Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Bruce Arthur: Toronto Mike'd #537

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Mike chats with Toronto Star sports columnist Bruce Arthur about Twitter, working for the National Post and Toronto Star, The Reporters on TSN, their new live show, the Raptors run and more.

Welcome to episode 537 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, StickerU.com, Bryan Master from KW Realty, Capadia LLP CPAs, and Ridley Funeral Home. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is Toronto Star sports columnist Bruce Arthur. Welcome Bruce. Nice to finally be here, Mike. It is great to finally meet you. I've been following you on Twitter, reading your work. You're great at what you do.

And now we've met in person. Better late than never. By the way, Sloan is one of the great Canadian bands. I'm so happy to just hear them. We don't appreciate Sloan enough. I saw them at the Hayloft in Prince Edward County a couple of years ago. It's one of the top three or four concerts I've ever seen. You're preaching to the choir, man. My buddy Elvis and I saw him at the Phoenix I guess in the last 18 months. I think it was last winter. I've seen him so many times. Chris Murphy's been on the show, so you're following in the last 18 months. I think it was last winter. And I've seen him so many times. And Chris Murphy's been on the show. So you're following in the footsteps of Chris Murphy here.

I once saw him on the ferry to Toronto Islands. And I was honestly, I was starstruck. And I just, as I went, he has his kids, I have my kids. And I just said, hey, thanks for everything you've done. That's all I could say. I feel like, and this is a, don't snicker at me, listeners. But I mean, Sloan is our Beatles, okay? Can we just say that right now?

There are similarities in how they write songs, actually. Yep, and how they all take turns singing and writing, and it's a true collaboration, and yeah. I'm playing everything you've done wrong because I want to hear about Newsapalooza. This was played at Newsapalooza, according

to your Twitter feed. It was. God bless Brendan Kennedy, formerly of the Star Sports section, who sang it for the Toronto Star Band. Newsapalooza is a great event every year. I don't go out a lot because I've got four kids, and we get up with them in the mornings and stuff. But I go out to Newsapalooza almost every year.

I didn't go last year because there was no newspaper bands. Oh, right. Which is kind of a bigger story of newspapers but we had Toronto Star Band and what used to be the National Post band back this year although I think only one of them still works for the National Post. Is that Conrad Black Sabbath?

Yeah. If you've never been to Newsapalooza and Conrad Black Sabbath is playing go even if you don't care about journalism or even cover bands. It's an experience there's nothing like it and this was at the opera house on uh was it friday yeah every year opera house now everything i learned about news of palooza i learned from uh fotm uh sarah boesveld who writes for chatelaine and uh i don't know if she performed but she's got a great voice she is

sarah is the lead singer of conrad black sabbath along with uh kagan mcleod the illustrator and artist and all-around genius raps for them but sarah has not only a voice like it's one thing to have a voice she's got a presence like one thing with news of palooza is it's a bunch of newspaper people and media people up there being rock and roll stars and people like a lot of them are playing rock and roll stars right they're pretending to be rock and roll stars sarah boesveld is a rock star she honestly is she's wonderful can you speak to uh do any bands bring in ringers like let's say i was participated and i said hey chris murphy you want to come into my you know can can do bands do that like bring in like professional musicians who don't work in the industry can i can curse on this podcast yes you can yeah okay so one year vice brought in the lead singer of fucked up uh but he had written for vice so that was totally fair and i will say uh this year the toronto star had

a bit of a ringer um i met her i can't remember her last name her name is ahadia and she was incredible but she i think has written like she's written for toronto life i don't think she'd written technically for the toronto star but we didn't win, so it's okay. Can the West End Phoenix submit a band? And can it be the Rheostatic? Oh, that would actually be a huge cheat. Don't tell Dave. Don't tell Badini that, because he would win.

Although, you know what? Honestly, Conrad Black Sabbath is, they had costumes. They did a rock opera this year. Wow. There was a whole thing. It was incredible. Okay, so it sounds like a good time. So people at this time of year in 2020

pay attention and how to get tickets and stuff and check this out. So cool. And you've never been tempted to perform? No, no. I'm not even a good karaoke singer. You can't do the triangle or I don't know. I guess I played drums in high school for two years um but i wasn't terribly good at it i'm not i'm not musically

talented i wish i was like it's like every writer wants to be a singer as is one of the theories um and none of us could sing so we write um but that's my voice is in the entire wrong register for 90 of the songs out there yeah you and me both i know what that's like uh sean fitzgerald submitted a question for you he wants me to ask you uh who is your favorite bald sidekick i met i first met fitzy in 2001 because i came to toronto in 2001 drove across the country from vancouver to get here and probably the third person i met in the industry first person i met in the industry was chris jones uh who has since written for esquire and now has has a TV show in development for Netflix and all this stuff. He's doing great.

But probably the third person I met was Sean Fitzgerald. We sat next to each other that first summer. I can't say enough about Sean Fitzgerald as a person, as a professional. There's a lot of really good people in this business. There really are. You wouldn't think that among the, you know, the, the bad media, but, but Sean is as he's an even better person than he is a journalist.

And there's a reason he won sports writer of the year. I believe it was in 2016. This is high praise. And I know he's listening. You know, I think I like him too. He's been on a couple of times, but he's not very good at like Toronto geography.

He seems to think when he visits me here he thinks he's in mimico you don't think you're in mimico right now do you i believe we're in etobicoke aren't we well etobicoke sure that's the the bigger borough but in terms of the actual neighborhoods uh i and again sean and i have our own beef here it's almost like a little ongoing thing but uh he likes to pretend i live in mimico where i know for a fact because i can read maps i don't live in Mimico. So this is actually New Toronto where you are right now.

Oh, see, like coming here from the West Coast, I still don't know the high schools, man. Like my kids are, I'm going to learn the high schools from when my kids go there. A lot of this, a lot of the city, because it's such a big city, it's one of those cities

that you can live in your whole life probably and only scratch the surface of it. Right. And so I've never been to New Toronto. I live on the east side. I don't go to the west side. I have dear friends

on the west side. I go because the Toronto Maple Leafs practice. Well, I was going to say they practice in New Toronto. So they're actually in, that's where the Maple Leafs practice. So that might be the only thing

that drags you to this corner of the city. I can probably work that into a piece actually because they could use a New Toronto right now. By the way, why have they never announced

that they renamed that arena that they practice in? Because we all know it as the MasterCard Center of Excellence or whatever the heck they call it, but I watched them put up the new signage months ago that says it's now the Ford Center of Excellence.

Yeah. Does it matter? The Ford Performance Center. Something like that. Yeah, no. Those kind of things, those are the press releases that hit my inbox and don't last very long i the thing is i uh don't think the press release i don't know if they what they're planning to do there but i just think it's strange that they just kind of changed the name and didn't

make any noise about it like no press release which is well and well we know the toronto maple leafs are not in it for the money never have been right. Right. So they, they wouldn't have promoted that. All right. Can we, and I thought about how to open, there's a lot of stuff I want to cover here, but if you don't mind, and I'm the boss around here,

you have no power here. I'm going to start with Twitter because you are very popular on Twitter. I don't know why people say that to me. They say like, I follow you on Twitter. Like my, one of the worst moments of my recent life is my next door neighbor said, i follow you on twitter like my one of the worst moments of my recent life is my next door neighbor said i follow you on twitter and i'm like oh i'm

so sorry i i apologize to everybody there's it's way too much i get so sick of my own voice there and i and i know i i tweet too much and i know that they're i'm terribly predictable on there and i've tried to change my habits i do much better in the summer when i'm not working right um i'm so much healthier in the summer gosh in every single way i'm just everything about my life is like is more how you were supposed to live a life um but twitter i i didn't want to join twitter when it first happened i thought it would lead to a devolution of the language um i thought it was just like a hundred whatever it was 140 characters i was like what am i gonna say in 140 characters. I was like, what am I going to say in 140 characters? And it turns out it's exactly how a lot of my brain works.

Just like, I don't agonize over tweets. I don't spend a lot of time writing them. I don't spend a huge amount of time thinking them. I just- It's like a stream of consciousness, right? They just go. Yeah, my brain's dumb but fast is how I would describe it. And so that stuff is supernatural to me. And my feed has gradually become a politics feed,

which is probably not good for anybody, but it's just kind of a... I've thought more than once about quitting Twitter. My life would probably, again, be healthier if I quit Twitter. Well, there are some other writers we know and maybe even love. I'm going to just think of FOTM Stephen Brunt, for example, who tells me he's never going on Twitter.'m gonna just think of f.o.t.m steven brunt for example who tells me he's never going on twitter like this is just a life decision he made and uh uh so i i mean i can see some people seem very content not to be there but i always find if you're absent

from there you're kind of missing out on a big chunk of the zeitgeist conversation like i feel like a lot a lot is happening in real time on twitter i personally love twitter like i actually just and i'm similar to you i tweet a lot and not as political as you but stream of consciousness stuff i got in trouble for something i tweeted yesterday because it was like just a thought quickly passing through but i want to ask you so so i have some questions about like bruce bruce arthur on uh twitter sure first one's from me which is i want to know your strategy like blocking versus muting like what do you do with the people who come at you because you said something about trump or there's

a i mean that's and that's happened a lot um i used to block more than i do now um i mostly just mute my thing is there are some people there say you owe me a debate you owe me an argument which if you said that to a real person in real life, like walking down the street, they'd look at you like you were crazy. And I spend enough time there mentally that I don't feel like I need to spend time with people who make me, who try to make me dumber or try to try to make my life worse. And so a lot of people I'll just mute because there's a,

there was a great quote from uh the former new york times media critic david carr right like block him or mute him let him yell down a hole right there's a lot of people out there who don't like the way i think especially is it like part of them some of them come to sports which i care less about uh but a lot of them politically and i don't need to listen to them right but none of them are going to make my brain a better place. But if they have to read what I write, and I never have to read what they write,

then they get to eat their liver, and I get to just keep on keeping on. Right. Now, I actually don't block that often myself, but I did block yesterday. I just questioned. I'm not even... I guess I am kind of curious about your opinion on this

before we get into some Twitter questions. But does it matter if if let's say that there's a story out of newfoundland about an 11 year old boy who had a birthday party and nobody came and then there's you know you probably know this story it's all over twitter and does it matter if that's all like true like does it matter like is it just it's a feel-good story everybody kind of seems to dig it like i questioned whether it happened just like a like i said i stream a consciousness tweet and i ended up having to block people like as if i had like like i was some some i was evil for even daring suggest that didn't all exactly happen as the dad sort of suggested it happened well i mean i in a way i hope it happened that way because then the reaction is

real the thing is we don't know about this thing there's this wonderful uh thread which i actually don't doubt um a woman a woman on a bus in scarborough did you see this one where there's two two women and their daughters in hijabs and they start talking to each other and they realize that they were childhood friends and that they were they were apart for years and years and the daughters translate to the other people on the bus and they get off the bus together and the whole bus cheers and it's one of those moments that sounds, one, very Toronto, and two, very life-affirming. Very just, like, the greatest power in the whole world

is people, and that is the power of people. And I believe that happened to be true, but it's one of those stories that feels almost too perfect to be true. And there's so many of those that have proven not to be true. Like, the internet should make you doubt things. Yes.

Probably more than it does. Your default setting is cynicism. Like, I would say the balloon boy remember that was like a decade ago or whatever but like you know cnn and everybody was covering this thing minute to minute balloon boy and i would say skepticism rather than cynicism but i mean the other thing is at the heart of it um like an 11 year old boy not having kids come to his birthday party is like one of the saddest things right like it's the kind of thing you'll remember forever as a kid and i hope that his life if that's what happened i hope his life gets better and things get better except now we'll remember it forever now too like that's the thing that like yeah he's now famous for it so i mean you

have four kids i have four kids so we can speak like if my kid was having 11 because i've had two kids surpass 11 like they've had an 11 year old birthday if nobody showed up my instinct and we tweet a lot you and i uh my instinct would be to definitely not tweet about this like do not put a picture of your kid and say nobody came to his party that's my instinct one of my rules and it's always been one of my rules is i don't put pictures of my kids on the internet right for people to see i have an instagram if you've ever asked to follow me on instagram i don't let you do it unless I know you because most of my Instagram, 95% of my Instagram is my kids, my family,

right? Like that's, that's for people that I've Vancouver, I have friends all over the place. Like it's a way to send a Christmas card every day. I never put, there's a picture of my kids. There was a picture of my kids in the Toronto star when I wrote,

but it was a picture of them as babies. It was years later. Right. I wrote about how me and my wife had struggled to have kids, and I thought that was okay. But the people who know me know what my kids look like. They're beautiful kids. I'm not even saying this.

They're gorgeous kids. I'm sure. But I don't put them out there for the world to consume because one of the things, this is kind of a bigger question, but I think you're probably about the same generation. How old are you? I'm sure we're both born in 74 yes actually um so i'm 45 we're on the in the last generation where the internet happened to us in the middle of our lives in university like we

you can remember what it was like before before the world completely changed before where we live in our minds changed and our kids are going to grow up in a world where the internet is something that they're going to like they're going to wander out into gotham at some point and gotham like gotham is in every kid's house now right like and this is stuff that when we were growing up it's not like you were protected from the whole world you never saw anything bad never learned anything bad like the school school yard still exists yeah but like i just i don't put my kids out there into the world until they're till they're gonna get ready to get out there into the world right like because there's enough people who don't like me right uh as well like that why would i show you

pictures of my kids i mean by the nature of you sharing your opinions on things you are going to uh polarize people right like once you come out and say something like uh i don't know i don't like andrew sheer as a person i'm just making this up but if you say that right away you've got a whole bunch of people who kind of mad at you right wait like it's well politics and sports are actually very similar in that there's people cheer for the teams right like people cheer for who they have invested themselves in and it isn't always logical and it isn't always reasonable um people always assume they know how i vote i actually i never know how i vote until i walk into the voting booth i usually don't have a strategy

like i've thought about it a lot but i don't make the final decision until i'm in there um but yeah like my twitter experience probably would have been much simpler if i never tweeted about politics like a hundred percent way simpler um because if you look at it from the start i always kind of did but i mostly was just doing stupid jokes and sports and whatever right and like i don't know like i've kind of made a conscious decision in terms of that um and i'm fine with it uh but it would have been easier if i never had am i right that if you are a and you do stuff with t but it would have been easier if I never had. Am I right that if you are a and you do stuff with TSN but you work for the Toronto Star

but does the TSN have a rule about no politics tweeting? Sure. Yeah, they do. But that doesn't apply to me. No, no, no. I'm not an employee but yeah, like I think

there are certain exceptions there contractually, like Leo Routens tweets about politics and Leo Routens works for everybody. So he's not a full-time TSN employee, but yeah, but I mean, ESPN has a, does kind of the same thing and more and more they're leaning into that.

No politics. And I know a lot of people at ESPN that have very strong and intelligent political thoughts and don't ever put them out into the world. I'm very lucky that my employers have not tried to control my Twitter. They don't try to police it at all. They trust you to ban your own tweets. Yeah, I had an editor at one point who kind of would send me questions and I would just say, no, I'm just going to do it my way.

It's going to be fine. Don't worry. I'm not going to get fired over this stuff. Sports Illustrated, back before, you know, when things were better over there maybe sports illustrated had a list of the top 100 people to follow on twitter and you made it like four times which is pretty damn cool yeah and i at some point i was going to send a note to someone saying you should probably take me off that list because it's not as much of a sports feed anymore

it wasn't for a time quite a lot i tweeted a lot about sports and it was fun to do and i still do tweet about sports but i just tweet less about sports than i probably ever have now here's questions that come from others so someone named steve wants to know when will you stop tweeting like is this something you're you are considering i know you take breaks in summer and stuff yeah in the summer i tweet way less um uh i'm gonna take a week off actually probably next week uh my family and i are going to go on a little vacation and i will try not to tweet when i do that there is there's a tweet at some point that someone sent so like are we just all going to do this forever right like um i don't know we don't ever think about this stuff do we

don't think the bigger picture on how this stuff is going to go i at some point i probably would like to stop. Because you're not enjoying it. Well, no, I do. I do enjoy it sometimes. But it is work too, right? Like you spend a lot of time there and I'd like to spend less time there. And that's why I've actually tried to tweet less.

And I kind of do. If you really looked at it, I don't think anyone should bother. I got to crunch those numbers. Don't waste your time on that. But I do try to tweet less and spend a little bit less time on there um a lot of it is when i'm waiting for people to call me back or avoiding writing or whatever i'm doing right like that's there's i have a lot of time in my life for that right like if i'm waiting for like i'm in a dentist's waiting room or something that's when i'm on my like I'm in a dentist's waiting room or something. That's when I'm on my, I'm like, I'm going to tweet now.

I'm bored. But yeah. Now, who is it here? Anonymous wants to know if you, if all he does is tweet about politics, why not write about politics instead of sports? Do you get that a lot?

I've had, I've actually had a professional athlete saying, I wish you were to politics, but not, not because I was bad at writing about sports. I don't think. But any desire to cross over? i mean i guess i could um i would be lying if i said i'd never thought about it but i don't know if that's what i want to do with my life like i've only written

probably eight non-sports pieces in my life like i've never like i've written about my father dying i've written about struggling to have kids i've written about camping i've written about like stuff like that and i can do it um i imagine i could do it uh but it's not i don't know if i want to go cover canadian election listen to the same speech 45 times i don't know if i want to um delve into that with my whole brain all the time right um because one thing about politics at this moment and one of the reasons i tweet so much about politics is i think we're really like it's it's very easy to overestimate the importance of the age you're living through right that the primal urge to experience history but i really think that things are more fraught

in terms of the things we take for granted in terms of democracy, in terms of, of like, there was a Harper's index that I tweeted yesterday. Then the percentage of Americans who wouldn't be surprised if there was a genocide of a specific religion in America was like one out of three. Yeah. Right. Like we're, we're at a really fraught time in terms of the state of media,

in terms of the state of government, in terms of the state of certain political parties, in terms of the state of media in terms of the state of government in terms of the state of certain political parties in terms of the state of the climate in the world like there's a lot of things that could tip into really bad places um and maybe my i don't know no no boss has ever said i think your voice would be better spent you know writing about politics no one's ever offered me that job if someone came and offered me that job i would have to go is that what i want to do with my life and i'm not sure it is gotcha now same anonymous person wants to know if you have so much interest in the usa they want to know do you want to work there like is this a place you want to work at some point the usa would you consider working in

the states do i want to live in America? Like anybody out there, like that's kind of a big question right now, isn't it? Like I really like where I live. I love this country. I love this city. I love the school that my kids go to and the friends they have.

I love a lot of the parents we know. I love the friends I have in the city. Like I like the Toronto's on a giant reserve of fresh water as we spin into a climate change future. There's all kinds of stuff that is great about where I am. I don't know that I ever want to live in America, just even on the basis of what are your odds of experiencing a shooting, right?

Never mind the idea that there might be a civil war there someday, that kind of stuff. In terms of American jobs, there's lots of great american jobs and i that's not something that's come up in any serious way in my life so like i don't think i really like the reason i tweet so much about the united states is if you look at the united states and then look at canada we're about five to ten years behind them in terms of what we do right like the stuff that happens there leeches over the border to here right and you can see it um and some people are like why do you care about the united states well literally every country in the world should probably care about the united states at least

a little bit and we're their biggest trading partner they're right next door right and we have spent basically the entire post-war period like relying entirely as a country on the united states being a stable partner it's the neighbor right next door and if their house is on fire and they're selling meth and there's a gang war in the front yard you're gonna care about yourself right so that's why i tweet so much about the states all right here's a name that popped up a lot when i said who's a question for uh bruce so uh first chris don't even answer this part yet but chris says uh how many different al strachan questions can one ask and then mike lynch says hi mike can you please ask bruce why al strachan hates him and there's

like five question marks at the end he wants to know how does this feud come about and i don't even know if it's two-sided it's one-sided right well it's like it's like that scene in the elevator in mad men where you know he says i don't think about you at's two-sided. It's one-sided, right? Well, it's like that scene in the elevator in Mad Men where he says, I don't think about you at all. Great scene. That's basically it. I've never met Al Strachan. Al Strachan started coming at me

when I started tweeting about Rob Ford, do the math. It's not that complicated. Al's also, and I don't really want to get too far into this because I don't think he matters. It doesn't matter in my life. But I think he's a really toxic vituperative person who is like a really nasty piece of work and i'm not just saying that i've had people tell me that i have friends of his who've said things about him which are not terribly

complimentary so he doesn't like me because of politics that's basically it and whatever else he says about me like the only time i ever engage with alice when he outright lies about stuff involving me and i see it stuff up yeah he's he's made stuff up about like my career and stuff and okay i mean if you want to do that you know so i'm going to spend your retired time doing that i think it's kind of not a great way to do it but you just described my relationship with dean blundell by the way if we're defined by our enemies right honestly like dean dean threatened to sue me once um i think he's done that with a lot of people is my understanding but i i tweeted about how he had said he made fun of that edmonton oilers prospect who who died in the river right um

and i tweeted about that and he sent a letter seeing his lawyer whoever that is saying i'm gonna sue you and i wrote back ha ha ha and he wrote back and i wrote back ha ha ha and then he blocked me on twitter and that's so that's about the extent of the relationship like there's when i say there's a lot of good people in media yeah there's some incredibly bad people not not not i'm not speaking professionally as people there are a few incredibly bad people in media too and we've just named two of them. Right. And after I stop recording, I'm going to need that full list. So I know who not to invite on the Toronto Mike. Michael Grange, actually, who's at FOTM. And you're probably wondering, why does Mike keep saying FOTM? I'm trying to get this to catch on. I think it's working.

Friend of Toronto Mike. That means you've been on the program. I'm working. You now, after today, assuming this goes well, Bruce Arthur forever will be an FOTM. So, but Michael Grange said, will there be a need for a second question he sent that to me as a direct message to grange and i have spent a lot of time together i'm actually really honored grange won sports writer of the year this year and i'm going to introduce him he asked me to introduce him at the thing next week i'm really honored at that i have so much time for mike um and he knows because he spent nearly 20 years around me that i talk a lot um i don't know I grew up with quiet parents

who didn't like each other very much for a couple of years when I was a young child and then grew up in a quiet household. So I think I probably filled the space and still do. Grange is wonderful. I'm so happy that he won that award

because like covering the Raptors this year, there were so many people doing such great work. Like honestly, every day for two months. Would you want to shout out? I mean, Michael Grange, who, yes, I think he's fantastic at his job and he also seems to be a real decent human being

love it like i really enjoy spending time with grange it's too bad he lives on the west side so i never see him do you want yeah yeah i'll tell you later how we're connected but uh can you please uh name drop others covering the raptors who you think did a great job now the problem with this is if i don't if i don't name anybody then then it's going to be then it's going to be seen as a as a slight but like i mean doug smith still does wonderful work after all he's just a piece he did about nick nurse uh fighting back tears on the bench because of his mom during the playoffs like no one else had that that was great um eric careen i worked with eric at the national post he's so thoughtful and he's really hard on himself he's so good um and he's getting better and better and i love

watching that like blake murphy's a fellow kid who went to ubc and who's carved his own completely different way into the business and like again blake's really hard on himself and works so hard like works fitzy level hard which is the highest compliment i can pay in the business um almost pathological there was one time in my first summer i went on a saturday the national post didn't publish on sundays i went on a saturday to show my mom the office because she was in town and i said watch sean fitzgerald's going to be there and he was because he would just go in on saturdays and work because he always was working um uh there's so many people like uh honestly like i could just

keep going and going and going like there's there's the the great part about uh like dave fudge did great stuff at our place like um like there's there's great stuff and when you have a team win a championship like that uh and it's really a privilege to cover and a responsibility because you're you're putting into words this experience that an entire city and country is having and that's to me one of the cooler parts of the job and everyone tries to live up to it right you'll try to live up to the moment without overriding the moment or whatever it is um and i'm really happy that grange won that award it's a really cool award to win it's a really cool day to have um and i'm gonna get to give a little speech about my buddy michael grange i mean you can you see he's right. I was really long winded.

Another Michael, Michael O'Riordan, who I actually went to high school with this, this guy, Michael, I, I remember very well, but I haven't actually seen him since high school,

but he seems to have, we've reconnected on Twitter, which is kind of cool. There's a plus one for Twitter. Now, Michael O'Riordan says, ask him why he doesn't just stick to sports, but very quickly then tweets,

just kidding. He says, fuck those jerks that wrecked deadspin i really enjoy bruce's writing and twitter feed i feel like he'd be useful when we burn the system down and eat the rich do you want maybe a comment or two about deadspin uh like deadspin's made mistakes let's let's get this out of the way like deadspin has had excesses, made mistakes, taken low blows, done stuff, like said stuff about people who didn't deserve it lots of times. Like any media outlet, they've made mistakes. Every single one has made mistakes.

Deadspin's are just kind of higher profile and a little more profane than others. What happened to Deadspin, the scary part of what happened to Deadspin, is that's a popular site that did what everyone was trying to do, is create a community right create a community in this in this cacophony this crazy riot of our modern internet and world and they created a place where people wanted to spend time where you knew exactly what it was even when it was unpredictable right and and the arsonists still came for them right like it was a profitable popular place and the bad guys came and the wrong owners bought it and that's where they wound up and you can say it's because

they published the hulk hogan sex tape i don't know the gawker people have pretty serious reservations about the florida journey and all that stuff but leaving that aside a great an essential part of the sports writing and internet ecosystem was destroyed for no good reason for no good reason because they said stick to sports right like the the guys who bought that they bought they paid 50 million dollars for that group of blogs they also own the onion by the way which is a treasure and should never be messed with by anybody um but they they just set fire to one of the the second most profitable thing that they bought right like how the scare one of the scariest things in media right now is you just you kind of have to hope you get a good owner you have to hope you get a jeff bezos without the moral complications

um and i don't know how many of those people there are out there when you talk about eating the rich don't eat the rich that want to save legacy media in a really positive way right um but like the guys who bought sports illustrated, are they, are they going to fix sports illustrated or are they going to be a hedge fund vulture capital suck the marrow out and throw the parts in the trash, right? Like what happened to dead spin is scary and sad and stupid.

And so much of the things that are happening in the wider world or that are stupid heedless it's like it's kind of like the great gatsby right like stupid heedless wretch people who break things because they can break them uh for bad reasons uh and that's like i have i have friends who work at deadspin who have worked at deadspin who still work at deadspin um it's it's it's a lousy thing does anyone really work there anymore like isn't not anymore yeah i guess that's true. I misspoke there. What's also interesting is how incompetent these guys are.

They didn't have the password to the Twitter account, right? They're republishing old blogs and it shows accidentally, like all the Deadspin guys are dunking on them because they're so incompetent. It's a scary thing because in media now, there's a permanent anxiety for pretty much everybody in the media. Maybe some guys at The Athletic or The Washington Post or The New York Times don't feel it,

except in terms of empathy for others. But there's a permanent anxiety. I've often wondered if journalism attracts anxious people or creates them. I think it's probably a little bit of both because it's like I tell journalism students, right? Let's say you write the greatest column ever. You wrote the greatest column anyone's ever written it's perfect it's a it's a work of art they'll chisel it in stone but hanging it in museum what do you got tomorrow right like what are you gonna do tomorrow what are you gonna do every day for the rest of

your life right um and so there's a permanent anxiety that comes with that and now we have all this other stuff in addition to that there was an anxiety back when times were good now the anxiety is just it's palpable everywhere. Well, we're going to get back to that later, but this is a good time to pause and give you some gifts since you came all this way here. And again, it only took me seven years or something of asking you, but listen,

I think it's so far judging from the first half hour, it was well worth the wait. So Great Lakes Brewery. In fact, I see I made a mistake. So I'm going to actually change this up. I meant to give you a variety pack and I think it looks like you got all Octopus Wants to Fight in there. Okay, so I'm giving you six fresh cans of local craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. You're leaving with that

today and you'll love it. It's fantastic. Always appreciate it. In fact, I read today on Twitter, they're going to start some kind of a movie night once a month. I think the first one's Strange Brew, which would be a fantastic. So you go to Great great lakes you have a beer and you enjoy with a bunch of like-minded people you enjoy strange brew for example that's fun anything that promotes community and in this crazy world i'm for yeah they're great people at great lakes so enjoy that i'll make sure you get a variety pack because i can't let you have all the octopus because it's my it's my favorite beer they make this is a uh a meat lasagna from Palma Pasta. It's frozen, so don't eat it on your drive home,

because it'll break your teeth there. But thank you, Palma. Palma's Kitchen, which they have four locations in Mississauga and Oakville, and they have a location called Palma's Kitchen, which is brand new, 10,000 square feet, retail, hot table. It's amazing, really.

That's where we're going to have TMLX5. This is an event we're going to have,mlx5 this is an event we're going to have and soon in this episode we're going to talk about an event you're going to be at a different event but my event is on december 7th it's at noon we're going to record live everybody's invited you'll get some fresh free free pasta uh great lakes is going to chip in some beer uh sticker you's got some gifts and we're going to you can be on the episode it's going to be an amazing festive collective so don't forget put it in your calendars december 7th at noon at palma's kitchen thank you palma pasta for hosting that sticker you.com uh has a toronto mike sticker for you

bruce i know you've been you know aching for one of those my kids love stickers though so i need you more actually because my kid yeah uh yeah i have similar age children, and you're right. They're nuts about the Sticker You sticker, so I'll get you more. So thank you, Sticker You. We're talking about in the spring doing TMLX6 at the Queen Street location that Sticker You opened. It's just like, I'm going to say it's east of Dufferin, just a little bit east of Dufferin on Queen Street. So thanks, Sticker You. They're also giving me a sticker that's going to stop people like yourself, Bruce,

because you're a tall guy. How tall are you? I'm like 6'3". People like you will be warned that they need to duck when they're sitting down this seat because there's going to be like a... Actually, it's going to be like

the Beastie Boys, check your head. Well, actually, that would be a great sticker. But yeah, no, I was saying like this is every friend of mine in high school who got a bedroom in the basement. Right. so like i spent a lot of time in high school bumping heads on like pipes and bulkheads and things i mean i was talking to hoxley workman about this and he says nobody ever envisioned we'd be like doing anything in the basement except checking the furnace maybe or maybe the laundry room was down there but the whole idea that

that we you know we dry wall the basements you know these hundred year old homes never considered the basement as like living space toronto real estate man i know that's part of it but thank you sticker you now uh done a solemn note uh anyone who's listened to toronto mike knows that when i was starting this thing seven plus years ago i didn't know anything about audio i knew a lot about the back end of a podcast and i thought i might even know about creating content but audio that was foreign to. So I reached out to the audio guru, Andrew Stokely, and I was very sad this weekend to learn that Andrew lost his father to cancer this past weekend. So I just want to let Andrew know that we're thinking about him. He was a great help and he's a good, solid guy. So sorry for your loss, Andrew. We're all thinking of you.

I lost my father earlier this year, and no matter how long they live, it's always too early, right? Like, it's always too soon. Yes. Now, if you wanted to go somewhere to remember, I mean, you're probably thinking of your father every single day,

but there is an event I want to tell people from Ridley Funeral Home. It's called Holidays and Hope Candlelight Service. So Brad from Ridley Funeral Home, great guy. He's basically going to be hosting this event at the Assembly Hall, which is near Kipling and Lakeshore. It's December 7th at 7pm. It's their annual free memorial service in honour of those loved ones who have passed away and can't be with us this holiday season. So if you want to learn more about that, 416-259-3705 or RidleyFuneralHome.com. Okay, Bruce, you're a Vancouver guy.

Is Steve Nash the greatest athlete this country's ever produced? I've made that argument. The way I frame it is this, like we were always kind of destined to create the greatest hockey player ever right like how many of the top five hockey players who ever lived how many of them are canadian maybe five you can argue five out of five you can argue five um what steve nash did we're the same age i never played high school basketball against because he was on the island

and i was on the mainland and our team wasn't as good as their team because no team was as good their team their team was amazing st mike's uh university school um I played against McKitts Beach once but I was coming back from a sprained ankle uh and got a sunburn it was a bad day uh but Steve what Steve did man like it's the second most popular sport by participation in the world and he became a two-time MVP and in in a sport where that's, it's just unfathomably difficult to do what he did. He had an argument to have been the greatest shooter of all time until Steph Curry and Klay Thompson came along. What Steve has done is really incredible.

I'm really happy to have gotten to know him better later in his career and into his retirement. We spent some time together a little while ago uh when he was in town he's he's a really fascinating searching interesting guy and as an athlete it's really hard to think of someone who rose to that level in that diverse a sport for that long on a global scale right like if we'd done this with a soccer player who became the best soccer player in the world for two years or won the award, you can argue whether he was.

Like that would be something that would surpass it. Like Wayne Gretzky, you can argue for Wayne Gretzky because of the stuff he did was so far beyond anyone else. But you can also argue that he's not the greatest hockey player of all time of Bobby Orys if you want, right? Like, go ahead. And if I may, another difficulty with the analogy of the soccer is that there are so many top-tier leagues of soccer.

Like, if you're the best basketball player in the world, you're playing in the NBA. Like, if you're the best hockey player in the NHL. But, you know, you know what it's like with soccer. Like, I don't know where MLS ranks. Some people say it might be, like, 10th or something. But there are all these leagues. Like, so the only time they kind of all get together truly is a world cup.

So it's kind of tough to like, even it's kind of tough to compare. We do this at the Lou Marsh every year, the Lou, Lou Marsh award voting is you have to take into account all the different, how many people play the sport? How difficult was the field? How,

how hard is it to get to this level? Like what is the level of accomplishment relative within sports? It's a really interesting and difficult argument every year. It's one of the reasons I enjoy it. Is it a slam dunk for a Bianca? It's going to be hard to beat her. Cause even though I, what's,

who's the woman, uh, golf, Brooke Henderson, right? Any other year, right? She'd win.

Right. But, uh, you, you can't win the U S open and not win this. I think it's slam dunk for no, no Canadian men or women had ever done it in a singles context, right? And the thing is,

I mean, she got hurt this year, which kind of limited some of her upside, and she still wound up as the number five player in the world. Right. She's incredible, man.

She's awesome to watch. When did you realize, so you're out in, you know, you're at UBC, you're a Vancouver guy. When do you realize you want to write about sports? I didn't know.

I bounced around a little bit. I worked at a fabric warehouse the year after high school because I got lousy grades in high school because I was on the basketball team and in the theater program, and I spent every day not doing homework. So I worked in a fabric warehouse, and then I went to a community college for a few years and worked at a supermarket to pay for it.

So I did two years of school in three years, then i uh enrolled to be a teacher at sfu and did not stay there because it's a concrete bunker in a cloud it was really depressing and i didn't think all of a sudden i went you know what i don't want to be a teacher this bad and i had no plan and i quit and i went back to work at the supermarket and saved up money and drank a lot like i'd bike directly from my supermarket to my favorite bar downtown where I knew the backstory of the bouncers who were both former Kingston prison guards. And I spent a lot of time that year just not knowing what I wanted to do.

And in the spring of, I guess it would be 1996, or 97, spring of 97, my ex-girlfriend, a woman named Rochelle Ray, called me. She was the culture editor at the UBC student paper. She said,

you like sports, you can write. I still don't know how she knew I could write. I don't remember writing a lot for public consumption at the time. Love letters maybe?

Yeah, maybe. Honestly, it might be what it is. I should ask her. And so I went and wrote a piece about a basketball player who i knew who was on the team who i played against in high school and uh and it disappeared at midnight

it was the night before it was due and disappeared into a floppy drive and i was like it was gone it was 20 inch piece i remember and i went i guess i'm gonna write it again and i wrote it again till like three in the morning they said you can stay come and roll in at ubc and i went okay and i rolled i traveled some i went to cuba and drove across country that summer and did all kinds of stuff and put myself in a little bit of debt uh and then went to ubc and wrote about sports and as soon as i walked into the student newspaper ask anyone who's ever walked into a student newspaper office uh what it felt like when they got there and i'll bet you most of them will tell you the same thing it felt like it felt like going home right it felt like you you found the place that you wanted to be you found all these people you wanted to be like

like i walk into the ubc i walked in there i went to the 100th anniversary of the ubc paper when was it it was last year it was uh 18 and um you talk to the editors and you walk around the office and they still know what it is right this is beautiful spirit and and sensibility and like as soon as i walked in there i was home and i just happened to be lucky enough to get a job an internship at the national post where i was hired over email i was never talked to on the phone i was never interviewed i sent clips and they sent me three emails and the third one was you got the job be here may 1st wow that was it like i didn't i didn't have to sell myself i'd like graham parley the then editor great man under unbelievable editor um okay so but you so you have to come

to toronto for this yeah and you're in vancouver yeah so i graduate uh well i finished my last exams me and my roommate have a yard sale where i owned a guitar at that time i don't even know why i owned a guitar i couldn't play it um we sold everything and uh me and my then girlfriend now wife uh she had just finished her first year of law school at ebc and so we thought we'd come out here for a summer so we got in my 1987 chevy celebrity that my aunt had given me uh a few years earlier i don't even remember the celebrity i'm'm trying to picture it. Super boxy. It's a very boxy car. Bench seats in the front.

Oh, yeah. Like a terrible electrical system. And we drove it across the country. And in five days, we had five days of driving. I drove almost three higher weights. My wife doesn't really like driving. We arrived in Toronto, and I started working at the National Post.

And I met Fitzy and Chris Jones and Dave Fezchuk and Cam Cole and Roy McGregor and Scott Burnside and it was a murderer's row in there. It was awesome. That section, at that time, that was the best sports section in the country. It got surpassed a few years later, I thought, by the Globe

in the Brunt, Mackey, Grange, like Naylor years. Jeff Blair there? Jeff Blair was was there they had a lot of really good people um but at the time like i walked into just an unbelievable sports section uh jim bray was the deputy editor he became my editor for like 12 years um and uh they offered me a full-time job at the end of that summer uh like one day graham walked in and he said how late how late are you staying and i went i don't know until like six o'clock and he went no no this summer oh i don't know i'm i'm done at the end of august and he said no we're hiring you i went okay i have a question from an out of

town because i'm born and raised here so i have no idea what this is like but when you move to a new city like that you're coming from vancouver to toronto like how do you know which neighborhood to live in like do you just ask around we had no idea well i remember i remember pulling down i'd been to toronto a couple times i was here during the snowstorm uh in 98 because we did the national newspaper conference in guelph and i spent a few days here after but i didn't know toronto really at all um i remember my wife and i coming down the 400 it was like dusk and we turn out of the 401 and it's brake lights and brake lights headlights and i go how big is this fucking city i went to stay at my wife's friend's house in lawrence park was a very nice house she'd never told my wife that her family was well off her dad was a kind of semi-famous pediatrician

wonderful man uh so we stayed there for a couple weeks we got in a sublet an apartment on avenue which had no air conditioning and no curtains so it was a little hot that summer and leather couch so you'd get up off the couch and we'll go like make up sound every time you got up and then uh we got a crappy apartment uh behind the synagogues off bathurst um i don't know why we chose there we just did and we lived there for a couple years it was awful basement apartment lousy place to live. And then we bought a condo just north of Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Merton Street. And that was the first thing we owned in the city.

And we decided we were going to, like that was, it took a little while because I'd gotten laid off and we were in the crappy apartment. Because in 2001, the Aspers took over the National Post and they eliminated the sports section the art section

saturday night magazine um a whole bunch of other things and i was one of the people who got checked out the door i was going to ask you for your thoughts on you know you talked about the best sports section in the country at the national post at the time you're there and like what you think of your former employers now what do you think of the National Post looking back today? Well, one, it was a great place to work. A great place to work. As much as we were underdogs and we were underfunded and all of that, I used to sit in the office with Sean Fitzgerald and Mike Trakos

and Mark Masters and Jeremy Sandler and Joe O'Connor and Cam Cole, and we were all there so much, and it was awesome. It was a really great place to work now there's still wonderful writers at the national post like richard warnica is one of the best writers of anything in the country um so is joe connor joe connor is like is just a canadian treasure in terms of how he writes um scott stinson's still there um there's there's there's good stuff there but it's just less and less, right? It's just less and less and less and less. And I think the spirit that kept the post aloft for so long

has been damaged just because it's hard to... I lived through a lot of layoffs that weren't mine over the years, like a lot. Like a lot of this business is funerals, right? Like it's going there's a that's why i got a funeral home to sponsor the show that's very smarty like when sean fitzgerald had his book launch for before the lights go out he did it at the bar where we would go after every layoffs the dora keogh on the danforth it's a great bar but man i had we all

walked in there and had flashbacks right like because we've seen this for years and years so it there there's still great writers in the post-media chain as a wider thing. The old post-media chain and the new Sun chain, like there's still a lot of really good journalists there and there's just fewer. And that's the story. Like I got into the business in 2001.

If you look at the peak of newspaper revenues, they peak in about 2000, then it's a water slide down ever since. Are you at the national post when you're named uh 20 the sports writer of the year by sports media canada you were the 2012 recipient yeah i was there then i went to the star in 2014 so um that was it was a super fun day um i'd watched cam cole cam cole's the only guy to win it twice um and i'd watched cam cole win it twice and i thought that was such a cool thing and it was really,

it's such an honor to win that award and it was a really fun day and the best part is my wife, my wife doesn't participate in my career very much because we have four kids and she didn't care about sports, which is great, which is actually really good

and she got to be there and I got to thank her in front of a big room full of people and that was a really awesome thing. And you've been living off that ever since, right? Oh, basically. Melkin. Coaston. Coaston. that's it done now okay so how do you end up at the toronto star where you are today uh well let's see damian cox went from trying to sign a deal

with tsn to sportsnet that was quite the time if i may pause you there because we really did think he was going to tsn like i think it leaked on twitter or something yeah there was all kinds of stuff happening um i had i had talked to sports net in 2011 quite seriously and this was uh but i didn't go because i wound up doing a deal with tsn and post media and really didn't regret it as much as sports net was a great and is a great place to work for a lot of people uh i just that was the best place for me at the time and so in 2014 damien goes to um burns's bridge at tsn and goes to the sports net and kahal kelly leaves the toronto star and goes to the golden male right and um it's really funny i got i got like a bunch of messages one morning saying are you going to the

globe because brunt had left the globe mail to go to sports net right so there's all these pieces are moving around and i got a bunch of emails from people saying hey are you going to the globe and i went not to my knowledge and someone said i have a source of the globe that saw you walking through the office and going into an office and sitting down there and i'm like well that's interesting because i've never been there uh it turns out there's a guy at the global mail who looks just like me oh wow yeah so and so the star called me and uh and we sat down and it was right before the playoffs in 2014 right before the hockey playoffs and uh i probably could have handled the departure from post media a little more gracefully but i just left i just i wasn't going to stay and i left and uh i went to

the star. As much as I really, I loved working at Postmedia for all the problems it's got. And it's always had problems and it's got kind of escalating problems in some ways. We'll see how long they can push the credit card bills out. I hope for a long time. I don't, I'm not really super happy at the direction the chain's going politically. I think that could be something that's bad for the country. going politically i think that could be something that's bad for the country um i want the i would like the company to do better by its journalists as much as possible because they're quietly they're losing some really good people under the behind the scenes that you're not noticing like michelle

richardson and ottawa sarah o'donnell and edmonton like there's bev wake they they canned in vancouver which was insane like they're losing a lot of really good people who do really good work um but uh but yeah like i i loved working there i loved the people i worked with and i went to the toronto star and i as much as now the toronto star has got its own challenges and headwinds and all that like i was still the right move to make um and it's still it's still the most widely read newspaper in the country yeah like that's still true i mean sure it's not the most widely read newspaper in the country. Yeah. Like that's still true. I mean, sure, it's not what it was, you know,

when we were growing up. And I remember the circulation of the Star was a behemoth. Oh, it was monstrous. Like when I was reading the 80s and stuff. But it's still number one in this country if you want to see most eyeballs on a single newspaper. Well, it's a problem as it's a newspaper, right? Like that's the,

how many newspapers are on incredibly safe and stable ground in North America, the New York times, the Washington post, the wall street journal. I mean, the LA times now owned by the richest man in Los Angeles. Good for them. Um, but it's, it's a challenge, man. Like I'd like to work for newspapers my whole career because I believe what newspapers are and represent are really important.

And people's eyes glaze over when you talk about this stuff. As much as newspapers have made their own mistakes and as much as they are imperfect vehicles in lots of different ways, I believe they are an absolute pillar of a society that I want to live in. The work that newspapers do is not replicated by anybody else. We did a story today in concert with a bunch of other outlets about levels of lead in drinking water in Canada.

That stuff matters, man. That matters to your fucking kids. Like, lead basically hurt your brain and makes it impossible for you to live in the world like no one else is doing this um the stuff that the toronto star does is a lot of it is really important reporting and once there's people who cheer for newspapers to die it's a whole side of the aisle politically to a degree uh they do it with the cbc too because they can't stand that it contradicts their worldview right if these things disappear what keeps any remote lid on

the corruption of public officials on the corruption of public corporate of private corporations on how society works right like the whole basis of a newspaper yeah the whole point of it is to make money right like the toronto star used to be clear and whatever it was a 40 profit margin right and they used to be that's why it was so thick you know that saturday star i couldn't barely lift it it used to be we went through kind of a golden age where doing journalism uh was both an important societal good and a way to get rich right like for a lot of people um now we've taken out the part where it's a way to get rich but it's still the other thing and so i i believe that if newspapers all disappear the society we live in there's studies that show um how it's really bad for local governments the news deserts

in the united states and in canada are really bad for how people live and they make a difference in your life and so all of us in journalism always say, subscribe to your local media and people go, yeah, yeah, you really should, I should really do that. And they don't do it. It's,

it's strange how, I don't know if it's one of those Pandora box things and like people are so hesitant to pay for something. Like you're saying something so vital, like when it was dead trees, we, we of course be paid, you know,

when it came delivered to door. But nowadays it's like, we expect it to be served up for free. the internet's made all kinds of habits man right the internet's done all kinds of things to how our brains work right um people are now circling around to paying for movies and music because the people who control the means of distribution have seized back kind of control of that distribution it's way harder to not pay for music now than it is way hard like we're we're five to ten years away from there being like five streaming services um where disney and hbo and amazon and whoever it is like all of them own like we're paying the same cable bills

just to five different entities right like but they've they've taken control of the media and the problem you get in in writing is that the industry is just not in that place and people aren't in that place because they're partly because one of the things the internet does there's so much to read man like there's just there's so much content all the time so how do you stand out how do you become essential how do you make an essential part of the ecosystem or maybe do what deadspin did and then the people come from them too right like so i don't have the solution i wish i did um i just think that it's something people should do if you want your society to be better man like that's what you should you should subscribe to things okay i want to ask about the the raptors run because i think that must have been like a lot of fun it was super fun um one of the things that was fun and by the way um

was sitting next to doug smith as it happened because doug's covered this team for 20 years right and and doug has seen it all right he's 25 years yeah for yeah for as long as it's been going yeah so sorry yeah um like he's he's seen it all he's been through it all and getting to see him cover that was really fun um i took a picture of him before one of the uh before during the anthem for the first game during the finals um so the the flag's up on the scoreboard and it's him and it's a black and white picture just i snuck behind him and took a picture on my phone um and uh and i think his wife framed it um i don't know if it's a very good picture but i just wanted to capture that moment because he's there's a lot of people who've covered this team for a really long time who kind of they've been through a lot of shit man like they've seen a lot

of really bad basketball a lot of ridiculous losing yeah stupid basketball um and to get to see the reaction of the people who have been like like there's people who work for that franchise, who've worked for it forever, right? Like guys like Ray Chow and Paul Elliott and Kevi, the equipment guy. And like there's people who've been there forever. And you get to see what it does to people, right? Like how it just cracks them open, right?

And it cracked the city open too. Like that parade, when does that happen in this country anywhere anywhere like we have parades and they they draw a lot of people and it's a wonderful thing like the pride parade across the pride parades across the country is a wonderful thing for a community um santa claus parades are wonderful things for community they don't get three million people or two and a half million people or whatever it was right that's the that's the great power of sports is that as much as it's still a battleground politically there are very few things in society that replicate the kind of fire that we all used to sit around 10 000 years ago right like there's very few things that we that that bring us all

into one place to experience the same thing it doesn't happen movies anymore it doesn't happen television anymore it barely happens with elections elections is the probably the closest thing like where you get 60 percent turnout or whatever it is right um and people generally care about it um there's very like half the country watched the gold medal final in 2010 right like that's that's as close as you can get to an election for something that everyone pays attention to and that's that's the power of sports and there's all kinds of kind of bad knock-on effects that come with it but to get to cover that that championship the great privilege of this stuff is you're covering something that a lot of people care about and you try to do justice to that right that's it and you get to because it's uh the playoffs you get to travel

with the team right because are you guys traveling for regular season games anymore we are only very occasionally traveling um i'm doing a lease trip out west uh in december day fest checks going out on a western trip but i think that's the only trips we're doing the least before christmas which i don't think is i understand why they're doing it um to cut costs right but it's money what's it like from your perspective though covering a game on tv like well see i don't do that very often right um but i mean you can you you can write about things intelligently from a distance that is possible to do um when i was at the national post i used to have to cover games off tv it's it's a harder thing to do now the one thing is is sometimes on tv you can actually see the game better than you do in person um i've

sat in the there's a there's a press box in the old madison square garden before they changed it up that was like in the middle of the stands and you're like oh that's a great idea except that when people stand up in front of you you can't see and the tvs they've got are the size of like a i don't know like like a like an ipad not even and they don't really work and there's people jumping in to charge their phones and there's beer spilling everywhere and it's like i would you're better off in the press room right they're the dirty one of the dirty secrets of sports journalism is sometimes sometimes people go to big events and watch it in the press room right and the real virtue of being there is the atmosphere and the access afterwards to see what it's really like

to be there i still think it's important to be there um if you want to cover sports properly i don't i think there are ways you don't have to be at everything but i think it's if you want to cover something properly you should be there um and the problem with that is it costs an enormous amount of money i'm going to play a little clip i'm not going to play the whole thing but just a little taste of something you did uh for tsn during this raptors run here. So if I've queued up the right audio, the next voice we hear should be Bruce's. Maybe as the ball soared upwards, you had time to think. Maybe you had time as it bounced and bounced and bounced one more. It took forever.

Maybe if you had a moment, you thought back. Maybe you remembered Kawhi Leonard's shot in Game 4. They get the switch. Kawhi takes it. Re-out. Makes it. Big time bucket. Maybe you considered Joel Embiid's size, his defense, how he blots out the sun, how Kawhi needed to send that ball so high. Finally, it hit the rim. It bounced straight up. And again.

Maybe you thought about what had to happen to get here. Maybe you thought about all the disappointments when you poured your heart into the Toronto Raptors and they let you down. Lowry, down to two seconds, loses it, scoops it up, swat it away. Maybe you thought about DeMar and Kyle on the floor against Brooklyn, or LeBron turning the Raptors into a plaything. Throws up the floater, caught fast! Good night, Cleveland! That is for you! plaything. Maybe you thought about Vince's miss or Jose's turnover. Maybe if you went back far enough, you remembered Chris Childs forgetting the score. Maybe, just maybe, that's what came to mind. Just maybe, that's what came to mind. The ball bounced again.

Maybe you remembered all the years of cheering for this other Toronto team. Maybe you remembered assembling outside the arena in the unseasonable cold, in the bitter spring rain, with your friends, with your family, with your tribe. One thing about Raptors fans, they look like Toronto. Like this most multicultural of cities. They're all in it, together. Finally, the ball bounced and it fell. And there was no more time to think. There was just time to feel it.

To remember. It was just time to feel it. To remember. It took forever. It was worth the wait. I ended up playing the whole thing. I was into it. Sorry. The guys at TSN, one of the great things about working with the guys at TSN, it's way better if you watch it with visuals. Like one of the things I had to learn about writing for television,

it's like a different language. You don't explicitly have to describe what you're talking about. There's lots of different ways. You have to be so economical with language. And the guys at TSN, both TSN and Sportsnet, but my experience is directly with TSN. TSN has bosses, right, who they have to make a certain amount of money, and they can do it any way they want.

And the great thing with TSN is they've decided to do it by trying to do things really well right and so when i get to work like that was a really fun one to work on because it's such a such a moment right and it's one of those i remember where i was moments oh for sure right and so you try to you try to channel how people feel about that moment and what it means there's only two moments where i went and bought a t-shirt right away i love the moment was so stuck in my head i had to get a t-shirt like was that moment and uh the bat flip those are the two moments i have t-shirts that was a fun one the thing i remember about that game other than that inning is right afterwards uh alex and

thoplas ran out of the office right behind us as I was running up the stairs to go downstairs. And his wife came from the family lounge into the press box and she screamed. Just screamed. And embraced him. And their kids came and grabbed him around the legs. And it was just such a wonderful, like you see what this stuff means to people, right? The people in sports put their lives into this shit, man.

And maybe we all as a society shouldn't spend so much time on it but there's also very few things that are this caliber of unpredictable entertainment you know i i have this battle with myself all the time i have these moments of why do i care so much like i watch so much live sports i care so much i mean a couple of times a week i get to co-hosthost a sports podcast with Hebsey. Sports, sports, sports, sports. And I'm like, it doesn't really matter. Like, it doesn't, sports doesn't matter. Like, why do I devote so much, like, passion and energy to sports?

But then, if every time I flirt with the idea of, like, I don't have to watch sports. It costs me money because I have cable packages just so I can watch all these games. And then I'm like, no, man, I like sports. I think I'm going to keep enjoying sports. Yeah. I think about that all the time, right? Like, I mean, you've seen'm like, no, man, I like sports. I think I'm going to keep enjoying sports. Yeah. I think about that all the time, right?

Like, I mean, you've seen like how much I think about the greater state of the world. Objectively, in the wider world, sports doesn't matter, right? Like as much as it can be a lens for lots of different things in the world and it matters to people. And there have been a very few times in which sports has influenced the world the course of world events that has happened i don't know how many more times it's happened than movies right or television yeah i'm thinking it was like i guess

south africa won the world cup in 95 the rugby world cup like there are some examples where it transports transcends sports and like jesse owens in 1936 in berlin is an incredible moment it didn't stop the second world war from happening right like it's just it's an incredible moment of defiance of human possibility and that's what a lot of sports is is the idea of human possibility and that's where that's where doping actually gets into kind of the problems of it is what's the outer limit of what a person can do and it's not just physically it's mentally it's under the highest pressure when it matters so much to them that shot that kawaii hit man yeah like you found out what his upper capacity was

in that moment what that's the upper capacity of that extraordinary human being i got chills listening to you talk about that moment and it just brought me right back and i mean from a pants fans perspective you know you covered it what a magical thing that is for you but from a fan's perspective i still kind of can't believe that happened like it happened but it's a little surreal and i'm actually this is gonna shock you but uh because we're the same age but i'm okay i'm okay if it never happens again like i feel so like fulfilled by it happening i got to enjoy it once i got to enjoy it with my you know raptor diehard son. And it just, it happened

and they can't take that away from us. The one kind of bummer about it, if you're a Raptors fan, is that Kawhi did leave, right? And what happens with that, it isn't even that they're not going to win it the next year because they weren't necessarily going to win it the next year with Kawhi.

Right. They would have been favored, I think. I think they would have been in great position. But you don't know if you're going to win. That being said, Toronto fans were robbed of even the idea, right? Like what was it?

July 7th. You got to enjoy it until like July 3rd. And then you were focused on Kawhi and then it was over. And that's kind of the part about it that, that Toronto kind of got robbed of is is the idea, being a defending champion, you get to experience all that again. Like, I talked to the Raptors people. Almost none of them have watched those games, right?

And I've talked to Masai where he said, like, one day I'm going to lock myself in my basement and I'm going to watch them all again. And watch with kind of fresh eyes, because when you're going through it in any sport, I've talked to Stephen Stamkos at the end of the playoffs, and he said, I don't even remember the regular season man it's a lifetime the playoffs is a lifetime and it's the same as a fan like it it's so intense right but then for raptors fans

just ended with a thud right like it's just he left he's gone but uh those memories forever but i have a question about messiah you mentioned messiah so. So, FastTimeMilan. Hello, Milan. He says, regarding Masai Ujiri, is there any news on MLSE getting an extension done with his current deal running out the same time as the big free agent names in 2021? He's talking about Giannis and some big names.

In my opinion, this is Milan, in Milan's opinion, it would be disastrous to the franchise if he were to leave. It has been very quiet with no news on that front. Yeah. I'll say this. One of the most interesting things about that night where they won was that Adrian Wojnarowski put out a piece saying that

this is what the Washington Wizards are going to offer Masai Ujiri. The same night they won, by midnight, it went out. It was $10 million and a path to ownership and whatever. It's really interesting that the big hopes for this franchise, in terms of winning another title, the most direct, which is not a direct route, is if the Milwaukee B bucks kind of stink this year and don't make the finals and Giannis becomes a free agent in 2021.

And Messiah's year, he is a guy who has a relationship with the anti-tacombo family and he can plug them in to Pascal Siakam. And if you do the cap, right, and you managed to make it all work, Fred Van Vliet, no Gianna Nobi.

And that is your new superstar. Although the funny part of that is that Siakam is probably a better end-of-game option. But anyway. If he makes it to the end of the game. That's the most direct route, right? 2021. Every team in the NBA with any serious aspirations is looking at the class of 2021.

Right. And we're all waiting for that. We're going to spend two years waiting for that. And Messiah is a free agent the same year. So is Kyle Lowry, by the way. If I were MLSC, I would do what it took. Honestly, you're not going to get another executive like this. He is not only one of the two or three or four best executives in the NBA,

he is widely seen as a guy with global potential to do all kinds of different things he's a superstar man right like he's as much of a superstar or more as yanis antetokounmpo there's one yanis and you get one shot at him so i get shot to lots of people right like they should do what it takes and spend the money and we're talking probably really really big money probably that money that was thrown around in the Washington offer to do it. And I was a little surprised they didn't do it this summer. Hmm.

Now, you mentioned, you know, signing a big free agent. I've been a lifetime fan of this team, the Toronto Raptors. I don't think, I mean, Hito Turkoglu might be the biggest free agent who ever came here. We've never landed a big, you know, grade A free agent. No,

but that just means they're due. But like, but how, but how do you do that? How do you land? How does the NBA really work? It's a lot like NCAA basketball. It's recruiting.

It's your situation. It's your city. It's your team. It's like Kevin Love went and played in Cleveland, right? Like Paul George went and played in Oklahoma City. Like you can get guys to go to good situations and play there. Masai Ujiri, that's why you got to resign him. Because who's going to, I love Bobby Webster.

I think he's going to be a really good NBA executive. Bobby Webster is probably not going to be the guy yet who is going to land that big fish on his own good point Masai could with the help of his whole organization no great point great point and since I just read that question from Milan from Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair let's remember Milan when they need an accountancy firm here's a quick aside here Bruce but when they need an accountancy firm at Fast Time they go with Capadia LLP CPAs. Rupesh Capadia is the rockstar accountant who sees beyond the numbers. And here's a really brief, I mentioned Rupesh was answering listeners' questions about

accounting. Here's a really brief exchange I had of Rupesh recently. What is the best accounting software for tracking invoices? Excellent question again. So the best accounting software I prefer is QuickBooks. However, there are a couple of softwares that I've been seeing very often these days. There is one which is called FreshBooks. The other one is called Xero. If you are thinking of keeping it long term growing in future, I think it's better to start off with something that will last you for a longer time. As of now, I feel QuickBooks would be a good software for you to go with. And if you want your free consultation with Rupesh, just give me a shout. I'll hook it up. And Brian Master, again, you might know Bruce, Brian Master, although you didn't grow up in this

market, so maybe not, but he's been a legendary voice on Toronto radio forever. Big name on CHUM FM and CHFI. He's now at the Jewel, but he's also a real estate agent. And here's a message from Brian. Hi, it's Brian Master, sales representative with Keller Williams to Realty Solutions Brokerage. I like working by referral. I love working with people, finding out what they need and where they want to go. So every month I put out an item of value called the Client Appreciation Program. And this is really great material. It's all about, well, for one thing, the way the real estate market is, but other things like, well, this month is how to turn your home into a smart home. We've also had things about how to throw a party on a budget, some travel tips. It's really great stuff. And it comes out

once a month called the Client Appreciation Program. I'd love to get you on it. It's easy to do. Send me an email to letsgetyouhomeatkw.com. And I'll send that out once a month via snail mail and follow it up with an email that's something related to the item of value. You can't miss. It's great information. It's something you can share with your friends. I'm Brian Master, sales representative with Keller Williams Realty Solutions Brokerage, thrilled to be on Toronto Mic'd. Now, before I get to the reporter's question here, I got to ask you about the CFL really quickly because a few questions came in about the CFL.

One is, should the Toronto Star go to the Grey Cup? I miss doing it. I really, really love doing it. I love doing Grey Cup week. It was a financial decision. Not enough people read the stuff during the week because Toronto is not a market that reads about the CFL. They'll read about the game.

And I always try to cover the CFL really honestly and well when I do it. But at our place, I'd like for us to do it. I'd like to do it every year. I think it's an important Canadian thing still, But there's at our place, I mean, I'd like for us to do it. I'd like to do it every year. I think it's an important Canadian thing still, but the Toronto Star has other priorities and that's just kind of where we are right now. It is kind of strange that the biggest paper in the country

isn't at the Grey Cup. Yeah, but I mean, but again. Not your call. Not my call, but like i i do understand the why like the everyone's making hard choices sure um and like i'm glad we're sending laura armstrong to the mls cup uh in seattle i'm glad we're doing that i'm glad that we sent roger de mano to bianca to watch bianca win the u.s open i I'm glad that I covered the Leafs and the Raptors all the way through the playoffs,

and so did Doug Smith and Dave Fezchuk and Kevin McGrann on the Leafs. I'm glad we did all that. But it's rare in this business for things to move in a good direction. It's just hard to do at this stage. Now, Jake the Snake actually sent me a picture of you wearing a Argos suck button.

I have met Jake. One of the great things about about the great cup is like it is such a welcoming environment man like it's just a really fun earnest party um as much as the partiers are getting older and older every year and it still is not the most multicultural crowd i will say that the great cup could really and the cfl could really benefit from an injection of kind of toronto raptor style multiculturalism. But where is it big? Not necessarily places that are as multicultural as, say, Toronto. Right. When Toronto recaptures their Argo fever, that will change that.

You know what? So many people have tried to fix the Argos. The one thing now is that they're under ownership that should be able to absorb any losses that they incur. But that's a great stadium, great place to watch a team, not that team this year, but it's a,

it's a good place to be. It's just no people that organization lost, not only one generation, but multiple generations with what happened at the end of the last several ownerships, which would happen with David Braley and his stewardship of the club god bless him um they just they don't have a natural constituency man like it's hard no i know i know i i root for the argos but yeah i mean they can fit 25 000 i think or something in that bmo field or 23 000 or something and you get i

saw them in uh under,000 at one game this year, which is baffling. There was more, just as many people were at the Wolfpack match at Lamport, although a lot of those were comp tickets, but still they were there. They had the bums in the seats. That's half the battle. Now, Jake the Snake did want to know, do you have a favorite Grey Cup Festival moment?

Was it meeting Jake? Let's be honest here. They all kind of blur together to be honest because there's i'm gonna be i'm not gonna lie i'm drinking less these days but there's a lot of drinking during great cup week i don't know what would be my favorite thing my favorite thing is probably actually something quite sad actually from a great cup perspective and something i wrote it's when i wrote about tony proudfoot in montreal uh before he died um because tony died of uh of luke eric's disease of als and uh was one of the great

Canadians, man. Like Tony Proudfoot was an educator and a football player and a guy who ran out in the street when people were getting shot. Um, uh, during, I believe it was the, uh, I call it polytechnic, uh, shooting. Was it? Uh, yeah, of course. This is, uh, I have to go back and remember. Yeah, I believe so.

Yeah. Yeah. Like Tony's a great tony was a great man it was a real privilege to tell his story before he died but like again the thing with great cup is it's there's so many lovely people there's just so many like people who are really having a great time and it's fun mike ragotsky is also a big cfl fan says what sport would bruce like to cover that he hasn't had a chance to write about? Probably World Cup of Soccer. I've never done a World Cup of Soccer.

Because doing the Olympics is honestly my favorite thing. Like the Raptors run was pretty close because of all the different parts of it. But I remember every Olympics I've been to, I've done six now or seven. I probably should remember. Do you have an Olympic highlight? Every one of them, honestly, has been so wonderful. it's such a challenge it's such an incredible challenge and it's such an incredibly

rich and kind of emotional environment um i don't know if i have a favorite i really don't because i started in beijing so i did beijing vancouver london so, Rio, Pyeongchang. Wow. And so I've done hot ones and I've done cold ones and I've done polluted ones and I've done autocracies and I've done democracies and I've done all these things. And it's just such a fascinating global thing to be at. And I always think I do my best work at Olympics.

I think you're never more kind of completely taken over by the event than you are there. And I think the World Cup would be a lot like that. Nobody could have predicted this. Heavy price for a dirty sport. This is going to be the big one. Opinions. How do the fans feel about this? Everyone has them.

I'm astounded. You've got to make sure that it doesn't continue. You cannot reduce players entirely to math. So why not get an informed one? Farber. The stupidity of all this. Simmons. This is one of the historical moments in this country.

Arthur. Goblin-like criminal scheming worst. Join Dave Hodge. All for a story that lifts us up and inspires us. For The Reporters. Sunday mornings at 9.30 on TSN. I do like that in that clip, I both kind of come out against analytics in a moment.

And then, uh, and then I'd call someone basically a goblin. That's kind of the extremes of things I do. All right. Tell me how you end up on the reporters. Um, that was all part of the,

the Damien left. And I got a call from Dave Hodge and you get a call from Dave Hodge, man. Like Naylor told him, Dave Naylor told me something early on when I started doing that show. Cause I was doing McCown at the time, uh, semi-regularly I was doing a bunch of stuff for sports net radio and stuff.

Um, and they asked me if I wanted to do that. And so that was part of the deal that I struck with post media and TSN to kind of combine a contract. Um, but one of the things Dave Naylor told me early on is like, he just doesn't, he never wanted to disappoint Dave Hodge.

And that was about right. Because Hodge is, I wish I could, I could give people the experience of what it's like to work with that man. He's incredible. Just such a pro and such a high demand for quality and so much personal integrity, just an unbelievable amount of personal integrity.

So doing that show was really, really fun. Now, we talk about doing that show in the past tense because TSN canceled the reporters. Yeah, well, I mean, again, TSN has bosses, and they had to make hard decisions, right? Like, we weren't the only show to go, right? But we were a show that appeared on Sunday, and they had to bring in uh union workers at higher rates and you know it just we cost money in a different way than a couple other shows and so the show the way the

show ended was a little ignominious i will say that um doing the show i don't regret really any moment of the whole thing other than the stuff that I said was stupid, which happens probably every week. But those are really fun guys to work with. And it wasn't just them. There were other people who would come in on the show, right? Like Fez Chuck or Naylor. We had Caper Ness one time.

All these different people. But I love working with those guys. I really do. Tell me about what's happening on November 25th. We're going to do a live show, which is super fun, which is a Hodges brainchild. Um,

and we're going to be at the paradise theater on November 25th. Brennan Shanahan will be a special guest and a part of the show. And we've kind of wanted to, to do something together. Um, that was more representative of us than the way the show ended. And so we kind of got together and decided to do this. And so we're going to be on stage and we're going to talk about sports and

we're going to talk about lots of different things. And then we're going to have Shani on and talk to him. And, uh, I'm really looking forward to it because we haven't been back together. All of us, I think in one place since the show ended i'm trying to think and you all like each other oh yeah like people sometimes whenever i

tweet about simmons people are always like i can't believe you're friends with simmons like i don't i'll say i don't agree with everything that steve says i tell steve that i don't agree with everything he says on and off camera, like on and off mic. Steve and I have had arguments, but they're always really respectful arguments. I consider Steve a friend, and I think Steve's going to retire in the next few years probably.

He's getting towards that age if he wants to. And I honestly think the sports media scene in Toronto will be lesser for not having Steve Simmons in it. And like Michael Farber, Michael Farber's just one of the great writers who's ever worked in the business and every moment i've spent around mike has made me better and dave hodge is simply one of the greatest broadcasters this country's ever seen i don't just mean sports broadcasters broadcasters period like these guys i love these guys like the best thing about the reporters is the stuff we could never put on tv right which

is when we would sit in the green room before the show and just talk tell stories that shit's fucking awesome that shit should be a podcast it should be the problem is there's a lot of stuff that gets said in there that you can't can't necessarily you can't tell the story publicly and i'm not saying like we're saying stuff that's completely objectionable or anything but there's there's some stuff you have to be a little more careful about but you know like it like it's, it is, it, we ask guys who came in and did the show, like ask Gary Lawless or ask, ask these,

ask Dave Naylor, like guys who did the show. The best part was just sitting around and talking before the show for like a half hour or an hour. It's awesome. If somebody listening wants to attend the November 25th live reporter show at the paradise, this is new, brand new facility reopened. I believe we're the first show. attend the November 25th live reporter show at the Paradise. This is new, brand new facility.

Reopened, I believe we're the first show in the Paradise, which is I'm all for the reintroduction and integration of theaters into communities. I think they're a great gathering place, and the Paradise looks like it's going to be beautiful. If you were going to send them somewhere to buy tickets. If you look on Dave Hodge's Twitter account or Mike Farber's Twitter account or Steve Simmons' Twitter account

or my Twitter account, you can do that. Let me find it though because it's an event bright is the ticket vendor. Yeah, and I should let people know there's an added bonus to attend this event is I'm going to be there.

Yes. So this is like, like forget these little Simmons and Hodge and Farber and Arthur, Toronto Michael. And Shanahan. And Shanahan, who went to my high school.

Did he really? A little older, so I didn't see him there, but he went to my high school. I'm obligated to point that out whenever Shanahan comes up in a conversation. But this will be really cool, November 25th at the Paradise.

Yeah, I know. It's going to be a really fun thing. I don't know if we'll do it again after this. We might, we might not. I believe there are, we're starting to run through tickets a little bit, but we want people to come out and join us and really have a fun night. Just have a fun night

because these guys are fun to hang around with. Shani's a fun guy to talk to. He doesn't do it a lot in the city. And I think it'll really be a thing that we'll all enjoy. And I actually have a question from Hodge, but you've answered it. Is he looking forward to November 5th at the Paradise? November 25th, of course.

Hodge is so great, man. Honestly, honest to goodness. I really mean everything I've said about him on the podcast. And I've told people all this stuff, right? There were moments in the reporter's show when things were difficult not just uh in terms of the end of the show but like technically difficult right um or editorially difficult and the steady hand and kind of steel backbone of dave hodge i wish we all had that

kind of agency and kind of guts and principles in our careers because like dave quit hockey night got kicked off hockey night in canada for trying to make the show better right and that that wasn't the last time dave hodge was defiant in the face of corporate idiocy right like he's done it his whole career yeah and you get to be around him and just get to see how rock solid that man is, man. He's awesome. When he parted ways of TSN shortly after the reporters ended, why wasn't he, you don't have an answer to this question, but why wasn't he scooped up by Sportsnet, for example? Like, why is he on the open market?

Well, it's a good question, but take a look at what happened to Sportsnet a few years later, right? Like, who were they going to displace? Who were they going to move out? They had contracts in place. And one of the things that happened once they signed that contract is that the margins were pretty tight, right? And it would have been the same if TSN had signed that contract. The margins were pretty tight.

They paid an awful lot of money. So these are companies that are trying to make money and they answer to shareholders essentially and to management. And so I can't say why they didn't do it, but that'd be my guess. Now, Chris McEwen, McEwen, McEwen. McEwen, I would guess. Okay, you would know better. He had a question.

If Bruce has to pick one TSN slash 1050 show to guest on, which one and why? I've really enjoyed doing the morning show with Landsberg and Koliakavo. Actually, I really have, um, like Landsberg is, is such a ball of energy and interesting, nervous,

like aggressive energy. And it's kind of fun to wrestle with them a little bit in a broadcasting way. And we've got, I'm very comfortable doing it. And then we have a lot of rapport going back and forth. And Carlo is just such a big old volcano of like earnest fun. Um, it's a really fun show to do.

Um, that's a show I probably do the most. Um, I haven't like, I love Jay and Dan, like Jay's a friend of mine. Uh, I don't see Dan as much,

but I'd like, I consider Dan like a, uh, an adjacent friend. Um, yeah, both great guys. I think I've only done that show once.

Um, let me think. I, I think only done that show once. Let me think. I think what the guys are doing on Overdrive right now is really, it's a really good thing. It's a good show. It's a show you can listen to and really enjoy. And when I've done that show, I've really enjoyed it. I love working with Matt Cause. Every time I'm on with Matt Cause,

we have a lot of fun. Do you have wine? He loves wine. I don't really drink wine. No, I don of fun. Do you have wine? He loves wine. I don't really drink wine. No, I don't either. Like my cottage is out in a minor wine country and I don't go to wineries when I'm there. But Cause is just, he has just a fun,

he doesn't take himself too seriously. He's funny. He's quick. He's very self-deprecating. I've always enjoyed working with Cause. Cool, cool. Now, 1050 is kind of having a moment right now because of some tumultuous activity

at the competition at 590. So this question here is, as Bruce has been on both Sportsnet and now TSN, his thoughts on the Rogers Media cuts, specifically the big names being that go, and I'm guessing the biggest name, of course, being Bob McCowan. Any thoughts on these changes?

In terms of Bob specifically, Bob's a big reason why I'm doing broadcasting at all. I've ever done broadcasting because I used to, I remember I used to do like occasional call-ins to the fan, like, and they didn't pay you. And then Bob asked me to be on the show as part of the round table. And like back then, that's like, that was the thing, man.

Like that was a great, awesome thing to be on on and then he asked me to co-host sometimes and like i know bob's run through some co-hosts over the years and i understand exactly why that's the case right um i loved working with bob he's a genius as a radio guy uh it was so much fun learning his rhythms and learning to work with him and i mean his run ended because of money right like it's the same it's the same reason that almost all like the same reason with hodge and the reporters the same reason with all the people who just got cut at sportsnet the same people have gotten cut in newspapers right like there are bigger struggles in the world of media as the world changes um like i've joked in the past let's all go to the bottom of the sea with laser

saws and cut the cables that carry the internet and see what happens when we wake up in the next morning but but like i loved working on that show i loved doing i loved working with brunt too i almost never get to work with brunt um well it's funny because when i was playing that that piece you did for tsn on the raptors with the bounce bounce bounce it's reminiscent of like a i don't know a 2010 olympics brunt piece or whatever like the video essay we're all kind of we're all probably copying right like a lot of it. I mean, I try to do things differently than he does, but I mean, you just try to write the right thing, right?

And deliver it in a way that it will resonate with people. Well, you're TSN's Brunt. Well, I mean, that may be the case. Although, I mean, Brunt is there like full time. Like that's his job. Right. When he's not in Newfoundland. When he's not in Newfoundland or wherever he goes to.

Doing his Woody Point music festival. By the way, before we leave Dave Hodge, I need to let you know, if you haven't heard yet, Dave Hodge, who, as you know, is a huge music fan, he comes on this program once a year to give his best of the year. Like, he'll give me soon, I'm expecting it maybe this week, his top 100 songs of 2019,

and we'll play the top 10 songs and chat about them him and brown are both huge music guys and they like if you go to live shows for like good bands in anywhere in the golden horseshoe you got a better than average shot of seeing one or both of them oh so true absolutely they're both and they both uh they both kicked out the jams here too they're both huge music heads they're They're awesome. I'm wondering, some other universe, I can imagine Hodge and Brunt on a podcast together. I don't know if you can do that right now with Brunt at Sportsnet,

but anyway. Well, and it's all really jumbled over there right now. I'm not sure they know exactly where they're trying to go. But I do miss working with Bob and working with Brunt. Those were really fun guys to work with.

Well, on that note, so Jason's question is, what was more fun uh the primetime sports roundtable or the reporters um can you win with answering this question well they're kind of they're two different things right like the roundtable is a free-flowing conversation in a way that the reporters is a little more formal in terms of how it was done i did the reporters for longer and i have more of an emotional attachment to that and i think there were really good moments. It's a harder thing to do because you're on television because of the formality of it and figuring out how to do that was hard.

I really, both of them, I think they were the two shows in Toronto that allowed for a wide-ranging, intelligent discussion of bigger issues in sports on a regular basis. Thinking man shows. Yeah. And,

and, and I think, I think, I think there should be a place for that. I don't know. Like obviously the, neither one has survived. Um,

but I mean the, the, the writer's block show is still doing this, the round table and still doing kind of smart radio. Um, I think there should be a place for that. I think there's, there's a place in sports for just talking about sports

and there's a place for sports for talking about what sports means. You know what I mean? I totally know what you mean. Where Tim and Sid is more of like a fun kind of a, I'm not going to say surf, it just sounds like I'm putting it down, but it doesn't go in as depth

and it's not as thought provoking, I would say, as the old primetime sports we all listen to. Yeah, they're different shows, right? Like they just approach, everyone's allowed to approach sports differently, right? And they do approach sports differently. But the other thing is like,

no one really approached it the way Bob did in the same way, right? And do you have any idea where he's going to resurface? Any leads? I don't. I sent him a note right afterwards thanking him for everything he's done for my career. But I imagine he's up to something.

Well, there's rumors of talking to Chorus, potentially, some kind of a network. And this is all just rumors, so please, speculation purely. But some kind of a cross-Canada thing that you would hear on 640 in this marketplace, potentially. Who knows? Everything I know about Bob tells me he's not going to sit around the house. Right.

That's all I can really say. Right. and dunking uh wants to know how your return to basketball pickup games is going oh man we could have done an hour on this okay so i i stopped playing full court basketball in 2008 because i had ankle surgery i had a bunch of alignment issues then i had three kids in two years so all these things happened in 2009 and so i was in a regular thursday night basketball game a good game with good players things happened in 2009 and so i was in a regular thursday night basketball game a good game with good players for like six years and then i stopped and my body's kind of gotten progressively worse over those 11 years and i started playing in the summers going out in prince to prince edward county i got in a pickup game with a bunch of guys there and

some of them are good and i was playing on concrete in the summers and i played twice a week this summer didn't get hurt and so i came back and called my guys at the thursday night basketball game i'm like can i get back in and the guy who still runs it is still the guy who runs it there's three guys left in that game from 11 years ago and i got back into it and the first week i was really i was wondering whether i could keep up with younger guys and and what is really again a good game guys can play in that game and i could i was good and then uh the fourth week my wrist had been bugging me all summer there was just something a little bit wrong with it and i couldn't figure it out and it wasn't getting better but it was i could still play basketball

i could still type all the thing was good i went up and blocked a shot a guy was stronger than me guys like 632 30 or something there's a lot of big guys in that game um and my wrist had an audible pop uh so i haven't played now in three and a half weeks i can hold on to see if i can crack my written i can't not quite audibly uh the wrist is getting better uh it's gonna get better it's my shooting wrist and if i can't shoot it's the last thing i can do at a high level i'm i can pull up threes on the break until i die hopefully um so thank you to 40 and dunking is an inspiration does leo rodents play in these games oh no really doesn't play anymore.

Talk to Leo. Talk to Sherman Hamilton. Those guys, they gave their bodies up to basketball. Right. But Sherman came out to that game a few times. Mike Grange has played in that game. There's a lot of ex-college players in that game or ex-high school guys.

It's a really fun game. But I'm going to get back to it. I'm all in. I bought a TENS machine, right? The electrical impulses that like heal your body about a portable massager compression pants all kinds of stuff i'm all in on this stuff now final question and then i have a bonus gift for you but uh gene volitus from the old jesse and gene show for those who grew up in toronto here uh ask him who scored the winning

goal in the 1963 stanley cup. Yeah. Eddie Shaq, I think now. Okay. So not a sponsor of the show, but this is a little story I became aware of. So there's a guy named Chris Williams. I hope got the right name here and let me see if I have it. Okay.

So he does a lot of work with special needs adults in helping them play hockey. So there's a hockey league for special needs adults and these special needs adults uh make these candles and they sell these candles for like 10 bucks a pop and all the money i talked to chris he says all the money is going they're trying to buy like a van to help them get around in their travels because it's costing them an arm and a leg so they're fundraising to buy a used van so they said i just was chatting via twitter dm and i said you know i can't take your money but i can talk about what you're doing there because I think it's really cool. And he wanted to send candles for guests.

So I literally gave him a list of, like, future guests, and he sent over gifts. Like, I see your name, Bruce, is written on this. So this is courtesy of the Electric City Candle Company. If you go to electriccitycandles.com or electriccityspecialneedshockey.com, you can learn more about how you can help out with the fundraising activities they got over there. That's super cool. One of the things that society doesn't always do, especially now under this current provincial government, is the people who need help, there's a lot of people forgotten by society and left behind right and so that's an awesome thing that though that's someone who's making people's lives better it warmed the cockles of my heart so if i can give bruce a candle from

electric city candle company i'm happy to do so and bruce uh it took us a while to make this happen but uh thoroughly enjoyable i had a great time i hope you had a good time too yeah no it was good i hope i didn't say anything that offended anybody but if if I did, I mean, that's the life we're in. If you did, I'll excerpt it and tweet it ad nauseum. Controversy sells, you know. You can say one or two things. I don't think I really screwed up, did I? I don't know.

No, you didn't screw up. I would have been more excited. No, just kidding. No screw ups. And that brings us to the end of our 537th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Bruce, tell us how we can follow one of the most hundred influential Twitterers or something.

They stopped doing the list. So I'm not on that list anymore. I mean, I always recommend that you shouldn't follow me on Twitter, but it's Bruce underscore Arthur. Arthur. Yes. Bruce underscore Arthur. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery

or at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Make sure you see me on December 7th at Palma Pasta. Is that the Saturday? December 7th? Yes. Okay, then I gave the wrong date

for the Holiday in Hope candlelight service. So please go to RidleyFuneralHome.com for more info on that. But that's an aside here. Where are we at now? Sticker U is at Sticker U. Brian Master, you write him at Let's Get You Home at kw.com get on his mailing list uh capadilla llp is at capadilla llp and ridley funeral home is at ridley fh see you all next week It's just like wine and it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and green

Well you've been under my skin for more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears And I don't know what the future can hold or do For me and you But I'm a much better man for having known you