• Watch out for the Pumpkinheads
At a football camp last week, Sam, a kid at A.G. Baillie Memorial School on New Glasgow’s west side, asked a StFX University football player if he liked the Cleveland Browns. The player said no, and that “the Browns are over-hyped”, which even if it were true, hasn’t happened in something like 30, maybe 40 years.
“Yeah whatever,” I muttered to myself, and then decided I’d be taking Sam’s picture for the newspaper. You have to back your fellow Browns fans, right?
So, I went over to Sam and told him I’d been a Cleveland fan since the 1980s, and he offered up a high-five, and we both agreed that quarterback Baker Mayfield is completely awesome, and Sam said he’s been with the Browns “from the start, when they were oh-and-sixteen.”
Mind you, that was just two seasons ago, but the kid’s only 11 or 12, so you’ve gotta cut him a little slack here. And he certainly found the perfect time to start following the Browns, who (and I know this is hard to believe) might be going to the Super Bowl.
Next February.
And that’s no joke.
• He Said Tongue-in-Cheekily
It’s not nice to wallow in the misery of others, but I just felt so tingly inside, watching Brad Marchand being interviewed after the Boston Bruins lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. I almost thought he was going to start sobbing uncontrollably.
“They took our dream away,” Marchand said pathetically, as he struggled to choke back tears, trying to overcome the anguish that surely was consuming him to the very core.
It was just too darn funny, and on behalf of Toronto Maple Leafs fans everywhere: thank you, St. Louis Blues. The world seems a little better now.
• So, That’s What a Championship Parade in Toronto Looks Like:
All the Toronto Raptors love will calm down next season, especially if Kawhi Leonard leaves Toronto to play elsewhere.
It was fun while it lasted, though, and for sure, the Raptors collected a whole new legion of fans with their run to a National Basketball Association championship.
From a small sample size of basketball fans in the U.S. – gleaned from the Internet – the Raptors are a popular champion, even south of the boarder. The Warriors have been too good for too long – three titles in four seasons – and people wanted to see someone else get the glory.
Even if Warriors’ star Kevin Durant had been completely healthy, I believe the Raptors would have beaten Golden State, anyway. And besides, injuries are a part of sports, so in no way do his injury issues diminish Toronto’s accomplishment.
A good way to watch NBA playoff basketball on television: monitor the score of game on your computer, and if the score is reasonably close with six or seven minutes left on the game clock, turn on the TV to watch the rest of it – you’ll still get 25 or 30 minutes of basketball viewing time.
• Myself and a co-worker, on the Monday morning before the parade in Toronto, tried to determine the over/under on the number of stabbings that would take place, with two million people of various levels of sobriety (and anti-social behaviour) all jammed together. We did not, for some reason, take guns into account. The final tally: four people shot, but thankfully, no one killed. I guess sports fans in Toronto don’t know how to handle success, due to their lack of familiarity with it.
Kevin Adshade is a writer with The News. His column appears each week.
