The Puck Stops Here...

ManagementSpeak: "Boy, we dodged a bullet on that one."
Translation: "What's bad isn't that we shot ourselves in the foot. It's how fast we reloaded and fired again."

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's had an interesting couple of years. First there was the player lock-out that saw the NHL skip an entire season. The fans were irate. ESPN discovered they could make more money covering high school basketball than professional hockey. Ultimately, the owners extracted what they wanted from the players, and the league came back, albeit with no national TV contract. Still, they tweaked the game to up the excitement (bye, bye, red line), and the fans seemed to be coming back.

Now, however, he's looking at another hole in his foot, thanks to, of all people, Wayne Gretzky, the greatest and most popular hockey player in history, not to mention all-around nice guy, who is currently the coach of the Phoenix Coyotes. ( Wayne, aim a little to the left, eh... )

Pillocks...

Just when you think the Red Sox organization couldn't come up with something more ridiculous to worry about, there comes this press release from the Lowell Spinners, their Single-A team. They want all the little leagues in New England to stop assigning "Yankees" as a team name, saying it traumatizes the poor kids.

Red Sox fans understand how devastating it can be for any child to be on a Yankees youth baseball team in New England. The Spinners have heard stories first-hand of children actually crying and refusing to play if they have to play for the Yankees. The Spinners believe they have found an answer to the problem.

Their answer? Rename the team the "Lowell Spinners™" Yup, that's the team I wanted to play for when I was a little kid. The frelling Lowell Spinners. (I will note here that when I was drafted for my first little league team, I lucked out. I got picked by the Dodgers.)