Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - David Shoalts Says Goodbye: Toronto Mike'd #474

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

Mike chats with David Shoalts about his departure from the Globe and Mail. On his way out, David shares his ten best stories from four decades in sports media.

Welcome to episode 474 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Palma Pasta, Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair, StickerU.com, and Capadia LLP CPAs. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me is amateur stand-up comedian Hey, I've been paid once or twice.

Only in beer though. Well, we're going to get an update on this. I have one-time ink-stained wretch at the Globe and Mail, but we're going to get a thorough and proper update on all of that. But welcome, David Schultz. Thank you, Michael. It's good to be here. Feel free to sing along here.

You remember what I said about that song when I was here for the Kick Out the Jams, do you? Your Kick Out the Jams is one of my favorite Kick Out the Jams of all time. Well, of course, because I have great taste in music. Because you educated me in a genre I'm not fluent in. I'm not as comfortable with my knowledge. Oh, is that right? Oh, so now do you have a massive blues collection well now when i hear the name howlin wolf i think of david schultz

and what he taught me and uh this was one of your jams things have changed bob dylan yeah they sure have oh so before we catch up and i want to course, in great detail, I need to know what's going on in your professional life. But first, I urge everyone to go to Schultzy Kicking Out the Jams. It's episode 284. So, 284, and it's fantastic. Like, I don't say this about every guest who has kicked out the jams and comes back, but it's fantastic. And by the way, welcome to the Five Timer Club.

This is an exclusive club five you're kidding i have you down okay so i actually had to okay you came in that time hebsey crashed the party remember oh yeah well ever since i've been uh you know keeping one ear cocked here it is oh my god i can never get rid of that guy he was actually here yesterday so um right so episode 150 it came over and hebsey crashed it because he had just got uh let go by chch and he had to tell that story but then you came back to talk about the rogers hockey changes like when i guess when strombo got it and oh yeah yeah glenn healy and all this and then you came back to kick out the jams which is this is one of the jams 284

right then you came back because we talked about a hockey fight in canada i heard you talking to anna maria tremonte is that who you were talking to yes i i was uh yeah she's a great interviewer and then i said i gotta up i gotta do better and then i failed so i don't know how did i compare it i thought i thought you did well you had a great guest you know also anna i although you had a lot of time on CBC, I remember listening and thinking they're giving him some room to breathe. Yeah, they must have been a good 15 minutes, I think. Yeah, 15 to 20, which is a rarity on like real radio, right?

I think that's amazing. Well, I think the subject matter is still of great concern to a lot of people who work in CBC. So, yeah, I got a little extra time. Right. And then you came here and did it up proper. I don't know.

We did like two hours or something. For sure. Yeah. People must have been bored out of their minds. But that's four episodes. And this is five. Is that four? Okay.

All right. So this is five. And I would refer to it. And not... I'm trying to think. I don't think... You might be the first five-timer. I have to go count Hebsey's appearances. Five and that's it.

This will probably be the last. Why? Are you leaving the country? Because I have a Bluetooth channel now. I can still get you in here. Oh, is that right? No, I'm not leaving the country. I'm just on my way out, as they say.

I was going to say, this is going to be epic because you're like, I don't know if you are, but I sometimes have a guest who hit that, pardon my French, everyone, but that out of fucks to give zone. If you're in that zone and you just you'll light the match on your way out and you get the real talk, you know what I mean?

That's when the true real talk arrives. Are we in store for that? Yeah, I'm probably approaching that zone. Well, can you come back when you hit that spot? Because that's the Schultz I want. That one. Oh. Well, yeah, I may be sort of.

I got one foot in it. But, okay, so let's bring down Bobby here. Mr. Zimmerman, goodbye to you. We'll be back. And the mic is yours. It's mine. So I guess you're in this roundabout way asking, am I still a sports writer at the Golden Mail or not?

Well, you know, it's beyond rumor. I've heard from multiple sources that you took a buyout. I did, in fact, take a buyout and signed the papers a little while ago. I am still technically a Globe and Mail employee. My last day is July 30th. I'm on vacation right now, but I'll be going back for a little bit. Okay. But I don't think you're going see uh i i won't be tearing up

the pages with all my writing and everything i'm uh i'm sort of doing the long slow slide out hey that's not too shabby now okay so is this this was a voluntary buyout uh i'd say it was an eager like were you waiting for them every once in a while when they need to shed payroll or whatever they do that thing i guess which is we'll take some voluntary buyouts and then if we need more we'll do involuntary yeah i.e layoffs um i i don't no one knows yet uh at least none of the the workers know if there's going to be buyouts. I think we're going to know soon within, I don't know, a few weeks, a month. However, this came at the absolute perfect time for me. I was looking at retiring a year from now.

And so, I mean, everybody knows the term of the buyout. It was the usual formula for how long you'd work there and it was capped at a year and since they could never get rid of me i qualified for a year and i always thought oh it'd be so nice to get a buyout and you know a year ahead of time and get paid oh no wonder you're so smiley today. Look at you. And like it just almost to the day worked out for me. It's going to be too bad for some people. If I'm going to guess, given that they want to take $10 million off the payroll, I don't think that's a secret either.

But you're half of that, right? Yeah. You're not the first person to say that to me. I wish. I wish. But I think, yeah, there may be some people who unfortunately will lose their jobs and uh you know i feel bad for them um but that is the way this business is going and has been going for 10 years so you know people say to me well you know aren't

you aren't you sad to leave? And, and a little bit, but you know what, the way the business has been going in the last 10 years, uh, it's fairly easy to leave. I got it. It's not as fun, right? No, uh, it is not nearly as fun as it used to be. Uh, we had a lot of fun. We worked hard, but, uh, yeah, it's in the last 10 years, we don't cover nearly the events we used to. So you just felt less and less of a player, I guess, for lack of a better word, on the media scene. And that in itself made it kind of easy to leave. And it certainly made the decision easy. There wasn't any agonizing over should I take this or not.

In fact, when they called the town hall to announce the layoffs, and like anything else, there had been some rumors in the few weeks leading up to it. It all happened quite quickly. There were a few rumors, which I didn't really put much stock in, because A, it's too good to be true, and B, you know. Well, don't count those chickens yeah and uh then they called the big town hall and uh the publisher philip crawley got to got it finally got around to it i gotta admit i was sitting there going i like the way this is headed but geez cut to the chase

and then he announced the buyouts, and I just said, done. Where do I sign? You know, it wasn't a lot of agony. Why is Schultz smiling back there? Agme, so I'm happy for you because perfect timing. This is something you wanted. Yeah, perfect timing. Now I'm on the business end of a shovel.

Right, okay. I've got enough work around. I've told people I've got enough work around i've told people i got enough work around my house all the half finished projects that i figure i got full-time work for two years but will you okay will you here's my question because you just wrote that book by the way um how did it do like uh hockey fight in canada was well received was it did it sell any copies yeah it sold some copies um i don't think I've earned back my advance yet. I'm always fascinated by this.

Well, I just found out from the lead singer of one of my favorite 90s bands that he never saw any money from album sales, and they sold 700,000 albums in the 90s, and he said he never saw any money from it. That's a common tale in the music business. Yeah, there's not a lot of money in the book business either unless you're Danielle Steele or somebody. But I'm definitely not. Or Stephen King, maybe. Yeah, so I don't know. I may get a few bucks in the future. Would you write another book now that you have some time?

Another question I get a lot of. Right now I'm saying I have no plans, as they say, at this time. But I suppose if somebody threw some serious cash my way, I could be persuaded. That serious cash that doesn't exist in the Canadian... That would be true, yeah. It's the Canadian book biz and the newspaper biz, a lot like the Canadian comedy biz. Many people who expect you to work for free. Right, right. At least I compensate you for coming on.

You're going to walk away with some stickers. That's the only reason I'm here, Mike, for the beer and the lasagna. I know. Hey, I'm on to you. I bet you you do make a sixth appearance. I bet you. You'll get bored at some point. Well, if there's beer and lasagna, I'm your man.

Well, you're cheap. I like that. That's good. Okay. Let's go back to, so Globesports. Who, is anybody in Oakland from Globe Sports? Like, did anybody go to the Raptors finals? Oh, to the Raptors?

Yeah. Rachel Brady's there. She's our Raptors reporter. Yes. And. We still cover the absolute big stuff. Okay. So you're at the Stanley Cup finals.

No, we haven't covered the Cup finals. Because that's a big stuff, isn't it? Several years. Yeah. Well, like I said, there's a lot of stuff that weals. No, we haven't covered the Cup Finals. Because that's a big stuff, isn't it? In several years, yeah. Well, like I said, there's a lot of stuff that we used to cover that we don't. Kind of amazing that... Cup Final. If the Leafs made the Cup Final, I imagine I would have been there.

Probably. It's been a few years since I've covered a Cup Final. Can you just let us know, when you leave and shut the lights out on your way out on the end of July, like who's left on Writing for Globe Sports? Writing for Globe Sports would be our columnist, Cahal Kelly, Rachel Brady, who I've just mentioned, our Raptors writer.

Well, I don't, I hate, I don't want to announce other people taking the buyout. So, because that's their... Conspicuous by their absence. I hear you all. To announce it. Well, listen, when Al Joines came on, he was a longtime Q107 guy. He came on and announced that Andy Frost was gone from Q.

And it was one of those things where I knew, but he hadn't gone public with it yet. So, I was going to let him announce it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Joines just like up and said, and also uh you know frost got it too so you know it's up to you whether you want to drop those names let them announce that well there's robbie mcleod has taken the bio too i think that's already out there so i'm not spilling robbie's i think jonah put that out there from the sports funny thing about jonah there the

toronto sports media man, is that he announced on Twitter that Robbie and I were gone. And I saw that tweet before. Then I noticed he had sent me a direct message asking. Oh, and he didn't wait for a reply. So I sort of said, and I really wasn't in position to say so at the time because the way buyouts work is that they announce there's buyouts. And of course, there's conditions on them.

The company always reserves the right to approve or not approve buyouts. And this was either the same day or the next day after the buyouts were announced. So it's not a real good idea to go around blabbing. No, you're waiting for it to be signed, sealed, and delivered. Yeah, when you sign that, all you've done is sign a request for a buyout. And at that point, I hadn't received any word from the company. Now, of course, the company very quickly said, yeah, we'll accept your buyout. They were smiling as well, I hear.

I might have said, yeah, we'll accept your buy. They were smiling as well, I hear. Yeah, I don't think any tears were shed there on Oak Row in the management sauna. Like over 30 years at the Globe, right? How many years yet? I had just passed my 35th anniversary. That was April, I forget the day, somewhere around the 23rd. Bob Elliott told me he quit The Sun, and then they did the voluntary buyout thing. He missed the buyout.

He missed it by like this much. He just made the decision, I've had enough and I'm done. But you want that crystal ball so you can say okay, just hold on. Yeah, that's always the thing, you know, if you leave too early and you say, oh geez, you know, if I'd have just hung in for, but you never know with these things.

So. Do you want to take a stab at the know, if I'd have just hung in for it. But you never know with these things. Do you want to take a stab at the future? But, okay, before I even ask you this question, did Jonah, was he DMing you to ask you to confirm it or just to ask you if you're okay with him or giving you a heads up? No, he was asking me, you know, I've heard you've taken a buyout. Is this true? And I saw this after I saw it was already out there on Twitter.

So I just replied to him saying, well, I'm in no position to say anything right now, but I see you've already put it out there. So I don't know what to tell you. Well, I have to say, sometimes I knew Cox was gone from, Damien Cox was gone from Sportsnet. And I actually, maybe because he's been on the show and I have a personal relationship,

I DM'd him to tell him, I know this is happening and I hope you weren't breaking the news to him no apparently he knew and I was just telling him like uh if you want to announce this your way first like I gave him like I gave him a week uh-huh to like control the messaging or whatever get in front of it before I just do a nice simple little tweet saying that he's no longer at sports net and he really appreciated that like he thought that was so okay so now i'm the i'm the classy uh there you go classy guys you get a week i give you a week and you can well it's been out there on twitter not that i'm uh any big interest in the news game but yeah so i'm approaching approaching being a former sports writer. July 30th, I guess I'll officially be a former sports writer.

Good for you, man. Like that's, I love it when it happens to people who are wanting it. Like this happened with Joe Tilly. I just had this chat with Joe Tilly and he said same thing. He said he was. He was ready to go. He had already seen it coming and he had done his old, gone to the financial institution, all prepared everything. And then when it came, it was like a good thing because he was primed for it.

Yeah. I can't say I'm any great financial planner, but I had done the math, but it was for my pension. I wanted to know, okay, there's a number, any number of online pension calculator, income, retirement income you know, there's a number, any number online pension calculator, income, retirement income calculators out there. So I had done that math a few months ago, just because I wanted to know in 2020, what kind of money I could expect to be coming in and if I could retire. So, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be traveling the world or anything, but I'll get

by, I guess. So it was an easy decision when it came up. Good for you. Good for you. I was going to ask you about the future of Globe Sports. Do you have a crystal ball? Is this coming to an end? I honestly don't know. I don't know if any of those kind of decisions have been made yet

because there's a number of departments that were affected by the buyouts. And what they want to do, and rightly so, is sit back, wait and see who's gone, who stayed, and then start making decisions. I would venture a guess as to say there's not going to be any sort of hiring freeze, I mean, or hiring spree, not a freeze. I mean, why would there be? They just went to the trouble of getting rid of a bunch of people. And so if there are people added, which there really has to be a few bodies brought in to keep the thing going, I would imagine they would be internal transfers. And as far as who goes what and does what, I have no idea. Now, I have some questions from Twitter and elsewhere. But first, you mentioned like meetings with somebody to make sure you're ready for retirement and all that financial stuff.

So I have a guy for you. You and anybody else in this position, I have a guy for you. Firstly, here. This is like a, it holds up your cell phone if you're watching like a video. Or maybe your wife's all into YouTube now. Maybe she can this but this is from capadia llp cpas so that's for you oh is this a new a new sponsor yeah they're the uh rupesh capadia a capadia and i'm dead serious here this is the rock star accountant like this is the guy who sees beyond the numbers and free consultation to you and anyone listening i could hook hook that up with Rupesh. Is that right, eh? One conversation. We're going to hear from him in a second here.

Better than my brother-in-law and two of my sisters. Listen, this is not your father's accountancy firm. Capadia, they get it and they can help you. And let's just hear a fun fact from Rupesh Capadia. Hey, hey, hey, this is Rupesh here. idea. Hey, hey, hey, this is Rupesh here. Did you know that you can claim almost up to $154 for Climate Action Initiative recently released by the government? This is just to compensate you for the additional gas tax that they are taking. So if you have not filed your tax return, please, please, please go ahead, rush, file the 2018 return and get your $154 for an individual

right away. Thank you. That's Rupesh Kapadia. And yeah, anyone listening, write me an email or DM me on Twitter and I'll hook you up with the free consultation. Rupesh and David, if you need to get things sorted out for this upcoming influx of cash that's coming in and prepare for your future. He's a great guy to talk to. Okay. Well, I got a year to make up my mind, I think. Yeah.

You got to get ahead of that too. Come on. Now, a client of Capadia is Milan from Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. So let's get the first question from him. You ready, David? This is a question for you. Fire away. Hello, Toronto Mike.

It's Milan from Fast Time Watch and and jewelry repair. Hello, Mr. Schultz. Loved your stand-up comedy routine last year at the Toronto Mike Listener Experience. Hope to see you again on June 27th at TMLX3, which is expected to be the greatest Toronto event in sports entertainment. Two-part question. One, your thoughts on the new fan morning show with the inclusion of Ashley Docking. And two, is there a sports media personality you miss on the Toronto sports media landscape

on either television or radio? Thanks, David and Toronto Mike. I have to plead ignorance on question number one. I'm kind of a podcast listener guy in the car, so I really haven't listened other than to small sort of segments. And you don't need to anymore for your job, right? Yeah. And also, I'm not often in the car before 9 o'clock in the morning.

Good for you. That's a sign of happiness, I think. Yeah. Well, no, even when, you know, even, well, I'm still officially working, but yeah, I mean, leaf practice starts at 11. So unlike certain keeners, I'm not down there at 9.30 sitting in a cold press box. Okay, so you can plead on the uh changes to the fan 590 morning show of course the fun fact is that ashley docking co-hosts with rachel brady's

husband see it all comes full circle here yes is there a that's a good question is there a sports media personality who's currently on the sidelines you'd like to see back in the game well in that sense he's not on the sidelines but i still miss miss him. The great Jim Shakey Hunt was always one of my favorite guys. He passed away at the age of 79. Oh, it must be at least 10 years ago. I think longer. Probably longer. I can't keep track of the years anymore.

I feel like it's closer to 20, but I don't know. And I got a little story about him later, but he was just such a wonderful, they always called him the world's oldest teenager, and he was just a fun-loving guy, and he was just great to be around because he'd keep you laughing. And he had the greatest stories. Now, it's too bad you couldn't have got him in here. Oh, I know.

To tell some of the stories he got involved in. Did you listen? So you said you listen to podcasts when you're in your car or whatever. Did you listen to Beezer's son, Steve Buffer? Yes, I did. Yeah, he's another fun guy and a guy I'll miss. He just came on the soccer beat this year. And I've covered, sort of covered, I can't, you know,

TSE for the last, I think, three years when I wasn't doing hockey and so I got to hang out with Steve again for a little bit and that's always a fun thing well he'll listen to this so I think he's now in some some boxing hall of fame like Ontario that would be on the Ontario Boxing Hall of Fame. I remember he had a story. He got, I think it might have been an award or may have been elected to the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame. And then he wrote something that pissed them off. They rescinded. And they didn't give him his plaque. Well, that's like you taking the buyout

and then you come on here and you say something they don't like and they pull that out. Well, I'm not going to trash the Globe and Mail. They gave me a good living for 35 years and they're paying me for a year to go away. How can you complain about that? Well, book your sixth appearance for exactly one year and a day

after your last day. I should point out, Milan, that was a great, great, he likes to do the two-part questions and just to keep you on your toes. But thank you, Milan. He was a great, great, he likes to do the two-part questions and just to keep you on your toes. But thank you, Milan. He's at Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. They've been doing quality watch and jewelry repairs for over 30 years, closer to 40 years. And if you mention to them that you heard about them on Toronto Mike, they give you 15% off any regular priced watch battery installation. Just mentiononto mike and you get it so where

are they you got to go to fast time watch repair.com to find a location near you their newest location is now in richmond hill so go and say hi to milan there and uh yeah any watch repair band replacement watch battery done cleaning jewelry all above. Fast time is where you go. I think I've been in his shop, not the new one, but didn't he used to do the Sears watch repairs? Yes, indeed. That's it. At the Eaton Center, I believe. I think I know that from listening to this podcast. And I had been in there several times. I believe it was almost, I think every Sears had a fast time inside, but they called it like Sears watch repair.

Probably, yeah. I can say this, I guess. They got screwed over royally when Sears kind of up and left. So Sears left the country. Them and a bunch of other people, yeah. There's a long list. Not to mention a long list of workers. That was, yeah, yeah.

A lot of litigate, a lot of workers. One of those hedge fund characters, he made out like a bandit. Yes. And everybody else got robbed. So what I like about fund characters. He made out like a bandit. Yes. And everybody else got robbed. So what I like about Fast Time, it's a family-run business. They've been doing that for 30-plus years with the Sears. Now they're kind of slowly rebuilding, like opening new locations in malls across this province.

So good on them, and they do quality work. So get your stuff done at Fast Time, for sure. Did we say hi yet to Gare Joyce? We should do this now. And Milan mentioned this. You did stand up at TMLX2. You still a positive experience? I thought you

were very funny. Yeah, but one of your listeners said Gare was better. That pissed me off. Let me know the name of that listener. I'll block them. I'll block their ip address no more uh gear gear um was on after you so maybe that was his advantage or whatever but you were great gear was great so thank you again for doing that will i see you will i see you at the next one june 27 you know what i i've heard about it and i think i may have marked it on the

calendar but i'm not sure because I still haven't. I'm terrible at long range planning. I'm not sure if I have any conflicts. It's not too long range anymore. We're 20 days out. I know. I am basically planning to be there. Let's put it that way.

Okay, good. Yeah, it'd be fantastic to see you there. And lowest of the low we're going to play and it's going to be great. Oh, so since I'm mentioning this event, it's at Great Lakes Brewery, June 27, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Here's a six-pack of Great Lakes beer for you. You enjoy the Great Lakes. I certainly, yes, I enjoy their fine product.

More than once. Oh, no. This is special, okay? There were very few made, and I'm lucky. I can't believe I'm giving you one. I almost feel like taking it back. Oh, I thought this was going to be pumpkin spice ale. Oh, no.

We're a bit early for that. Okay. Or late, depending on how you look at it. So that's an electric circus. Tropical pale. Yeah, tropical pale ale, I think. Okay, this is a little bit of an oxymoron. New England style tropical pale ale?

I never thought of that. I didn't know the tropics made it that far north. No, I don't think so. Well, you know, since all the Boston's down in the series, I got a question for you. But I am sure I will enjoy it. Enjoy, enjoy. So yeah, good people.

They're actually down the street, not far from where I live here, there's this grilled cheese challenge tomorrow and the beer tent is from Great Lakes Beers. So if people are listening to this early, that's the Saturday, which is whatever that is. I don't even know, the 7th or something like that.

8th. I will say something about Great Lakes, and this isn't their fault. I can never figure out my local LCBO in lovely Bolton. They will carry some lines from a brewery, you know, and not others. And it always seems to be the ones they don't carry are the ones that I like. For example, Great Lakes has a wonderful Pilsner, but I can never get it in my local store. And it's just, it's very annoying.

Well, stock up at the retail store on June 27th. And they also do that with another craft beer I like. They'll carry the other beers from that maker that I'm not too keen on, but the one I really, really like, again, it's a Pilsner. They don't have it. I think they're fucking with you, David. Well, probably. I have to drive to Nobleton to get it.

Oh, no. By the way, since you mentioned Bolton, Dale says hi. He says hello from another Boltonite, and he wants to know your prediction for the NBA and NHL finals. So do you have a good Lord? Yes, I am. I'm, I know, I sort of know Dale in the sense that he, uh, he emails me from time to time. I hate predictions. I got to tell you, um, if I, if I said Raptors, it would quite jinx them. Although the way the, the Warriors are going down with injuries um yeah all i'll say is the the

raptors have every opportunity to win this thing and if they don't they only have themselves the blame um and as far as the cup final goes i guess the blues are in the driver's seat um i'd never ever count the bruins out though and And all Leaf fans, I've had so many Leaf fans say to me, people I know, like, anybody but the Bruins. And I said, what's wrong with you guys? You should be pulling for the Bruins like mad because then at least you'd be able to say, you know, we took them to seven games, nobody else did.

I've heard this sentiment often. You want the team that beats you to win it all, so you lost to the champs. I don't have that at all in me. I'm all about, I want them to suffer. I don't want them to succeed. I would far rather see the team that, especially the Bruins,

who have beat us a few times in a row now, let them get swept in the next round. Get out of here. I can't even, this final... You're going to be angry anyway. So you might as well, if you have the team that beat you win it all, then you can convince yourself your team is the rightful winner.

And the only reason the team didn't win is because they got screwed by the refs. I like the sweet schodenfreude. Let me delight in the misery of those Bruins fans. No, I'm rooting for the Blues. Let's mix it up a bit. Well, I think you got a pretty good chance of seeing them win their first Stanley Cup. Good.

But ask me now, how many minutes of the NHL finals I've watched in total? You probably watched about the same number as me. I have fallen asleep in front of, I think, at least three games in the final. At least you tuned in to three games. I haven't seen one from beginning to end.

Okay. Probably a sign of my age. I think it's the general malaise. First of all, we're all distracted. Most of us are distracted by this basketball team that's been just wonderful. And sick of seeing the Bruins. I think it's a combo.

You used to care about these ratings. I'd be interested to know. I would guess that this might be the lowest since Rodgers took over. This might be the lowest rated. Yeah, I don't imagine they're very good. This year in the playoffs has to rank right there with some of their worst. I mean, they did get Canadian teams in the first round anyway,

so it wouldn't have been horrible. But yeah, I would guess the ratings for this cup final are probably around the same they were. What year was the really bad year? 2015 or 16? Yeah the first year of their deal so whatever that was. No it was the second

year when everybody when the Leafs drove the 18 wheeler off the cliff and then none of the Canadian teams made the playoffs I thinkeler off the cliff, and then none of the Canadian teams made the playoffs. I think that was the second year. Okay, you wrote the book. My memory bank thinks it's the first year, but I trust the guy who wrote the book on this.

You literally wrote the book. It's been a while since I wrote it. That's the problem. Did you ever read it? No, I'm just kidding. It's pretty good. You should read it. I recommend it.

That's something Gary Joyce would say to me. Oh, so Gary, that's where I was. Let's send, I mean, Gary is the reason you started your stand-up career. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. In fact, he's the reason. I wonder if he knows this. He's the reason he's been on Toronto Mike twice now.

In fact, his second time was to tell his 10 best stories. And this is really your rebuttal now. Like you're going to beat him at that game in this episode. You're going to tell him. Am I? Okay. Well, that's cool. Well, I must admit when I heard him at the stories i said hey i can do that too i didn't really think of it as a rebuttal i just i like to you know you gotta sell the sizzle here i'm selling the conflict here but gare yeah you you basically you said to me i think it was off mic

you said to me you should have gare joyce on and that name meant very i didn't the name didn't like you know he's got a name recognition problem. I don't know if you know this, but he's a great writer. Yes, he's a really good writer, yeah. Go up to like 20 sports fans in the city and ask them if they know Gare Joyce. I think he might be, he might like it that way. I don't know, but I don't know.

I think he does. Maybe less so now that he's doing stand-up comedy right that doesn't really help comedy much but well he's busy carrying his jason priestly million and it's because in a large part because of the style of writer is he writes those very long thoughtful and well-crafted i might add long features and so you're not in the uh newspaper or online every day with your photo above your byline writing a column uh no so that yeah that uh keeps the recognition down and you both have something in common that you're both uh banned from primetime sports is that true um i don't think i don't know as an official ban list i probably am now um because what happened was people still think I'm on there.

I mean, I always run into somebody who says, hey, you're always on primetime. I go, no, I haven't been on that thing for probably 10 years. But that's just the way media is. People don't remember these things. But, yeah, I may have been, I don't know as I ever did anything to get outright banned at first,

other than showing up late the odd time. I thought you wrote an article in the Globe. Yeah, well, that came later. Okay, that came later. And then they sort of realized, you know, we have two roundtables a week on Bob McCown's show, and we bring all these people in well why don't we bring our own people in and right promote them so they sort

of moved to that and cut back on the outsiders which is too bad i think they got down to dave perkins and maybe doug smith uh yeah and and that was that but then of course any and this this happened then the next thing that you're referring to happened a few years after that. But then, of course, any, and this, this happened, then the next thing that you're referring to happened a few years after that. By then I was covering, I covered the media stuff for a few years. Which by the way, you did a great job. No one else was doing it.

Maybe that's why. That's one reason why I started doing it. I thought it was probably a good idea to do something no one else was doing. The Jonas of the world and the Toronto Mikes of the world were really appreciative that somebody was actually doing a little journalism there. So I wrote a couple profiles of Bob and I think he liked the first one.

And the second one in which I sort of explored his chances of getting another million dollar contract and concluded that they weren't very good. He didn't like that at all. One of his colleagues said, you know, you made Bob's head explode. I knew, well, I guess there won't be any chance of a comeback on primetime. And the last time he mentioned my name, I think is when Scott Moore stepped down and he was saying,

he's making the rounds of the show, he's doing his goodbyes. And they talked about the book a little bit when he he was on bob's show and then bob said oh yeah we all know schultz is a tsn guy kind of a head scratcher i'm thinking i probably haven't been on tsn in a longer period than uh primetime no that's too funny but you're gonna have trouble topping that final story from gear joys in his episode so people who want to hear his 10, which I do recommend you listen to at twice the speed, but that's another story. Gare's final story about his being banned from primetime and the Bobcat moniker was

pretty, pretty strong. So I hope you finish strong. Make sure your best story goes last. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that. I haven't actually thought about a chronological or what order I should tell these in. Order only matters that you finish with your best one. That's really all that matters.

Best one? Oh, let's see. What would be the best one? There is a good one in there, right? I should tell the people. I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'm going to learn in real time. Okay.

I know which one I'll finish with. Okay. All so i gave you the beer but i want to give you of course you've uh you've got a uh large lasagna yes from palma pasta silly leaning on it here oh that's like it's frozen solid there keep it cool that's another reason why i'm here amazing for their fine lasagna yes and once again, I expect to hear back with all sincerity that it is the greatest lasagna you've ever bought. This is authentic Italian food from people who know. The Petrucci family, so they've been doing it for, I don't know, I'm trying to do math, 30 years, I think, themselves.

But they just opened a new location near Mavis in Burnhamthorpe. It's called Palma's Kitchen. 10,000 square feet, retail space, hot table. Get yourself some pizza, cappuccino. Amazing. Just go there for lunch. It's fantastic. So enjoy your lasagna. People should go to palmapasta.com and cater their events with Palma. And if you want to try them out, but you don't want to make your way to Mississauga or Oakville, you should go to Skip the Dishes, where they can now be found. So Palma Pasta, lasagna for David Schultz. Enjoy.

Stickers. Yeah, I wondered what's up here. I thought I'd stumbled into a kid's play area or something. This is going on your car, right? Car or bicycle, wherever you like. That's a Toronto Mike sticker. Put that on my garden tractor. That's where I'll be spending a lot of time.

Put it on the tractor, take a picture, on my garden tractor. That's where I'll be spending a lot of time. Put it on the tractor, take a picture, tweet it at me. That would be amazing. That's courtesy of stickeru.com. Very nice. And you can get customized stickers there. So stickers, labels, decals, buttons, temporary tattoos. I gave you a temporary tattoo. Oh, yeah, I'm a real tattoo guy.

It's only temporary, David. Get as many as you like. And it's, again, a real tattoo guy. It's only temporary, David. Get as many as you like. And it's, again, easy to do it. Just upload the image at stickeru.com. Excellent organization. That reminds me of a story. This has nothing to do with sports. Let's go bonus.

Okay, here's a bonus story for you about tattoos. I have a niece who happens to be a surgeon, some sort of OB-GYN surgeon. A woman doctor. A doctor for women. A doctor for women, yes. And she told me a story when she was interning, and I won't say the city. I don't want to get her in trouble.

But a woman came in for an operation. But a woman came in for an operation, and when they went in to operate, they noticed she had a tattoo right near her... You can use those doctor words. Vagina? Yes. And it said, Mike's property. Well, somewhere along the line before she came in, there'd been a parting of the ways with Mike, obviously.

And clearly she didn't want to spend the money to have the tattoo lasered off. So she came up with a rather unique solution. She had the word not tattooed in front of Mike. So it was not Mike's property. Remember Johnny Depp had Winona forever and then he broke up with Winona Ryder and changed it to Wino forever.

Now the not Mike's property, it's kind of a risky move on her part because like one third of men born in like the 60s, 70s and 80s are named Mike. Like it's very possible she'll end up with another Mike. Not that she should be his property. I'm not saying that.

But she's saying that. I'm sure it wasn't off putting in the lease for any subsequent visitors. And if you remember, if you can see that bumper sticker that says, if you can read this,

you're too close. If you can read this, I'm either going into surgery or, you know, we're pretty close. Yeah, well. That's a pretty good story. I have another question for you from Brian Gerstein

at propertyinthesix.com. Propertyinthesix.com Hi, Dave. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Mike. Less than three years ago, one of my clients bought a condo in King West for $308,000. It is now worth $550,000 and I'm working with her today to use that equity to move up to a townhouse with a yard for her dog. The condo appreciation has made this all possible.

I can crunch the numbers for you too. Just call or text me at 416-873-0292. Dave, officiating has been a topic of conversation, not only in the NHL playoffs, but in all of the professional sports leagues. As a former umpire, I have a lot of empathy for officials who have to make split-second decisions in real time, and the speed of the games has never been faster with the athletes playing them. Where do you see the future of officiating? Are we going to keep on adding more reviews or go back to the human element calls to keep the games moving? Well, first of all, I only found out on my last visit here that that's not Brian playing the piano and singing. That was a great disappointment to me. I always figured it was him doing all that.

You know, a lot of people think that's him. He's got great pipes. But did you know that voice? Maybe you knew this from the same time you learned that wasn't Brian. But the guy going propertyinthesix.com is the same gentleman who sings the opening theme to Toronto Mike. Is that right? Ill Vibe. Mr. Ill Vibe.

Yeah, that's him. So the, what up, Mike? This whole, this theme. By the way, do you have a theme song? I'm used to it now because I've had it now for, doing the math really quickly, seven years I've had that theme song. And now it's like I just, when I enter a room, it just plays. You know what I mean?

Like the Imperial March. Well, I adopted the Bob Dylan song. I used to care, but things have changed. That's why I played it off the top. And I'll put this in the background. Just in the background a little bit. This is some Johnny Rawls, Soul Survivor. Wonderful, wonderful.

And that's another song I identify with. An old guy, still going. I cherry-picked these two songs from your ten. Honestly, I think I've been clear, but go listen to David Schultz kicking out the jams. Just do it. But I cherry-picked these two because I thought they might be appropriate

for your visit here. Your fifth visit and hopefully not your final visit. I have a question. Oh yeah, so Brian, we have to answer that question. That's right. What are you going to do with officiating? Yeah, this is a timely question. The easy answer is that, you know, the whole instant replay genie is out of the bag. And so we're going to. That's not going away. I think will happen is it'll get streamlined. And as far as the NHL anyway is concerned,

I think they're going to allow the referees. I mean, this, you know, the whole idea that they're the only guys who can't look at the replay and change their call if they want, you know, if it's reviewable. It's bizarre, right? So, yeah, there's going to be a rethink, A, of what exactly is reviewable because we've seen two or three times in the playoffs how crazy that is.

And you're going to see the referees and the linesmen being able to go over to the replay and change their call. Now, as far as the, and I think I wrote about this not long ago, as far as people worrying about how the game's delayed, and I agree, it's a huge pain when it happens. That, they've got to speed up a little. If you look at a play four or five times

and that shouldn't take too long, and you still can't decide, well, then the original call stands. That's inconclusive. That is the definition of inconclusive. But, if a ref has made an honest mistake, he should be able to see in the first or second look at, oh yeah, okay, that happened, and boom.

It shouldn't take forever. Let me ask you, so I've watched every minute of these Raptor playoffs, and it's been fantastic, but there was a play in a reason, I think it might have been in game one or two i can't remember anymore i guess i think it's game one game one against the warriors where pascal siakam the opposite uh the warrior guy stuck his hand through the rim to knock it away like a gold oh the gold they missed gold training yeah and i always wondered like okay if the head can they why can't somebody at the uh the office in the wherever they are, New York or New Jersey or whatever,

why can't they review that at some point and just say, we're taking two points away? Good question. Clear violation, right? Yeah. I mean, the war room review sort of thing, I believe, is exclusive to the NHL, right? Yeah. But I do know if your toe's on the line, if they go three-point shot, let's say, and then they review it and, like, oh, the tip of his toe is on the line,

they actually do take a point away. They do that. Yeah. Sometimes those ones, especially in baseball, drive me crazy. Where, you know, they go in super slow motion and then, okay, the smallest amount of time possible you took your foot off the bag. Well, come on. For 100 years years you know

refs just made that call and that was that so you know those things that's to me the perfect example of going too far but they need to it's difficult but they need to strike a balance here between games taken 4 hours and yeah well the NBA needs to do some work on that I mean the last

2 minutes of an NBA game are already the longest agonizing stretch in sports. And now you've got those guys seemingly in every other call running over to the scorer's table and having a look. And it's like, come on. Especially the ball's out of bounds, and of course they have to review that for two minutes. They're just sort of, okay, most plays in the last two minutes

are fairly important, but some of the stuff they're looking at, it's like, give me a break, just play. Maybe the coaches have too many timeouts in basketball. Maybe we just need to take a couple away from them. That'll do the trick. I don't know. But go Raptors. That's tonight.

So I'm excited about that. And this Soul Survivor is a great jam here. So a little taste of what you get from the kick out the jam. So here's an interesting question from Twitter. His name is Will mckeown what do you think david about the ongoing beef between al strachan and bruce arthur are you are you aware of this are you aware of this oh yeah i'm very aware of this uh we need now leave it all let's just yeah empty the vault let's go tell us what's going on al has always been a sort of acerbic guy,

and he has a very sarcastic sense of humor, which a lot of people, of course, when you just see it, the sarcasm seems to be lost on Twitter. Yeah, the tone is gone. I have this issue too. Because I have a sarcastic sense of humor, sort of. So they tell me anyway. I think I'm a little ray of sunshine, really.

That's a good example. I get that a lot on Twitter where people just take whatever I say completely literally, and that happens a lot to Al. And so when he's cutting somebody up on Twitter, most of the time he's joking. However... Yes, because he goes hard at Bruce and it's pretty constant on Twitter.

He is not joking when it comes to Bruce because, as we know, Bruce is very opinionated like we all are, but he offers many, many opinions on Twitter. And I think that kind of gets up Al's nose. Yeah, well, Al is a Trudeau-hating right-winger. Yeah, and basically Bruce admires and stands for just about everything that Al detests. Yeah, true. So that is pretty inevitable, I'd say.

I don't see any way that those two could ever really coexist. Are there any other beefs you can update us on? So I saw this question from Will, and I was thinking, okay, I remember there was a beef, of course, between Steve Simmons and James Myrtle. You must have an update, any insight into this. As far as I know, that is in the same place it's always been. Those two do not agree on mostly over analytics. And I don't think they're about to anytime soon.

Is there any, now, you know, Jim Taddy and Mark Hebbshire, they were on Sportsline forever, and that's where we all fell in love with these guys on Sportsline. And I spent a lot of time with one of those two gentlemen, and I don't see any, I see like, I don't know, I don't have a sense that they're buds anymore. Do you know anything about the Taddy versus Hebbsy? Are they okay? I'm completely in the dark on that relationship.

I'll find out on Monday from Hebsey for a thorough update on that. As far as I know, I get along with both of them, so I'd like to keep it that way. Okay, well, I don't think Taddy listens, but yeah. I'm trying to get Taddy on Toronto Mic'd. I think he'd be a great guest. Yeah, I really

don't know. What about Dean Blundell versus Common Decency? Is there a rivalry there? Well, Common Decency would always win out, I would hope. Yeah. No, I'm not a big Dean Blundell fan. Apparently, he's not a fan of me either. He blocked me on Twitter.

Was that right? Yeah, I forget why. He's not a fan of me. You're in good company. Oh, probably because I said something about him being a complete dolt on Twitter. He's not a fan of mine either. Yeah. We're in good company. I think you're in good company.lt on Twitter. He's not a fan of mine either. Yeah. We're in good company.

I think you're in good company. Very good company. I urge listeners to Google when Dean Blundell attacks. Is he back on the air, by the way? No. Did I see that somewhere? He does some fill-in work

periodically on 1010. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's why I saw his name because a lot of people were appalled that 1010 would actually put him on the air. Well, here, so real quick aside about radio is that there's an, okay, so in St. Catharines, there's HITS 97.7, of course, HITS FM. This is a station in St. Catharines.

And their morning show team is Jason Barr and Chris Biggs. They go by Biggs and Barr. And they have taken a job in Ottawa. So, like, at the end of this month, I believe they'll sign off from HITS and they'll make their way to Ottawa to replace people named Doc and Woody. I have to plead ignorance, but Doc and Woody apparently were on Ottawa radio for a long time. I know. It's like a whole different world. What's this

Doc and Woody? What's going on? But they're retiring, quote unquote, and then Biggs and Barr take over. But there's an opening right now. I saw like a listing for a new morning show guy or gal or both on uh 97.7 maybe blundell applies for that and that's a bell media company ah who knows who knows i even though i am from the area down there the dagger peninsula yes i grew up down there

um see the funny thing about radio is if you don't listen to a particular station it really doesn't exist in your consciousness and neither do any of the people even though they may have been there for decades you you just simply haven't heard of them a listener of this program uh sent me a dm the other day and said oh you must have asked dave agar on like where's can we get dave agar and i the honest to god truth is because i never listened to 10 10 this was a black like me, it was a whole black, like Dave Agar, like I kind of know that name when he retired.

I heard a bit of it on Twitter or whatever, but like I've never heard the man's voice. Like this is how it went. Yeah. See, like I'm the opposite.

1010 was one of the stations that used to be on my, uh, presets. Presets. So when you're, you know, punching the buttons,

looking for news or whatever, he, he did the news, I believe for years. A long time, right? Yeah, so I was totally into talking to him. I was pretty familiar with him. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I have these blind spots

because if you don't listen to something, it doesn't necessarily exist unless they put up big billboards everywhere, which I guess is the whole point of billboards. Okay, let's get to these stories or you'll be here for three hours. So I don't think we closed up the Gare Joyce loop. I wanted to say get well, Gare Joyce.

I believe he's watching slash listening to us right now from a hospital room. He's probably turned off by now. He's gone. So Gare, get well soon. Fun fact, seven years of podcasting and every single guest who has ever appeared on Toronto Mic is alive today. That's a fact. So Gare, get well soon. I don't want That's a fact. So I want to, I don't, so Gary, get well soon. I don't want to break that streak.

So I want to keep that going. Well, Gary did sum up when the news leaked out about me, did sum up my departure by saying that journalism's gain is comedy's loss. Which is a great line. All right, my friend, you take over and start sharing these stories. Okay. Now, I'm not one of those sports writers who's been sent to 20 Olympic Games and, you know, 25 consecutive Stanley Cup finals.

I was always more of a third liner. And so my stories are a little different than guys who look back on their career and say, well, you know, I got to see Bobby Orr score that goal where he flew through the air and became a statue. Which was game five, by the way, people talk like that was game seven. That was game five. So mine are a little different. I might as well start sort of in chronological order with this happened shortly after I landed my first major sports beat was in this was in the fall of 1980 and I had been hired that summer by the Calgary Sun which just became had become the Calgary Sun and came to town they bought the old Albertan newspaper and they hired Steve Simmons to be their hockey writer and they hired me to be the football

writer and backup hockey writer so I covered football and hockey and this was my very first road trip with the Calgary Stampeders and they were playing the Hamilton Tiger Cats Thanksgiving weekend in 1980 and so it was a trip, first time home for me in a while. And I believe the game was actually on a Sunday. And so after the game, then I was going to head home for Thanksgiving dinner. But we landed in Toronto. And there was supposed to be a bus there for us to go to Hamilton. That's where we were staying.

And there were no buses. Something happened with the bus company. And so they brought in a whole bunch of limos and, uh, everybody just kind of grouped up. And I wound up in a group with the president of the Calgary Stampeders, a fellow named Frank. I can't remember his last name. He was a very nice man. Um, he was a big shot at Air Canada. I remember that. The Calgary Stampeders were then community owned and run by a board of directors and he was the head. He also wasn't a big fan of my writing because being a young guy, you know, one of the privileges of youth is stupidity. And so I figured I'd go in there with a real bang. So I started off writing a lot of stuff about how bad

the Stampeders were, and they were in the process of going from the best team in the West to the worst. But he was too nice to confront me about it. But anyway, so I wind up in the group with him and Al Mackey, who's been my colleague at the Globe and Mail now for many years, but at that time he was the brand-new football writer for the Calvary Herald. We were both about the same age. We were 25 years old green as grass and uh ed mcclainy who at that time

was an all-star defensive end for the stampeters and the radio team of eric bishop who was a veteran uh radio guy a real western uh hard-boiled, conservative kind of guy. He was a heavy drinker. No, he was a hard drinker. He liked his booze, but he thought any drugs were the devil. And his color guy was Wayne Conrad, who was an all-star center in his playing days with the Stamps. I think he was in his second or third year of retirement. I think I was in his second or third year of retirement. I think I can tell this story now.

Eric is no longer, Eric Bishop is no longer with us, but I'm sure Wayne Conrad's around, and he probably doesn't even remember this. So we pile into this limo, and Eric Bishop and Frank, the president, are in the front with the driver, and us four are in the back. And the first thing Wayne Conrad does after we get on the Queenie to Hamilton,

he fires up this big joint. I just about fainted because I'm thinking, Eric Bishop thinks weed is the devil. He didn't even bother. There was no like blackout screen or whatever. It was just the window. But luckily, Frank and Eric were yakking away. So on my left is Ed McElhaney, the player.

Can you imagine what kind of position he's in? And Wayne is just laughing and carrying on. And Al Mackey's probably feeling like me on the other side. And of course, he wants to share his joint. And all I can think of is, I just got this job. I can't lose it. Reefer Madness, he wants to pass the Dutchies. So nobody else wanted to partake.

So he smoked the whole thing by himself. And through some miracle, neither Eric Bishop nor Frank, the president, turned around. And he put both windows down too. So he got a nice buzz going. And the other three of us were just sitting there going, oh my God, my career's over. Of your 10 stories, is that the only one in Calgary?

Yeah. Oh, no, no. There's one other. There's one other. Only because, just make sure we don't leave this episode without you mentioning that Steve Simmons got Howard Berger fired from... No, Steve didn't. Well, accidentally, maybe.

Did he admit to it? Yeah. I think Steve told... Have you had Howard on here? Yes, I have. Yeah. Yeah. And Howard, I remember, yeah, I listened to the Howard episode,

and it was a little... His recollection is a little different than mine, but I think it was basically the same. My recollection was that Howard did not do an assignment because he went on his own up to Edmonton, I believe, to write a sidebar on the Stampeders game because Howard was very eager to get a pro beat. He didn't, he wasn't too patient in those days. Like he was sent to a swimming meet or something?

Well, the, I forget if it was a local club team or some high school kid. They were going to a meet in Japan. And we, both papers had what was called an amateur page in those days. I think they ran on Tuesdays. And so you have to supply stories. This was sort of a reader exercise. And so, of course, none of us saw too much glamour writing these things. And so Howard does this, but he let it go too long, and what happened was that when the next amateur page came out,

the Calgary Herald had a story on this swim team, and we did not. Right. We had the pictures, but no story. You meant Rogue. And so Steve was quite annoyed about this, rightly so, and he wrote Howard a memo, and in retrospect made the mistake of copying Les Payette the managing editor and Les Payette was a guy who had no problem firing people especially if he woke up on the wrong side of bed and he fired two people that day and one of them was Howard

because he read the the uh the memo the memo yeah and there was you know all kinds of great unhappiness still funny how these themes we know kind of intertwine. And Steve, who was sort of the innocent party to all this, when the dust was settled, there were negotiations with Howard and management, and they wound up saying, I don't know if any money changed hands. Howard hadn't been there very long.

But they were going to give him a really nice reference. And of course, Steve had to write it, even though he wasn't the guy who fired him. That's sort of how I remember that one going. Some fun bonus story there. Okay, great. Well, the other Calgary story I remember is, this actually happened a year or two after I left

and came back to Toronto. The Calgary Flames were playing the Vancouver Canucks in a playoff series, and it went, I believe, the full seven games. And at that time, Al Coates was the PR guy for the Calgary Flames. He was their first PR guy in Calgary. And so we all knew Al quite well.

And as a few years went by, I think Al was losing patience with some of the writers. He thought they were a little biased against the Flames, so this kind of played into it too. And they were playing, I believe, game five in Calgary. And if Calgary won, the series was over. If they lost, the series would go back to Vancouver.

One of the guys covering the game, a married guy, happened to have a friend in Vancouver. And if the Flames lost, he got to go back to Vancouver and spend some time with his friend, in quotation marks, at company expense. Special friend. So, the very close game, and I'm not sure if it got to overtime or it was very late in the third period, it was tied, and Vancouver scored to win.

Well, this guy couldn't help himself. He gave it the full fist pump and you know totally broke the no cheering in the press box rule and going yeah well al coates happened to be standing behind him when he's doing this and al just went ballistic i knew you guys were biased against us i know you hated us. Oh, that's funny. Oh, yeah. So nobody would say to Al, like, they didn't want to blab around that this guy was just going to see his mistress. But years later, it wasn't all that long ago either,

I ran into Al in Toronto. Al later became a general manager. He was GM of the Flames for a while, and I think for the Anaheim Ducks, if I recall. But I ran into Al in Toronto at the press box there, and I happened to think of that story, and I said, you probably don't remember this. And I told him. That's great. Yeah.

That's great. He was kind of flabbergasted about that one. That's fantastic. Oh, let's see. I was working in Toronto by this time. And one thing about being a sports writer, if you do cover big events, you end up with a lot of what you call brushes with greatness.

Like you ride in elevators with somebody famous, right? And that sort of happens a lot. And happen to be in uh edmonton and this is when i was working for the globe and i'm pretty sure i was there to cover um must have been it wasn't a great i'm pretty sure i was there to cover the leafs happened to be there right around Grey Cup time. Because there was a lot of, you know, coming and going. And it also happened to be a, oh God, I got to look up, I'm terrible sometimes with, oh yeah, Van Halen. Van Halen concert. And so I get on an elevator,

and at that time in downtown Edmonton, there were like two really good hotels. One of them was the Westin's. The hockey people always stayed at the Westin. I get on this elevator, and I, of course, gave up pop culture in 1982. So I, you know. You're still in the Van Halen area.

I'm vaguely aware of Van Halen. But so we're riding up and this is a pretty tall, it's like 40 or 50 floors, this hotel. And it suddenly dawns on me, this is the entire band with a few of their hangers on. And yeah, and this is when David Lee Roth was still there. I was going to say, is this the David Lee Roth era? Because I eventually recognized him because he was such a notorious media guy and so i guess and it was eddie van halen and whoever else was in the band yeah i'd only know those two guys and uh yeah they got off the

elevator and a couple of their hangers-on i guess some people might call them groupies started viciously gossiping next to me i'm just thinking just thinking, what the hell? But I must admit, it wasn't until I went and looked at my computer or something, I figured out who the hell they were. Wow. And on the same elevator, same bank elevator, same hotel, and this was, I forget if it was the same Grey Cup time or another time, I got on a hotel, me and Terry Jones, who was a very well-known sports columnist.

He wrote the book I loved as a six-year-old, The Great Gretzky. The Gretzky book, yeah. So he was really well-known out west. And so we get on the elevator and the next floor on gets Bobby Kurtola. Now, you were probably way too young to know him. See, I know the name,

but this is nothing in my life that I remember from Bobby Kurtola. He's Canadian, but he was a really big pop star in the 60s. I think when he passed away, I went retroactively because he passed away, right? You know what? I think he did a couple years ago. And I think when he died, I went back and listened to some of his

hits from, I think, the 50s, I guess? More in the early 60s, mid-60s were his heyday. He was kind of a real poppy sort of singer. I remember the one hit out of his I remember is the girl who sits three rows over and two seats down, and he had a secret crush on her. He wasn't a real hard rocker, but then he created, you know,

because then that sort of music faded away, and he created a second career for himself as sort of a lounge singer in Las Vegas. Okay. Apparently. But the CFL would bring him in as a sort of celebrity. But what blew me away when he got on the elevator was that he recognized Terry Jones. Oh, yeah. Because he was a Western guy himself.

Right. And he said, Terry Jones. And then he got off and I said to jonesy man jonesy you're bigger than i thought jonesy's literally big his nickname's large who is so david lee roth is a big i mean especially back then uh this is a big deal van halen was like the biggest rock band on the planet for a period of time like 1984 around there but my question is who's the most famous person outside of uh athletes who's the most famous person outside of uh athletes who's the most famous person you've ever met do you have an answer to that because i could ask

because my only okay to preface it my teenage daughter uh got to meet and chat with will smith and now whenever this contest happens she wins because we can't top will smith in terms of like global fame and my answers are much i'm always like oh david schultz like you know oh good lord you poor guy i'm like does ron mcclain is he famous or strombo well i mean probably don cherry is the most you know famous person of my acquaintance like i i know him and you know yeah he's a big deal in this country but uh outside of that oh god like any like a musician like did you bump into br Bruce Springsteen at some point? Well, I rode in an elevator, again the elevator, an all-star game with Sheryl Crow.

That's a big star. Because she played, when the all-star game was in Florida, she did a concert between periods, and I think she did either post or pre-game show. But I remember Mike Brophy, who at that time was writing for the Hockey News, and he's far more outgoing than I am. It was one of these big freight elevators

they use in arenas. There's a whole bunch of people crowded on there. And Brophy walked right over to her and said, Mike Brophy from the Hockey News. Good to meet you, Cheryl. And I'm just cringing because I wouldn't dream of doing something like that. Well, that's a big star.

I think that's a big one. Oh, I sat next to Tommy Hunter on a plane ride from Calgary to Toronto. And who else? William Shatner. That's a globally famous icon. Yeah, New York to Toronto. And the only thing I thought at the time was, man, that guy's guts are even bigger than mine. He's still going, man, that guy.

He's in his mid-80s, right? He's amazing at reinventing himself. And on the same flight, it was almost a shuttle flight between LaGuardia and Toronto, Mordecai Rickler was on. Big famous guy too. Those are big names. Steve Simmons, I think he may have told you this story

when he was on here once at a game in Montreal. Rickler had a regular press pass to all the Habs games for some reason. And Simmons, when he was a rookie, we were working in Calgary, wound up sitting next to him. And he told me when he got home, he says, Jesus, he was the most friendly guy I ever met. I don't think he shared that story. That's a good one, though.

Good stuff. Okay, we're rock and rolling here. Let me see. Well, there's the, I mentioned Shakey Hunt. Yeah. And this, I've even written a couple of times. Shakey became famous in CFL circles. Well, he was always famous in CFL circles because he loved the CFL,

but he established the tradition of the sex question at the gray cup. Right. There was a few days before the gray cup, both head coaches would, would have a press conference and everybody would show up and shaky. And I forget why it started probably because one year, some guys from one team or another got caught out on the town or whatever. And then Shakey, out of the blue one year, asked both coaches, where do you stand? Are you okay with your players having sex before the game. And he used to get huge, you know, funny responses

and other straight-laced coaches would just, oh. But this was my own personal experience with the sex question. This was a sort of sidebar to that. This was at the 1988 Grey Cup and it was in Ottawa. I believe it was the first time Cup, and it was in Ottawa. I believe it was the first time they held the Grey Cup in Ottawa, and BC was playing Winnipeg. And a guy named Joe Gallat was the general manager of the BC Lions, a real funny guy, a bit of a character.

But his head coach was a guy named Larry Donovan, who was as straight-laced as they come, you know. It was painful trying to interview the guy. And so he was a big flop when it came to asking the sex question. And he just mumbled something about, you know, my players are adults and whatever. I expect them to govern themselves accordingly. adults and whatever you like them to you know govern themselves accordingly so the next day was a morning press conference and sitting at our table was joe galat who was a bit of a cut up

kind of a card and uh shaky's giving him royal shit because he says you're such an interesting funny guy you get the most boring coach in the entire world. And Galat says to him, well, no, Shakey, honest. He is actually an interesting guy. And you know what? He says, his wife teaches sex education. And Shakey starts laughing. And then Galat throws in another punchline.

He says, and she wears garters. And this Shakey's almost on the floor and he says i'm gonna write this and you could just see galat's face oh my god and so the next day in all the sun papers so it was in the ottawa sun um he is this column about larry donovan was the coach's name and he said well he's you know and then he says I'm told he's not a boring guy. And his wife teaches sex education and wears garters. And then Shakey, of course, says, instead of saying a sores, he says, this information comes from his general manager, Joe Galat. And he says, and don't ask me how he knows the state of Mrs. Donovan's undergarments.

So this caused a big stir. Mrs. Donovan's undergarments. So this caused a big stir. And then on the flight home, we are standing in the line for security. Even in 1988, they had security where you, there was a sort of metal detector we walked through. And right behind us is Joe Gillette and his wife and Larry Donovan and his wife.

And I am just all, I'm just, I can't contain my giggles. And Galat is just kind of looking at Shakey and Galat's wife looks at Shakey and says, you are a bad man. And then just then, uh, Mrs. Donovan went into the washroom just as we were about to walk through the, the, uh, walk through the machine, the detector. And I said to Shakey, guess what, Shakey? She's gone to take off her garters. She doesn't want to set off the machine.

And, of course, Shakey starts roaring. And the Donovans completely ignored us. It was as if we didn't exist. But that was why Shakey was always one of my favorite people. No, that's a great Shakey story. And I understand that to this day, that question still gets asked in honour. It fell after Shakey passed or stopped. I think shortly before he died, he had gone to 50 consecutive Grey Cups and he missed.

So in his honour, yeah, it still gets asked today. Usually by the most senior reporter. It's, I think, been asked for the last, how many years, 10, 15, by Terry Jones. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, and some guys give really good answers. Well, now you can anticipate it and prepare your reply.

And, okay, I won't, let me see what else i got here um oh yeah this i said i was out of uh calgary story this is a fairly short one it was my first time i met pat quinn so this was the same season i got through the guy smoking the joint in a limo with the president. And then we moved on to the hockey season. And the Flames had a really good year, their first year in Calgary. They wound up going to the Stanley Cup semifinals after all those years as the Atlanta Flame bowing out in the first round. Somebody said later they were too bloody scared to lose because they had so many fans. They'd never seen them before. So this was the first time the philadelphia flyers came to

toronto and at that time pat quinn was their coach and i think they had just been to the cup final the year before and lost to uh either ebbin to the islanders i forget and uh that islanders was the islanders i think there was a crucial game there lost on a missed offside and that's why quinn hated referees he'd never he wasn't a guy who forgave easily and uh the linesman blew an offside call it cost him a crucial goal and he ever since hated referees he would just see them about them but anyway uh so he was this big intimidating guy and there was me Steve Simmons and Eric DeHatchek rookie babes in the woods hockey writers and Philly lost late which often happened against the Flames they were the kind of team that could

sleep through the first two periods and then they had so much talent they'd just crank it up and score five you know and this is one of those kind of games so we go up sort of tiptoe up to Pat Quinn and he's giving us the fisheye, like, you know, this is the last thing he wants to do. So I'm sitting there thinking, do you remember Dave Schultz? Of course, the hammer. Yeah, he wasn't playing. Your namesake. Yeah, my namesake. And in those days, yeah, he was very famous as the toughest goon on the Flyers. But I think he was a year or two gone from the flyers by then but just to break the ice because it was sort of uncomfortable with this guy glaring

down at you and he was taller than all of us i introduced myself i said hi i'm david schultz and he's sort of looking at me like are you trying to pull my leg and so i'd break the ice i said yeah i got a little shorter since I retired. And he didn't even crack a smile. He goes, yeah, you're fatter too. So these other two clowns would break up with that one. He proceeded with the interview. Was there ever any, did anyone ever hear you on the radio

and think you were Dave the Hammer Schultz? Like, was there any mistaken identity like that? I got the nickname Hammer, yeah. And that was out in Calgary, by the way. One thing that did happen was that Dave Schultz, shortly around that time or a year or two later, retired and wrote a book with Stan Fischler about how much he actually hated fighting.

And, you know, he was sorry he had to do it. But, you know, so he's on the book tour and comes to Calgary. And my boss thinks this would be real funny to have Dave Schultz interview Dave Schultz. And he's right. And, yeah. Except that when I introduced myself to Dave Schultz, I might as well have said I was Bob Smith. There was no reaction, whatever.

Do you think, oh, yeah, you think he thought you were goofing on him? Like that would be like a joke? No, I don't think so. It just didn't seem to twig on him. I just was like, oh, yeah, okay. He was nervous. So what? I had, okay, so frequent guests, not in the five-timers club like you,

but Mike Richards comes on. He's close. I think he might be at four. But I always wondered, Mike Richards shares a name with a longtime NHL star, Mike Richards. It makes you very difficult, and they spell it the same way, very difficult to Google Mike Richards, the radio guy. Because you Google Mike Richards hockey or whatever, you're not getting anything about the radio guy. Right.

But if you know how to spell my name, the other Dave Schultz never comes up. That's right. You get a completely different spelling. I did cross paths with him sort of years later when they had the outdoor game at Fenway Park. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Philly was the team playing the Bruins and he, oh, there was always an alumni game.

So they had a, what they call the media day skate at Fenway Park. And because it was Fenway Park, we all brought our skates, right? Because this is a skate you didn't want to miss. And because it was Fenway park, we all brought our skates, right? Cause this is a skate you didn't want to miss. And so we're skating around and Dave Schultz is skating around and it was very clear.

He had not been on skates in like decades. Wow. So I skated over to the Gary Mahar, who was sort of the head of NHL PR and said, you know who the second best Dave Schultz on skates is today, don't you? Yeah, that guy. I didn't go over and say it to Dave Schultz himself.

No, very good. I also crossed paths with Van Halen later when I was working. A second time? By this time, yeah. There was actually, this may have happened before, because I was working on the desk at the Globe and Mail, and our old office at Spadina in front was basically a dungeon. I'll never forget the first day I went in there.

There were no windows. It was dark and dingy. And I had been working at the Toronto Sun, which is next door to where we are now, oddly enough. They're long gone. They're up at the post building. Yeah, they moved in. That was, at the time, a brand new building

with lots of windows and light. And I go into this dingy little hole, and you can barely see. And I'm thinking, oh, my God. But because our newsroom was so decrepit and run down, these guys were making a TV movie, and they needed a sleazy tabloid newsroom. So, of course, they picked ours.

And they were going to film around us while we were working putting out the paper. At that time, I was on the desk. I hadn't gone back to reporting. And the movie starred Valerie Bertinelli as a mother whose child was kidnapped or something, and she was this reporter for this tabloid, was helping her try and solve this case for some reason. So they spent two nights filming in our newsroom while we were working, and on one of the nights, we're sitting there, and I look over, and there's Eddie Van Halen leaning against the wall,

watching the... I didn't bother going over and saying, hey, remember me from the elevator? Eddie Van Halen, that's amazing. By then, I think I was fairly well aware of who they were. Big time star, big time star. Although they've broken up, so Valerie's, I don't know if she's available, I have no idea, but she's no longer with Eddie Van Halen

I really don't know you got to catch up on your TMZ stuff oh and you're going to give me by the way give me a heads up before it's your last story okay what let me see here's oh here's one

when I was early on covering the Phoenix C coyotes which became an on and off saga for me over a number of years and this was early on uh their first go around when a fellow named richard burke he bought the team from uh what was it barry shanker on winnipeg and he's he and his partner whose name i forget who later out, they are the ones who moved the team from Winnipeg to Phoenix. And he was now then, he couldn't get an arena deal fast enough for him in Phoenix. And so he didn't want to keep funding the losses. And so he sold, it was in the process of selling the team to Steve Ellman,

who was the guy who started that whole bankruptcy saga because Ellman himself had less money than Richard Burke, who had said to me in this. So I was doing this big takeout on this whole thing. Cause Gretzky was getting involved and I went down to Phoenix and one of the guys I made an appointment with to talk to was Richard Burke. And that's when, actually in one sense, that was a real eye opening, got me started on

that whole reporting sports business thing. Because one of the things he said to me was, you have to be a billionaire nowadays to own a hockey team because you have to be able to fund your own arena if you're not going to get anything going with the town. Because what Elman ended up doing, of course course was cutting a deal with those hillbillies out in glendale right where none of the hockey fans live but he got a free arena and then just you know the team's struggled ever since but burke said to me these you know what you need to be as a billionaire build your own rink you get all the money and you're fine he said i'm worth 300 billion dollars300 billion, he said to me, and I can't afford it. He says, I have no idea how this guy Elman's going to do it. But he basically was, I want to be rid of this thing. So I'll probably sell it to

him. And this interview is going on at the Ritz Carlton in Scottsdale. Very, very, you know, in you know, Scottsdale is the wealthy part of our community next to Phoenix and this is the ritziest hotel the Leafs used to stay there during the Pat Quinn era he always picked really good hotels and so we're in this really fancy lounge and it's the middle of the day it's the afternoon and as he's talking to me I'm looking around the room and I notice and after a while it twigs to me, wait a minute. This room is full of gorgeous women in like their 20s and a bunch of old men.

Like senior citizens, octogenarians, you know, like they would be their great grandfathers. And I'm looking around me and there's coming and going. These women are going out the door with one of these old guys and then after a while they're back. And I'm just, after a while, sort of figured out what was going on. And at the end of the interview, Burke laughs and says to me, I assume you saw what was going on around here. And he says, if you got the cash, you could probably rent one of these young ladies.

If you got $500 or $1,000. And I said, oh, geez, no, it's a little rich for me. And then as I walk out the door, in coming through the main entrance is a group of, you know wealthy uh scottsdale moms with their little kids one of those little girls beauty pageants oh yeah yeah yeah of course things that i'm just thinking what a contrast anything that's a conflict i think so it was a valuable interview in more ways than one it was uh yeah oh But you didn't partake. No, I was a little rich for a moment.

That's the second story where you didn't partake. Well, here's one where I sort of involuntarily partook just a little bit. Okay, good. This happened after the very first NHL lockout. This was in 1994. Was it the 94, 95 season? Okay. They lost about, they lost part of the season.

They didn't, you know, lose the whole thing because they settled. And the settlement came in New York and Manhattan manhattan late at night around midnight so we just you know we all had to work like crazy we got the story in and then we're done of course we had to have you know you can't just go to bed after an intense period so we uh we went to a bar oh the whole writing crew and uh scotty morrison and then i scotty who's now at sports net at that time he was at the toronto sun we've been friends for a very long time uh we took a we were staying at the same hotel as sheridan in midtown manhattan and so we we split the cab uh we shared the cab back to the hotel and this is now about four o'clock in the morning. And I wasn't hammered out of my head, but I was, I was feeling, you know, I had a nice buzz going, but I still knew what, you know, what was what.

And so we pull up and I said to Scotty, cause I think he'd gotten the cap to the place. I said, oh, I'll get this cap. And all I had, I had a 20 on me and, and the ride was about like five or six bucks. It wasn't much. And as I'm handing this, I noticed there was a woman had come across the street and was moved over, standing next to the cab. And as I hand this, and the cabbie always got her singles.

So he's counting out like 15 singles. So Scotty gets out of the car next to me. And I noticed him. He said something to this woman or she said something to him. And then he moved on and stood over by the door of the hotel. And I get done, uh, getting these,

uh, I put these 15 singles in my wallet put my wallet in my my uh pocket i get out of the car and this woman it says to me how would you like the best blow job i've ever had and she grabbed me right by the by the dickie bird as as you might say. And I started laughing because I had a little bit of a buzz going. And she was wearing this sort of cape or caftan, you know, that sort of thing. Okay. And as I'm laughing, Scotty yells from over to the door,

check your wallet! Which is a good tip, by way so i go like this and of course the wallet's gone and so i immediately grabbed her by both arms right and then i thought oh she might knife me so i moved my hands down to just below her elbows yeah she couldn't and now we're dancing in a circle like this on the sidewalk and uh as we're doing and i said to her i'm not letting go until my wallet comes out of there well next thing you know she starts shedding one dollar bills and the cabbie by now has gotten out of the car and he's scooping up the one dollar bills oh man the days before the uh in a circle

and there's nobody else around there was she had a she had a guy with her who who was by this time he had been off in the distance and now is coming with the platform what's going on here and i said to her i'm not letting go until my wallet comes out of there and finally the wallet comes out oh you're a lucky man it's man. And I pushed her away so she couldn't stay too close to me and tipped the cabbie handsomely and off I went into the hotel. And Scotty said

to me, you friggin' idiot. I said, well, what did I know? I must admit, it is very distracting when someone does that to you. That's the move. I got a buddy who was in Barcelona and he had won too many and the kind of, the woman of the night,

if you will, they kind of brush against you and kind of put their arm around you and you're totally distracted by it all. And usually it's not until much later that you're like,

oh shit, I don't have my wallet anymore. Like that's the move. Yeah, yeah. Scotty kept his head down. Well, Scotty had the awareness to say check your wallet. Scotty, props to you. We we gotta get Scotty on Toronto Mike

he just sealed his deal Scotty come on this one's a bit long it's not my last one but it's a bit long but is this the penultimate story or no maybe third last

I gotta tell the Simmons. We got another Simmons story. Oh, yeah. We need more Simmons stories. I'll tell that one next. Well, this happened, oh, at the NHL draft in June. I went and looked it up. June of 1999.

It was in Boston. And it was a gorgeous weekend, late June in Boston. It was sunny, you know, just sunny and hot. And so all of the women had their summer clothes on and we were all commenting to each other about how, how wonderful this was and how absolutely beautiful the women in Boston were. And we were doing this at dinner. We had gone to a, you know, the usual post-draft dinner. We went to this old-fashioned Italian restaurant and there was me and Scott Burnside, who at that time was working for the National Post. Damien Cox, who was with the Star. And then there was Christy Blatchford, who was there. I'm pretty sure she was with the Post by that time.

It was 99. And in those days, she would do like Rosie and come cover sports when it suited her. And also sitting at the table was Rosie Domano. Right. Who was then, as now, with the Toronto Star. And so we're talking about this. And one of them, either Blatch or Rosie, said, you should write about this, how gorgeous they were.

And Damien said, no way. This is well before the Me Too movement, but even then, it would be pretty bad form to write a column about how all these gorgeous women were around. Right. And he said to to them you guys could do it but we couldn't and they're sort of going well that's too bad you know men can't you know express their healthy appreciation for the female form and yeah you know well as we're saying this in walks two women and sit not far from us. And one of them was drop-dead gorgeous.

I mean, to this day, I can still remember her. And she was wearing a very tight, white, low-cut top. And she had the build to wear this thing to maximum effect. And I mean, our eyes, just, you know, the old cartoon thing when the eyes come out of the mouth. And our eyes just, you know, the old cartoon thing when the eyes come out of their mouth. And so we very quickly were fascinated and looking. And so they're sort of like, see, see, you guys, you can't even, you know, out loud express this. And it's too bad. And meanwhile, Damien's already said stuff like, yeah, I guess they sent all the ugly girls out of town for the weekend, you know, and stuff like this.

And we're sitting there talking. And this being an old-fashioned restaurant, they had those huge menus, right? And so the waiter had given them their menus, and they're holding them up in front of them, which we didn't like. And then the waiter's taking his time. So I'm sitting there going, where's that waiter? For crying out loud, why doesn't he get over there and take their order? So shortly after this, Rosie says, I'm going to write this.

And we all kind of went, yeah, yeah, okay, sure, write. Now, there is a sort of unwritten rule. Maybe it should be written. A lot of agony would have been avoided. That if you're going to write about a social gathering where you know some pertinent topic was discussed you generally don't use the names of the people like you would say the gentleman from the post or the fellow from the star said right right and certainly this was subject matter that we were you know you know, we had just said to Rosie or Damien certainly had that this is not something we can write or be quoted on.

Right. So I figured, okay, fine. And, you know, I had no doubt Rosie was going to write this like the next day when she got home. And, but I just assumed it'd be like every other column and we'd be identified maybe by our papers, if at all. Right, right. Well, this is, I believe, a Monday morning. The phone rings at home, and it's a friend of mine who works at the Star and says to me, have you seen the paper today?

And I said, no, what are you talking about? Have you seen Rosie's column? And I said, oh, so I said to her, my friend, I said, oh, I guess she did write it. What are you going to do about it? And I said, well, I don't know her, my friend, I said, oh, I guess she did write it. What are you going to do about it? And I said, well, I don't know. I haven't read it yet. Okay. She said, and this is like nine o'clock in the morning.

And I said, oh, okay. And I forget if I, I'm pretty sure it would have been online. And those was 99 was sort of the earlier days of websites, but I believe they all had websites. And I live out in the sticks in Bolton. I didn't want to drive into town and get a paper. So I looked it up online. I'm reading this. And she quoted all of us by name.

Wow. And newspaper. And I'm just going, oh, my God. I probably got off a little better than Damien, who was quoted as saying, I guess they sent all the ugly girls. And, of course, she used my quote about where's the waiter? Why isn't that waiter coming here? And she drew the scene of why I said that.

So I'm reading this. And well, then I showed it to my wife. And that was later. And she laughed it off. Yvonne's pretty good that way. And she just laughed it off. Well, I kid you not, an hour later, the phone rings again. And it's my friend from the Star.

And she says, have you read it? And I said, yeah. What are you going to do about it? And I said, well, I can't say I was misquoted. She says, now she was annoyed at Rosie for using the names, right? If I may, this is, and I don't know the ethics on this. But yeah, she thought Rosie had crossed the line by using our names. This is a great, always wanted this.

I'm not a journalist, as you might have noticed, but like, is there a presumptive off the recordness to colleagues having a dinner like that together? Oh yeah. Every dinner like that is assumed to be off the record. Sort of like what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And if you do want to use something, like you talk to the other person first, right? Or if you are going to use it, you don't use the names unless you got permission.

Well, Rosie didn't do any of that. She just went ahead. Like she did tell us she was going to write it, but we all assumed and you know what happens. But did you ever have dinner with her again? Because you've been burned once, you probably wouldn't repeat that. You know, I still get along with Rosie.

You know, I asked her to come on this show and she just told me that she's strictly a print gal. I think that's how she worded it. Strictly a print gal. Yeah, that sounds like Rosie. And then I thought, have I ever heard her voice on a radio station or whatever in all these years?

If you listen to the Durbano podcast. Oh, she's on that? Rick West had interviewed her because she had a run-in with Durbano. And I think he threatened to kill her, if I'm not right. Rosie's had a few run-ins. She'd be a great guest. She was not a big Durbano fan. Okay, because that's not strictly print then.

I got an example there. So I think my friend at the Star was kind of hoping i'd phone management over there and complain because she was quite angry that you know rosie had done this right i just said no other night i can't say it was misquoted so then later on it turns out i found out just how many people read the freaking toronto star because my daughter especially Especially in 99. Yeah. My daughter had a soccer game in Bolton that night. And I got there, I think because I was working, I didn't go with, I got there a bit late. So all the soccer moms were sitting in the little bleachers. Right.

And as I came walking up, they as one turned and boy, did they give me the stink eye. And one of them, who I thought was my friend, goes, look, it's the Boston Ogler. You know what, as I take in this story though, is that so awful what you did there? Is you objectified a woman? Or are you, because you're just sort of like, you're not, you know, you're just to yourself, you're referring to how attractive she was. Someone did say to me, well, at least your quote was funny.

I know, I was going to say, like, you could have said so much worse. Like, you must have been, like, wiping your brow. I know Damien was very, very angry for, I think, for a long time. Yeah, his is a little, yeah. The way he was cast in the thing. And Scotty Burnside wasn't too pleased either, I don't think.

So then, I'm sorry, I left out one part before I went to the soccer game. Then the phone rings again, and I think it's my friend calling again, like, why aren't you going to, and it's Rosie. And she just goes, I'm sorry. It's easier to apologize after than to ask for permission. I just, I thought about it. I thought it would be extremely hypocritical of me, you know, because we're always wanting people to say what they think.

And it would be extremely hypocritical of me to start screaming about what was off the record. So I just said, you know, I kind of expected that, you know, our names weren't going to be used. Other than that, I said, you know, I really got nothing to complain about. Well, now I'm just thinking of all the stories I have from people when I press stop on the recording, and then suddenly the next 20 minutes I have the most amazing stories.

And it's not done yet. That's why I said this one was long. So that all happens, and and you know it kind of everybody goes back to sleep a year later it i know it was a year because it was almost to the day my mother phones me and it turns out that her one of her really good friends has a daughter who lives up in magnetawan up in northern ontario Her daughter used to babysit me, by the way. But this woman, she had a mail subscription to the Toronto Star. And my mom is telling me that whenever she sees something in the star

that she thinks might interest her mother, she mails it to her. Of course, she saw this column, but somehow it took a year. Then the column got mailed to mom and then she uh sometime after that passed it shared it uh talked it to my mother and my mother says well young man and i said to her mom you should have been there they were spectacular and i have never said anything like that to my mother before or since, but I just couldn't help it. That's when you say, I'm married, but I'm not dead.

There was a long silence. Man, that's great. That's great. Oh, yeah. My 15 minutes of fame in the Toronto Star. Thank you very much. Yeah, back at the late 90s, that traveled far and wide, that Toronto Star. That was a big deal.

Folks in the biz were having a laugh at our expense for quite some time after that. I've got to find out if that's somewhere online. I have to go to maybe the reference library. It's still there. Okay, I'm going to dig that up. It's somewhere online. I have to go to maybe the reference library, the microfilm. No, it's still there. Okay, I'm going to dig that up. It's still there. It would have been June of 1999, if you want to go look it up.

Oh, I will. Google Rosie Damano in June 1999. I'll find that. Yeah, it's there. It is there. A few years after that, this is the Simmons story I was talking about. And in fact, you had one of the central figures

of this story in here, his son, Jeff. Okay. And this stars both of his sons. This is when the Leafs played the San Jose Sharks in the semifinals in 1994. It was late May. And we were, I forget if, I guess the first two games were in Toronto, right?

Because Garpenlov hit the crossbar in overtime, right? Just before the league started. Haunted by that. Oh, yeah. Haunted by that. And so now the series has switched to San Jose. And it's the day before the first of the two games in San Jose. And it's a gorgeous California day.

The sun's out. And, of course, I think we'd had a crappy spring. So everybody, when the work is done, heads to the pool and we were all staying at the Fairmount Hotel, which is a big ritzy hotel in San Jose. And they had a real big pool area and there were Leaf players out there taking in the sun. And then there was us media guys and a few of the Leafs party, like Bill Waters was there. He was assistant GM of the Leafs at the time. And a few other guys like that. And Steve brought his wife, Sheila, and their two boys, Jeff and Mike,

to have a weekend down in, or four or five days down in California. So they're out there as well, only Sheila and the kids are some distance from us. They might have been in the shade. Steve is sitting over where we are. And then shortly after we sat down on this hot, sunny day, two young couples come up, and they're Asian folks. And the two women in question were absolute knockouts. They were just gorgeous.

And they're both wearing string bikinis. And one of them has a tattoo of a cat. This is, I guess, the early days of tattoos, right? A big long tattoo of a cat right from her knee up to her waist along her thigh. And nobody said a word word but everybody knew what we were all just sitting there you know leering for lack of a better word and the boston ogler strength yeah what can i say well at least i had to make sure i had my transition glasses on so we're sitting there doing this and simmons the two his two little guys who were like four or five

years old both of them uh at the time um come over where he is and so we're all sort of sitting there and then one of them i forget which one if it was the older or the younger walks over to this young woman and says can can I touch your cat? Well, you should have seen, nobody again says a word, but the sweat breaks out on all of her hands. And she looks at him. At least he called it a cat. Well, I know. I know.

Yeah. It would have been, I suppose if I didn't want to be quite so truthful, I could have said, yeah, right. That's what he actually said. want to be quite so truthful i could have said yeah yeah right that's what this is what he actually said um well the but then the woman looks at him for a second and then goes okay more sweat pops out and he stands there for like it seemed like forever but it was probably a minute he's touching her yeah i can see that i gotta i got. I've got the five-year-old now, and I can see him doing that. Amazing woman's leg.

And we're just going, and Simmons is sitting there with the biggest shit-eating grin you've ever seen. Like, that's my boy. Take it after the old man. And he's just sort of grinning. And nobody has a grin like Simmons. He likes to look from side to side. He's sort of famous for it. Like, look at me. And so we're just sitting there like Simmons. He likes to look from side to side. He's sort of famous for it. Like, look at me.

And so we're just sitting there like this and then all of a sudden from across the pool deck you hear Steve! Because Sheila had looked up and saw this. Get over here right now! And yeah, that was the end

of that adventure. Oh man, that's great. That's great. So is this one now, that was the end of that adventure. Oh man, that's great. That's great. That's great. So is this one now, this is the final story? No, I guess this will be, let's say this is the second last one. These last two are direct hockey related. The penultimate story.

Okay. And I used to entertain people at dinner for years after telling this story. Because this was in 2000 in the conference final. And it was the year of Mario Lemieux's big comeback from cancer and back troubles. And he played so well. He basically carried. Oh, he caught LaFontaine, if I remember correctly. And didn't Pat LaFontaine have a big lead in the scoring race?

And then Mario started late and caught him, I think. He had a great, I think. He had a great, great year. Unbelievable, yeah. And he played so well. They didn't have that great of a team, but he carried them basically into the conference final where they ran out of gas there. I mean, that's as far as he could have got them.

I think it was the Devils, New Jersey Devils, who beat them. Probably. They were one hell of a team. So we're all down in Pittsburgh for the conference final. And me, being my usual disorganized self, Pittsburgh at that time probably still doesn't have a great selection of hotels, cabs either. Worst city outside of Edmonton for getting a cab I ever saw.

What's Vancouver like? Because I hear they don't have... I've never been to Vancouver that much, but I don't recall it being... Edmonton and Pittsburgh stick out to me as the two worst cities to get a cab in. I have no idea if Uber is in those cities. Oh, maybe that's the problem with Vancouver.

There's no Uber. Oh, that's... Yeah, I always hear the Vancouver people complaining about no Uber. I don't know about Pittsburgh. I haven't been there in a long time. So I couldn't get a room in any of the decent downtown hotels.

I had to wind up at the Green Tree Radisson, which was about halfway from downtown to the Pittsburgh airport. And if you've been to the airport, you know it's like a day's drive, it seems, from downtown. So this, I had a rental car, I guess is how I got it. I had to have one because I guess is how I got it. I had to have one because this hotel was like half an hour away.

So after the first, it was the first off day or the day before the game. So I covered the practice and decided rather than sit in this dingy basement room in the arena, I'm going to go back to my hotel and write. Okay, so I do. And, of course, if you travel a lot, it always seems when you're tired, you've got work to do, and all you want to do is sit in your room, that maid's cart is always outside your door, right? It never fails, at least with me.

So I'm dragging my sorry butt back to my room and now there's the maid's cart oh geez well i step in and then it's sort of odd because your cart is there and the door is only open a little bit and it's dark what the hell so i push the door open and i could see enough to see the room had been made up. And then I'm thinking, where's the maid? And all of a sudden, to my left, I hear a voice. Oh, excuse me. And I turn around, it's the bathroom, which is also dark.

She's sitting on the toilet. Oh, she had to use the washroom. Yes. Well, okay, I thought, all right. Hey, you get caught short, a little tinkle,inkle who cares all right but usually you close the door well yeah yeah and so i thought oh all right so i throw my coat down on the bed and i go over to the uh desk and take out my little laptop and then realize this ain't no little tinkle. She's having the full blown sit me down.

Yeah. Oh yeah. She's paving the Hershey highway, man. How do I know this? Because I, my laptop was this ancient IBM think pad that took a good 10 minutes to boot up. So this thing is slowly booting up the longest bloody 10 minutes of her life. And she's still in there. I'm actually surprised you stayed in the room like you didn't. I was tired.

I wanted to work. It's my frigging room. She's in the bathroom. But then I realized, no, she's not just taking. Oh, my God. And finally she steps up. She goes, oh, I'm sorry, and then leaves. But she kind of said, oh, I'm sorry, like it was no big deal, and off she goes. I think, well, okay, that's a story for the boys.

I think at least she's got to clean up after herself, right? Because that's her whole function. Well, yeah, I mean, because I'm looking around, I think the room's clean. Like, what's the deal? I guess this is her parting shot to me. And you never stayed in that hotel again. I should have called her back and said, hey, you didn't leave the toilet paper folded into a point. Oh, right, right.

What the hell? So, okay, fine. All right. So, we all go out there and I tell the boys a story. And they all go, oh, yeah, okay, funny, funny. That's never happened to me, huh? Yeah, and I go, yeah, it just happens to me. The next day, it's game day.

For some reason, I decided to make the trek back to my room, probably because I wanted to take a nap in the afternoon, even though I'm not much of a napper. I come back after the morning skate, roughly the same time of day. There's the bloody maid's cart. Oh, jeez. I walk in the door, the same maid. Really?

She is sitting on my bed. Okay, your bed. Not in bed, sitting on my bed, and not for the reason you think. She is watching a movie on my TV. Oh, wow. A pay movie. Oh, my goodness.

This is the worst hotel maid ever. Yeah, and she's looking at me like I'm the party pooper. I'm the jerk, and I've interrupted her break. And you were going to pay for that, right? I've just gone, oh, no. There's no bloody way I can look at the frigging minibar. Who knows? You got the world's worst hotel maid.

Oh, yeah, that was day two of the maid. Oh, I just, oh, Jesus. I was wondering where that story was going to go. No, that was an eventful trip. A day or two later, when the penguins, I think they might have got swept. So after the series is over, they got eliminated on an afternoon game. I know that much.

Because we went to this restaurant downtown for dinner after we were done working. And as we're waiting to get seated, who's in the corner booth with the large party but Mario Lemieux and uh i couldn't resist i'm standing there and of course my wife and family will always tell you voice is so loud and you don't know how to be quiet so i said to our group oh look there's mario that's the first time all series i've seen him in the corner see he didn't hear me i don't think but a couple people in his party did and

yeah i got the same look from them as i got from the maid i was gonna say if this is an oh henry story well he's there eating with the maid right yeah i know the maid came over and took his order yeah that's great that's okay that's the penultimate. I have to ask her if she washed her hands. Oh, oh man. Okay. Is this the final story? This,

to your great relief will be the final story. I can't wait to hear, uh, I can't wait to hear gear. Joyce's review of these stories. These are great. This was a few years earlier, uh,

than the, uh, penguin story. This was the 1997. And I even got the date. It was May 4th, 1997. It was in Detroit at Joe Lewis Arena, and I believe it was another conference final. It was the Anaheim Ducks.

I think it was the first time they'd gone that far in the playoffs, and Ron Wilson was their coach at that time. I remember this series, right? There's an upset in this series? Yeah, and it was the Red Wings. And this game went to triple overtime. And of course, you know, pissed off all the writers

because it meant we're going to miss last call. Right. And so, and of course, you know, writing stuff, you know, overtime games is overtime games can be a killer. So I'm at the Joe, and I'm sitting between, one side of me is Kevin Allen from USA Today, and on the other is Robin Norwood, who I think at that time was working for the Orange County Register.

She might have been with the LA Times. She worked for both places, but she's on the other side. And this is in the second overtime intermission. So it's been a long night. And I don't know, have you ever been to Joe Lowe's arena? No. Well, the press box there was an afterthought. In fact, when they opened the arena and gave the media the tour,

it turned out they didn't have a press box and only realized that when Joe Falls, who at that time was a famous detroit columnist said oh wow uh group given the tour of the red wings where's the press box that's a rather uh enormous oversight yeah so what they did was jam it above one of the more middle sections so it was in this narrow little thing and they had to build it up over top of the last row in the section you had to sit on these big high stools and it was very narrow as narrow as the one at the uh what do they call it now scotia bank arena and which was also an afterthought because originally that was going to be a basketball building right and so it was a

really uncomfortable place to work and you were sitting about five feet above the last row of the fans. Like if you were a nasty person, you could have dropped stuff on them, but they were right there in front of you. And so at the end, in this second intermission, by now it's like, it's well after one in the morning. I was really late. And that section sort of cleared out probably because everybody is going down to see if there's any beer left, I guess.

Except right in that last row in front of the three of us, there's a couple was sitting there. And at first, we didn't really notice anything going on. And then there was a sort of murmur went through the rest of the crowd. You know, what's going on? And I looked down, and all you could see was a guy sitting there, and he had a blue windbreaker over top, while this woman was underneath the windbreaker in his lap.

At least her head was. And suddenly we figured out what was going on, and I think, wait a minute, they don't even have like a big blanket. It's just this little windbreaker. At least they had the windbreaker. And the crowd has figured out what's going on, and they're starting to murmur and cheer. And then, of course course and we're speechless we're just this is happening three feet in front of us yeah you know and uh

like at our feet and all of a sudden this blue windbreaker which had been bobbing up and down, sort of flips over and this woman sits up and then looks around and realizes all these people are looking at her. Except in her immediate section, it was all empty seats. Like they were clearly the center of attention. And she's trying to act all embarrassed and like, oh, you know, you caught me. And I'm just thinking, how the hell would you act embarrassed about, you know, what you've just been doing?

And by this time, of course, security is advancing on them. Right. The crowd starts chanting, let them stay, let them stay. Let them finish. Well done. And so, no, the security gets up, and they didn't resist. They're walking out surrounded by security, and the guy is taking bows. She's got her head down.

He has got his arms up to the ground. Yeah, he thinks he's king of the world. He thinks he's wonderful. And I turned to my two seatmates and said, I don't know, but that guy gets my vote for salesman of the year. See, if these are the stories we're getting on your fifth visit, your sixth visit, which will be a year and a day after your

final day at the Globe, they're going to be completely X-rated. You're going to ask me to block your wife from listening to that episode. Well, I told my wife there's going to be a couple stories I probably haven't told yet, but I'm pretty sure I told her that Well, I told my wife, there's going to be a couple stories I probably haven't told you, but I'm pretty sure I told her that one, I think. It's been a long time.

That's 22 years ago, but yeah. You'll never forget this. That's great. And again, congrats on getting the year to not work. Oh, thank you very much. To work in my yard, do manual labor now. That's what lies ahead of me when I leave here. Me and the shovel.

Well, no, if you ever need any help, let me know. I think that's a long bike ride to Bolton. I'll have to map it out, but I could do it, I think. I think I could do it. I've got about two tons of building materials on a trailer that need unloading. You want to come up? Well, we'll work something out. Schultz, always a pleasure.

Thanks for making the drive from Bolton. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Welcome to the Five Timers Club. I've got to find out who's in this club. It can't be very big. You're in it, so congrats. About as big as that club at Joe Lewis Arena. And that brings us to the end of our 474th show.

You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike and Mr. Schultz, you are at D Schultz. That is correct. And that's S-H-O-A-L-T-S. I may not be tweeting as frequently as I used to. Oh, you're a good tweeter. I like the sarcastic, sardonic wit thing

you've got going on on Twitter. Yes, but the spirit has to move me. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how bored you get in retirement here. Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptor's Devotee. God, let's win tonight.

That's 9 p.m. tonight. I can't wait. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time WJR. Sticker U is at Sticker U. And Capadia LLP CPAs are at Capadia LLP. See you all next week. 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 Oh, you know that's true because everything is coming up Rosy and gray yeah the wind is cold but the smell of snow won't stay today and your smile is fine and it's just like mine