deal breaks down like this: in 2010-11, the first season of the extension, Luongo will earn $10 million. In 2011-12, he will make $6.716 million. From the 2012-13 to the 2017-18 seasons, he will earn $6.714 million each campaign. In 2018-19, Luongo will make $3.382 million, which will drop to $1.618 million in 2019-20. In the final two seasons of the contract -- the 2020-21 and 2021-22 campaigns -- he will earn $1 million each. For the Canucks, the annual salary cap hit will be $5.33 million.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 06:17 PM - 10 comments

NHL players fire union chief: Once again, the National Hockey League Players' Association is looking for an executive director. The NHLPA said in a release Monday that its executive board "voted overwhelmingly to relieve Paul Kelly of his duties as executive director, effective immediately." No reason was given, but it's believed the union executive felt that Kelly did not take enough of an adversarial stance with league management. Kelly succeeded Ted Saskin, who was let go in May 2007 amid allegations of monitoring players' email. Saskin had taken over when Bob Goodenow stepped down under pressure from the players on July 28, 2005, only two weeks after a collective bargaining agreement was signed to end the lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 02:07 PM - 6 comments

Als legend Sam Etcheverry dies at 79: Sam Etcheverry, the legendary quarterback who led the Montreal Alouettes to three Grey Cup appearances in the 1950s then later coached them to CFL title, has died at the age of 79. One of the most remarkable players in team and Canadian Football League history, Etcheverry quarterbacked the Alouettes from 1952 to 1960, setting virtually every team passing record. He totalled 30,303 yards and 186 touchdowns on 1,969 completions. He threw for 508 yards in the 1955 Grey Cup, setting a record that still stands.

posted by tommytrump to football at 05:59 PM - 4 comments

Burress Pleads Guilty in Weapons Case: Plaxico Burress, the former New York Giants receiver, pleaded guilty on Thursday morning to attempted criminal possession of a weapon, in a deal with Manhattan prosecutors that will send him to prison for two years. Justice Michael H. Melkonian of State Supreme Court accepted the guilty plea. Under the plea agreement, along with the two-year prison sentence, Mr. Burress, 32, is to be sentenced on Sept. 22 to two years of post-release supervision. With good behavior, he will be eligible for release after slightly more than 20 months.

posted by tommytrump to football at 01:33 PM - 29 comments

For Winter Games in Vancouver, Ice Isn’t So Easy : Ice appears such a simple concoction — water turned really cold. This time of year, its favored role is usually the one it plays at the bottom of a glass. But ice is a year-round, lifelong science for the people hired by the Vancouver Organizing Committee to produce complex forms of it for the Winter Olympics, coming in February. Beyond the usual challenges in constructing ice surfaces to meet the needs of different sports in different arenas, Vancouver’s location presents a twist, with its combination of sea-level elevation and high humidity, unique among Winter Olympic host cities. Consider the challenge facing Tracy Seitz, who will make ice for competitors in bobsled, luge and skeleton at the Whistler Sliding Centre. The serpentine track, nearly a mile long, starts at an elevation of 3,080 feet and drops to 2,582 feet. In February, it sometimes snows at the top and rains at the bottom. Occasionally, the opposite occurs.

posted by tommytrump to olympics at 01:29 PM - 9 comments

Y. E. Yang Shocks Woods to Win at P.G.A.: Y. E. Yang has won the P.G.A. Championship, finishing at eight under, three strokes ahead of Tiger Woods.

posted by tommytrump to golf at 07:19 PM - 10 comments

Ted 'Teeder' Kennedy, 83: Captain of Maple Leafs: Come on, Teeder! Next to Foster Hewitt's "Hello Canada'' to open his radio broadcasts of Maple Leafs games, those were the most famous words heard at Maple Leaf Gardens in the glory years after World War II. The man who shouted the encouragement from the green seats in quiet times during Leafs games was John Arnott, and the man for whom he was cheering was perhaps the quintessential Maple Leaf, Ted (Teeder) Kennedy. Kennedy was a Leaf centre for 12 seasons with five Stanley Cup wins, team captain from 1948 to '57, and the last Leaf to win the Hart Trophy in 1955 as the National Hockey League's most valuable player.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 02:55 PM - 2 comments

Eunice Shriver, Founder of Special Olympics, Dies : A sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy and the mother-in-law of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Mrs. Shriver never held elective office. Yet she was no stranger to Capitol Hill, and some view her work on behalf of the developmentally challenged, including the founding of the Special Olympics, as the most lasting of the Kennedy family’s contributions. “When the full judgment of the Kennedy legacy is made — including J.F.K.’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kennedy’s efforts on health care, workplace reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential,” U.S. News & World Report said in its cover story of Nov. 15, 1993. Edward Kennedy said in an interview in October 2007: “You talk about an agent of change — she is it. If the test is what you’re doing that’s been helpful for humanity, you’d be hard pressed to find another member of the family who’s done more.” As an example, Mr. Kennedy cited the opening ceremony of the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai, where a crowd of 80,000 cheered as President Hu Jintao welcomed more than 7,000 athletes to China, a country with a history of severe discrimination against anyone born with disabilities. The first Special Olympics brought together 1,000 athletes from 26 states and Canada for competition. In December 1968, Special Olympics Inc. was established as a nonprofit charitable organization. Since then, the program has grown to almost three million athletes in more than 180 countries.

posted by tommytrump to culture at 11:11 PM - 7 comments

Blackhawks' Patrick Kane arrested: Blackhawk star winger and U.S. Olympian Patrick Kane gave the team a black eye and even caught his mother off guard early Sunday when he and cousin, James M. Kane were arrested in his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y., at 4 a.m. for allegedly assaulting a cab driver and grabbing back the $13.80 fare when the driver said he was 20 cents short of giving them change for $15.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 06:13 PM - 6 comments

White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle throws perfect game: Mark Buehrle was not only unhittable Thursday -- he was perfect. Center fielder Dewayne Wise, inserted in the top of the ninth inning for defensive purposes, preserved the perfect game by leaping above the fence to complete a juggling catch of Gabe Kapler's drive for the first out of the ninth.This marked the second no-hitter for Buehrle, who no-hit Texas on April 18, 2007.

posted by tommytrump to baseball at 04:58 PM - 20 comments

Hockey Night in Israel : The United States defeated Canada Wednesday evening to claim the championship of the World Jewish Ice Hockey Tournament – staged for the second time in this northernmost of Israeli towns. The event was the creation of Canadian Sydney Greenberg, head of Astral Media and, while homespun at times, it displayed tremendous professionalism. Like most of the players, officials were drawn from major junior hockey leagues in Canada and from the American Hockey League.........The 10-day tournament had been a great success with teams from five countries (Canada, the United States, Russia, France and Israel) taking part in both senior and junior divisions. There were several close games with two being decided by shoot-outs.

posted by tommytrump to hockey at 01:56 PM - 0 comments

Blue Bombers scout caught spying at Ticat practice : Winnipeg pulls a leaf out of the New England Patriots' book after one of their employees is found taking notes at Hamilton's practice. “I think the Bombers and this guy are taking our league marketing campaign of ‘accessible and affordable’ a little too seriously,” Ti-Cats President Scott Mitchell said.

posted by tommytrump to football at 06:40 PM - 3 comments