Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Steve Simmons: Toronto Mike'd #170

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

Mike chats with Toronto Sun columnist Steve Simmons about his years at the Sun, his relationships with Damien Cox, David Shoalts and James Mirtle, his thoughts on analytics in hockey, his Phil Kessel story about hot dogs, how he got Howard Berger fired and what it was like being a day oner at The Fan 590, The Team 1050 and The Score.

Welcome to episode 170 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. I'm Mike from torontomic.com and joining me this week is Toronto Sun journalist Steve Simmons. Welcome, Steve. Nice to be here. I have a brother named Steve. Very good. There's a lot of people around my age that name.

I don't know how many there are anymore. Well, there's a lot of guys my age named Mike, but that name seems to have fallen out of favor. I've got one of those too. Yeah. Now, your son was born in the 80s? I have one born in 87 and one born in 90. Okay, yeah.

That was still the heyday for Mike. I've noticed it's fallen out of favor now. But in the 70s, every second boy was named Michael. Every second boy. So, thank you. You're coming straight from the Raptors practice, right? So, I'm thinking, like, what a difference that fourth quarter, like in terms of even like I envision like scribes have written their pieces and their editorials and their articles about the Raptors game, maybe the season. And then this fourth quarter yesterday kind of they had to throw everything out and start again.

Well, the beauty of last night was it was a six o'clock start. So you didn't have to write anything. That's right. So we actually could wait until the end. start so you didn't have to write anything. That's right. So we actually could wait until the end. Late in the third quarter, I wrote like two paragraphs that I thought I'm going to

lead my column with. And then in the fourth quarter, I just hit delete and they disappeared. And it's a weird sport, basketball. Like all of a sudden, it's going one way and then bang. Ebbs and flows, they say. Yeah, but usually there was no ebb and flow.

It was all one way. And then the Raptors trailed at the end of one and they trailed at the end of two and they trailed at the end of three. And then Paul George went to the bench and it was like, light goes off and the Raptors outscored them 19 to one. It was 21 to two to start the quarter. That's insane. Yeah, I think the score in the fourth quarter ended up being 25-9, I think.

So what was it like at practice today? What's it like there? It's a weird thing to cover the NBA because you don't get to watch practice. You get to go in at the end when they're just about finished. So they open the door. The Raptors have a great new facility on the X grounds. And they have a room where you sit and sort of do your work. And then they say, okay, the gym's open.

And by then, virtually every player of consequence is gone. And Bruno is playing one-on-one with Bebe or somebody over there. And what they're doing at playoff time is they have an interview room where they bring in players to a podium. And so today they brought in three players and a coach, I think, and that's who you get to interview. And if you want, you can kind of sneak back and hopefully find someone else who might not have been involved. But that's kind of how it works.

It's very controlled, and the whole NBA kind of works that way. I heard some people on, I guess, Twitter and stuff are talking about, you know, yesterday's fourth quarter, they're comparing it to the bat flip. Now, I don't want to get crazy and say nothing. I don't think it's a bat flip because it was a very different circumstance. But if we end up winning our first ever best of seven series, and it's possible now, that fourth quarter, it's going to be like that. I don't know what Dwayne Casey said at the end of the third quarter yesterday.

I would love... Did you find out anybody's spilling those beans? Well, it didn't sound like he said anything you could print in his words. And he said he was glad TNT turned the mics off. But I think more than anything, it was Paul George was on the bench. And when Paul George was on the bench in game five, the Raptors outscored Indiana 19 to one. So I think what you're going to see in game six is you're going to see Paul George on the floor, whether he's alive or breathing or whatever,

because you know, they're up against it. And the whole team just, just fell apart without him. And the Raptors caught momentum and basketball is a funny thing. I don't even equate to me. You can't equate it to the bat flip. They're just not. I'm with you. I'm with you. They were different kinds of emotion, different kinds of unexpected activities,

and if you're in the building yesterday, and I'm getting texts from friends while the game's going on, and they are just bitching. Like, everybody, I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe they're playing this badly at home, blah, blah, blah,

all that going on. And then, you know, at the end, wow. Like, I'm getting the wow text. Yeah, and it's like, where did that come from, right? Like, it just, I mean, even to the very end, they almost tied it up, I guess, with the three at the last moment. But just crazy. So I wanted to find out what the buzz was like at Raptor practice,

but I want to tell you right off the bat that this is a personal pleasure to be sitting here with you because I've been a sports fan, well, forever. And when I look back at sort of the late 80s and 90s and reading about sports in this city, there's two guys that always jump into top of my head, okay? One guy is Steve Simmons and the other guy is Damian Cox. And I've had Damian Cox on this podcast, so it's a personal pleasure that I get to have Steve Simmons. It's very nice of you to say. I mean, I guess what happens when you're around

as long as I've been around, at the end, you know, everyone gets sort of, either they hate you or they appreciate you. And there's no seemingly middle ground on all that. Well, we're going to get to that

because you're right. There's no middle ground with Steve Simmons, I find. Like, we're going to get to that. But question. So my family was a Toronto Star family. So that was what arrived every morning. So I read a lot of Toronto Star.

But every time I got access to a Sun, I went straight to that sports section. I always loved, growing up, I always loved the Sun sports section. Well, it's funny because at one time, the Star had a very vibrant sports section. The Globe and Mail had a vibrant sports section. The Sun had a vibrant sports section. And as the newspaper business has changed dramatically, the Globe and Mail has kind of tailed off into

where sports isn't very important to their product. And the Star has cut way back in terms of what they do. And I think the quality of work at times that they do, although their high-end guys are pretty good. And we've gone the other way. And I don't think a lot of people necessarily know that because we don't do a great job of telling people.

But in an industry that's shrinking with sports coverage all across North America, we're going the other way. We're increasing our coverage. We're increasing the number of pages we do. I don't think people do know that. I think people assume it's shrinking. And I think Bill Pearsar Sports, nobody knows his name,

really is to credit for all of this. But we're doing 24 to 28 pages every single day. And I'll give you an example. We're going on the road with the Raptors tomorrow with three reporters, two reporters and myself. Yeah, that's unheard of today. And I presume everyone else is either doing one or two. It's just the way we approach things. We did it with baseball.

We had more people at Blue Jay playoffs than everyone else. We have more people at the Stanley Cup or the Grey Cup than anyone else or at the Olympics for the most part. And I think, you know, I wish we did a better job of telling people the scope. And it's not just that we cover the Toronto teams because, right, I'll give you an example. There was no Toronto Star coverage of the first round of the Stanley cup playoffs. There was no, um,

very much coverage in the other Toronto papers. We had, we had reporters at four different series. Um, and again, we're a chain now, so we can do that. And it's cost efficient that way. But nonetheless, that's, that's a lot better to have people there who are bringing you sort of the live action as opposed to getting wire copy. Oh, for sure. For sure. Schultzy is your buddy, right?

Dave Schultz? Yes. Is he as good a stand-up comic as he tells me he is? I've only seen him once. Okay. And I saw him in his debut. And I can tell you before seeing him, he's one of the funnier people I know. And I love him to death.

before seeing him. He's one of the funnier people I know, and I love him to death. But we went, and it was the night of the Second City. People who took the Second City comics course were graduating. So I think there was nine of them. And of the nine,

at least at our table, he was by far the funniest. Okay. And three or four of them were either too nervous or just not ready. A couple of them were okay. And it was kind of a mixed bag.

But what he reminded me of, and I've done this so many times with him that it just felt comfortable for me, is it reminded me of him sitting in a bar with a couple of beers in front of him and telling stories. And he's very good at it. He's very funny at it. Yeah, I was lucky enough to have him here for episode 150 and he told that story of the stand-up and that's when he mentioned you were there and I said, I guess Schulze and Simmons are pretty tight

that you're at his debut performance. We're in each other's weddings. I'm married 30 years. He stood for me. We lived together in Calgary. When I covered the Flames from 80 to 87, he was my backup for a number of those years before leaving for Toronto.

So we go way back to the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sundays. Yeah. I want to hear about these Calgary days, but first I'm going to tell you that the beer in front of you, I don't know if you're a beer guy. Do you drink beer? I don't anymore. But maybe you have a child who drinks beer or a friend who drinks beer or a neighbor. You're taking that home with you. My wife drinks beer. Your wife, right? There you go.

She's a Maritimer. Of course she drinks beer. That's right. Not just the Screech, right? Is that what the Maritimers drink? Screech? But this beer, you're taking it home with you. That's from Great Lakes Brewery and they're a local craft brewery and they're good people and they want you to enjoy. So you're taking that with you. Anyone listening who wants to crowdfund Toronto Mic to this podcast, it's patreon.com slash torontomic, but it's easier to just go to torontomic.com and click the orange Become a Patron button. That's just easier.

Go there, click. Even a dollar a month, if you can afford a dollar a month, please do, because it helps keep this thing going. And these nice mics and swing boom arms, professional quality almost, right? You've been in a lot of professional studios. I've been in a lot of studios where the mics didn't look this good,

including big media organizations where usually they look broken. There you go. These ones aren't even broken yet. So, yeah. And let's go out West. We're going out West where we belong. So you were working, I got a Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun. Tell me about like how, how it began for you at West in Calgary. I was working, I was going to school at Western and I was working part-time for the London Free Press. And then I wound up in a summer program at the London Free Press. And at the end of the summer, my employment was up, like a lot of summer students. And I went to pack up my

stuff as September was coming. And the sports editor really wanted to hire me, but he had no opening. And he said, you know what? I'm going to find you a job. And I didn't believe him, frankly. So I packed up and went back to Toronto and went back to my parents place and tried to see if I could find a job in Toronto and wasn't having any luck and like all people at the time sending out a million resumes and hoping that somebody answers and I had applied to the Winnipeg Free Press and the Winnipeg Free Press sports editor happened to be friends with the Calgary Herald sports editor and the Calgary Herald sports editor was looking for a young guy and said, do you know anybody? And he said, I had this one resume. It looks pretty good. Why don't you give him a call? And the guy gave me a call over the phone and hired me over there. I'd never met him. I'd never even applied to Calgary.

I had no intention of going there. It just came out of the blue almost. And he said, we need you in three days. And I was on a plane within three days and they put me up in a hotel. And all of a sudden I was somewhere I'd never been before and starting kind of a new adventure. And it was, honestly, it was the best thing I possibly could have done.

Correct me if I'm wrong, like I'm trying to remember this convo with David Schultz, but is Howard Berger in Calgary at this? Is he in the Calgary scene at this time? He came in about a year or so later. First off, when I got to Calgary, the Flames had not yet moved. And I'm working for the Calgary Herald.

I'm covering the Alberta Junior Hockey League, which is tier two. It's not even the top rung of junior hockey. It's like the second rung of junior hockey. And I'm covering the Calgary Canucks team that Mike Vernon is the star of. The best player in the league at the time is Prince Sutter, playing for Red Deer.

And I go to the Alberta Junior Hockey League annual banquet. And a real estate agent, who happened to be the referee-in-chief of the AJHL at the time, comes up and says, I've got something for you. And I said, what? He said, I got a call today from Cliff Fletcher. He wants three houses. One for him, one for Al McNeil, the coach, one for David Poyle, his assistant.

I said, what's this about? He says, flames are moving here. Wow. And there had been rumors. There had been some stuff in the Globe and Mail. There had been a little thing. But here I am, the number 14 guy on a staff of 14, and I've got a story saying the Flames are moving to Calgary.

Wow. And I got a front page across the Bible. This is, for that point in time, was the biggest story of my career. Massive. My career was only about eight months old at the time. And at the time also, the Calgary Sun was about to open.

It had just come to Calgary. There was two papers, but the Calgary-Albertan was about to go out of business, and the Sun came in to take over for the Albertan. So as the Calgary Sun came in to think, I break this story and they want me.

They think, here's this great guy. We're going to hire him and we need some young guys. And so I went to work day one for the new Calgary Sun where Eric DeHatchick, who is a well-known hockey writer for the Globe and Mail and other places over the years, was supposed to be our hockey writer. Well, he had a fight with the boss

about one week into training camp and quit. So all of a sudden, they look at me and say, you're covering the flame. I'm 22 years old. You're covering the flames. And they had to get a backup. So David Schultz was working with me at the Calgary Herald. When I left the Sun, you know,

DeHatchick wound up going from the Sun back to the Herald. Schultz went from the Herald to the Herald. Schultz went from the Herald to the son to become my backup. And he covered the stampeters. So he covered the stamps and I covered the flames and I covered the flames and backed up on the stamps. And here we were, he's a year, I think a year or two older than I am. We're in our 20s. We don't know anything. We're just learning on the job. I mean, that opportunity doesn't exist today. No, timing is, that's fantastic timing.

Here's the funny thing. If you go through that about a five-year period, before I get to the Howie Burgers thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. DeHatchick is covering the Flames. He's in the Hockey Hall of Fame hockey writer now. Schultz is working both Stampeder and Flame Beat. I'm on the Flames Beat.

There's a weatherman in Red Deer who they want to bring in to host Flames local hockey because Jim Van Horn, who was the host, has gone off to work for this brand new thing called TSN

that nobody thought would last. What's it, Sports Network? It's not going to last. So he goes off. They bring in the weatherman from Red Deer. His name? Ron McLean.

That's fantastic. At the same time, there's a guy who retired from the Flames named Bill Clement, whose NHL career had come to an end. He decided he wanted to do television. He went on to become NBC's lead hockey analyst, the Philadelphia Flyers guy for how many years? So out of that small, that little tiny place,

not even one city, so many careers were launched. Very interesting. And John Shannon, who's now on television, but was producing at that time, producing local broadcasts of Flames games. And so all these people who started in that market at the same time have all sort of gone on to reasonably good careers.

You know, that's actually, that's a fantastic little story, like all that emerging. And then at some point, Howard Berger's there. Well, here's the weird thing. My listeners, okay, the listeners of this show

love the Howard Berger stories because they all listen to the fan, you know, throughout the 90s. They all listen to Howard Berger and the fan. They all follow Howard Berger's blog and they all, like, you know, listen to Raiders blog.

And so any Howard Berger story is always appreciated here. Howie's a tremendous guy, by the way, who's unfortunately just fallen upon a difficult time, I think. He came out to write for the Calgary Sun while I was writing for the Calgary Sun. And at the time, we didn't have a sports editor. So the boss came to me and in one of the dumbest moments of my life said, would you like to be the sports editor? Of course, I didn't really want to, but it seemed like he wanted me to. So I think I was 25 at the time. And yeah, I'm the sports editor. You know, we didn't have much paper. We didn't have many people. We didn't

have any budget. We didn't have much of anything. And Howard Berger was the only of a staff of, I don't know, eight or nine. He was the only young guy, I would say, that had gumption and that had real go-getter sort of mentality at the time. And I thought, you know, he's the guy we're going to nourish and he's the guy we're going to build with. What happened was I had assigned him one day to do something, a story on a swimmer. And instead of doing the story on a swimmer, he went to the Stampeders Eskimos football

game and wrote something on that, which wasn't assigned. And I thought, I'm going to take the opportunity here and I'm going to send a memo to him about, you know, when you're given these kinds of assignments, you have to take them seriously. All it was to do was to get him on track. It wasn't to do anything else. But at that time, we were ordered by our bosses that if you send a memo to someone on staff, you send a copy to us. So I did what I was supposed to do. I sent the memo to Howard. I sent a copy on to my editor-in-chief.

The editor-in-chief calls me on the phone and says, you got a fired burger. I said, why? He said, because insubordination. I said, no, this is not what this is about. This isn't about insubordination. This is about this is not what this is about this isn't about insubordination this is about me trying to sort of hone in a guy who's got all kinds of ambition right but you got to have some direction yeah that's all it was i was trying and i'm not i'm not a whole lot older

than howard frankly at the time or even now um but i'm trying to you're probably the same age difference now yeah yeah i'm trying to sort of get somewhere. Well, he went in that afternoon and he fired him. Yeah. And not only that, the Stampede was starting, which is a big event in Calgary, and you need all your staff for everything. And we had a small staff to start with, and we're losing a body, and it's like,

why are we doing this? And Howard, I think, was out of work for maybe a year or two after that until the whole fan thing started. And what, I think, was out of work for maybe a year or two after that until the whole fan thing started. And what a great run he had until it sort of came to an abrupt end. Yeah, we're going to get to that because you're a day one-er at the Fan 590. I'm a day one-er at the Fan. I'm also a day one-er at what was Headline Sports that later

became The Score. The Score, right. Right. So not many guys can say that. Are you a day one-er at Calgary Sun? Calgary Sun as well. It's not bad. It's the score. The score, right. Right. So not many guys can say that. Are you a day one-er at Calgary Sun? Calgary Sun as well. It's not bad. It's not bad.

All right. So I guess how do we get – I want to get you to the Toronto Sun here. So do you – how do you end up back in Toronto? Wayne Parrish was a columnist at the Toronto Star, probably the best sports columnist at the time. And he got hired to replace George Gross as the sports editor of the Toronto Sun. And Wayne and I had been friendly through the business. And strangely enough, I'm doing a book on Lanny McDonald at the time,

and I'm calling Wayne to help me to get clips from the Toronto Star that I need for researching the book. And so on a certain Friday, I called Wayne at the Star, and I said, I I'm sorry he no longer works here what do you mean oh he's now the sports editor of the Toronto Sun I almost dropped the phone it just didn't make sense to me and about

a day went by and we got in touch with each other and I tried to get him to get me the clips I needed and he said you ever thought of coming home and I said I think of it all the time why he says well we might have something for you and at the time it's funny because he hired two of us in about his second or third month on the job. It was December of 86. And he hired Bob Elliott from the Ottawa Citizen and he hired me. Bob's now the only Canadian in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And so Wayne Parrish

was pretty good at assessing talent and did a pretty nice job because both of us are still 29 years later working for the Sun. And he brought me in at first to write features with the talk that I would move into the column job when someone moved out of it. And it lasted about two years of sort of doing spot assignments and features. And then I think in 89, and I've been writing the column for The Sun basically ever since on a regular basis since then, and been the lead columnist for most of that time. Yeah. So you mentioned Lanny McDonald, and I thought of his mustache, and then I realized I

need to know if Howard Berger had the mustache when he was working in Calgary. I believe he did. It wasn't much of a mustache. I mean, was it a Lanny mustache? No, no, no. Very few of us could ever have a Lanny mustache. I don't think anyone would want one. I mean, when I get a little one, it itches.

So I don't know what that big one's like. And if you sleep the way I do with your kind of face sideways on the pillow, I don't know if that big one's like And if you sleep the way I do With your face sideways on the pillow I don't know if I'd want that fuzzy hair I guess when you're like a Raleigh Fingers or something You've got the wax and every morning I guess you do the mustache wax But the amazing thing for a guy like Lanny was He could not go anywhere

I don't think he still can He can't go anywhere in Canada where he's not recognized He might be as recognizable a face As there is in this country Yeah, yeah That's very true So the Toronto Sun, like you said He's not recognized. He might be as recognizable a face as there is in this country. Yeah, yeah. That's very true. So the Toronto Sun, like you said, you've been there since, I guess, 87 or whatever, which is, by the way, a very long time to write for one paper.

So that's amazing. Almost impossible by today's standards. Yeah. I mean, you can count on one hand, I guess, the guys who have been at the same media company since the 80s. Well, we have. I think we've been fortunate. Bob Elliott's been there all that time.

Ken Fidlin's been there all that time. Bill Lankoff, myself. Mike Rutzi just retired. But there's a lot of guys who've been around a fairly long time because historically, the Sun has been a great place to work and a great place to work in sports because they're so pro sports. Well, tell me, so the little paper that grew, as we called it, what was the culture like at the Toronto Sun? When you first started there, it was amazing. It was so different than any paper I'd worked at.

I'd been a little bit at the Globe, a little bit at the London Free Press, Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, and then I get to the Toronto Sun where you have to understand how the Toronto Sun was created. The Toronto Telegram folded. And basically three people who worked with the Toronto Telegram decided that they're going to find investors and they're going to start this tabloid newspaper that no one thought could last. And everything they did was for the employee. was for the employee. And so when you got there, you had sabbatical programs when you worked 10 years,

and you had profit sharing, and you had Christmas bonuses, and you had all these things that nobody gets any. I mean, it's all disappeared over time. We've been sold so many times since then. But the original owners were all newspaper guys, and all they wanted was a newspaper for newspaper people. Yes. And to make you feel great.

Everybody loved, they had the biggest and the boldest parties. They had the most fun. Anyone who worked there, almost everyone I know who worked there loved being there. Now, over time, of course, that disappears, like most jobs do, and you get sold, and now you're corporate, and now you have these rules and that rules. In those days, I think the only rule was, don't be late for the party like that was the way the sun operated so now you're

uh you're owned by post media so i mean for example recently and i follow you on twitter so i kind of got a little bit of uh how you felt but you basically uh where were you you were at 333 king street east for forever and then you ended up moving to 365 Bloor Street East. So what was it like symbolically or what was it like making the move? I think it's like selling your house when you've been in your house for a very long

time and you're attached to it and you like this cupboard and you like that bedroom and you like the kitchen and everything's comfortable. 333 King Street was comfortable for all of us who worked there. And especially if you'd worked there as long as I had. And it was also a rare place where you had free parking downtown Toronto, which is kind of unusual. Yeah, it is. And now we're on Bloor Street and we're one floor of a corporate building where you need to use a security card to get in the building and there is no parking and it feels like you're renting space so far. It doesn't feel like home.

It might take a while to feel like home. And frankly, these days, most sports guys, and maybe most news reporters, but most sports guys in particular, they don't work from the office anymore. We work from venue. So if the Leafs are playing, we write from the Leaf game. If the Leafs are practicing, we write from the practice facility. If the Jays are playing, we're at their game. And so unless, or a lot of the times, I would say 50% of the time, I'm at home on the phone doing my interviewing and talking to people. And so that's, there's no need to be in the office that much anymore,

and I don't think I will be very much. And since, I guess, since the late 80s, you've covered, my stats here are old because I've got through 2013, so they've likely, obviously, the numbers have grown, but at that time, 14 Olympics, 31 Stanley Cup playoffs, 13 Grey Cups, 12 Super Bowls, four World Series,

two NBA championships, and it says over 50 world championship fights. So A, that's a lot of great variety, but B, you've been at a lot of big events. You've been part of lots of great sporting history. Boy, I've been lucky. I think I've got the best seat in the house. When you can be sitting at the finish line

when Usain Bolt is running, or Donovan Bailey's at the 96 Olympics and you're seeing that those those great Saturday nights two of them in a row for Canada that kind of thing or you're sitting like I was in Sochi close enough to touch the ice and Canada's playing Sweden in the gold medal game or or in Vancouver you know this I'm coming up to 16th Olympics this summer, which blows me away because, first of all, I was such a disaster at my first one, I suspected I'd never get back.

What was your first one? Los Angeles, 1984. Oh, you had to point it out. And it's a funny, it's a boycott Olympics. Yeah. And because it was a boycott Olympics, Canada won a pile of medals. And wherever I was, someone lost.

It didn't matter what day it was. It didn't matter what was going on. Everywhere I went, somebody lost. And I missed every single story of all of them. And the one I remember the most is a bunch of us made a decision to go out for dinner one night. And it was modern rhythmic gymnastics was the only event on that night. And a bunch of canadian guys

said let's go for dinner there's no there's nothing possible that can happen that will affect you so we all go out for dinner you realize we're on the west coast so it's a three-hour difference events going on at night and a woman named laurie fung wins the gold medal for canada we don't know who laurie fung. We've never heard of Lori Fung. And Lori Fung had never heard of Lori Fung at that point in time. And what happened was you had these computers in the lobby of our hotel where you could check the results. And the leader, when we went out for dinner, was Elle Fung, China. They had put the wrong country in her thing.

So we all go out for dinner. We all get back around i don't know maybe 11 o'clock at night which is what one o'clock two o'clock two o'clock in the east papers are locked up by that point and the red message light in the hotel is flashing like where were you like we have a gold medal and no one's covering it and apparently no one was there the next day they had a laurie fun press conference for people to, but basically most of the Canadian media that night went out for dinner because we all thought there was nothing going on. Right.

And that's a perfect example of my LA Olympics. I mean, Sean O'Sullivan lost and Willie DeWitt lost and all the people I went to see lost. That Olympics in LA kind of ruined me. I was 10 years old, so it was the first Olympics I watched. And Brian Williams, I watched the whole thing. I loved it. But it ruined me because at the time, I didn't fully appreciate this boycott thing.

And I just assumed Canada was always going to win medals like that. So it kind of messed me up. And there's a little-known sprinter at that time. I believe won the bronze medal in the 100 meters. His name, Ben Johnson. Right. So were you there in 88 when Ben won gold? No, I was one of the ones I missed. One of the few ones I've missed. I didn't go. We had other people there. That triggered for many of us in the industry, six of the worst working months,

if not a year of working in our lives because everything became about drugs, about steroids, about Ben, about what happened. And I remember being sent on a, I was on a stakeout in Windsor, Ontario, sitting by the house of Charlie Francis's, at that time, girlfriend became his wife, trying to find Charlie Francis, who was Ben's coach. And we were all sort of in different areas of Ontario at the time, somebody looking for Ben, somebody looking for Dr. Astafan, somebody looking for the coach,

anything just to get ahead on the story. It was crazy reporting time through that period. On that note, just because it segues nicely, but do you believe Chris Colabello when he tells us that he's basically denying the whole thing? But I mean, personally, I'll speak for myself. I've heard that initial complete denial so many times by people who got caught that I just don't believe him. What are your thoughts on the Chris Colabello PED? I would love to believe him.

And if you spend any time at all with Chris Colabello, he's probably the most delightful guy in the Blue Jays clubhouse. And his story is just, you know, it's from the heart to believe and you want to cheer for the guy. But when you have a drug in your system and it's a way

back drug that East Germans used to use with their systemic drug planning in that country when they basically turned their women's swim team into men. Which is why we dominated in 84 because they weren't there. Yes.

But that drug is very well known. It's a throwback drug. So ask yourself this. How did you get it? And how did it get in the system? And what did he get in the system? And what did he possibly take? Did someone spike something?

Like every time I hear a spike story, I giggle because so many people over the years have said this has been spiked and that's been spiked. Nothing's ever spiked. Of course, you covered it. But Ben Johnson with the water bottle and like, oh, come on. Like, I mean, at some point. But yeah, I would love to believe Chris Colabello too.

But to be honest, I don't. Like, I just don't believe in my book., I would love to believe Chris Colabello too, but to be honest, I don't. Like, I just don't believe him. Well, you know, we've said many times over the three rules of steroids, deny, deny, deny. Yep. And that's what happened. We heard it from Ben. We heard it from Lance Armstrong. We've heard it from way more guilty people than Chris Colabello.

And I would love to believe that somehow some fluky weird thing happened but what fluky weird thing could have happened? Right, right. Your column, this and that, that used to be called Last Word, right? It started, I think, as Simmons on the Side. It started many years ago. Do you remember Frank Orr? I don't know if you're old enough to remember Frank.

Frank Orr was the hockey writer at the Toronto Star. Yes, I do. Just a tremendous guy and a tremendous journalist. And Frank had a column in Sunday's Toronto Star at the time called Either Or. And all it was was a collection of stuff. Almost all of it hockey. And Wayne Parrish, my boss at the time, called me and said, I'd like you to come up with a format for Sunday. I don't know what it is. You create it. And it's sort of our answer to either or.

Gotcha. And that's where it started as Simmons on the side, which was sort of a side of bacon, kind of here's extra for your morning kind of thing. And so it ran down the side of the page. And then it expanded to a whole page, and now it's two whole pages. And it's gone through, it was last word, and now it's Simmons says. The format is basically scatter shooting. Random thoughts on whatever it is that's on your mind with three or four pointed arguments of some kind. Yeah, basically it's like that dot, dot, dot thing

that Larry King would do, right? This is sort of the Larry King recipe, if you will. Yeah, and actually I think it was started before Larry King started his. A guy named Joe Falls in Detroit was also one of my heroes, and he used to do it, and I thought he did it marvelously well,

and I wanted to do it, and I thought he did it marvelously well, and I wanted to do it. It's funny because it's a pain in the you-know-what to do, and it used to be a lot easier to do than it is now. Before there was internet and before there was sports radio, you could write almost anything, and you could get an item Tuesday Tuesday and it would still be okay for Sunday. Now, if you have something Tuesday, it's dead by Thursday. It's old news by then. You've got to, everything has to be fresh and you've got to figure out how you're going to do it. And what's happened over time is some people don't know I write any other day. There's a portion of people who, if they meet me, the first thing they say is, oh,

I love your Sunday column. Yeah. Oh, I have to get your Sunday, when I pick up the paper, it's not there, I get mad at you. And then,

I never hear anyone say, I love your Tuesday column or your Wednesday, whatever day it happened to appear. Right. It's just that, whatever it is about that notes package and the way it works

and it's now 26 years, I think I've been doing it. It's must read, must read and now I notice it can come out on a Saturday night I've noticed. I send it out now earlier because that's the way the world works but it's taken on a life of its own and it's a lot of work and it's a long

writing day. The average column I'll write for a regular day is about 750 to 800 words. That's 1600 to 1800 words. I had Elliot Friedman here and I because much like that piece which I read every Sunday, I always

like Elliot does a thing called 30 thoughts and I go Elliot like how long has that taken you to write or whatever and he's like too long. Basically it's a big deal to write his 30 thoughts, and I suspect it's pretty similar when you write your Sunday. Yeah, and I read Elliot's column as regularly as I can, and I guess the difference is his 30 thoughts are all hockey.

That's true, yeah. And I'm all over the place. Which I like. It's a variety. Any of the four major sports, any of the Toronto teams, Which I like. It's a variety. or something crazy in there. But I try to have some fun with it and try to have some humor with it. And again, like I said, people really, really like it. The whatever became of at the end of the column, it's like taking on a life of its own.

Like I'll go in to get my hair cut and the barber in the chair beside me will yell like, Rick Vive. And I'll look over like, what do you mean? Whatever became of. And everywhere I go people will throw a name out at me

like that that is a great part but that must have got much more difficult with the internet because I feel like back before the internet or before like

Wikipedia and stuff like there's a we didn't know like it was nowadays I feel it's much easier to find out whatever it became of

but that's and considering you've done that for what two decades almost every Sunday, like, only one mess up on whatever became... There's two. Two mess ups.

I only know of one. I have two dead people. So what was the other dead person? Well, I don't know which one you know about. Okay, the KHL... Oh, okay. The guy in the crash. Okay.

Well, I... And I knew him. That's funny, because I knew the guy, and I wrote it. And often what I try and do when I try and do the whatever, I try and tie it to whatever is going on at the time. So say Wimbledon is happening at the time, I'll try and pick a tennis player of some kind

or the Leafs are playing St. Louis. Maybe someone who played for the Leafs and St. Louis, which I think is how Karpatskoye came up that time. And earlier there was a defenseman named Bill Nyrop who played for the Montreal Canadiens in their glory years with Savard and LaPointe

and Robinson on that defense. And I just, whatever became Bill Nyrop and he had died of cancer a couple of years earlier and I just didn't know. And normally, almost always,

I check. Well, that's what I was going to say. So after the first time, you'd think you'd implement like, let me do a quick, assuming that, when did you make the first mistake? Was it during the Twitter era?

I think it was before the Twitter era. Good. Only because then you get a couple of letters or whatever. Well, if it happens on Twitter, like it just takes on a life of its own and you're the biggest idiot. Well, here's the funny thing. Go ahead. And this is what gets me about the world. I don't really understand social media, I must admit, and I've been kind of a disaster at it.

But you've been improving, but we'll get back to that. But that said, this is 36 years for me. I've written 9,000 columns. If I make mistakes in 70 of them, my accuracy rate is higher than 99%. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know anyone who does their jobs perfectly. We're all going to make mistakes. We're all going to trip over things. Once in a while, we should have checked something and didn't. And here's the other problem I find.

Once in a while, I think I can trust my memory. I know now I can't because I've just seen too many things and heard too many things over the years. And the years blend into each other, and sometimes the people do. But you make one of those, and you are jumped on forever. Yeah. Like I said, I follow you on Twitter, and I have noticed, in fact, I've remarked, I think, to others, that your Twitter game has greatly improved, almost like you attended some kind of a,

and I don't know if you did or not or whatever, but what would you call that? Like, uh, uh, some kind of a course or, or some kind of a tutorial and like social media, because I feel like you're much improved in the Twitter sphere for what that's worth. I wish I felt the same way. Cause I, I feel attacked is what I feel most of the time. Well, you are attacked. And, uh, Cox has been going off about this all week. I noticed on his Twitter feed. Well, you are attacked. Cox has been going off about this all week, I've noticed, on his Twitter feed. Well, you know, it's funny. People always lump us together.

Yeah, I do. I mean, I'm doing it now. People always lump us together. We have next to no relationship. Okay, yeah. We've never had any real relationship, for whatever reason, because he did what he did at the Star,

and I did what I did at the Sun, that people thought that there was some kind of symmetry there, and I've never quite understood it. But you must have crossed paths. Oh, yeah. We did a TV show together for years. So, like, today, when you...

Because Cox can be a bit salty. I don't know if you know this. You can be a little salty. He was born salty. He was born salty. So, I just want, like, what is your relationship like today with Damien Cox? It's a nod hello on a good day.

That's something. We share... He chairs the Lou Marsh Award every year now. He's the new chairman since Silken Laumann stepped down. And so for that time, he will invite me to participate, and I will participate

and we'll be civil to each other. And the rest of the time, there's next to no conversation. I used to have a sort of standing joke when he was on The Reporters, that I talked to him once a week standing joke when he was on the reporters that I talked to him once a week and they paid me to do it. Put it this way. I've got great friends in the business. I've got a lot of really good friends

in the business and I hope that they feel the same way about me that I feel about them. We're just not, have never been friends and I doubt to think we ever will be. I actually never thought you would ever be friends because I figured you were rivals with, you know, have never been friends, and I doubt to think we ever will be. I actually never thought you would ever be friends because I figured you were rivals with, you know, Toronto had the two big sports sections.

You had your star and your son, and you guys were kind of rivals. I always envisioned kind of a fun little evil eye when you crossed paths, like you'd kind of cleared each other. Yeah, but you know what? I covered the flames with Eric DeHatchik. He covered for one paper.

I covered for the other paper. We had the best relationship. We were the best of friends. We still, this many years later, are still pretty good friends. What was it? You did your job real hard. You worked as hard as you could. And at the end of the day, you went and got dinner.

And if I beat you today and you beat me tomorrow, life goes on. And that's how it is with, you know, with Elliot or David Schultz or Pierre Lebrun or Bruce Arthur or whoever. Paul Kelly or whoever it is I'm working with. Most of those guys are my friends. Most of those guys are people I hang with. And you never had a mullet, right? So that was a Cox thing. I never had good hair.

No, you never had good hair. Or bad hair for that matter. All right. So moving on from the Cox thing, although kind of not really, but Fan 590. So you're a day one-er. So can you tell me how you got involved with day one at the Fan 590?

It's an odd story. I mean, you always think, if you're on the outside, you think that this is a great organized thing and that they're putting together a sports radio station. Therefore, they must know what they're doing. I got called about, I think, three weeks before it all started by a guy named Alan Davis, who was the original program director. By the way, he's now the program director of WGR Buffalo.

Okay, yeah. So, you know, he's still around doing what he does. He called me and said, we'd like you to co-host 10 to 12. And I said, great. You know, with whom? He says, we're still figuring that out. And they wanted a woman, which was a wonderful thing. And it depends.

So we talked about different possibilities and kicked around some names. And it turned out to be Mary Armsby from the Toronto Star at the time. Well, she's still at the Star doing news now. And they put us together. And they put us together, I think, Friday before the Monday launch. Neither of us had ever hosted a radio show. Neither of us had ever sat in a radio booth. Neither of us had pushed any of the buttons you had to push.

And Alan sat with us and said, okay, here's what you do. He went through the fundamentals of how many times you give the name of the station and when do you give the time and how do you do this and how it's going to work. And I think it was the Monday morning, we went into work for the very first time. Honestly, at the time with a producer

who knew less than we knew. Oh, wow. So the producer didn't know much. We knew less than nothing and we went on the air. And I thought for a year we did okay, all things considered. Tells you how different the times were. The star made her quit. They didn't want her.

Today they want you out doing television and radio. Newspapers do. At that time, they thought, we're giving away our product for free on radio. Different times. And so Mary, they thought, we're giving away our product for free on radio. Different times, eh? And so Mary, who I adore, had to leave, and they wanted to bring someone else, and they asked me, who do you want?

At the time, I asked for Rod Smith, who's now the voice of God on TSN. And Rod wanted to do it, but TSN didn't want him to do it. He was a reporter for them at the time, so that didn't work out, and it. He was a reporter for them at the time. So that didn't work out. And it turned out they brought Jim Taddy in. And Jim Taddy and I did the second year together. Yes, guy.

Yeah. And at the end of it, those were the two words I never wanted to hear again. Oh, my God. I had a similar chat with Hepsy about that. Yeah. We lasted, I think, a year and some. And Jim went in and said, either he goes or I go behind my back, and what happened was the program director,

who wasn't Alan Davis anymore, said, okay, you're both gone, and that was the end of my beat. I came back two other times at the Fan to host shows, but the first days were remarkable because honestly we had no idea what we were doing. Quick on the Taddy thing is that speaking of salty salty i've had a little interaction with jim tatty and it was so bizarre like i've just a bizarre interaction like he he didn't want to talk about the past which like you know come on but i won't talk sports line like can you imagine like come on but we're not

going to talk about like the show sports line is was his life really i know that's no it's what he's no one knows yeah i mean come on anyway that I won't go too far on the Taddy thing. We actually get along now. Like, Jim's at the fan now doing a lot of different things. Oh, sorry, at the TSN radio. And TSN Hamilton doing some things as well. And he's hosting pregame Leafs, and he's hosting pregame Raptors, and he's doing some decent work.

Yeah, I hear him a lot on that. He's doing some decent work, and we get along fine. But for a while there, I was kind of bitter at him for what he had done to what I thought was a burgeoning radio career at the time. Yeah. And look at you today on Toronto Mic'd. So it's crazy. See how far I've come?

You've come here in my basement now. The day one at the fan. Who are the other guys? Do you remember the other day one-ers? The morning show was Joe Bowen, Mike Inglis, and Stephanie Smythe. I don't know if you know where those people are. Mike Inglis is now the play-by-play man of the Miami Heat. Yes.

Joe is obviously doing the Leafs, and Stephanie Smythe is on CP24 doing news. That was the morning show. Mary and I were 10 to noon. I'm trying to think who was the original 12 because it became Cox and Stelic, but at the beginning it wasn't. It might have been Shulman and somebody. It might have been Shulman by himself. So it was Dan Shulman into McCowan and Shakey Hunt.

Yes. And so that was the original, I think that was the original lineup, if I'm not mistaken. I once asked Barb DiGiulio to tell me about some of the other people that she was working with. She couldn't remember anybody. So I'm glad that you have a much better memory.

Barb was around at that time. Norm Rumack was doing night work. Jim Richards, who's now at CFRB, was doing night work. And then the interesting thing to me was very soon, and I don't know at what point in time, these three young guys kept running around the station looking like they were somebody's kids. And it was Bob Makowitz and George Strombolopoulos and Jeff Merrick.

And here we are, what was that, 92? Here we are all these years later, and Strombolopoulos is hosting Hockey Night in Canada, and Merrick is all over junior hockey and hockey at Sportsnet. And Bob Makowitz was hosting the 9 to 12 show on TSN radio. And Merrick would want you to know he buried Harold Ballard.

I don't think you're allowed to mention Merrick without telling the story. I don't even know the story. So he worked at Park Lawn Cemetery, which is actually not crazy far from here. And he was working there, and one of the first gigs he had was to dig the grave where Harold Ballard was going to be laid to rest. So he literally buried Harold Ballard

in the city. And Jeff Merrick, who is a friend of mine also, he helped me out when I was coaching a minor hockey team and got injured. Not from coaching the team, but from playing. I needed someone to come and run my practices while I couldn't go on the ice. And Jeff helped me out and came out. Yeah, he's a great guy. And ran some of the practices for me. And he also helped me.

I wrote a book called The Lost Dream, which is the story of Mike Danton and David Frost and that whole mess. It's just a disturbing, horrible story. But a good book that you should buy, I point out. He helped me with it. He would read the chapter after I wrote it and sort of give me his view as I was going along. And sometimes those kinds of people are really helpful for you. He helped me when I decided one day I would bike over to Park Lawn and see the grave of Harold Ballard. I'm texting Merrick, because it's not

marked with a high thing. It's like on the, it's really, really buried behind a, like on the ground behind a bush. Like, you really can't find it. And he was kind of

helping me find it and I eventually found it. So, not that many people, I think, would want to go see the grave of Harold Ballard other than to maybe,

you know, urinate on it or something. That's right. I kept thinking like, oh gosh, no wonder they hide it, you know. Also buried in the cemetery,

by the way, is Con Smythe and Jeff Healyaly of all people. Wow, that's an interesting trio. There you go. There's some fun facts. So day one are at the Fan 590. Headline Sports, and you mentioned it became the score.

But you're also a day one are there. So how was that experience? Well, it was weird because they only had one show when they started. The rest of the time called they ran what was called the wheel which was highlights from last night so they'd run them like in five minute loops or 10 minute loops and that was what most of the day consisted of but they had kind of a magazine show that either ran from five to seven or six to eight i can't remember what the time was and it was hosted by a guy named jory middlestad and among the the panel

was gordon stelic and myself who are on every single day and and also a guy named greg sansoni was doing the updates and once in a while elliot friedman was doing updates or you know he was a young guy just starting out and so you look at there and you see years later, Sansoni is an important figure at Sportsnet, and Elliott Friedman might be the best guy on Hockey Night in Canada or Rogers Hockey, whatever you want to call it. I think he's the best guy on there. Brian Spear, who was one of the producers there, is important.

Somebody is Darren Millard's wife that worked there. It was a lot of people who started and wound up going to other places. The show didn't last very long in the end. I think it may have lasted a year and some, maybe two years. I don't remember. It didn't last very long. I was also a day winner.

Do you remember when Chum went all sports? Of course. What was it called? The team. I was a day winner. Romanek was on that. Yes, Romanek was and Jim Van Horn. Do you remember when Chum went all sports? Of course, yeah. What was it called? The team. The team. I was a day one. Because Romanek was on that. Yes, Romanek was, and Jim Van Horn, and Gene Valaitis.

And they brought over Ferguson. Yeah, Scott Ferguson. And that's how Wilner got the gig on the fan, because he needed a new guy. But I was there, too, at the beginning. So I've done a lot of startups over the years, and almost all of them are confusing. Because most of the time, you don't know what you're doing from day to day. You don't know who's out there listening or if anybody's watching or anything like that.

What do you think went wrong with the team? Because they didn't give it much time. They didn't have a direction. They didn't have a direction. They might have hired some of the wrong people. Their attitude wasn't that they were going to take on the fan. Their attitude was they were looking for a national audience, and they were going to go national and it was going to go across the country

to all of their stations, and they were going to look at sport from a broader perspective. What was wrong was people want local. That's why people read the sun. People want local. They want to know read the sun. People want local. They want to know what's going on in your city. And so if you're listening to the fan, and all it is is Leafs, Raptors, and Jays talk,

and now you're turning here, and they're talking about the Winnipeg Jets, I think it's an easy turnoff. And so what happened was they didn't give it a very long commitment. They probably hired people who had the wrong vision, and then they probably hired some wrong on-air staff. So other than that, all was well. Yeah, other than that, it was great.

Yeah, and TSN, speaking of TSN, so the reporters with Dave Hodge. Speaking of Ron McLean, he was in here recently, and we replayed the pen flip. And I said, you know, we talk about the bat flip all the time. I want a T-shirt with the pen flip, the Dave Hodge pen flip. But what's it like, reporters? I feel every Sunday, or not Sunday anymore, it's now Mondays, like the dumbest kid in the class.

I have Dave Hodge sitting on one side of me, and Dave Hodge, I won't say that he's brilliant, but he is so smart, and he is so focused and intelligent and on point. And his expectation of you is to be that way. And I've got Michael Farber sitting in the seat beside me, former Montreal Gazette columnist, former Sports Illustrated writer,

who, if he's not the smartest guy in the business, I don't know who is. The words, every show I'm in, the words that come out of his mouth, I have to go home and then look them up. And beside him is Bruce Arthur, who might be as smart, if not smarter, than the other two guys.

And there's me sitting there, and I'm there, I think, because I'm emotional, and I'll argue with them, and I'm there I think because I'm emotional and I'll argue with them and I always have a different point of view and I have a perspective and I know my sports and so it's a wonderful group to work with and I'm proud as heck to have been 14 years doing this show

and I think I'm the only surviving from the original panel. The original panel was Stephen Brunt and Damian Cox, who have since moved on to other places. But, you know, it's a real treat of a show to do. TSN has been great to us. They bring us on when trade deadline's happening. They bring us on when July 1st for free agency day and they let us explore things that otherwise don't get explored on either TSN or Sportsnet or the radio stations really in any depth. And that's what I love about doing the show. Absolutely.

Now, here's a little tidbit for everybody. So I've had communication with Dave Hodge. I've invited him on the show. And he says, I want to come. This is Dave Hodge's words. He wants to come in the summer because he has something he wants to say in the summer. So I don't know. I'm just leaving that out there. I have no idea what it is, but who knows what that is. You mentioned Stephen Brunt. Did you see his piece on Shapiro?

I did. They called it a documentary. I believe they called it a documentary. They can call it whatever they want to call it. So in my opinion, it was an infomercial. I'm a huge Stephen Brunt fan as person, as writer, as talent. He is brilliant. And he might be, of the last 30 years, the best writer of sports in this country.

be of the last 30 years the best writer of sports in this country um that said he has become you know he has become mr company man and in becoming mr company man you know you have to do things that maybe you always don't want to do uh that was the sales job that's all it was it was kind of embarrassing in a way um in fact i called pa Paul Beeston last week after watching the Shapiro thing. And I said, I keep waiting for your documentary. And he laughed. He says, they couldn't do me in half an hour. He says, I need a full-fledged movie. Everybody's a little embarrassed about that. I mean, think about it in a broader picture. A guy is named president of a sporting team. Name another city or another place where the network that broadcasts the games would do a half an hour special

on the guy named president. No. Why? Because he's gotten a lot of doubt and he's created a lot of doubt. But Steve Brunt was told basically, you know, let's put a happy face on this. And so in print...

Show him that, you know, his kids love him. Show that, you know, it wasn't his fault that AA is gone. Like, show that, you know... Yeah, well, whatever. It's just... It's insulting to the fan, really. I mean, so here's the thing. Brunt can go off to Mexico

and do the brilliant show on Roberto Asuna, which he's fully capable of. And Brunt can write books that, you know, I look at and I wish I could have written one sentence of it, and I couldn't have. But that's part of, I guess, if you're dealing in that job, in that world, once in a while you're going to be asked to do something

you probably don't want to do. And I suspect if push came to shove and he would be perfectly honest, he would say, you know what? I wish I hadn't done that. The head scratcher for me is why would Rogers, so if Rogers has a Stephen Brunt and Brunt is supposed to be the journalist

that asks the tough questions and the integrity guy, why would you want him to be, wouldn't you give that to somebody else? Why would you want Brunt to be in the shill infomercial that would tarnish what integrity he has left because they thought here is steven brunt integrity impugned you know here's a guy that if you he instantly brings credibility with his name and so you got your name you bring credibility brunt is stamping this okay therefore you should think it's okay. I understand that.

I'd like to know one question for Rogers. Where was Stephen Brunt yesterday when they were interviewing Chris Colabello? Because I would have thought you would want your number one guy to be doing that interview, and they didn't do that for whatever reason. You have a friend who knows Brunt and just says, well, the guy's got kids to put through university. What do you want him to do? And then he's like, well, I guess.

What can you do? There's only so many gigs out there. Well, you know what? He's got a good one. He's an industry now. I mean, really, between the books and the columns and the newspapers and the magazine stuff and the TV documentaries and the awards and everything else, I'm not going to sit here and throw stones

at one of the giants of our industry because he is that. But every once in a while, you have to, you know, swallow one for the team. Right. And I suspect that's what he did here. He probably wants to take that one back. Okay. Speaking of swallowing one for the team. So I was wondering, one of the, speaking of Twitter and the recent era here, there's been

some discussion about your thoughts on analytics and hockey. And I had a guest in this room, James Myrtle. So I'm going to, it's a very short clip. I'm going to play a very short clip of James, if I can get the volume up. And then I just want to ask you about your opinions on analytics and hockey. So this is James Myrtle talking about some guy named Steve Simmons here. Did you guys like, did you guys shake hands on this and disagree? No, we didn't.

It's too bad that it has to become something personal because I want it to be about the ideas. I want it to be about the debate, about the different ideas and the different concepts. That's totally fine. But I think some people make it personal and it goes even further than that. And it's unfortunate.

So when you see Simmons in like, I don't know, press box or something, do you guys say hi or do you ignore each other? really no that's too bad yeah all right so my question to you is uh how can i how can i have you and uh james myrtle two good guys how do i get you guys to kiss and make up over this analytics this is a strange thing because i don't even know how it happened you know he has his views on actually i do know how it happened. Remember now. I wrote a column about my views on analytics. And I used an analogy to begin the column. And he was part of the analogy without being named. I didn't even name him in the analogy. It was just an analogy of sorts that

this had happened in a press box. And that was the response. And he took it enormously personal. And I didn't really understand why he took it so personal because he also said I made it up, which was completely erroneous because the people who sat beside me have confirmed this thing 10 ways over. But whether he remembered it or didn't remember it, first of all, no one reading it

would have known who the person was. So no one would have taken it back to him. So I don't really understand. That's where it began. And from that time on, it's kind of been cool between us. Funny thing with James, when he started with the numbers, I thought he was way off. And by that, way off as a sports writer. Because he was unable to tell any story without numbers.

It was like he couldn't write about a hockey player. He could only write about his course. Possession stats or whatever. Yeah, whatever it was. And I thought, you know what? And a friend of mine said one day that when he writes his next interesting sentence, it'll be the first one. That was a few years ago.

Since then, he's kind of developed into a better hockey writer. He's writing more interesting things. He's reporting. He's asking questions. He's not completely consumed by numbers and by proving that the numbers mean something. And I think he's become a better journalist out of it. Whether we'll ever be friends again, I don't know. Somebody probably larger

than us would have to bring us together. That's me, man. And here he is. Here's a funny thing. David Schultz, who works for the Globe and Mail, is one of my best friends. The funny thing about the analytics thing is that I have become the print guy against them.

I know so many people who don't have respect for the numbers or don't necessarily believe in the numbers, from GMs, from coaches, from writers. Nobody says it. So because nobody says it, I become the bad guy. You're the poster boy for what they call old school hockey. Yeah, I'm the idiot, so to speak.

But it's funny because I know so many. It's just people don't. I know GMs. I'll tell you a coach. A Stanley Cup winning coach gets the analytic report from his team and tosses it in the garbage without reading it most of the time. Now, would he ever sit at a podium and say, I tossed the thing in the garbage?

Absolutely not because the bees, they're like bees. They're out there and they attack in bunches. And they get out there and they go crazy if you don't agree with them on their points of view. A lot of what I believe about hockey came from, I coached for 24 years. And I ran hockey schools. And I started hockey schools. And I ran organizations schools and I started hockey schools and I ran organizations in the city. And so my thoughts on what wins and what loses

and what matters on the ice aren't things always that can be compartmentalized statistically. And I think the fact that hockey is such a random game and the puck turns over, I'm going to use the Harry Sindenstat, I think about 400 times a game, 400 to 500 times a game, that possession to me is a way overrated thing that everyone now, every broadcaster in zone time, possession,

I don't think Danny Gallivan ever used zone time in his career or possession. It's not quite like cannon eating. Yeah. And I'm not saying it's not important to possess the puck. Of course it is. But there are so many elements that factor into hockey games that aren't quantified in those

kind of statistics that to me there's other things to look at. If I hear you correctly, you're not anti-analytics. You just believe there needs to be like a balance here in the force, if you will. A balance between... The pendulum can't swing so far that it's all numbers and math. And well, I'll give you I'll give you an example of how the Leafs operate just because they're the team I'm most familiar with. That's my team. Let's go.

They have an analytics department who will produce information for the general manager, for the president of the team. They will use that information and for the coach and they will use that information, and for the coach, and they will use that information as they choose. But if they choose to go with what they see, as opposed to the information, then they will go with what they see. And so it isn't a set, here's the only way to do it, and this is the way. I think Brian Burke, who's, you know, I hate to put myself in the same sentence with him because he really doesn't like me at all, is, he said it's like a lamppost for a drunk. You know, it serves a purpose,

but what exactly is the purpose? And I think it's like anything, the one thing about hockey compared to baseball or basketball, it's so fast and so random, and you're switching lines about every 36 or 7 seconds, that how can you possibly accurately track an NHL defenseman

who plays 19 and a half minutes and has the puck on his stick 32 seconds? What's he doing the other 18 minutes and 28 seconds? And how do you accurately track that? Because I think that the essence of hockey is playing without the puck. And until I see a stat that can tell me about people playing without the puck, that's accurate and that results.

I'll give you an example. The other night, Alex Petrangelo for St. Louis, he had a marvelous, marvelous game, one of the great defenseman games you'll ever see in Game 7 against Chicago. Yes. And he was all over the place, getting his stick in places and getting his body in places and getting in between people. And so whatever his course would be for that night,

his partner would share, correct? Yeah. Well, his partner had nothing to do with what Alex was doing. Alex was making all these amazing individual plays. And so the other four guys on the ice are getting credit for his doing. In a way, that's kind of, I hate to say this, it's a little bit like plus minus. It's an inaccurate stat that's only accurate, relevant to your own team concept. That's only accurate, relevant to your own team, you know, concept.

I can see why people have broken up over this analytics issue. It's a very like divisive, polarizing kind of, you got, because I have, I struggled kind of understanding the new analytics as it come out. And then I actually, Myrtle's one of the guys who kind of helped me kind of understand it or whatever. But he's a self, he's a confessed math geek, if you will. Like he just likes, he's always gravitated towards numbers. So I think he finds solace in the numbers. And I think there's a place for analytics, but I don't want it to all become math because then sports would really become boring. Okay, here's my analytics point of the week.

The way I can say it the best. Okay. Chicago loses to St. Louis in game seven. The key play, as far as Chicago is concerned, is a shot that hits one post, bounces, and hits another post.

If it goes in, we have a different series and a different game. But it doesn't. And you know what else it doesn't do? It doesn't even register as a shot on goal. So the most definitive play in that game doesn't exist in any... But they have a shot towards the net. There's that shot. But that's a shot towards the net that can win a series or lose a series,

as opposed to seven or eight other shots that can't do anything. I'll give you a Glenn Hall line. You remember Glenn Hall? Yeah. Glenn Hall played 502 straight games. I once asked him about how he could have done this. He said, well, they take 40 shots a game. He said 15 of them are wide.

That leaves 25. 20 of them hit me. I have to make five saves. That was his view as one of the greatest goalies who ever played. And I think he's not all that wrong when you look at it. But so much comes down to like a turnover. Not all turnovers are created equal. One, where do you turn the puck over?

How do you turn the puck over? In what circumstance? At what time in the game? When do you do it? When do you tighten up? There's so many other things that I look at. Shooting percentage is another gun that the stats guys love. I covered a Flames team that Kent Nielsen,

one of the great NHL players I've ever seen, played for. When Willie Plett played on his line, he scored 39 goals and had a shooting percentage of 19%, I believe. When they moved Willie Plett the next season to Jim Poplinski's line, I think he scored 14 goals and had about a 12 shooting percentage. Now is Willie Platt shooting differently or worse the next year? Absolutely not. Was he getting great shots and great situations?

Perfect. The next year, because he played with a great centerman who had wonderful vision, quantify vision, quantify the past that no one else could make that Conor McDavid makes. That's what I don't see in the stats that we talk about. All right, moving on to just a couple of years ago when you, I'm trying to get this right,

but this is the Jose Bautista thing. So what happened there? I know that he had fun with you on Twitter, if you will, and I think his tweet said, who are you and why are you talking to me? And I think that might be one of the more retweeted tweets. It still is. Yeah.

There's hardly a day goes by when someone doesn't, and this is one of the great joys of social media people that I really don't understand. Find something that's three years old or five years old or two years old and keep banging the drum. Keep it top of mind. So here's what happened. I think Kansas City was going to the World Series or something,

and I ran a tweet that said, you know, the Kansas City Royals are going to the World Series, and they didn't make a trade at the deadline. See that? Joey Vats or something. Because Patisio, remember, had gone off at the trade deadline that the Jays didn't make a deal. And so my point was a team that didn't make a deal of consequence

was going to the World Series. And he tweeted back, you know, who are you and why are you, you know, whatever it was he said. And the world went nuts. So I get a call the next morning from a speakerphone call. Anthopolis and Beeston are on the phone, and they are laughing their heads off. Okay.

They think this is the funniest thing they've ever seen. And I said something to Alex or Paul about it, and they said, Jose doesn't even run his own account. That's like somebody in New York or something. Like a PR firm or something. Yeah, that does that. And so stupid me, you know, dumb Twitter guy,

writes, Bautista doesn't even write in his own account. Yeah, that does that. And so stupid me, dumb Twitter guy, writes. Bautista doesn't even write in his own account. It's some guy in New York or somewhere. And then I get one back saying, yes, I did, or something, or yes, it was me. Yeah, I write my own tweets. And so now I'm buried. Now you're over two. Now I'm like, just throw dust on me and put me in the ground kind of thing. And on the first day at spring training that year, I went up to Jose Bautista.

And the first thing I said was like, what was that? And he kind of giggled and said, yeah, I just wanted, I didn't like your tweet and I wanted to give you one back. And we had about a five minute conversation at the time and shook hands. And ever since then, well, until the night that he buried Ryan Goins, all was well. And we had gotten along just fine. But the world doesn't understand getting along just fine. So in the Twitter world, this is hysterical to people. One of the things I don't understand,

you say something, someone says something back to you. And then you get this, he owned you. something, someone says something back to you, and then you get this, he owns you. Right. Yeah. Like, haven't you had an argument with a friend or a wife or a girlfriend or whatever

that you say something, she says something back, and two minutes later, you're friends again. Like, that's the world. It's not the world of social media, though. And that whole he-owned-you thing, same thing happened the other day with the St. Louis

broadcast. I'm watching Sportsnet. The Blues are playing. And it's strictly one-sided. I mean, it's a Homer broadcast. As if we watch a Leaf game done by Bowen. You're watching what should be a national game and you're

getting the local broadcast. And so I tweet. I've turned off the sound. I'm not listening to the St. Louis guys anymore. Didn't mention Darren Pang's name. Didn't mention John Kelly. Didn't mention anybody. Just said that.

Right. Then the world exploded again. It's one of those... Yes, it did. It came across my feed. I got hundreds of responses, almost all of them from St. Louis,

almost all of them killing and now comes back to who are you and why are you saying this again? And all the same, you get the same sort of refrain, and Pang owned you. Yeah, that's right. And then they tweeted something like, well, we didn't know you still wrote hockey kind of thing.

Oh, we stopped reading you a long time ago. And I wanted to respond back and didn't. I wanted to respond back that, of course you stopped reading me. I don't write about St. Louis, which is all you talk about. Right. You know, I have an issue, too, because if Rogers Hockey, they spent the five billion bucks or whatever, and

they're showing the games, I don't want the regional feed either. I agree with you. Why are we getting the regional feed? And I asked Vic Router this question. Money. Well, yes. Yes, money for sure. Saving a buck by not sending your own crew. But they also also try their best to avoid the NBC feed if they can because TSN people are on that feed.

In fact, the game I saw, it might have been that game seven, actually, of St. Louis and... No, that was Dave Radnorff. Yeah, okay. So there was a very big game previous to that. I can't remember anymore. It's all blur. But it was Gordon Miller was the voice, a very big game previous to that. I can't remember anymore. It's all blur. But it was Gord Miller was the voice,

and it was on Rogers Hockey, and it must have been a last resort because they would do anything to avoid having Gord Miller on Rogers Hockey. Here's one of the funny things. The other day, I think it was the Islanders were playing Florida. Howie Rose, who does the Mets games,

also does the Islander games. And so Strombalopoulos was throwing off to the game between Florida and the Islander games. And so Strombolopoulos is throwing off to the game between Florida and the Islanders. And he says, oh, let's go back to Howie Rose. No, bang. The next day when Gord Miller's calling the game, it's let's go back to the game.

For sure. No, let's go back to Gord Miller. No. Heaven forbid that we mention his name because we might get a pimple on our forehead. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, they have the games. Come on, we. Yeah. We might. Yeah. I'm with you. I mean, they have the games.

Come on. We're not going to TSN to watch any playoff hockey. Oh, and the TSN turning point for you on Twitter might've been that Jose Batista exchange. Cause even notwithstanding the St. Louis situation where they, you got owned quote unquote,

I think your game, your Twitter game improved following the Batista instance. Maybe you were more, you were more careful maybe? Not everything that popped in your head had to go into Twitter because they're all going to jump on it and make it the biggest thing. Well, I think what I did, I think more after the column I wrote when Phil Kessel got traded and that kind of exploded in a different kind of way,

what I kind of decided after that is more than anything else what I'm going to do is post my work. Once in a while, I'll comment on what's going on. But most of the time, I'm just, here's today's column on this. If you want to read it, it's there. And I'll use it as an outlet to how many thousands of people are following me. And you know, how many are following the people who are retweeting it, and whatever. And often, if I have a good one, you know, you know, one of the guys with a million followers or half a million followers will retweet it. And often, if I have a good one, you know, one of the guys with a million followers or half a million followers will retweet it and then it gets lots of clicks

and works better for everyone that way. But I just find that to this day, the two things I get back at me all the time, one is the Batista one and the other is the words hot dogs. Well, let's talk about the hot dogs. But first, Twitter, are you a big blocker? Because some people don't bother blocking.

Some people block lots of people. I block and I have a system. If you swear, if you are personal in your... By personal, I don't mean that's a dumb thing you said. By personal, it looks, hair, body, whatever. So if they call you an idiot, is that enough? I won't block anyone ever

for calling me an idiot. If you've sworn, if you've been, you know, over the... Like I get ones where, you know, you get called a pedophile. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's block.

That's block. Yeah, it's an easy one. You've done this to children. You've, you know, anything like that. And there's so many foolish people out there. Like it's amazing

how many idiots there are. When you're anonymous behind a keyboard, you say some pretty stupid stuff. That's for sure. I've had a blog,

TorontoMike.com, for 14 years, I think. And I can tell you, I used to never have to ever delete a comment. I went years never having to delete a single comment.

But in the last two years, that's all out the window now. All of a sudden, people are just jerks online. Well, depending on what day it is, I can block two or three in any given day. And there are people, they just don't understand what it is they're saying.

Or maybe they do understand and just don't care. But I'd like to think, I'd like to believe in the better good. And last summer was an interesting experience for me because the Pan Am Games were in Toronto. And every day of the Pan Am Games were in Toronto. And every day of the Pan Am Games, I was at a different venue. And every single day at the Pan Am Games, I had people coming up to me at whatever venue I was telling me how much they liked my work. And if you live in the social media world where all you get is negative feedback and all you get is insults and you're an idiot and who would believe him and what point of view does he have then after a while

you can start to take that personally and really be affected by it. You've got to have a pretty thick skin. You in particular, and it's not just you because you can say this thing about Mike Wilner. I get a lot of feedback on Mike Wilner and a lot of people love Mike Wilner and a lot of people hate Mike Wilner. and a lot of people hate Mike Wilner.

It's very polarizing. But with you, too, a lot of people love your work, and a lot of people love to hate your work. Yeah. I think what happens is some people have taken Twitter, just have confused Twitter for journalism. Right. Yeah. And I'll say something, and I'll get a response back like, what kind of journalism is that?

Well, if you're getting your journalism in 140 character bytes, you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer. That's right. And what I find is the majority of people who seem insulted or angered or whatever by me are people who don't read me. They read about me or they read the headline about me. Or it's just fun to hate on Simmons for some reason. Yeah. But Cox gets, I know you're not friendly with Cox, but Cox gets the same thing. He gets, absolutely.

And so there are people in the industry who don't. There are people who get love the other way. It becomes who, you know, I made a lot of mistakes early on on Twitter. I mean, I tripped over myself a lot. I did silly things unintentionally, like I posted my phone number once and thought I was sending a DM to somebody.

And another time I was having a conversation with a real good friend of mine about I was having a conversation with a real good friend of mine about who was a woman going through a breakup and all that and I made a joke about she said I don't have any female friends and I made a joke about well you should find a female friend with benefits and I went out there without the D

on the thing and now everybody thought I was trolling for friends with benefits you know it's just like stuff every once in a while you push the wrong button or you hit the thing without the D. Yeah, that D thing was dangerous at the beginning. It had to be DM, I guess. Yeah, but not just that.

The way my phone was set up originally, and again, I'm not the most technical guy in the world. If I got a tweet sent to me and I went on Twitter, I could respond back. But it also came on my text. Now, if I responded back on my text, it doesn't go directly to the person. It goes direct to Twitter.

So a bunch of times early on, I responded directly back to people when I thought it was going directly back to them. And I just should have gone into Twitter and sent it back to them instead of the opposite now i've since removed that ability from my phone but at the beginning i didn't know how to do that you needed joey bats's uh pr company to run your tweets come on the uh we got to touch on this hot dog thing quick because um so the story is basically that

yeah when when kessel left you said something something about he frequented a hot dog vendor located outside his apartment. And you said like on a daily basis, he would frequent this hot dog vendor. And I guess the pension plan puppets guys, one of those guys I once had dinner with, he's just a big Leaf fan. He's a nice guy, a big Leaf fan. But the pension plan puppets now, it's like a consortium of people who write about different things and they decided that it's impossible that he could be frequenting the hot dog vendor

that you said he was because he was living here and this is how long it would take him to walk. So anyways, calling you basically a liar that you made up the story. So for the record here. And then it went on Keith Olbermann. Oh yeah, well I'm going to play that in a second actually

because I think that's kind of cool. it went on Keith Olbermann. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm going to play that in a second, actually, because I think that's kind of cool. You got roasted by Olbermann. Yeah, cool and funny, but it takes on a life of its own when that stuff happens. That's true. So, okay, so there's lots here. So for the record, okay, do you stand by the Kessel hot dog story?

Absolutely, except for the address. And I'll explain what happened that day. It was a day where I was working at TSN because it was trade deadline day. And so I spent the entire day there. And at the end of the day, I have to write a column about Kessel being traded. And about January or February, one of my son's friends had said, every single day when I go out in the afternoon, there's Phil Kessel at the hot dog stand by his condo. And I thought to myself, what a neat lead to sort of explain what it was about Phil Kessel's time in Toronto that didn't make sense, among other things, was his unwillingness to sort of be...

Gary Roberts up. Yes, whether Gary Roberts up or just be intelligent about being a professional athlete. And so I thought, what a great way to explain, begin the piece, which was about 850 words. For the record, the hot dog reference was two sentences. It's not a story. It's not a series of stories, despite what people have written.

It's not all these other things. And so I phoned the kid to say, where are you? Like, where's the hot dog stand? Now, my version of where are you was, where's the hot dog stand? His version of where are you was where he was at the time. So he gave me the address of where he was at the time okay so he gave me the address of where he was at the time um and then the reason i wanted to put the streets down i grew up reading mike lupica in new york and whenever mike lupica wrote about anything in

new york he always referenced it was broadway and 17th or he always brought you home i thought this is the way you got to write about people in your city, and I've always done that. So I'm going to get the block. Well, I got the block, and I wrote it. One of our editors who lives at that block said, there is no hot dog stand there. The hot dog stand is here. And so she changed the streets.

So the streets get changed, and the original streets were wrong, then she changed them. So there's already been one mistake made. If I use the word, he goes to a downtown hot dog vendor every day, there wouldn't have been one word of complaint from anyone. Trying to be too specific, and then having a miscommunication with someone got me in a position where I got the streets wrong. And so I know for a, you know, and the funny thing was what happened the day after the column appeared before any of the Olbermann pension plan puppets, any of the other stuff happened. office and he'd read the column and he said, he walked into the office today and everyone was laughing. And I said, why was everyone laughing? And he said, because they thought I wrote the column. I said, what do you mean they thought you wrote the column? They said, well, were you talking to Steve yesterday? And he said, no, I haven't talked to him in a couple of weeks. Why?

He says, because the column reads like you had written it. So basically what I was trying to write that day, 800 or some words, was why the Leafs needed to get rid of Phil Kessel. And as I'll say right now, I've not read a better column explaining why they needed to get rid of Phil Kessel from that day. And Shanahan the next day is saying that his front office thought he had written it, which furthermore tells me that I hit the nail on the head in writing the column. And I wish that I hadn't used the word downtown instead of trying to be specific with street quarters.

So ESPN personality Keith Oblerman called you the worst person in the sports world. Well, he did that every day. That was a bit on his show where he found a person to do. And clearly, you're in the United States, and you're picking a Toronto columnist for a Maple Leaf hockey story as your lead that day? ESPN was having a bad day. Let's hear it, because how could I not play this clip?

I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't play this thing. By the way, he lost his show right after this, so I don't know if there's any correlation. Don't mess with Simmons. That's what he learned. Okay, here we go. But our winner, this guy, columnist Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun. The Toronto Maple Leafs traded unpopular, egg-shaped, meaningless goal-scoring expert

Phil Kessel to Pittsburgh in a salary dump, yet the Simmons guy has somehow made Kessel look sympathetic, indeed victimized. Yet the Simmons guy has somehow made Kessel look sympathetic, indeed victimized. The hot dog vendor who parks daily at Front and John's streets just lost his most reliable customer. Almost every afternoon at 2.30 p.m., often wearing a toque, Phil Kessel would wander from his neighborhood condominium to consume his daily snack. And now he's gone. Just like that.

The Maple Leafs could no longer stomach having Kessel around. Wait a minute, you're complaining about a hockey player eating one hot dog every day? The bullpen catcher of the Brewers just inhaled 18.1 cheesesteaks over three days. Police were sick and tired of Kessel, sick of his act, tired of his lack of responsibility, unwilling to begin any reset or rebuild with their highest paid, most talented, least dedicated player. He didn't eat right, train right, play right. Yes, trim Phil Kessel, freed of the avoir du poids caused by eating one hot dog a day at home, amounting to as many as 110 hot dogs a season, would really have helped the Maple Leafs maintain their tradition of never contending for anything.

What matters is that Kessel is gone. That who he is, what he represents, what he isn't had to be removed from the ice, from the dressing room, from the road, from the restaurants. Again with the food? Buddy, what do you think? The Toronto tradition and reputation. Maybe I won't play the whole thing.

But if you actually listen to the words, but you listen to the words between the hot dog stuff, that's exactly why the Leafs got rid of Kessel. They wanted to restart without him. Mike Babcock needed him gone. That's not in question at all. That's why I think, to be honest, I'm really proud of this as a column.

I think it's a terrific column. And I think of all the columns written in that days that followed the trade, I would challenge it to find one that explains better what happened. And at least it got

a lot of eyeballs on it. Yeah, but for the wrong reasons. You don't want to be known for that. And there are people to this day, like when I write a fact, you can't believe you had Phil Kessel eating a hot dog. I'm wearing this for, I'll be wearing this for a very long time, and I think it's just so wrong.

I was actually at the Dome yesterday night, and I ate a dog, and I was having this dog, and I like to put lots of mustard on my hot dogs, and I was thinking, like, this is the, no, I love street dogs. Like, this is the best. So do I. I'm a huge street dog fan. And it was just representative of all of the things

that they didn't like about Phil. You know, there was a lot. A long list. And he... I don't think he... The problem with Phil is he's better in Pittsburgh where he's not the guy.

He's a complimentary player, which is what he can be and what he's best at. But even early in the season when they needed him to be something on Crosby's line or Malkin's line, he couldn't be that. Now he's back playing his best hockey because why? He's an individual on his line, basically, who's running the line himself. Phil Kessel's got all kinds of talent. I don't think anybody could deny that. But what the Leafs didn't want, and we'll tell you quietly off the record this all the

time, is they didn't want to begin this grand rebuild, which is going to take a long time and it's going to need people to be certain kinds of people. They didn't want him anywhere near it. And I think that's the message. And that's what Olbermann misses in all this. He misses the nuance of that. A couple of Twitter questions here that are nice and light, but one quickly is, why do you believe so strongly in Makarov being in the Hall of Fame?

Because this Twitter, I think it's Rob J on Twitter, never hears that from anybody else. I'm astounded that he's not there, for one thing. From around the year 1987, I can't tell you how many years back or how many years forward. It's like I'd have to have the information in front of me. He was the third best forward in the world. He might have been second, but there was Gretzky, there was Lemieux, and there was him.

He played on that famed KLM line. By the way, Igor Larionov is in the Hall of Fame, and he wasn't as good a player in the heyday as Makarov was. He led the Russian League in scoring nine times. He has Olympic gold medals and world junior medals. And when he got to the NHL, he was already past his prime. Yeah, he's like 30-something. And he's still almost, he's not a point-of-game NHLer, but he's close to that.

I just think that if you were that great, go back to the 87 Canada Cup, which is one of the great hockey tournaments of all time. The leading scorer in the tournament, I believe, is either Gretzky or Lemieux. I can't remember. One is one, one is two, and Makarov is right there behind him. If you're that player, and Phil Housley's getting in the hall,

and Larry Murphy's getting in the hall, and all these guys are getting in the hall who are good but not over-the-top great. At one time, this guy was top five in the world. That, to me, gets you in the Hall of Fame. And what, another question quickly, what's the greatest single one-game performance

you've ever seen? And I guess that's an individual. In any sport? Yeah, in any sport, what's the greatest single one-game, I guess,

individual performance you've ever seen? I didn't see the Kobe Bryant 81 live, but I watched it on television and that's probably... I feel like the 60 might even be bigger, because it's his last game.

The 60 was crazy, funny, great, exhilarating, and all those things. Because we would have been mind-blowing if he had scored 30 that game, I think. And here's the difference is you can do that in basketball. You can be an individual and pile up points. It's very hard to do those things

in other events. I think some of the Joe Montana Super Bowls were superb. I was fortunate. Again, I've had such a good run of events. I was fortunate to be in Alberta from 80 to 87 and to see so much of Wayne Gretzky

and to see so much of those great Oiler teams. You'd go to a game and Gretzky would have six points and you'd think to yourself, where did they come from? I don't even remember him getting them. He just was so subtle all the time. So that or whether it be a no-hitter in baseball. There's not any one thing I could point to

unless it's an Olympic event. And at that point, Usain Bolt takes precedence over anyone because when he runs the 100, it's the most breathtaking thing I've ever seen. It really is. It really is. Your son, Jeff Simmons, writes for Sportsnet. So you're proud of your boy. Yeah. In fact, it's funny.

I didn't want him to go into the business. I thought, you know, I don't like what's happening in our industry now and it's shrinking and it's more difficult. And, you know. It's a real challenge. He got a business degree from the University of Guelph. I thought, this is great. He's going into business. He wound up his first job. He wound up getting

hired by an old boss of mine and has been doing it ever since and loves it. I hope he continues to love it and I hope he continues to do well. Cool. Speaking of Schultz, he wanted me to ask you about being a totally obnoxious Jays fan in high school.

Well, here's the thing. Here's where he's wrong. The Jays were born in 1977. I graduated in 1976. Hey, there's a problem with your story, Schultz. So, probably I was an obnoxious Jays fan when we lived together.

Right, but not in the years, say, 80 to 82. Yeah. Or 79 to 82, whatever it was. So yeah, I probably was then and I wasn't covering them. I was living in Calgary covering the Flames. I probably was exactly that. He might have been the same about some of the teams he followed. Hey, no shame in this.

All right, and one more, one thing I'm going to leave us with here, but you, sorry, a tweet that you tweeted. This is during the Pan Am Games closing ceremonies, okay? So, all right, I like the Guess Who. I really do like the Guess Who. I had their greatest hits on CD, and I spun it a lot.

I love the Guess Who. Here's some Guess Who to get, and I spun it a lot. I love the Guess Who. Here's some Guess Who to get us in the mood. But then I was thinking, okay, that's great, and I would be entertained by that. But if you're like a young athlete at the Pan Am Games, wouldn't you prefer Kanye over the Guess Who in 2015? Well, you've got to ask yourself, who is the closing ceremonies for? Is it for the people who bought it? Is it for the people who are watching on TV?

Is it for the athletes? So who's it for? I think it's for a combination of all those people. Now, the interesting thing was everybody was really excited about Kanye being there until he started performing. And you watch the athletes on the floor. Normally at a closing ceremony, it's a pretty vivacious, excited, everybody's

done. It's like school's over. Let's have a party. People weren't into it. I remember the whole Mexican team walked out in the middle of his first or second song. Would the Mexican team have preferred Birding Cummings? Probably not.

Here was my complaint from the beginning was, this is a Canadian event. When you have a Canadian event at the closing ceremony or opening ceremonies for that matter, you're supposed to be showing your country. Now, whether that's Bieber or whether that's Celine Dion or whether that's Drake or whether that's... Well, Drake was the obvious, and I think we all predicted Drake.

The Weeknd or whoever you want to use, or go back to the band or guess who, or Gordon Lightfoot or whoever you're going to pull. Something should say Canada to me, and that's what I didn't like pull, something should say Canada to me. And that's what I didn't like. It didn't say Canada at all. And I thought, again, I've been to closings or openings at 15 Olympics. Almost always the band is local or the entertainment is local.

That's a fair point. And Kanye is definitely not Canadian. But you know who's Canadian? The lowest of the low, and we're going to close with lowest of the low today. And they're still performing. Yeah? I saw them recently at the...

It's not the original. The guy, Stephen... Damn it. My cousin used to manage them. Okay, because there's a Stephen... I almost called him Stephen Stills. Stephen in the band has left, but yeah, you're right.

Ron Hawkins still performs as lowest of the low. That's but yeah, you're right. Ron Hawkins still performs as Lowe's solo. That's not the Ron Hawkins, the Ronnie Hawkins. No, it's a different Ron Hawkins. And by the way,

thank you for coming. I enjoyed it. Straight from Raptors practice. I hope you had a good time and I hope people cut you some slack on the hot dog story. Wow.

Maybe this podcast will warm them up. Well, we'll find out how many people listen depending on what the responses I get. That's right. And that brings us to the end of our 170th show.

You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. And Steve is at Steve Simmons. See you all next week. Smile you out, check ass, just come in. Ah, where you been? Because everything is kind of rosy and green. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the snow won't stay today.

And your smile is fine, and it's just like...