Sports 34 results

Before we called it ‘the Beforetimes,’ we watched baseball — without worry

Column: A Long Day's Journey into COVID awareness Last March, Ex-Press staffer Charles Gordon was in Dunedin, Florida when COVID-19 cancelled Spring Training, and forced his family on an angst-filled road trip northward. A year on into the pandemic, we look back at the moment when everything, and everyone, changed. A memoir from March 21, 2020 By Charles Gordon We had already decided to come home before the call came officially from our government. For one thing, a prescient friend had announced, on the Tuesday before, that he was leaving: he had a respiratory infection and the Coronavirus could be fatal to him. A bunch of us were at the Florida restaurant where he told us that and we made light of it on the way back to the hotel. “Should I go straight to the hospital?” I asked, to general chuckles, as we got into the car. Still, it made me think. Here I was, an older Canadian, pushing 80, and a long way from a decent health care system. For another thing, they cancelled ...

Willie O’Ree’s Wild Ride into Hockey History

Sports: Hockey Hall of Fame Willie O’Ree smashed the National Hockey League’s colour barrier when he was recruited by the Boston Bruins, but the newly inducted Hall-of-Famer gave a young hockey fan from the ‘burbs a big city thrill. By Rod Mickleburgh Every now and then, the National Hockey League, even under Gary Bettman, does the right thing. So it was with the recent selection of Willie O’Ree to the Hockey Hall of Fame. O’Ree, 82, was chosen under the hallowed institution’s “builder category,” as the first black to lace ‘em up in the NHL and a long-time ambassador for youth and hockey diversity. In recent years, the honours have piled up for the likeable O’Ree. Banners raised, arenas named, ceremonies, inductions to other, more local halls of fame, and in 2008, the Order of Canada. O’Ree has taken it all in stride, evincing little bitterness over the setbacks and racist taunting he experienced at times during his long hockey career, which lasted until he ...

A Great Big Yes to James Paxton’s No-No in Toronto

Sports: Baseball Ladner B.C.’s James Paxton is the first Canadian to throw a no-hitter on home turf, but the man they call Big Maple refuses to chuck his Canuck identity. By Rod Mickleburgh When James Paxton came out for the bottom of the ninth against the hometown Toronto Blue Jays, he was pumped. Three outs away from an historic no-hitter, the steely hurler from Ladner, BC was not going to lose it by nibbling around the edges of the plate with sliders and curve balls. He came right at the Blue Jay hitters with fast balls. Despite having already thrown 92 pitches and never having pitched a complete game in his six-year, injury-plagued career, they were his fastest of the night. One broke the 100 mph barrier (160 kilometres per hour in Ladner). All seven were strikes. Anthony Alford fouled out on the first pitch. Hot-hitting Teoscar Hernandez went down swinging on three blazing fastballs. And dangerous Josh Donaldson lashed the ball hard, but straight at the Seattle Mariners’ ...

A Great Big Yes to James Paxton’s No-No in Toronto

Sports: Baseball Ladner B.C.’s James Paxton is the first Canadian to throw a no-hitter on home turf, but the man they call Big Maple refuses to chuck his Canuck identity. By Rod Mickleburgh When James Paxton came out for the bottom of the ninth against the hometown Toronto Blue Jays, he was pumped. Three outs away from an historic no-hitter, the steely hurler from Ladner, BC was not going to lose it by nibbling around the edges of the plate with sliders and curve balls. He came right at the Blue Jay hitters with fast balls. Despite having already thrown 92 pitches and never having pitched a complete game in his six-year, injury-plagued career, they were his fastest of the night. One broke the 100 mph barrier (160 kilometres per hour in Ladner). All seven were strikes. Anthony Alford fouled out on the first pitch. Hot-hitting Teoscar Hernandez went down swinging on three blazing fastballs. And dangerous Josh Donaldson lashed the ball hard, but straight at the Seattle Mariners’ ...

What Made the Sedins Magic? Sixth Puck Sense

Sports: Daniel and Henrik Sedin Say Goodbye Once called the “Sedin Sisters” by cynical media types who saw the Swedish twins as soft, Daniel and Henrik Sedin proved their taunters wrong with an iron forged commitment to the game, and pure finesse with the puck. By Rod Mickleburgh VANCOUVER - The outpouring of admiration and affection for the incomparable Daniel and Henrik Sedin, as they played their final three games for the lowly Canucks, was like nothing I’ve witnessed in my more than half a century of following sports. Fans, scribes, commentators, competitors, all the way down to the referees and well, just about everyone, joined in the celebration and heartfelt farewells in a way that went beyond the usual tributes to the end of a great player’s career. They seemed to be an acknowledgment that, in the 100-year history of the National Hockey League, the Sedins were something special. They were not the equal of Howe, Gretzky, Lemieux, the Rocket, or some of the other NHL ...

Sweetest Olympic Hangover I Don’t Want to Get Over

Entertainment: The Olympic Hangover Begins The 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang get a five-star review from a career movie critic who laughed, cried and finally fell asleep on the couch as the Olympic flame shone a light on our nobler selves. By Katherine Monk So it begins. The Olympic hangover. A sad headache prompted by a cocktail of adrenaline, fatigue and extinguished propane fumes. For eighteen days, we couch potatoes put our bodies through the rigours of extended television viewing and all-night streaming. Now sleep-deprived, about three kilos heavier and feeling emotionally bereft without a need to channel hop across the grid, it's time to look back on the games that were -- and what made the PyeongChang Winter Olympics such fantastic entertainment. Obviously, the athletes and their individual feats were the highlight -- and the reason why the drama is so sincere, but sorting through the sporting achievements is for experts such as Bev Wake and Rod Mickleburgh. I see the ...

Canada’s record-breaking Winter Olympics, medal by medal

Sports: 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang From double gold medallists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who carried the flag in the opening ceremonies, to triple-medallist Kim Boutin, who carried the flag in the closing ceremonies, here's a snapshot look at the athletes who made the podium By Bev Wake So it turns out the absence of NHL stars from the 2018 Winter Olympics may not have been a bad thing, after all. It allowed so many other athletes — from so many sports — to step into the spotlight and shine. For the first time since 2002, it wasn't the men's gold-medal hockey game that brought Canada to a standstill: it was a pair of ice dancers from southern Ontario. When Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won their second gold medal of the Olympics — in ice dance, to go along with the team title won earlier in the Games — social media exploded. Sure, a lot of the chatter had to do with their relationships status, but there was an obvious appreciation for what they were doing on the ice. ...

Canada on track for a record-breaking medal total at the 2018 Winter Olympics

Sports: 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang From the history-making luge team to comeback kid Mark McMorris, Canada has had a Games to remember — and it could get even better during the last week of competition By Bev Wake There have been moments, during these 2018 Winter Olympics, that should stay with us for a while. There was Sam Edney, unable to control his tears after winning a silver medal in the luge team relay. Those were more than tears of happiness after the heartbreak of Sochi, where the team had three fourth-place finishes. They were tears of validation, of discovering good guys sometimes win after all and hard work can pay off. It had only been a couple of weeks since Edney, Alex Gough, Justin Snith and Tristan Walker learned that their fourth-place relay finish in Sochi — which late last year had been upgraded to bronze due to Russian doping — would stay a fourth after all, thanks to a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. And now they had their silver ...

How do you spell Canada? C.O.U.R.A.G.E.

Sports: 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang The Great White North is currently enjoying one of its best Winter Games ever, but the winning ingredient may not be money, fame, celebrity or even patriotic support. It's guts. By Rod Mickleburgh This year, I thought, my lifelong love of the Olympics, was, if not at an end, under serious challenge. PyeongChang? The site of the Games conjured up no vision at all. Nor, with newspapers and other media so reduced, was there any real build-up to these Winter Olympics to whet the appetite. Once Gary Kingston, the Vancouver Sun’s consummate chronicler of BC’s winter athletes, departed, coverage dropped to virtually zero. As for the Globe and Mail, my former paper has regularly sent a healthy contingent to the Olympics, including, on occasion, me. This year, the Globe opted for a small force of three. The late, dispiriting, get-out-of-jail-free card delivered to Russia’s organized dopers didn’t help. Given that, the lack of buzz ...

How do you spell Canada? C.O.U.R.A.G.E.

Sports: 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang The Great White North is currently enjoying one of its best Winter Games ever, but the winning ingredient may not be money, fame, celebrity or even patriotic support. It's guts. By Rod Mickleburgh This year, I thought, my lifelong love of the Olympics, was, if not at an end, under serious challenge. PyeongChang? The site of the Games conjured up no vision at all. Nor, with newspapers and other media so reduced, was there any real build-up to these Winter Olympics to whet the appetite. Once Gary Kingston, the Vancouver Sun’s consummate chronicler of BC’s winter athletes, departed, coverage dropped to virtually zero. As for the Globe and Mail, my former paper has regularly sent a healthy contingent to the Olympics, including, on occasion, me. This year, the Globe opted for a small force of three. The late, dispiriting, get-out-of-jail-free card delivered to Russia’s organized dopers didn’t help. Given that, the lack of buzz and an ...