Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Steve Simmons: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1724

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

In this 1724th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Steve Simmons, the lead sports columnist at the Toronto Sun, about Mitch Marner, Masai Ujiri, Bob McCown, Don Cherry, Wayne Gretzky, Cito Gaston, Bob McKenzie and more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, the Waterfront BIA, Nick Ainis and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Welcome to episode 1724 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Toronto's Waterfront BIA. More than just water. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball.

Get your butts to Christie Pitts this summer for the best baseball in the city, outside the dome. RecycleMyElectronics.ca Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. Building Toronto Skyline, a podcast and book from Nick Aynes, sponsored by Fusion Corp Construction Management Inc. and Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning to Toronto Mic'd, it's Steve Simmons.

Welcome back, Steve. Nice to be here. I see you had 1700 and some podcasts. 1724 is your lucky number this time. I think I'm four of them. Yeah. Well, listen, I took notes. So let's do this. I think this is your fourth is what I think.

That's what I thought in my head coming here. All right. Let me tell you, let's recap the ongoing history of Steve Simmons on Toronto Mike. I will say your last visit was 2022. So this was long overdue almost three years ago since you've been here. Did you miss me, Steve? I miss you all the time. The feeling is mutual. Okay. So just to recap, because somebody listening is like, I didn't know Steve Simmons was on Toronto Mike before. And they can go into the archives and they can hear your first visit April, 2016. That's, that's a long time ago, almost a

decade ago. It was episode 170. What a low number that was. Mike, this is the description I wrote at the time, Steve. Mike chats with Toronto Sun columnist Steve Simmons about his years at the Toronto Sun, his relationships with Damian Cox, David Schultz, and James Myrtle. So this is of the time. His thoughts on analytics and hockey, his Phil Kessel story about hot dogs and how he got Howard Berger fired.

And we also talked about what it was like for you being a day one-er at the fan 590, the team 1050 and the score. What an episode, Steve. I might as well leave now. I can't talk about that. Let's revisit, Steve. I might as well leave now. Let's revisit all those. You know what? I remember to say, you just told me before we pressed record, you literally golfed with David Schultz last week, right? Yeah, we regularly play golf together. We're old, old friends. And David, who wrote for

the Globe and Mail for many years, now retired, remains one of my better friends. who wrote for the Globe and Mail for many years, now retired, remains one of my better friends. Does he try any stand-up comedy material on you? Not sure he's doing much of that anymore. I think he went, he tried, he went hard at it, and then life tends to take you in different directions. I think that was heavily encouraged by Gere Joyce, who does a lot of standup.

And I think Gere Joyce got his bud, David Schultz, to do standup as like a, like just a boost his spirits and maybe that's run its course. So no more standup from David Schultz. Although he did do standup at a Toronto Mike listener experience once at Great Lakes Brewery. You know, two of the funniest people I know are not comedians.

And they're ex-sports writers, and Schultz is one of them, and Steve Buffery is the other one. Buffery. And they're both hysterically funny people, but I'm not sure they're hysterically funny on stage, if that makes any sense at all. Well, not everybody's a stand-up comedian. Some people are just naturally, like, you know,

me, for example, you know, I might not be so hot on stage at yuck yucks or whatever But I can roll with you on a live recording and get get in some laughs Well to be determined but okay So speaking of buffery because when you say things I might go off in tangents But I think the last time I saw you was at the crooked queue For Steve Buffery's retirement party that you know, I don't get out to Etobicoke very often. I come to do your show. I come to see Buffery and I get to the Crooked Q every once in a while. And that was a fantastic night. You know, it's funny, you know, in our business, you can get, you know, people

to come out once in a while for things, but most of the time people go their own way. The star people go their way, the globe people go their way, the globe people go their way, the sun people go their way, the TV people, TSN goes one direction, Sportsnet goes another, and everybody kind of sticks to your own. When it came to Steve Buffery's retirement, everybody showed up. It was phenomenal.

Paul Beeston was there, and that guy's Bill Manning, who ran Toronto FC at the time, and it was was just all the, everybody from everywhere in sports, there were star guys there, there were globe guys there. There was like every, almost every name person in the sports industry, which, which tells you how much Buffery was loved and still is loved. And you know, that's phenomenal. Cause I think if you had one of those things for me, seven people would show, you know, I'd be there to cover it though. It would be Schultz and I.

Would Howard Berger make an appearance at your retirement party? He works for a funeral home, Howard. Yeah, Benjamin's. And so he may just be sort of sizing me up for the future. Is that where you're going to end up? Because normally I do a pitch for Ridley Funeral Home, but you're going to end up at Benjamin's? Well, it tends to be for my religion. There's, I think there's two funeral homes in the city that are primarily Jewish.

And so that's, I suspect one day, you know, I will be a customer. Well, let me give you a gift, even though you won't end up there in many, many decades when it's time, but Ridley Funeral Home, they proudly support this show. Howard Burger does not work for Ridley Funeral Home, but this is a measuring tape for you, Steve, courtesy of Ridley Funeral Home, they proudly support this show. Howard Burger does not work for Ridley Funeral Home, but this is a measuring tape for you, Steve, courtesy of Ridley Funeral Home. I love a good measuring tape, so thank you very much. And we'll try and stay away from Ridley,

or as long as we can, as long as most of us can. So, okay, so I'm gonna get back to that point, because we mentioned the crooked queue, just because I did see you there at Steve Buffery's. And don't ask me how I got an invitation, but I was honored honored to be there and all these like heavyweights. I remember taking a run at Paul Beeston. I wanted Beeston on Toronto Mike and we weren't able to make it happen. Do you think you could do something with your vast Rolo decks and maybe you could help me get Paul Beeston on Toronto Mike? You know what I've been trying to do? I've been trying to get Paul Beeston to write a book. Well he could start with this and then just

turned 80 recently within weeks and you know you think of what Paul Beeston has done and seen and been through. He ran the Blue Jays from day one. He built with Pat Gillick this phenomenal organization and his phenomenal team that won two World Series back-to-back hasn't been topped by you know by anyone but the one Yankees team since right and and so he went from there to the Commissioner's office in Major League Baseball where he was second in command of Major League Baseball and some people thought he was going to be next guy to be Commissioner and it didn't work that way and then if you look at where and then he came back to the Blue Jays and did the

Alex Anthopoulos thing right you know where you know to 2015-2016 until Shapiro was hired yeah the two greatest I mean the funny thing was is how the whole Shapiro thing came down the owner of the the Blue Jays now and the owner of everything now is Edward Rogers and Edward Rogers had decided that he was going to replace Paul Beeston as president of the team and and so he went to Major League Baseball and he said you

know give me it give me some suggestions and names of people and you know one of the people given to him was Kenny Williams of the White Sox and so to get permission to speak to Kenny Williams of the White Sox. And so to get permission to speak to Kenny Williams of the White Sox, one of the Rogers people, whether it was Edward or one of his other associates, called the owner of the White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf, who's one of his best friends in the world is Paul Beeston. I love that story. So he calls to ask permission to hire someone

to replace Paul Beeston, hangs up the phone, Reinsdorf hangs up the phone, picks up the phone, calls Beeston, says they're trying to get rid of you. Heads up my friend. Wow. Uh, why do you think, looking back, why do you think Mr Rogers was so keen to get rid of Paul Beeston in Alex Anthopolis, uh, in that regard? Well, he wasn't so keen to get rid of Alex Anthopolis as he was to get rid of Paul and start his own sort of operation.

And Edward has a guy, I think his name is, maybe Roger Ray, but his last name is R.A.I. And he's one of his best friends and he's one of the sort of sports advisors that he listens to. And Roger Ray had told him why the Blue Jays were badly run, you know, and showed him a bunch of statistically proven things that, you know, turned out to be nonsense, but nonetheless, you know, they were, they were that. And so Beeston was an easy guy to replace. He'd been around forever. He was old. Um, what's that? Nine years ago?

Nine or two. Well 2015, it was like the end of 2015. So it's 10 years ago, he was 70. So that, 70. So you may look to be replacing that at that time. And so what happened was he started the process, got Shapiro's name through the commissioner's office, wound up hiring him out of Cleveland, and by doing so, basically eliminated Alex Anthopoulos from remaining as general manager because Alex would not work with Mark Shapiro under any circumstance. They did not see baseball the same way. They didn't like each other particularly. So there was a lot of sort of issues there. So Alex said, no, I'm out. At the last minute, before the sort of whole thing happened with Shapiro taking over,

he offered Alex a long-term expense of, he would have made him the highest paid general manager in baseball. Mr. Rogers spends money, we'll say that for him as an owner. He's not a cheap guy. And so he spends money and he was willing to spend it on Alex at that point. And I went up having breakfast with Alex

At the time and he he had an offer from TSN I think it was a million dollars a year which for Canadian television is enormous money Absolutely, it was a million dollars a year if he went and became their Baseball guy their voice of baseball at At that time, baseball was, you know, TSN was more interested in baseball than they are right now, for example. But if you look at it, Alex had the offer from TSN, he had the offer from the Blue Jays,

and then he had a chance just to leave. And he wanted to stay, had it been with Paul, had it been with someone that he had regard for or could operate the way he wanted to operate. He loves Toronto. His family still, his family, his in-laws live in Innisfil, like he bought them home. He's here a lot.

And so we're having breakfast and talking about, what's in front of him. And he's got the TSN offer I said you can't take that You know, you're gonna hate TV. It's not for you, right? And he and I said if I were you this is what I would do Of course, nobody ever listens to me, but I said I would take the Blue J job I think it was five years by get fired after one year get paid out and

Make some money here. Right. And he was too honest and honorable to do that. But was it was the bottom line that, you know, Shapiro would have veto power over baseball decisions? Well, I think, you know, like any president in any situation, you always have veto power. Yeah, Shani had it. Everybody has a boss.

Right. And so you have to go to your boss. And in that case, it wasn't that he had veto power, it's that if I'm working with you, Mike, and I don't agree with how you operate, then I can't work with you honestly and feel good about the work that I'm doing and feel honest about it.

And I think in Alex's case, he looked at it and said, this wasn't for me. And so he didn't take the money that that was in front of him he went and took a year or so and wound up you know until this season doing a phenomenal job with the Atlanta Braves. And it's funny because until this season until right now you can see the the decline of the the on-the-field performance of the Toronto Blue Jays and no playoff victories and some underwhelming results and as we're speaking the Toronto Blue Jays are in first place in the AL East. Go figure. I

mean this was a team I remember talking to my son who's a big baseball fan. Who's an FOTM. Yes and a very good episode by the way. Thank you. No bias there. No and my wife and I listened to all two hours of it. It's the most we've ever heard him speak. And he thought at the beginning of the year, this was the least likable Blue Jays team he's ever seen. They couldn't hit, they had no offense, nothing was going right, it just didn't look good. And then all of a sudden, parts from almost nowhere, with the exception of George Springer,

who's had three declining seasons in a row. Yeah, he looked like he was done, washed up last season. So you're looking at it. This is a phenomenal story if you think about it. He's mid 30s. Baseball is nothing but statistics. You look at three years in a row, every meaningful stat, he's dropping. So you're not saying you're still, oh, at at 35. He's gonna be better than he was at 31

I mean, that's just not logical 32. He was this 33 was this 34 It was this numbers drop numbers drop numbers drop, right? You know, the only reason he's here is because Excuse me is because Because the contract is so large and they have to pay him and so Now all of a sudden he's having Are you not having an MVP season because he plays in the same league with Aaron judge? but he's having an absolutely astounding season and so is Alejandro Kirk and So is Addison barger and you know and there's so many guys that you wouldn't have said

This is not a Vlad E Guerrero, Beau Bechet show as the Blue Jays are sitting in first place today. This is all the other guys. And it's actually phenomenal to watch. This has become a very likable team and a very exciting team. And I'm not sure they're gonna keep it up, although they have a great schedule for the next while where they play the White Sox

and some other crappy teams, Oakland. Well, it's not Oakland anymore, but whatever they are now. Right. Um, you know, they have some easy games coming up after just sweeping the Yankees at home and not just sweeping them, pounding them with the amount of runs they scored. So you've seen what Springer's doing and what Kirk is doing, what, you know, bargers doing and then, and then a guy like Ernie Clement, you know, career sort of last guy on your roster kind of barely able to be in the major leagues is having

another, he's having a phenomenal year. So where has this come from? How has this happened? You know, the management people who are not my favorite people on earth, right, you know, are sitting there probably with their chests pumped out right now and laughing at the rest of us. But listen friend of Atkins, FOTM Hall of Famer Stu Stone literally texted me last night with like a laughing at me because I'm in the same place as your son was at the beginning of the season where I found this team very unlikable. And I think I was critical of Atkins on a number of fronts. Thought there was a lot of grounds for dismissal there now stews laughing at me My only reply was to quote FOTM Mike Willner and say it's early

Well, it's not early anymore though. It's it's it's early We're 82 ish games in or 83 games in it's it's July. It's the 4th of July Here's what's interesting. Ross Atkins spent $15 million of Mr. Rogers money on Max Scherzer, who's basically done nothing at all. He was barely pitched. He spent, he traded for Jimenez, who's got this enormous contract and he has done nothing.

He signed Anthony Santander as a big money, 20 million a yearish free agent. He's been hurt and done nothing. So you can almost say this is a fluke that it's happening the way it's happening, but it's kind of a nice fluke because let's face it, you know, people are kind of, you know, grumbling about the Leafs and grumbling about the Raptors and grumbling about TFC and there's a lot of grumbling to go around in and grumbling about the Raptors and grumbling about TFC. There's a lot of grumbling to go around in this sporting market right now.

So it's nice to see at least the Blue Jays are doing something as unlikely and impossible as it all seems. Well, we're gonna do some grumbling on this program. Can you believe we're still in the description of your first appearance in April, 2016? But I now remember about a half an hour ago when we mentioned the Crooked Q that I was going to ask you,

if you know this name, Cliff Thorburn, do you know the name Cliff Thorburn? Of course. Hall of Fame snooker player. Okay. So I'm not a snooker head. One of the great Canadian figures of all time. He was in that seat you're sitting in a couple of

days ago, Cliff made his Toronto Mike debut and we did get a question about whether he had played Snooker at the Crooked Q. It used to be called the Kingsway Billiards or something like that. But just funny small world story that if you want to hear from Cliff, I had a good, I don't know what it was,

80 minutes with the man just a couple of days ago. I think I did a story on him about 30 years ago, give or take a week. Yeah, he won the world championship in 1980, but he was still, like he was rated number one in the world, I think, 81, 82, so he's still going, he doesn't retire. I think he retires in like the mid-90s, I think,

but yeah, I had to do a lot of catching up on my snooker history and Cliff Thorburn's role. And it's unbelievable a Canadian did that like he's apparently debatably depending who you ask the greatest and I don't know what's happened recently but the greatest snooker player who does not hail from the United Kingdom. Well I don't I don't know what the other countries are I'm not big on world. Ireland, Australia. Having said that though what you've seen in this country is boy has sport changed from what we might have grown up with in different times.

Because I remember, and I'm a newspaper junkie, having grown up in the industry and reading it from the day I was born basically. I would always follow where Canadians all over the world, whether it was tennis or whether it was golf or whether it was squash. It was always the little, you know, the small print at the back of the agate pages of the newspaper. And so you'd look for Cliff Thorburn's name

or George Knudsen's name or Dave Barr or whoever it was. And now we're seeing, you know, Canadians, tennis players that we do know. They're not just little names in the newspaper, or golfers that we do know that are leading in large tournaments, or sometimes winning them. Or Shea Gildes Alexander. Well, did you see the contract he just signed?

70 something million a year? Yeah, wow. You know, I'll tell you how much Canadian basketball has changed just in my time. I got sent to Los Angeles in I think in the late 80s to do a story on a basketball player named Mike Smreck. I don't know if you know that name. Rings a bell but I'm not. It's spelled S M R E K. Mike Smreck's from Niagara Falls, Ontario if I believe if I'm correct and it's spelled S M R E K Mike Smreks from Niagara Falls Ontario if I believe if I'm correct and he was the backup to the backup center of the

Los Angeles Lakers with Kareem Jabbar right in in those great years Magic Johnson and Jabbar I got sent to go to Los Angeles to do a piece on Mike's wreck why because he had won an NBA ring. And nobody had ever, I don't think any. Right, because this is pre-Bill Winnington. Yeah, nobody I don't believe had ever done that. But I think he got two in the end. And I spent like two days hanging out with Mike Smreck.

He lived in the hotel right across from the Forum. It was kind of fun. And I'm in the Lakers, in those days, you're in the locker rooms interviewing players. I'm in the Lakers, in those days, you're in the locker rooms interviewing players. I'm in the Lakers locker room, and the PR guy is supposed to set me up to talk to Jabbar. And I thought, okay, this is kind of cool. Get a chance to talk to Jabbar, he's a very bright man.

And Jabbar thinks I'm a gag, because why would anybody want to do a story on Mike Smritz? Like, so he thinks I'm there as a, as a, as a joke, practical, you know, one of those David Letterman kind of setup guys. But instead, you know, I just wanted to know, you know, what he thought of them. Slim Pickens back then, you know, Leo Roudens, when was he drafted in the first round? First ever Canadian to be drafted in the first round. I played high school. Not I personally

played but my school played high school against Leo Routins. I remember. Oh he's the kid from Keele Street. That's what they called Leo. And yeah but that but now we have guys signing for 70 million and winning MVPs and playoff MVPs and you know it was crazy. We've come a long way baby okay and also quick fun fact that kind of blows my mind okay because when we were doing our Jays chat there for a bit we talked about George Springer look at this resurgence from George Springer but he can't win MVP Aaron Judge plays whatever here you do know there's only two years difference in the ages of George Springer and Aaron Judge? One is 35 and one is 33. Doesn't Springer present as a much older person than Aaron Judge? Well

because Aaron Judge presents as not an age. Do those you know superheroes that they make the movies, do they have ages? Avengers? Yeah, all the movies that are coming out all the time. How did you win a bar bet or two if you said you sold them? You know there's only, there are only two years difference between Aaron Judge and George Springer. Two years and about a hundred pounds of muscle. Standing beside Aaron Judge is one, it's a fascinating thing to do because he is the most built guy that plays a sport in a power way that that equals his body. I think that there is there is really in any sport. He's he's in Greek nature and he seems like on ask.

Yeah, he seems like such a nice man. Like when you're around him or covering him. My little exposure to him has all been very positive. And and it's nice to see someone who's enjoying being that great and you look at this this season he's having one of the although he's been in a bit of a slump lately he's having one of the greatest seasons of any right-handed hitter in history what he's hitting home not even just home runs it's everything it's crazy to watch and it's like it's like Superman in a you know, it's like they peel the uniform right off of him

It was November 2017 Steve Simmons when you returned to Toronto mic'd so we're about and a year and a half later So we got you in 18 months later It was episode 288 and this what I wrote at the time. Mike and Steve discussed several topics, including the recent post-media and tour star swap and cut, this newspaper deal. Cash Palmer. We talked about cash. How's cash doing?

I would rather change the subject, unfortunately. We'll move on from that one, then we'll think of Cash Palmer. The cancellation of the reporters, which I'm going to actually revisit in a bit because I'm going to ask you about somebody else. But Bob Elliott, I guess we always talk about Bob. How's Bob doing? Bob's doing great. Bob is very involved with minor baseball in Toronto, very involved with his website, Canadian

Ballet Baseball Network, you know, still loves baseball more than anyone I know and hanging out with his grandkids. Yep. Loving the grandchild thing and he, the thing I love about Bob, he reads the newspapers late. He doesn't ever read them on the day that they come out. I think he'd just pile up on his desk and he catches up. Sure. Because I'll get emails from him or text messages like three weeks after I've written something saying good piece on this and I can hear it in his voice coming to me but. Well kind of that Quite the voice. Yes, love Bob Elliott. Okay. We talked about the athletic we talked about the Argos TFC Roy Halliday

Phil Kessel, of course, we gotta talk about Kessel Joey bats his diabetes How is your I'm pausing in this reading the description to find out how you're doing physically? How's your health? My health is about as good as I would expect. I'm handling diabetes about as well as I can expect. Unfortunately I have neuropathy which is a side effect of diabetes which is you lose your nerves in your feet and in your hands and I've lost them in my feet and partially in my hands and so what happens is that you lose your ability to balance the same way you would have balanced before

or say you're going for a walk and you're not thinking of where you're walking, you might trip a lot easier than the average person will. For example, I used to coach minor hockey and really loved it. I used to play as well and I can't put skates on anymore in balance. I just don't have the feeling in my feet that gives me the kind of balance that that makes it safe for me to skate. So I'm not

able to do that. So it's not like it's not like it's changed my life completely but it just means that there's things you have to be aware of that you weren't aware of before and that's what you know getting older is part of that. You've had to make adjustments. I mean I've had diabetes now for 30 you know coming up to 35 years and so you know this is really the only I would say really bad thing that's happened physically in all that time. Okay we also talked about your sleep disorder how are your sleeps these days? Oh boy, now you're on a new subject. I can't sleep. I've never been able to sleep. I've tried a million different things. I have gone from, you know, sleep clinics to hospital visits to

hypnosis to psychologists. I mean, I've gone through every single possible thing you could have gone through, and it has not helped. I'm just bad at it. And I'm fortunate and really fortunate that I've had a job that I don't have to be up early and be at work at 8 in the morning or 8.30 in the morning. So I wear a, that's a hand-me-down, my wife got a new one and she said, do you want to try this? And I said, okay, let me see, it's a Garmin watch,

but it tells me how my sleep is. Like every day I get a sleep score and it talks about how long your sleep was, did you get into REM, all these interesting things. And REM, not the band, you know. I know there's the band, by the way. I think I get more of the band than I do sleep. But you're not, so, and I know you've done, of course,

it must be annoying, actually, when you say, I have a sleep disorder and people are like, have you tried this, have you tried that? But you're not, so, and I know you've done, of course, it must be annoying actually when you say, I have a sleep disorder and people are like, have you tried this? Have you tried that? And you're like, yeah, I've tried everything. Everybody has an answer except, except one, except one that works for me. Jeez. And what's happened? But how many hours are you getting?

Go ahead. Not very many. At night I'm getting almost none. I get most of them in the morning. I think I just passed out from exhaustion. This sounds terrible Steve. And so what's happened also is because of neuropathy, that's an element that's made it worse because what you have is you've got tingling in your feet that, you know,

your feet aren't real comfortable being under sheets and things like that. And so, you know, that's played a part in me falling asleep which has made it more difficult Have you thought about flipping everything like a like a shift worker or something and just maybe like a vampire? I've gone so many different ways and so many different, you know If I ever have time to write a book about another thing in my life, you know It's gonna be about you know, what a miserable time I've had trying to figure out how to sleep Well speaking of the word miserable, I would think with as little sleep as you're getting

that you would be miserable. I think you'd have a justification for being Mr. Cranky Pants with such little sleep. Well, I'm gonna quote two of my friends, Bruce Arthur, who works for the star, and Buffery. And they said that I'm sort of this freak of nature that like they'll use me as in because we've been to a lot of Olympics together and they'll say you make no sense. You don't get any sleep and you wake up the next day in a better mood than we did after sleeping eight hours or

10 hours or whatever it was and they don't understand it. I think I've just had to learn to adjust and I think it's affected me in other ways but you just try and go on and do what you do and smile and then do the things you like to do. Otherwise you know what are you living for? More on Bruce Arthur later when I bring up the reporters but we also kicked out the jams that episode so if people want to hear Steve Simmons play and discuss his 10 favorite songs of all time, that is episode 288. One more to go here, and then we'll actually start this episode.

So the third visit of Steve Simmons was October, 2022. That was your most recent visit until now. It was episode 1,142. So 1142. It's quite a gap between two and three. I'm just looking, but there was a pandemic in there. So we'll blame that. Mike chats of Steve Simmons about what you wrote about Akeem

Alloo and Wayne Simmons. Your polarizing presence. This is a constant thread. We'll revisit it at some point today, but how long you'll write your new book, A Lucky Life, Gretzky, Crosby, Kauai, and more from the best seed in the house. That was your fabulous book. Loved reading it. And that was, believe it or not, and I don't know if we have that kind of time today, but we went two hours and 20 minutes when we talked in October 2022. So there you go. Now this is, this is your fourth appearance.

And here we are. Okay. We could just run back the other ones. But some of them will revisit. I have a question. Is that George the animal steel over there? Yes. Okay. In fact, I mentioned Stu Stone. So, Stu Stone is close personal friends with Atkins. In fact, I went to a movie premiere, Stu directs movies, and Atkins was in the row in front of me. They're good friends. So, when I would be critical, and I think I was in well within my right to be critical of some decisions and moves made by. So when I would be critical, and I think I was well within my right to be critical of some decisions and moves made by Atkins, Stu would kind of just defend Atkins,

and he's having the best time right now. Like, you should see these text messages. He's acting like we won the World Series. And I'm just saying, it is not as early as it used to be, to coin a new phrase, but it is early July, and I'm kind of morphing into a playoffs only guy but yeah George the animal steel this is from my time WWF time I was a big mid to yeah I have a box of these at home I

have it like oh do you have the ring yeah I don't think I have the ring anymore but I have a box of figures and the kids have drawn all over a bunch of them from earlier and don't throw those out Steve. Oh no I'm definitely not throwing, I can't throw anything out but that's. You got some hoarding going on there. Yes lots of old sporting collectible kind of stuff. My wife will throw all of it out tomorrow if she could. Oh my goodness okay so I have to ask you about somebody who was in the news recently but before I do that I'm going to let you know that I have a lasagna in my freezer for you, Steve Simmons, courtesy of

Palma pasta. Have you ever enjoyed Palma pasta? I have and the lasagna is awesome. Okay, I got one for you. Thank you, Palma pasta for feeding us all last week at TML X 19. And we were at Great Lakes Brewery and Great Lakes brought us our first beer and of course, fresh craft beer from Great Lakes. The guys from Great Lakes were here earlier today to record a new episode of Between Two Fermenters, podcast from Great Lakes that I am lucky enough to produce.

And speaking of such, I highly recommend Building Toronto Skyline from Nick Eienes. That's a great podcast. He's in condo development and there's some great conversations about building Toronto Skyline from Nick Ienies, that's a great podcast. He's in condo development and there's some great conversations about building Toronto Skyline. And of course, RecycleMyElectronics.ca, Mr. Simmons, that's where you go if you have old cables. I know you said you don't throw anything

out, but if you have these old cables, old electronics, old devices, old laptops, like you know, make that visit to RecycleMyElectronics.ca. Put in your postal code, because you can drop all of that off to be properly recycled so the chemicals don't end up in our landfill. Let's do that, Steve. I've got a few things for them. Okay, well listen, you might need a bigger boat, as they say. By the way, did you see Jaws in theaters?

I believe many years ago. Well, I mean 50 years ago. So Jaws just celebrated its 50th birthday. That's why I said many. All right, 50 years ago, you were old enough to see. I'm trying to gauge the age, but you were old enough to see Jaws in theaters 50 years ago, is what you're telling me. I'm trying to gauge the age, but you were old enough to see Jaws in theaters 50 years ago is what you're telling me I was a university age if I if I recall you can do that then Okay, i'm trying to quickly i'm gonna go to my youtube channel and play a Little piece of audio here. It is right here. Hopefully this works. Let me see what happens when I play this from youtube

Well tim, this is our last show. Yep. How many podcasts have we done? I don't know. This is our 313th. 313th. Yeah, we've been listening to all around the world. It's just amazing how many different countries, you know, people download and listen to it. We've had 6.5 million downloads, which is pretty good. So, 6.5 million downloads. That's an awful lot. Thanks everybody for listening and toodaloo. So this is from, I guess a couple of weeks ago now,

this was Don Cherry seemingly signing off for the last time. Like you heard those words that were said there and this was promoted on the official Don Cherry X account as the finale. So I know that there's some, you know, Joe Warmington had a chat with Don Cherry and Don suggested they were just done for the season, just done for the year. But I don't know, what are your thoughts? Was that Don signing off for the last time or we have to wait and see in the fall? It sure sounded like Don signing off for the last time. Albeit, I think late just by listening

to him. That said, Joe and him are very close. He's close with Joe Warmington. And every time Don has something to say, he tends to say it through Joe Warmington, the columnist of the sun. And, uh, and so if he's planning to come back and he wants to come back more power to him for being able to do it and, but he does sound like a man who maybe deserves a break. You know, Don, Don went about as long as you can go, I think. He's in his 90s. You know, on the air and podcasting. Every once in a while, you'll hear somebody who's late 80s or early 90s and they'll sound incredible. Oh, Brian McFarlane. But then every once in a while, you know, you can hear Don there and you really don't feel very comfortable

listening to you. See, it's entirely again, I'm merely speculating, but it's entirely possible. That was the finale and Dawn just forgot or doesn't realize it. Uh, who knows what's going on in the cherry household. Yeah. And I, I, you know, to be honest, I don't, I've not seen one or heard one of the podcasts I did not when he, when he finished with hockey night in Canada, I never saw Don again. And so I never heard him again. And so, you know, if people were out there listening,

cause he had enormous following, and still has an enormous following. No doubt. And so, you know, whether people want to listen to him or believe to listen to him, that's terrific. I've never heard it. How many years has it been since the whole thing happened with Sportsnet and?

The you people come here for your milk and your honey. Good question. I wish I could, you know what I think? COVID messed up my sense of time. Like I feel like I used to be good at that. Oh, that was five years ago. That was 10 years ago. But with COVID, so Dawn was gone pre-COVID. So it's pretty long. It's a long time now. And, uh, you know, I really like Don

Cherry. I mean, well, let's, so let me set you up and then we'll go off on Don, which is the big question I have because it was raised, uh, who was it? Jeff Lumbee made a passion plea to get Dawn Cherry the Order of Canada. And I'm so my specific question to you, and then I would like you to talk about Dawn for a moment here, like his place in twenty twenty five and how we look back at Don Cherry. But do you think, Steve Simmons, that Dawn Cherry deserves the Order of Canada? I don't know who deserves the Order of Canada based on who gets it and who doesn't get it.

Cliff Thorburn got it. Oh, good. I'm saying I don't know who deserves the Order of Canada based on who gets it and who doesn't get it. Cliff Thorburn got it. Oh good, you know. I'm saying that. Donovan Bailey's got it. I don't know. It took Donovan Bailey way too long. It was ridiculous how many times he got passed over. But I don't know who and what the qualifications are. So it's not for me to say whether he does or doesn't deserve.

What he does deserve is hockey Hall of Fame recognition in my opinion. Now it can come in one of two ways. It can come with the Foster Hewitt Award which is for broadcasting or it can come from the builder category which is what did you do for hockey and in my view whether you like them or you don't like them, whether you found his opinions crazy or you found his opinions perfect for you, he factored in the way the game was looked at. He factored in the way we watched hockey.

I'll never forget seeing a Saturday night press box crowd at Maple Leaf Gardens or at, you know, at the Scotiabank Arena now, everybody would huddle around the television just to see what Don had to say. Half of them critics, half of them supporters. It was an amazing thing to watch. He had an audience. He had something to say. You know, yes, he did it in ways that maybe you don't like.

Yes, there was elements to how he broadcasts that you could take issue with. But what you can't take issue with is, did he have impact? Did he have impact on the game, in how we view the game, in how we talk about the game? And so for me, somewhere along the way, he should have gotten by now Hall of Fame recognition in one of those two categories.

But unfortunately, like everything in our world now, we've gotten so politically correct, and I don't know if woke is the right word, but just politically correct, that we're not willing to open doors to people who maybe made it challenging for you to talk about certain things. And so in Don's case and in other people's case, they haven't gotten the Hockey Hall of Fame recognition. And the Hockey Hall of Fame,

the broadcast award, by the way, is a bit of a sham Are you in it? No, and I to be honest, I think I'm in the same kind of situation where enough people Don't care for how I do my job or you're polarizing Yes And and don't share he's polarizing and I understand it and him and I for years were very close and had a great relationship and then we had a bit of a falling out and and You know at this stage of our lives that weren't really able to repair it very well. But I'll use an example.

The award is the Foster-Hewitt Award and it's for broadcasters. And the guys who vote on it are primarily play-by-play people. And so what they do on an annual basis is they either put a play-by-play guy from a city or a play-by-or a color guy from the city an analyst most of them doing you know the tell the local television of the local teams and So many of the people who do play-by-play around the NHL have been

Inducted as you know through the foster through the foster he would award But you know who hasn foster through the Foster Hewitt Award but you know who hasn't gotten recognition Dave Hodge Ron McClain anyone who's hosted anyone who's not gone the play-by-play route right well does the guy doing play-by-play in Hartford is he more Hall of Fame than Don Cherry being the voice of Hockey Night in Canada or Ron McClain being the voice of Hockey Night in Canada or Ron McLean being the host of Hockey Night in Canada or Dave Hodge before them, you know.

Introducing. Well I'm glad you mentioned Dave. You know, introducing both of them, you know. Dave was there before McLean. Dave was there with Don Cherry when he first started with Coach's Corner. Well can we put a pin on that because I'm glad you mentioned Dave Hodge

and this will kind of lead to a little reporter's talk. But first, thinking about Don Cherry, so this debate, this impassioned plea from Jeff Lumbee that Don Cherry deserves the Order of Canada. My first thought is, how can you give a man the Order of Canada when he did what Dave Hodge explained so eloquently in this short clip that you might recognize because you were in the room, Steve Simmons, I was in the room, you were in the room, but let's listen to this quick Dave Hodge hit Back in the early days Don would call me on Friday night and would tell me everything that you know He wanted to talk about and I would say no no no maybe and here's what we are going to talk about

But one particular conversation we had was Don saying What's it? Give other night, boy? That Patti Roy, that Patti Roy, we make it say, is I gotta talk about Patti Roy? You can see why he made that statement. And I said, Don, if you want to talk about that goaltender, we will talk about Patrick Wa. And Don said, Don, if you want to talk about that goaltender, we will talk about Patrick Wa. And Don said, I can call him Patti Roy.

If I want to call him Patti Roy, I can call him Patti Roy. I said, by doing so, Don, you're insulting the man. You're insulting his family, his friends, and the entire French-speaking population of this country largely based in Quebec. If you mention the name Patti Roy on TV, you will be corrected and hear the same speech. So we talked about something else. And that's Dave Hodge.

That is perfect Dave Hodge. That is perfect Dave Hodge. That's, um, he did not like that Don Cherry mispronounced names and some of them intentionally. Oh, I think all of them intentionally. And he did not like when he would make errors. Dave is a stickler for broadcast excellence. And so the names have to be right. The facts have to be right. The opinions need to be reasoned. The delivery has to be right. And so he had great frustration working with Don because Don wanted to be a character and

Dave didn't want him to be a caricature. They wanted him to be a hockey broadcaster. And so if I if I'm saying that I think Dave Dave, that Don belongs in the Hall of Fame, I suspect Dave's vote may not be the same as mine. But I think Dave makes a great point, which is how offensive it is to Quebecers and Francophone community in this country. We are, as you know, you know, you're Canadian history. This is a bilingual nation.

And he was so purposefully offensive towards. Our French Canadians and purposefully offensive to Europeans and purposely offensive to Swedes and to Russians. And, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, Rodney Dangerfield was offensive, you know, doing his standup. And so is Don Rickles. And so, you so, but they were darn funny at the time. At that time, they didn't get the order of Canada either. No. One of the things working with Dave Hodge was one of the great pleasures of my

life and what an honor it was. And the thing about Dave was Dave knew exactly what he wanted to do in every show he was ever on. What he wanted to get to, what he believed in, what he, you know, how he wanted the show to go. And every once in a while, I can get emotional and I can get excitable. And while, well, I won't, you know, mispronounce names intentionally or any of that. So one Sunday morning I got Excited about whatever topic it was. We were talking about on the reporters and I went off on one of my you know tangents We go to commercial He turns to me and says no one wants to hear that on Sunday morning

And it was like you're too loud, you're too excited, like calm it down. He didn't have to say anything more. Right. But Dave Naylor and I, Dave Naylor used to be on the show too, he's a TSN football guy. Right. Dave Naylor would say, we live in fear of upsetting Dave because he was such a pro and such an incredible influence for us work wise. And every once in a while, while the show was going on, he would just turn and give

you a look. And the look was shut up. So my little taste of that is that every single year for several years now, I record with Dave Hodge, his best of the year in music. So this is an annual tradition. Usually this records, I want to say like late November, maybe early December, but it was in person this past year. We had to do some remotes during the pandemic, but I was glad to have him back in the basement.

I hope to do it again this coming winter. But just that recording of the top 100 Dave Hodge songs of the year, I get more nervous about that episode than I think any other episode I do the entire year because I don't want to disappoint Dave Hodge. Well, how many hours would that show take to do? Well, it's all live to tape, right? So it doesn't take that long. We probably recorded it in an hour

and then I probably add the music in post. Yeah, and it ends up being like a 90 minute special. I understand that. When you worked with someone like Dave, who was so professional, who was so good at his job, who, you know, just to watch it, just to appreciate how he did his job watching it. I mean, I was there for 15 years.

I was the only person from start to finish who was on the panel. So you're there for the Brunt era. I lived through Brunt. I lived through Cox. I lived through lots of people are there You know we had a lot at Michael Farber when he was healthy and then Michael Farber was sick and missed a few years And then he came back, you know for a long time. I had the middle seat I had Michael Farber to my right and I had Dave to my left and it reminded me of If you were in class in grade five and the two smartest kids in the class were right beside you right you

know one on each side you were in the dumb seat and that's how I felt most Sunday mornings that I was in the dumb seat because Farber was using words I didn't even know and and Hodge was saying things that was just so darn smart and you know I had to take a back seat. So tell the listenership that recording I played of Dave Hodge, where was that recorded? I believe that was when we were at the Paradise Theater. We did our last actual show was live

at the Paradise Theater, which is on Bloor, I think. Is it college? College. I think it's college. Okay. I bike by it all the time, I think. Is it college? College. I think it's college. Okay. I bike by it all the time, but I believe it's college. Okay. But the Paradise, it could be Bloor though,

but it's one of those streets, we're in the right neighborhood. But the Paradise, I was there because that entire recording was dropped into the Toronto Mic'd feed as a bonus episode basically to witness. But when I was there, so I had two thoughts at the time, now we're going back several years, because this is-

If you remember, Brendan Shanahan was there that night too. How could I forget? I waited afterwards, because he went, I wanted to get Brendan Shanahan on this show for a long time, but not to talk Leafs, now that he's no longer, we'll talk about that in a minute, he's no longer president, but to talk Mimico and about his youth, I mean, he grew up down the street.

He went to the same high school I went to. I wanted to talk to him. But anyway, we'll get to that in a minute, Brendan Shanahan. But I did wait a long time to finally meet him and tell him what I wanted to do. But there were so many people there trying to get his attention. I eventually just gave up and biked home. And I'll never forget that night. That's the night somebody stole the lights off my bike that night locked up outside the Paradise Theatre Okay So at the time when we'd recorded that episode and I was honored to be a part of it a couple of things one is I thought maybe this was the first in a series like oh

Because it was a full house. It went so well. I said, oh, maybe there'll be regular live recordings of the reporters But that was a one and done was there any conversation ever about doing another one? Oh yeah, there was a lot of conversation about what was gonna happen to the show and where it was gonna go. And there was some interest. I believe this is pre-COVID. But I think it was pre-COVID.

There was some interest in sort of going from place to place with the show and doing it live and having like live audiences and whether it was to do it like live audiences and and you know whether it was to do it on university campuses or different things that there seemed to be and there was producers interested like i'm talking about guys who were very established in the industry but this never came to be no and i think what happened was is that is that the belief that it was going to happen and then covid, and then everything fell apart,

and then guys went in their own directions. I think we made a giant mistake when the reporters ended. And the giant mistake was we didn't take the show immediately to podcast. Okay, so the second thing, because I teased it by saying two things I thought at the time. The one was more live events,

but the second one is why isn't this a podcast? Well, and I had conversations with Dave about this. Yeah, and Dave was the one person at the time who I think really had, when the show ended, he was ready for the show to end. I don't think he wanted to... He was a music guy. Yeah, but I don't think he wanted to see what it would become. Right. Bruce was the youngest of us and it was Bruce and Farber and myself. Right. And I'm mad now, it's all these years later, I'm mad now that we didn't do it because I really truly believe had we taken the show to podcast immediately with Dave or with another host, then we would be one of the top sporting podcasts

in Canada right now, in my opinion. Well, at the time, I had lengthy, serious discussions with Dave Hodge about the reporters becoming a podcast. And I think the hiccup, the reason it never happened, was Dave was keen on getting the money up front. So it always comes down to the money, right? So getting the money up front. So it always comes down to the money, right? So getting the money up front for something, and I was more, and I'm not a sales guy,

as you know, it's Steve Simmons, but I was more keen on creating the compelling content and then getting the money. So it was more about what comes first. When you look at, again, retrospect being what it is, people were not making a whole lot of money in podcasting at that time. And since then, we've seen what's happened in the United States, where some of these podcasts have gone like wildly.

Oh, like smart listen, all those. Yeah. Smart listen. And the one with the Kelsey brothers and the Kelsey wife. There's a lot of stuff out there where guys are making ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. I thought there was a market for us. I still think there is a market for us, but I think we missed the opportunity to hit for money if we had gone through with it.

And again, none of us had enough foresight at the moment to see what was gonna happen in the industry and how big podcasting was gonna become. Well, I could just tell you, I took my best run at this. Dave and I, I definitely took my best run at this. It was a real thing and I really thought it might happen when we had that live event. And I was thinking, okay, so all of you at the time,

and I think Bruce has moved away, but all of you at the time lived in the GTA. Oh, do we call where Dave lives the GTA? Sure. No, Mike was in Montreal. Right. No, that's well that's I had to finish the sentence, which is except for Michael Farber, who was in Montreal.

So I felt like you meet on, I don't know, Zencast or Riverside, whatever, everybody meets there and records and then I just grabbed that source audio and package it up. And it could have been like a pretty, pretty low overhead, pretty every week, every Sunday or whatever we decide. I know it's in the rear view mirror, but not really. Like you're all still with us. You're all still sharp as a tack, right? I don't know if you were ever sharp as a tack,

Steve Simmons, but you're as sharp as you ever were, right? But so maybe it's not too late. I'm just throwing it into the atmosphere. One of my favorite podcasts, I guess, is Elliot Friedman's 32 Thoughts. Sure. And, um, and one of the giant mistakes that Elliot and at the time Jeff Merrick made when they put that thing together was they didn't own the podcast. Right.

It's a Rogers. It's a Rogers production. So they're being paid to do the podcast as opposed to having ownership as own the podcast. Right, yeah, it's a Rogers. It's a Rogers production. So they're being paid to do the podcast as opposed to having ownership of the podcast. Hired guns. And I was fortunate. I did the last, I think 10 episodes, maybe 15 of Bob, when Bob McCowen was still doing his podcast. Sure. And I was his co-host for the last, I think last 15 episodes. And, you know, for a couple of years there they were doing pretty well financially they lost their they lost their their big sponsor which

I think put them put them in you know which is why eventually he pulled the plug on the thing oh there's a sports betting sponsor that shelled out some big bucks yeah and and so they were paying you know he was paying for you know John Shannon was getting paid and Bob was getting paid in the producer was getting paid and you know that was a fair bit of money going around uh... at that point and at the end of the day there just wasn't any you know i thought again have had we started before bob and and before thirty two thoughts and before that some of these other ones who knows where we

might be is an excuse to play a little of that here. Any excuse to do that? You know that. Okay. But how's Bob doing? Have you had any contact with him lately? I have not spoken to him since about a week after we did our last show, which would have been just around December. And he was

talking at the time about doing a book and writing another book. He had written one previously, which was a best-seller I believe. And so he was looking at doing another one and we talked a little bit about that. And you know I gave him some names of people to consider to use for writing. And then that was as far as it went. I've exchanged the odd text with him since then, but not really seen him or heard him. Is Bob McCowen, is he a good guy? I don't know well enough to have to answer that question. I've worked with him.

He's an exceptionally talented broadcaster. He like one of the most talented who's ever worked in this country, an exceptionally talented radio guy. But I've never been socially engaged with him in my life or in his life. And so I really can't answer that. I don't know him. It's funny that answer. He's a great broadcaster because I knew things can't answer that. I don't know him. It's funny that answer. He's a great broadcaster because I knew things going on at Q107 but I wasn't going to put them in in public. Maureen Holloway was here and Maureen, I asked Maureen, this is before the Jennifer Valentine video came out talking about John Deringer, but I asked Maureen Holloway what's it like working with John Deringer and she gave me this look and I think she knew I knew

But she wasn't gonna say anything again pre Valentine video But she said to me John derringer is an excellent broadcaster and I think that's the code I feel like that's the move right like let's talk about something like that Here's the difference if I'm Jennifer Valentine, and I know what's happened to me while working with whomever, then I'm going to view it differently. But if I'm in a circumstance where I work with a person while he broadcasts and all he does is broadcast and we don't see each other from the minute that that ends to the next time we go on the air, then I don't see each other from the minute that that ends to commit to the next time we go on the air

Then I don't know him and so you know I think you have to answer the question based on you know What your knowledge base is so the facts? These aren't facts of course these are opinion the opinion of the consensus is that both John? Derringer and Bob McCowan are excellent broadcasters. Well. I'll give you one thing I have worked with both in in in small in small doses right John, Daringer and Bob McCowan are excellent broadcasters. Well, I'll give you one thing. I have worked with both in small doses. Right. I never found Bob to treat people badly.

That's not what I found. I saw instances at times of John doing that. And that's not in a a in a me too ish way I'm talking just just ripping someone a new one yeah I saw that and I know some people it was prominent people in our industry now if they were honest would tell you those stories it's not my place to tell them but you know in Bob's case you know I working with Bob is at least when I worked with him, I never found him to be a real pleasant person. He just

came in, he did the show, he finished the show and you left. There was no relationship to speak of that I found. I didn't have, you know, I, I, when we were doing the podcast together, I, you know, he'd say, well, okay, let's tape at 10. I'd come on at 5 to 10. We would do the show, finish the show and say, see you tomorrow. And that was the extent of the relationship. You know, sometimes when you do a show with somebody, you know, you can become best friends, you can become, you know, close. If you cover a beat with somebody, for example,

they can become your best friend, the guy from the other paper or from the other radio station or TV station or wherever. I just, I worked with Bob in a variety of different things. I'm your best friend, the guy from the other paper or from the other radio station or TV station or wherever. I worked with Bob in a variety of different things, primarily as a fill-in co-host on Primetime Sports and then all these years later, getting called out of the blue to,

can you do some podcasts? I wasn't expecting to get that call, to be honest. Well, then you were filling the John Shannon void. Yeah, John Shannon left. And here's the thing. When Bob McCowen phones, you take the call because he's Bob McCowen, because he's Dave Hodge, because when you're one of those guys,

I don't know if you saw the thing the other day, Bob McKenzie just retired. It's on my list. And Bob McKenzie to retired. It's on my list. And Bob McKenzie, to me, was a difference maker in his industry. And when Bob McKenzie calls or Hodge calls or Brian Williams calls or McCowan calls, you take the call. So when McCowan called, I took the call and said, do you want to do it? And I said, give me a few days to figure this out.

And all the time I'm thinking Bob McKown wants me. That's pretty cool. And I did it and I enjoyed it. Okay, fair enough. Now your book, we mentioned it in the description for your third appearance. It's called A Lucky Life. We have many books, but this is the one about your life. A Lucky Life, Gretzky, Crosby, Kauai, and more from the best seat in the house. I want to ask you about the first name you drop in the, what's that called, the subtitle? I guess that's the title still. You talk about Wayne Gretzky. Steve Simmons, I would love to have a little chat with you about the current status, the opinions of the typical Canadian with regards to number 99 Wayne Gretzky as we speak in July.

Actually, it's an Independence Day in the USA. What an appropriate time to talk about Wayne Gretzky. Well, I'd rather keep the politics out of this because I'm not the most politically well person in the world. So I'm not going to sit here and judge Wayne Gretzky based on what his relationship might be with the vile president of the United States of America. We know where he was on election night. Yes.

And we know obviously that there is a relationship. Does the relationship mean that he's pleased with what he's doing or is about to do or maybe doing to our country? So am I bothered by that? Yeah. But it doesn't change what I think of him or what I think of his career or what I think of him now as a broadcaster or any of the other things.

I think you have to separate, you know, one from the other. I don't think Wayne Gretzky, because he might golf with Donald Trump every once in a while is also involved with Middle Eastern, you know, politics and philosophies as to how Donald Trump is dealing with. Okay, but Steve, we're talking about a very specific threat made many, many times by the president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, where he basically

threatened to annex this country and that, and wants to make Canada the 51st state. Like with that specific threat it is interesting that Wayne Gretzky has never made for himself, speaking for himself, he's never made any comment about that. He's been completely silent on that specific subject. Didn't his wife come out and say something? But that's different, right? As far as I'm concerned, there's the mistake. If you're Wayne Gretzky, and you mentioned Order of Canada earlier today. Which he never picked up, by the way.

He never picked up his Order of Canada? Never picked it up in Ottawa. That I didn't know. He's won every award you can possibly win. He's been Mr. Hockey. He's been, you know, everything to everybody at various times. What he should have said at the time was, I don't agree with what's going on. I don't agree with what's happening with Canada.

I am a Canadian. I love this country. I have I have worn the the flag competing internationally. I have been a general manager for Team Canada and an Olympic Games I have you know There's never been a time where I didn't feel to be proud to be Canadian And I think he should have come out with something along those lines, but he did it I know he didn't and that bothers me fired. I'm fired up right now, Steve Simmons.

But what what are we now supposed to think then? I think his silence speaks volumes in the sense that I have no choice but to consider the fact that maybe he, too, would like to see Canada become the 51st state. Well, that I can't speak for. But I will say this, and I've been fascinated by this over the years. Wayne Gretzky grew up in Ontario and he lives in Florida. Um, Maryola Mew grew up in Quebec and he lives in Pittsburgh.

Steve Iserman grew up in Ottawa area and he lives in Detroit. You can go through the greatest Canadian Steve Nash is where, and, and, you know, outside of Donovan Bailey, there's a lot of guys who, Darrell Sittler lives in Buffalo. There's a lot of guys who do not live in Canada for, for whether it's taxes or whether it's housing or whether it's weather or whether it's whatever, you can run through it and you can sit back and say, you know, you know, is that, what does that mean for you?

I am a very proud Canadian. I spend two to three months every year in you? I am a very proud Canadian. I spend two to three months every year in Florida. Why? Because I love the weather. I love my place down there and it makes me happy. Does it mean I, I in any way agree with their politics? No. Does it mean that I have any use for Trump? No. Does it mean I like what they're doing with our country and tariffs and all that? No. But I still want to do what I have any use for Trump? No, does it mean I like what they're doing with our country and tariffs and all that? No, but I still wanna do what I like to do for me. And so I understand why Gretzky lives where he lives

and why, you know, where Lemieux lives where he lives and everybody else seems to. And so some of, you know, these are, if you took a list of 20 of the greatest athletes, entertainers, comedians, whatever, and say where are they living? Well most of Neil Young's down there, Joni Mitchell's down there. Most of them are not living here. Glad to hear. Well we'll get back to Donovan Bailey in a minute because because he's living in Mississauga these days. And I think just to put a loop on the Wayne Gretzky thing,

because we've heard people speak on his behalf. You mentioned his wife. I think Doug Ford spoken on his behalf. I think somebody I'm missing, maybe it was Bobby Orr, who maybe, I think it was Bobby Orr who's spoken on behalf. The fact that Wayne Gretzky didn't make such a simple statement to say, I'm a proud Canadian, I love Canada, and Canada will always be a sovereign state, like always be a sovereign nation. Like a simple statement like

that, but the fact that we never heard anything of the sort from him, even during the Four Nations, when he was the our ambassador, what was the term? I can't remember now, but he was the, I guess he was like the the the ambassador or whatever for Team Canada and he was in a suit and you know, there was not even a reference to the fact that I'm friends with Donald J. J. Schumacher. I'm not gonna shit on him for being a Trumper and we're wearing a MAGA hat I'm not even going down that road. I know there's a lot of people I know in respect to who like Donald Trump and his politics. And that's a whole different category. But to this, the 51st state nonsense,

to simply make a, just a statement like, of course Canada is not for sale and will never join the USA, Canada's proud sovereign nation. That's it. That's all we were looking for. Yeah. And he does, whether he got the advice to do that and chose not to or whether he didn't get the advice and still chose not to. I think he made a mistake about with regards to how people will perceive him now. Well is this is this now just something in in this point in time in history? Will three years from now will this matter? Will it matter five years from now? We don't know that. See if I had told you Steve Steve Simmons, and we'll move on from Gretzky, but I'm all riled up here, but if I told you just merely, let's say two years ago, if I had said to

you, hey, there'll be a day in a couple of years when Wayne Gretzky comes to Canada and gets soundly booed. Like if I said that to you, you would say, Mike, you're nuts. Oh yeah. I mean, that's obvious, but listen, there's been no time, you know, I'm coming up to my 70th year. There's been no time in my lifetime where our country has been under siege. This is the first time. So this is something none of us have ever lived through before. None of us have ever witnessed before or seen before.

So we don't know what to think and we don't know how to react other than we're willing to protect what's ours and we're willing to protect what we've fought so hard to to build and And so and we're taking notes of the Kevin O'Leary's and the Wayne Gretzky's we're taking notes. Okay. Yeah, and you know what? It's it's it still strikes me impossible that we're living through this and that it's actually happening and that, you know, well I was, you know, I can't believe, you know, the last years of our former prime minister and how what happened in this country and what's happened in the country in a variety of ways. But I was really hoping that the new prime minister would be somebody I would be happy for or be excited about and I'm

finding now that I'm having less, you know, what's the word I'm looking for, less belief in him and he's only a few months into the job. So where does that stem from? I'm naturally curious and I like we should disclose the obvious which not everybody realizes but the newspaper that you've written for forever is absolutely slanted in favor of the Conservative Party of Canada. I don't even think this is even a debating point, and that's not to say you share those. I've had Liz Braun on the program, and she's bleeding heart lefty, and she wrote for 100 years for your paper, so it doesn't mean it applies across the board. But one of the more conservative sports writers I've ever met is the aforementioned honorary

mayor of Etobicoke, Steve Buffery, right? So I'm just curious, what specifically has you so unhappy with Mark Carney's performance as prime minister? I don't trust him. I don't believe what comes out of his mouth. I don't like that of how he says one thing in an election and then does something else after the fact. And so I was looking for strength and I'm not

political. I am not like, I work for the very conservative Toronto sun. Right. My opinions are I'm, I'm, I would call myself a centrist and on some positions I'm right wing, I'm not like I work for the very conservative Toronto Sun. Right. My opinions are I'm, I'm, I would call myself a centrist, you know, in some positions I'm right wing, on some positions I'm left wing, you know, cause like one of these guys can play all three forward positions.

But, but I just, I don't get a sense right now that I believe what he's saying or what he's doing and I don't trust him. And there's things happening in this country right now, and they're not related to Trump and they're not related to, um, what do you call it? You know, this whole taking over of, of, of the 51st state and all that. But the level of hatred in this country right now,

across the board from, we just saw something in, in Toronto happen yesterday. We've seen things in Vancouver recently. Like there's, you hardly go a day now without some kind of hate involved crime. And I want to know in this place that used to be, this place I was so proud of, where did this hatred come from?

And why is it so prevalent now? And I don't understand it, but I sure don't like it. And what I really don't like, and I hated it in the Trudeau time, is he never stood up against anything. He stood for nothing. And if you stand for nothing, this is what you get in terms of solution. I gotta ask you a question because I was having a chat with my friend and client, Avi Federgreen, the other day and we were talking about this and that and I was just made an offside reference

that everybody loves Avi Federgreen was pretty much the sentence I said because I find him to be a very likable, talented filmmaker. And he said, he told me, he said, I was, somebody, I was spit upon. And then I had to inquire like, what are you talking about? You're a spit upon. And he started to tell me the story that since October 7th, he has experienced a level of antisemitism in Toronto, the likes of which he had never experienced prior. And he said that he was literally spit upon I don't know if he was coming out of the temple I'm not sure but I was curious is that what you're referencing when you talk about the hate involved crime

Is it what we what has been experienced by some Jewish people in the city since October 7th? Well, it's not just Jewish people I think we saw what just happened in Oshawa. Was it a day ago? That wasn't Jewish people. It's a different religion, it's a different culture. We're seeing, we saw what happened in London, Ontario, when the guy with the car drove over a whole family. Right, they were Muslim. These aren't, this isn't the Canada I know. And so, I live in a neighborhood that's,

I'm not gonna say fully Jewish, but it's predominantly Jewish. And there's a strip mall not far from where I live, and there's two stores and a restaurant side by side in a strip mall. All three were vandalized with Jewish anti-Semitic symbols recently, and I thought to myself, what does the people who live in my neighborhood have to do with what's going on in Israel?

What do they have to do with what's going on in Gaza, or what's going on in the Middle East, or policy? You know, I don't remember getting the phone call from Netanyahu asking me what I thought he should do. You know, I might have an opinion, but the opinion is somewhat meaningless. It's my opinion, that's all it is. But why is it that in our country, and it's not just our country now, it's happening, unfortunately it's happening all over.

You're seeing it in the United States on college campuses more than anywhere else. You're seeing it in the UK, you're seeing it in France. It's where all of this hatred has come around the world in recent years, it's hard to figure. And we took a certain value being Canadians. I think we took things like safety for granted. I think we took not being spit on for granted. Freedom of religion. Yes. And so and so when this now happens, it's like, where am I and what's going on

and who's protecting me here? And that's that's my complaint with basically all levels of government. And to be honest, the mayor of Toronto is the top of my I can't stand her list. Olivia Chow. Now, I don't live in Toronto so I'm happy for that. Okay, now this conflation, this despicable wrong conflation of basically somehow if you're angry at Israeli policies and what's happening from the Israeli government and then you apply this to people of the Jewish faith. I mean it's a faulty premise and totally erroneous and unfair and wrong and it makes me sick. But it applies kind of both ways in the sense that I have absolutely had somebody on the program be sympathetic to civilians in Gaza

and was told that that opinion was anti-Semitic. So like, I'm saying this conflation is wrong both ways. Israel, and I have this chat with Ralph Ben-Murgy all the time, my friend and client, but the fact that you can absolutely be a proud Jewish person and be against the policies of Netanyahu and not agree with what Israel is doing in response to October 7th. These are two separate things. Yeah, but people don't view it that way. Right, no, that's right.

It's not viewed that way. And so therefore, if you are, if I am a Jew living in Thornhill, Ontario, I am clearly the person who was to blame for the hospital being bombed or whatever place was being bombed that day while they're searching out Hamas leaders. There's too many elements for a sportswriter to be really making sense of any of this, other than the fact that- Nah, it's disgusting. Well, here's the thing. I'm married to one of the great people of all time. She's now put up with 40 years of me. She should be getting Donovan Bailey's gold medal, is what she should be getting.

Both of them. um and and you think about it but she is so angry about not feeling safe for the first time in her life she's a cave bretner where they don't lock their doors right you know she grew up in that kind of environment and now and now is looking around and seeing you know what's happening to this city or to other cities or to the rest of this country. And it's pretty alarming. I mean, it's pretty alarming when they had a graduation, I think it was a graduation at MIT recently, where they had Palestinian protesters. What do they have to do with graduation at MIT? this is the struggle that we have now is we don't know who the people are that are hating. We don't know who

the people are that are protesting. We don't know if they're being paid to do so. We don't know like there's a lot of unanswered questions here. Geez Louise. Yeah I'm sorry I'm very sorry. I had this pretty open and honest chat with Mike Wilner on this exact topic pretty recently and I'm sorry, I'm very sorry. I had this pretty open and honest chat with Mike Wilner on this exact topic pretty recently. And I'm just, I feel sick that you're going through this and nobody should be persecuted because of their religion. That's just wrong. So, oh my goodness.

Okay. I'm going to ask you about a big name that's been in the news and I know you're going to have many words to say about it. But just before I do that, I want to welcome a brand new sponsor to this show. It's the Waterfront BIA, and I'm going to specifically shout out an event that's happening tonight and through this weekend. So we're recording on July 4th. This will publish the afternoon of July 4th. So if you're hearing this, July 4, 5, and 6, there is a festival called Fun Philippines Toronto Food and Music Festival.

And you can experience the vibrant heart of the Philippines and enjoy live performances by Filipino artists, feast on authentic Filipino foods, discover artisanal and indigenous-made craft exhibits. This is the perfect opportunity, Steve Steve to explore new flavors or embrace traditions happening at the waterfront this weekend. So make a plan, check out all the great Filipino action there. And last but not least, I know you're a fan, I think you're a fan, have we ever talked about Toronto Made Beliefs baseball Steve? I don't know if we have. Okay what are your experiences with Toronto Made Beliefs baseball? Well it's funny we're just talking about hate and and riots and all of that. My dad would

tell me about the Christie Pitts riots from 75 or 78 years ago. How many years ago it was now? And I believe he was there and he would talk about the Toronto that he knew that was very prejudice at that time and then grew into the city that it grew into. And so for us to now, my dad's 26 years gone, for me in my head, I hear his voice and I'm thinking about the times that we sat on the hill,

watching ball games at Christie Pitts because where else could you go and sit on a Sunday afternoon for nothing and enjoy baseball? I thought it was a great place to take kids, no cost and nice day and stay as long as you want and quality of baseball is reasonably good. So that's kind of my, I haven't spent a lot of time there.

You know, I used to see Jack Domenico all the time back in the days when The Sun had a newsroom and he was still live and he'd pop around, you know, and a lot of our guys were doing program pieces for him for his program when he was publishing. And he did a lot of work with The Sun and selling advertising for The Sun. And so, you know, we saw a lot of work with the Sun and selling advertising for the Sun and so we saw a lot of Jack over the years. He was an interesting character.

So I'm going to give you Steve this book which is the history of Toronto Maple Leafs baseball and I'll encourage you to revisit a game at Christie Pitts. Fill the Hill. You can now, without being harassed by the cops, you can now without being harassed by the cops, you can now drink a beer sitting and watching a Maple Leafs game. So grab a lager, a hot dog and enjoy some Maple Leafs action coached by World Series champion Rob Butler. I did a story, I think it was about five years ago, they had the anniversary of the Christie Pitts riots and they had a softball game at Christie Pitts' commemoration, had a bunch of Toronto dignitaries

out for that. I found a guy named Joe Black who lived in the, above the convenience store, right at Bloor and, is it Christie? It's Christie. Yeah, right at Bloor and Christie. And he watched the entire riot happen. He was not old enough, I guess, to be out there

and playing it. And he gave me a play-by-play of everything he saw that day. And it was pretty amazing to hear it from, I think Joe has since passed, but it was an incredible thing to hear from someone who was witness to that kind of history. And at the time there were signs on beaches in Toronto where it would say, no Jews or dogs allowed.

Oh my God. Wow. Okay. Well, there's better things happening at Christie Pits now, Steve. So you know, there's a woman from Japan named Ayami Sato. Yeah, that's a great story. I think it's a phenomenal. It's a story we haven't

done enough on I think just because you know we're so focused on you know Leafs Raptors. The other Leafs yeah. Yeah so and we're gonna do some focus on that except it is a great story and I think the whole vibe, Cito Gaston was there last week. Do you know Snow, the man who rapped saying... In Farmer? Yes, I heard you had that album. He's the, yeah, 12 inches of snow. So he's the official ambassador for Toronto Maple Leafs baseball, snow. I, you know what, I have not been around there. I've been threatening to, I think when my grand,

I have a grandson now, and when he gets a bit older, I'm gonna take him to Christie Kitts. Okay, let me know, we'll give you the star treatment when Steve Simmons makes it. You know who's there every game is Larry Milson. He lives right there. Oh, very nice. I see him there. Okay, so we're going to hit some hotspots here. Always amazing to talk to you. Please a few words or more, if you will, about Masai

Ujiri. Why was he fired? Money. Edward Rogers did not like what he was being paid and did not like having to pay that much money for someone to do what Messiah did for the Raptors. Now there's a second factor in that money. Messiah had a clause in his contract and it was a percentage based on value of the franchise. And if you've been following pro sports in recent years, sports franchises have gone out of control in terms of value. So the amount of money they would have to pay Masai this coming year, for example, was

astronomical. And when I asked somebody directly, why did Masai get fired? Because Keith Pelly did not really answer the question at the press conference. I was told because the percentage got too high and whatever the money, whatever that equates to in dollars, because I wasn't given the breakdown of how it works, he was making a lot of money just in salary with one year to go on his deal. So you add that to that 2% which is I don't know exactly how the whole thing works out but if you take a look at

the 10 years that he's been with the Raptors, 12 years and ask yourself what was the franchise worth when he got here? What's it worth now? How much did he you know play a part in the increasing of the value or is that just what's happened in all the pro sports? But I was told that that at 2% was you know it was not in size case the 2% solution. Money money money oh my goodness okay now I need to talk about a guy who's gonna make a lot of money in Vegas this year. Mitch Marner let's chat about there's two ways to look at this firstly will Mitch get booed when he comes back like will there be this sense that he was never gonna sign here?

And why is it you think Mitch never seemed to put it together in the playoffs when it mattered? Talk to me about Mitch Marner. Mitch Marner is an interesting, and I'm not gonna say complicated, because maybe uncomplicated might be the best way to put it. Incredible talent. I mean, I don't think anyone would ever say,

he could do everything. Mitch is an exceptional skater, exceptional vision, exceptional passer, exceptional playmaker, creative player, all those things. But when hockey got harder, and you know, players hockey always uses the term time and space you take time and space away what can you do when you took time and space away from mitch marner he became less effective so i'll use even i'll use power play as an example very very very interesting power play guy because of all of the talents that he brings on the power play. And the Leafs in the nine years that he was here had the fourth best power play in the NHL in, in playoffs,

in the nine years he was in the playoffs, I believe they have the 20th best power play. So what happened with the same guys on the ice for those, for those two minutes or however times you're a game you're talking about right what happened to that at playoff time that they weren't able to translate you know at the same or even close to the same percentages now Mitch Barner's excellent penalty killer correct that's one of the things that they Craig Barube and previous

coaches used him to do so he was used to kill penalties. In the playoffs, the Leafs, I think in the 10 years, nine years he was with the Leafs, were 10th in penalty killing. In playoffs, they were 25th. So again, what were they not able to do with the same people in the extended time? It wasn't just that they couldn't win games and they

couldn't score goals. Their strengths, this was a team built on skill, which means they were built for power play and they were built for penalty kill. And they were at nine years, 20th on the power play, 25th on the penalty kill. That's, that's, that's, those are bad numbers. Those are, those are bad numbers. Those are numbers. Those numbers are hard to believe because, you know, every season, 16 teams make the playoffs. So to get a number like that,

because obviously some new teams come and go, whatever, but that's difficult to get in the 20s. Well, I guess what you, if you wanted to do it, you know, break it down even more accurately, you would eliminate the teams that had maybe one or two playoffs series, you know, and you'd have to do it, you know, break it down even more accurately, you would eliminate the teams that had maybe one or two playoff series. And you'd have to do it that way. You got the Sabres who had zero.

Yeah. But what I'm saying is that whatever it was that they did in the season, they have been unable to do. And you know, if you look at the nine clinching games that the Leafs lost in each season, they were eliminated in the last game of every season, so it's nine years of being eliminated, seven times in the first round. Mitch Marner did not score in one of those games.

So he did not produce when it was on the line, but neither, in fairness, did Austin Matthews, neither did other people. I think William Nylander of the group of four is the only one that sort of produced at a reasonable level. John Tavares also for seven of those years didn't produce all that much either. But in Mitch's case, I think him leaving

has very little to do with what the Leafs did or didn't do in the playoffs and a lot to do with how everything was perceived or how he perceived everything to be. He did not like that Heath, he believes he was singled out much more so than Matthews, much more so than Tavares, much more so than Nylander, for problems the Leafs had over the years. Like a whipping boy. He believes that.

One of the reasons he believes that is because everybody around him tells him that. And Mitch listens to his father, and he listens to his agent, and he listens to his friends. And there's a lot of, there was a lot of jealousy, even though he'll come on camera and say, Austin Matthews is my best friend.

He'll come on camera and say that. Behind closed doors, he's not saying that. And behind closed doors, you're not seeing Austin Matthews and Mitch hanging out a whole lot. What you're seeing is, I'll give you an example. One game, the Marner crew invited, I don't know,

10 or 12 people to come to a Leaf game. And what you see after the games is they all sort of huddled together in a different part of the arena once the game's over. And so the group is all there huddled together and they're there on Marner tickets and some of them are wearing Matthew's jerseys and Apparently daddy went Ballistic over the fact that you know, we're giving them tickets and they're wearing his

Jersey other guy right? his Jersey, other guy. Right. Um, and so that kind of thing, how come he got to be captain and I didn't get to become captain? How come he got the first contract longterm and I did like, how come he got the bonuses when he was drafted and I didn't get the bonuses that that the leaf said they weren't going to give anyone. They gave them to Austin. And so there was that kind of built up over time and over the years. And the funny thing, the last two years,

he had 53 assists on Austin Matthews' goals. If anything, they should be hosying to each other because one guy's a playmaker and one guy's a goalscorer and what a nice fit they should be together. But I think what happened is over time, he just didn't fit here anymore. And so he basically took, he had his best season individually this year

while plotting to leave. It's kind of a unique thing. That's the thing though, it's apparent that he's known for quite some time. He was outta here. Well, he was asking, like Max Patchareti, what was it like to live in Vegas? If you're doing that, you're not so subtle. One thing about Mitch is he didn't know how to come across well when speaking to the public.

By speaking to the public, I mean post-game interviews and his time at the podium and that kind of thing. He just, he didn't come across particularly well and he was never told or never coached properly on how to sort of do it. And he plays his last game, they lose the playoff game to Florida. And one of the questions asked is,

did you think that this is your last game? Did you think this is your last game in the uniform and last game? And he said, I've never thought about it. Well, at that moment, you know, of course, you have no choice but to believe it because he said it, right? But you realize a month or two later,

the lion is rear end off. And so, you know, one thing about Mitch is he didn't know how to play the game outside the game, if you understand what I'm saying. And there is a certain, you know, to play hockey in Toronto, there's a certain way you have to be. And he wasn't that way. And because of that, he became less popular than his teammates. And I think when he does come back, and I think... Well, that's why I...

How will he be received when he comes back? Oh, he's going to be massively booed. I'm not sure it's... What's the word I'm looking for? I'm not sure it's necessary or even warranted because he played nine years here Yeah, he played exceptionally well for nine regular seasons. Yes The team didn't have any success He was one of the players on that team that didn't have any success So him leaving as in the end it wasn't as a free agent because he was traded, but it was essentially leaving as a free agent, is he earned the right to be a free agent by fulfilling his contract to the end.

And he earned the right to be a free agent by choosing not to negotiate with the Leafs. And when they went to him in March or wherever it was and said, you know, we have a deal that we can trade you to Carolina, would you like to go? You know, he said no and people are gonna look at that forever and say, oh you could have Miko Ratanen. Although Matt Sundin did the same thing, right? Yeah, a different kind of way because it was right at the end of Matt Sundin's career and I think he only played like one year. Yeah, but the fact that you know he did sign in Vancouver. He was traded to Montreal for a first round pick and could have been traded to Montreal for a first round pick

and then he refused. Yeah, that always irked me because then he up and went to Vancouver. And I've had that conversation with him. I thought he should have gone to Montreal at the time, but guys do what they do for whatever reason and for whatever for whatever reason Marner did not want to negotiate with the Leafs this year now whether that was his agent saying that whether that was his dad saying that

whether that was whoever made the call they made the call and and what do you do he wound up where he wanted to be he played and you called it too I'll give you some props on January 10th by the not January June 10th right I wrote a column saying that Marner's going to Vegas and Alex Patrangelo will be placed on LTIR and here we are July 4th and what's happened Marner's in Vegas and Alex Patrangelo's career is over there you go a great career though now it's interesting? Marner's in Vegas and Alex Potential's career is over. There you go. Great career though. Now it's interesting that Marner seemed to wilt when the pressure was at its highest, you know, in all these elimination games that we inevitably lost over the last decade or so because

in the Four Nations Cup where it felt like it was bigger than a hockey game, I know sitting here in South Etobicoke it it felt like much more than a hockey game. And I can't tell you how badly I wanted to win that game against the USA. He had that sublime assist in overtime. Connor McDavid scoring the winner. Like he seemed to rise to the occasion when there was all eyes on him.

Well, here's the funny thing. You go back to game six, Leafs and Florida, he makes the brilliant assist to Matthews for a beautiful goal. So he has those moments in him. But if you look at the four games they played in the four nations, he played a lot in game one, not very much in game two, was used sort of sparingly in in three and then played like like John Cooper had him figured out I'm not gonna play you 20 minutes or 19 minutes every game right I'm gonna

play you when I need you in certain circumstances and in some games he scored that oh it was at the overtime breakaway goal against Sweden right you know he scored that he did nothing in that game but he scored that over time breakaway goal against Sweden. He scored that. He did nothing in that game but scored that goal. He didn't do much in the clinching game, in the gold medal game, but he set up McDavid for the winning goal, which is what Mitch Marner is. He has phenomenal skill. No doubt about it. The guy came to the NHL.

Think about this from, you could go to almost any team in the league and not play nine years with either Austin Matthews or John Tavares as your centers. These are the only centers he's ever played with. This is incredible talent to play with. Now he gets to go to Vegas and he can play with Jack Eichel. And if things go bad there, Tomas Hurtle. So it's like, he's born under the right star.

Like you can get drafted in, I don't know, Columbus or someplace, Buffalo, and never, and never play with anybody. Um, and, and so he's, he's been, he should be thinking whatever for, for his nine years in Toronto, which were very good except for the fact that that team, and I don't think the team frankly was good enough in almost any of the other years to be a Stanley Cup contender, but I thought they were this year. Yeah, they had me fooled as well.

Now I want to ask you about the gentleman who was your special guest when the reporters were live at the Paradise while somebody was stealing the lights off of my bike outside. I'm still mad about it. But Brendan Shanahan, the Shana plan has come to an end, the end of an era there. Brendan Shanahan did some incredible things with the Maple Leafs. They're not all evident in standings, they're not all evident in playoff success and or failures. What he did with the franchise in building it up, in building all around it, in dealing with the alumni, in retiring numbers, and

just turning the leafs into a going concern as a franchise. Because the Leafs had gone through a very bad, they had gone through the John Ferguson Jr. years, they had gone through the they're an embarrassment years. The Jeff Finger era. Yeah. And so you get to all that. Shanahan took over a team that was disastrous

and had zero talent. I remember one of the first things he did is he ordered a breakdown of every player in the organization and sort of, you know, how much talent do we actually have here? And after going through the whole thing, what he realized is we don't have much. And so, you know, they went through the first season, which was a write-off, and then a tank season, which got them Austin Matthews. And they kind of went from there. And he built – you look at the Buffalo Sabres just down the road, 14 years in a row, they weren't in the playoffs. They were in the playoffs all nine of Shanahan's seasons. In some

places they would congratulate you for that. But what happened is is that the expectations You know got high and his and the and the other problem the Leafs ran into and this this is something that won They can't undo They signed four players for forty some million dollars in players for 40 some million dollars in cap money prior to a pandemic not knowing there was coming a pandemic flattens it and so for four years for the next four years the seller kept didn't move and so that those salaries which should have been increasing each year as the cap increased each year should have been

less and less a percentage of the overall became an absolute stranglehold and you know you can criticize Kyle Dubas for many many things but I don't think you can blame him you know for for what happened out of China I'll find a way all around the world because you know they just had they had no money they had no money to spend and they still are paying in some ways for that. And not only did they have no money, but they didn't sign very good contracts when they did. Everybody in the world got a no movement clause and everybody got too much money and everybody

got too many years for the most part, other than Matthews. And so the Leafs were strangled by that, and that was part of, you know, part of the Shanahan time. Although I thought he made a mistake, frankly, and him and I have had this conversation. When he had Lou Lamarrillo here as general manager, and he had Mark Hunter and Kyle Dubas as his assistants,

that's a strong hockey front office. That's a very strong hockey front office. There's a guy who's done it all. Two guys, one in particular who's learning and one who's been putting together great junior operations for years and years and years. And so he had all that in place. He decided in order to keep Dubas

that he would have to let Lou go. Then in order to keep Dubas, he would also, him and go then in order to keep Dubas he would also him and Hunter wouldn't work together so Hunter left and so to promote Dubas who probably wasn't ready to be promoted he lost a Hall of Fame general manager and you know probably a Hall of Fame junior level executive. And so the Leafs didn't recover very well from that. I think that was Shanahan's biggest mistake. People will look at other things over the years

and give you other reasons, but to me, those were the biggest errors that they made. And then once, it was interesting, he fired Dubas over what I believe was a bit of a power struggle of sorts and hired Brad Tree Living who was sort of only guy available kind of thing that I can put in there. I didn't like the move frankly when they did it, but as I've gotten to know Brad Tree Living and gotten to know how he operates and how he works and what he does,

I'm more and more and more impressed with him than I ever was before he came to the Leafs. And I think under the circumstances, which have been really difficult, because he has been trapped by all the money problems that happened before he got here, he wound up finding Anthony Stolar's for cheap, and he wound up bringing in Chris Tana for cheap and he wound up You know You know, there's just a lot of good moves that that he made small moves some of them But all of them that made the team better and I thought again last year I thought the team with Marner was ready to

You know and and they were ready. They were up 3-1 in game 3 against Florida You know eventual and they were ready. They were up 3-1 in game three against Florida, you know, eventual Stanley Cup champions. So they were ready to a point, whether they would have gone and beaten anybody after that, I don't know. You know, they didn't get to where they needed to get to. And unfortunately, one thing we'll never know,

what if Stollars was healthy for the whole playoffs? What if Sam Bennett hadn't, you know, essentially injured him? You know, would the Leafs have advanced? That we don't know and that we'll never know. But what we do know is the Oilers didn't get to a game seven. No and you know what, if you look, one of the things about this Florida Panthers team, I don't know if we talk nearly enough about how great they are, they had 11 one-sided wins in the playoffs. That's five-one, six-one kind of games. 11 of them. I went through the history. The great Edmonton Oilers teams with Wayne Gretzky and Messier didn't do that. The great New York Islander teams that won

19 playoff series in a row did not do that. You can go through teams in history. Most teams, this has barely been done. So what the Florida Panthers did this year, now that could partially be maybe Carolina's not that good and maybe Tampa Bay's not that good. I don't, you know. Maybe the Leagues aren't that good. Yeah, who knows?

But what I'm saying is, but when they had to win, what had happened? Five one, six one. Oh, I know, I remember a couple of like ones. Yeah, it's like, you know, it was like tennis You know, that's right. All right. No, I just checked the clock Steve Simmons. So easy to talk to you I could talk to you for hours, but I'm gonna try to keep this thing to two hours so we're gonna go a little rapid because I you know, it's been a while since you've been here and My next episode which is Monday happens to

you've been here and my next episode which is Monday happens to feature Stephen Brunt. So Stephen Brunt will be on the show and will be joined by Blake Bell and Len Lumbers who are the two chaps behind This Day in Dave Stebe history. Do you follow this account on social media? I do not. Okay you're missing out my friend. By the way what is your social media of choice? Like where would you do you post anywhere specific these days? I have really attempted to avoid all of it. I post my columns on X. Occasionally, I drop them into my Facebook account because you can't post them.

And that's about the only social. But I really choose to not engage at all just based on history and how... For your mental health. Too many hot dog jokes, right? You know, it's gotten vile over the years with just how people perceive things and how angry people are. Well, even when I promoted your coming on, I got several...

Ask him if Mitch Marner likes hot dogs. You know, that's a kind of typical Simmons question. I've written more than 9 000 columns. I've actually never done a column on hot dogs. It's one sentence in a column, and if you actually read the piece, it's probably the best piece on why Phil Kessel was leaving the Maple Leafs. I know, but as I recall, you got the location wrong. Yes, I know that. And that's a whole... So that was like fuel for the fire. But here's the thing. If you, if you don't like a hundred of my pieces, if you have found

fault, if you have found error, if you've found the opinions not right, however you... A thousand of them. What percentage of my work is that? Not a thousand, say it hundred. What's what's a hundred to nine thousand? My math is terrible. Oh, it's nine That's an easy one of all those zeros, but but yes point taken. Yes So you ask people what what is their objection to me, right? It's the same for oh He said this about him or he said that about it's the same five columns, right? It's never beyond that. And every time I get into a conversation with one of the haters, by the time we end the conversation,

they're not haters anymore. Well, you know, you heard the Jeff Simmons episode of Toronto Miked, and we did talk about this. And we agreed, Steve, that you should lean in on this. Like, I know, lean in on the fact that you're the hot dog guy. You know, I know Phil Kessel posted that picture of him in a golf course about the hot dogs.

By the way, he never denied any of that. I always found that interesting. And then he kind of- Who doesn't love a good hot dog? He kind of went to school. I probably told you this in a previous one because the hot dog story was fed to me by one of my kids. And it was from one of their friends who lived in a condo.

And what we were planning to do at the time, at The Sun, was we were gonna get a photo out to shoot him outside of his condo eating a hot dog. Which at the end of the day, of course, never came to be, newspapers get busy, things happen, people get shot. And so it never happened, I never thought of it again, until the day I happened to mention it and get it wrong in the column, and here we are,

on my gravestone, you're going to say something about hot dogs. But you'll be remembered. I feel that's why I think Jeff and I were talking about you leaning in, because yeah, it's all stupid and it's not fair But the fact that you're remembered for something like that You can spin that to be kind of like to become like a wrestling heel, right? You could be yeah

but you know what if you if you love the business as much as I do right and you love the work as much as I do and you've put your heart and soul into it as much as I have right for the last 45 years and your heart and soul into it as much as I have for the last 45 years. And you care about everything that you say and you write and you realize how much harder sometimes you work than other people doing the same job. That you want to be regarded for that. You want to be known for that. You want to be respected for the work that you've done. Is it a bit like... You know, I mean, my office is like, I hate to say this because it sounds like it's bragging, but my office is like I'm surrounded by awards.

And it's like, you know, I'd love to throw them all out and along with the hot dog jokes. Do you think this is a bit like when you know Dave Hodge, the first time I met the man who was at the door. The pen. Yeah so just before we start recording I was you know I'm I'm with Dave Hodge and it's a young broadcaster Mike and it's like oh my god of course I have a million questions about the pen flip. He says to me I'd prefer we didn't talk about the pen flip and I had I looked Dave Hodge in the eyes and I said something to the effect of, well Dave, I'm going to ask you about the pen flip. What you say is up to you. If you want to say I don't want to talk about the pen flip, you know, you

know, I'll not gonna rough you up. But, and I ended up asking him about the pen flip and he gave great answers actually. But I remember that was his words to me before we pressed record. And it's funny because I think Dave Hodge, similar to you, he doesn't want to be known as the pen flip guy because of all the great work he's done over the decades. I took a lot of grief years ago for writing something about Matt Sundeen and a hip injury. And at the time, I think it was, I forget who's career ended, might have been Mo Gilney's career ended on a similar hip injury. And so I'd written about, he had suffered this

torn labrum of the hip and, um, and it was going to require surgery and blah, blah, blah. Well, turned out, and I didn't know this not being a medical person, that there are two different torn labrums of, of the hip. Right. One is extreme and one is less extreme. And the one Sundeen had played with

in the season prior to that, and I think the next season as well, was the less extreme that eventually wound up having surgery on and kind of ruined the last few years of his career. But I took great grief for, for being wrong. And, and what people perceive to be, to be wrong, it wasn't that I said his career was over is I said that this player's career ended on that injury.

Right. Um, which again, but, but again, it's one of those things that takes on a life of its own that you can't get back. And that's part of the things I don't like about social media is you can't put things back in the bottle when the genies out. Well, I went over to the live stream just to check in on what's going on there. And Mark Wiseblood does, I'm just going to read what he wrote. He just said he's, he's Lawsoning.

Lawsoning is a term we use on the program when people fact check people. And that's a shout out to Robert Lawson who fact checked Randy we use on the program when people fact-check people and that's a shadow to Robert Lawson who fact-checked Randy Backman on Toronto Mike, but he's Lawson in the no Jews or dogs sign in Toronto He says they never found any evidence of this So that possibly that there were no no Jews or dog signs in Toronto back in the 30s, but I wasn't there I'm quoting my father. Yeah, you're right. I wasn't there There was 1933 a little early for me and the snowman to be in that riot.

Okay, so I mentioned Stephen Brunt, Blake Bell, Len Lumbers. I have a question for you, Steve Simmons. Does Dave Steebe belong in Cooperstown? Yes. And I think what happens is you have to look at Dave Steeb's career now through the lens of what we statistically accept and appreciate now more than we did then. And he did not win a Cy Young, I believe, and I don't think he even came close to winning

a Cy Young. No. If you look at the votes he got most years, he was a fair bit back. But if you look at Jack Morris's statistics, a 10-year period, and you look at Dave Steep's statistics, and I'm doing this all at the top of my head, I don't have things in front of me.

If you look at Dave Steep's statistics over a 10-year period, I think Dave Steep's statistics are more impressive than Jack Morris's other than Jack Morris's what he was able to do in big games and things like that. I thought Jack Morris was all I voted for Jack Morris a number of times as a Hall of Famer and I never had the opportunity to vote for Steve because he was off the ballot, you know, before it got to that point. And I feel the same way by the way about Carlos Delgado He's I have two more names and next was Carlos Delgado. I feel that way about Carlos Delgado who?

Carlos Delgado got caught coming onto the Hall of Fame ballot in the wrong year and you're only allowed to vote for ten And so if you go through it, I think the year that he was up there were ten better candidates And so he got bypassed quite early. And I'll bet you most of those 10 wound up getting elected. I'm sure I probably I don't bonds was one of them or whether Clements was one of them, but you know, other than them. But you look at his numbers numbers and I'll use an example, um, Fred McGriff, who's now in the hall of fame, he got in on, on the secondary, you know, extension, the, the, the, what do they call it the seniors committee or the new era committee? Um,

he got in that way. And I think if, for Carlos to have a chance, I think that will be how Carlos will get in. And the problem with all the guys now who are lining up to, you know, for a past over and each city will look, some people look at Don Mattingly, for example, as being one of those guys. If you look at who doesn't get in, and I'm, I'm, I'm a Louis Tiant fan for years gone by and thought Louis Tiant should be there. But baseball is the one hall of fame compared to all the other sports where there's always people on the outside who you think should be in.

More than the others. Like to me in hockey there's too many guys in and basketball everybody and his mother gets in. Right. T-Mac's in there. But, and T-Mac probably should be in there. But a lot of really good baseball players are not and will not get to the Hall of Fame. So I feel like they got it right with Tim Rains eventually

and then maybe the same can happen for Dave Steeb and I'm just gonna promote Monday's episode with Stephen Brunt, Blake Bell and Len Lumbers. They're gonna make the case. We're gonna make the case for Dave Steeb being in the baseball's Hall of Fame. Somebody, and I don't know who this was, somebody emailed me a story I had written

on Dave Steebe from the early eighties that I didn't have any recollection of ever doing. Um, I was working for the Calgary Herald at the time and I had come to Toronto for something and I'd gone to a couple of Blue Jays games and I did a Steve piece and uh, I didn't, I had no recollection. Sometimes you write something all these years later, you know, you don't remember them all. And I was so happy that this, whoever sent it to me, I was so happy that they sent it. And I got a chance to read a piece

I didn't even know existed. That's amazing. Last name quickly here. We'll do this one quick. Ceto Gaston. No. I don't think, I think to get in as a manager, you have to be exceptional exceptional and So, you know the the dusty bakers of the world or the Bruce Boche's of the world will get in But she'd only managed in one city. He only managed in one place. He won the two world series

If you go beyond that, there's not enough on the resume to me. I'm a CETO guy in many ways, but I just don't see how you make the candidacy for him. Alan Gold has a question for you. He says, How do you come up with the names of the people for the end of your Sunday columns when you do whatever happened to so and so? It's really hard. And it's gotten way harder over the years because, because, you know, after, you know, 30 some years of writing the Sunday notes column, you know, 30 years times 45 columns a year times how many names have I used. And so what I tend to try and do is, is tie it into whatever's happening at the time in sports.

So if Wimbledon is going on, I might use a tennis player. If a big golf tournament's going on, I might use a golfer. If hockey playoffs are going on, I might use a hockey guy. And I can always use Leafs and Blue Jays. Those are sort of my fall-on positions. And I tend to time it to someone who hasn't played in at least 10 years. And one of the things is we're fortunate, I'm fortunate that I can search a name

to see whether I'd used them already. Because sometimes you don't remember whether you have or you haven't. And you go through it. One of the fascinating things to me is people love that one line. I'm writing 2,000 words on Sunday mornings and that one line and I'll be getting my hair cut and someone will yell, you know, Fred Boimestruck or some ex-leaf that no one can remember or some guy's

name, Jason Blake, you'll just get a name thrown at you, some Blue J, some Argo quarterback, some anybody and people are interested in that whatever became of and people have asked some people have asked over the years why don't you tell me next week where he is and I tried at one time to do that and what happened was it was too hard to find I tried at one time to do that, and what happened was it was too hard to find everyone. If I could do it 100% and be accurate, then I'd love to do it. But as it works now,

like the Blue Jays had a really big week this week. So I might be thinking, I don't know who it is for Sunday, but I might be thinking tomorrow, you know, who is it? And I'll just sort of call up rosters of certain seasons and see if I can find a name that's on there. And the beauty of having sports minded children is boy, they come up with way better whatever became of us than I do now. Matt Layden, he's an Edmonton big fan of the show, he just says, are you two going to talk

about the retirements of both John Liu and Bob McKenzie? We did touch on Bob McKenzie, but I mean, if you had any words about John or Bob, and then the obvious question I'm going to ask you is when you see, when you hear Bob talk about how he's going to be spending the next several years, you're similar vintage. Do you ever think, hey, I'd like to do that, maybe it's time for me to retire? The day I wake up and I'm not interested in what happened that day or a point of view or an angle I could write or some way of producing what the next column might be, like I'll use the last four days of the Blue Jays for

example. I'm sitting at home watching the games and I'm thinking, I should be there writing this or I should be there writing. If my mind stops doing that, I'll be the first guy out. I'll be happy to, to, to walk away and not do it. But as long as I'm still enthusiastic and excited by it, I think I'll continue working, I don't know for how much longer. Um, I've been'll continue working. I don't know for how much longer.

I've been really, really fortunate. Unfortunately, I'm gonna go back to, I guess the early 80s now. I got to work with Bob McKenzie. I got to work for Bob McKenzie when he was the editor of the hockey news. I got to work with him while he was at TSN and I was at TSN. And what an honor it has been just to be with him while he was at TSN and I was at TSN and what an honor it

has been just to be around him, watch how he does his work, watch what a true professional he is. I think it was Jennifer Hedger who came up with the term that he's the Bob father and I think it's a great it's a great great term if you look at the list of insiders the elliot friedman's in the and that the elebron's and the darren draggers and the uh... franc serra valleys and whoever else i'm missing i apologize to bob mckenzie began all that

and even just become begin that he'd be can the draft being covered the way the draft is now covered. He, he started with, with the world junior becoming a big deal, like so many things he was forerunner of in terms of his coverage. It's he's had, he's had a career that none of us will ever equal. And we're just I'm just, I'm just excited and happy to have worked around him. And, and, you know, when he was, when he was the editor of the hockey news, I wrote a column called the Western Word out of Calgary for the

hockey news, you know, and, you know, we were both about the same age. Well, one quick funny story. We're in Long Island for the Stanley cup final in the mid eighties. So we're in a bar late at night and they're re-showing the Islanders game. I believe it was against the Oilers and, and they're re-showing it and we're, you know, maybe having one or two too many drinks. And all of a sudden they go to its intermission and Stan Fischler is on, you know, doing the intermission for the Islander game.

And Bob McKenzie is his guest. And Bob is with us in the bar drinking and we're yelling at the TV, hey, there's Bob McKenzie and we're pointing, he's right here. And all of a sudden it was like, he was the celebrity in the bar. Nobody knew who Bob McKenzie was

or had ever heard of him at that moment. But he was the celebrity in the bar that night and we were having a great barrel of laughs with that moment. But again, what a career of influencing coverage of so many things. And one other thing,, never went to print and or broadcast with a story that wasn't true.

That's an incredible, incredible thing to accomplish for 40 some years. And we know he's a sweetheart because like yourself, Steve Simmons, he's had multiple appearances on Toronto Mike. You know, McCowen said no. Can you believe it? Come on, come on, let's get back to that. Okay. How are things at post media these days?

Um, I wouldn't know because we don't have an office anymore. So because we don't have an office anymore, we don't really ever see anybody except, you know, if you, unless you go to, let's say a leaf game, you see the leaf writers or a baseball game, you see the baseball writers and kind of do it that way. We're still flourishing in the business somehow. I don't know how newspapers are making it anymore, frankly. But you're still, am I correct to say, you are the most widely read sports columnist

in the country? That is correct. And here's the interesting thing right now, is I don't think newspaper companies, and I'm not going to just single out post media, but I think newspaper companies care as much about the newspaper today as they do about online. And so what they can do with online is they can calculate exactly how many people are reading this piece. Not only that, and what's more important than how many people are reading, is how long are they engaged in the piece.

Now, I don't know if it's because my Sunday Notes column is over 2,000 words or it's because people really love that thing, but the Sunday column is the most read piece in Canada and column is the most read piece in Canada, and it's the most engaged piece. And for purposes of selling advertising or whatever, the engagement number is far more important than the person clicking on the piece.

If I click on your column and I'm off of it in seven seconds, then I haven't read anything. That's called a bounce. Yeah, I don't know the terms. You know them better than I do. But in my case, I have the long engagement time. And I believe last I had heard my engagement time was the largest in the entire country.

And so if that's the case and that's true, every time I get one of those snarky, why don't you retire emails know emails or texts here or you know online notes I always think of saying stop reading me and I will you know one of the benefits is you're not behind a paywall like a lot of like there is a there's a lot of people who won't even read this thing in the globe or this thing in the star or whatever because they're they're not willing to give their credit card number. Yeah, what you have to do is figure out ways to get around that.

And how do these... Where there's a will, there's a way. There is a way, there are ways. And you've got to be smart about it. Well, speaking of smart, the other benefit for you in that engagement rate is the average Toronto Sun reader reads very slowly. So you have that going for you. I love that.

By the way, here's the hot hitting question on our way out. Is it time to retire the sunshine girl? It was time to retire the sunshine girl long ago because, you know, they're just these are all cycling old photos now, like nothing new happening. They're not even good old photos, by the way. You know, they should have gotten rid of that thing years ago. There was, there's no reason for it. But here's what's ridiculous.

Guess what's read online every single day? The Sunshine Girl? The Sunshine Girl gets enormous numbers of hits. Well that's shocking because, hey guys, I know where you can see naked ladies now. But you can see lots of things much more interesting than that. I just remembered, so shout out to your cousin, Steven Page, because I just said naked ladies and then I thought of bare naked ladies. That's a fun fact, but through a different part of the family tree, snow is also related

to Steven Page. He is. Yeah, so snow must be on the other side. It's a different branch, okay? You know how these trees are. So in a through a different branch, Snow is related to Stephen Page confirmed by Stephen Page. I saw him the other day at the Sloan garage sale. And you are of course related to the other side. And I think that's a fun fact. So you're not related to Snow, but you're related

to a guy who's related to Snow. But I used to have his album. So there is that 12 inches of Steve Simmons. Dude, this was fantastic. Is there anything you wanted to say on the way out? I didn't mean to rush it, but we did a solid two hours and I loved it. We're going to do it again. Now I got to drive in rush hour traffic. Well, I didn't even ask you about the TFC said goodbye to the Italians.

I was going to ask you if there's any hope for the Argos to become a big deal in this city again. I was going to talk about women's pro sports, the Sceptres, the Tempo, AFC Toronto, but I feel like maybe we save, well, some of it's timely, but we save some of that for next time. What do you say Steve Simmons? Sounds good to me. And that brings us to the end of our 1724th show. Go to torontomike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs.

Much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, don't leave without your lasagna, Steve. Toronto's Waterfront BIA, don't forget the fun Philippines Toronto food and music festival is taking place this weekend by the waterfront in Toronto. Toronto Maple Leafs baseball. We're going to get Steve back to Christie Pitts. Recycle my electronics.ca building Toronto skyline and of course Ridley funeral home. See you on Monday when my special guests are Stephen Brunt, Len Lumbers, and Blake Bell. We're going to talk about Dave Steeb for however long it takes. See you then. So So Music