Phelps, pot, and overzealous police

Depending on how you look at it, the good news for today is that South Carolina police have decided not to pursue drug charges against competitive swimming superstar Michael Phelps.

As a former competitive swimmer, I kind of feel like I should weigh in on the Phelps bong photo issue. I don't view the world through rosy enough goggles to seriously entertain the notion that Phelps wasn't properly enjoying his bong. I doubt many others don't either. So we'll go with the assumption that Phelps is occasionally 'doping,' in the 'up' sense, not the performance-enhancing way.

You'd have to think that if Phelps was Canadian, we'd happily turn a blind eye to the incident. Remember Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Ross Rebagliati who was temporarily stripped of his medal for having marijuana in his system? We all supported him. I'm not sure though if our support was due to a more permissive attitude towards drugs in Canada or to the fact that we're so desperate for gold medals that we're willing to let a lot slide. Certainly though, we'd be willing to overlook a lot for a guy like Phelps who wan more gold than Canada in the last summer games.

You have to wonder about how much this situation hurts the camp of the war on drugs. "Kids! Don't do drugs or else you'lll never be one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen. Oh, wait... shit."

FYI: The ten most successful potheads on the planet cool enough to admit it

Actually, speaking of Ross Rebagliati, there may actually be a performance enhancing aspect to marijuana for athletes of a certain psychological disposition. Some people get too tightly wound-up in pressure situations, too aggressive, and it causes them to tighten-up, lose control, and make mistakes. My wife is that way, and I've often joked that if she toke a little before a big game, she'd perform better. Perhaps in a smooth and rythmic sport like snowboarding slalom, the weed gave Ross an advantage.

Note: I'm not a recreational drug user, and don't encourage it, except for copious quantities of alcohol - and even then I don't get truly wasted as I tend to prefer keeping my mental faculties intact. It just seems that in a society that accepts tobacco and alcohol it is congongruous that marijuana would be stigmatized. There are many, many other more important things to worry about the mild drug lives of young adults.

Are the Montreal Canadiens a religion?

A professor at the Université de Montréal is going to start teaching a graduate class studying the Montreal Canadiens hockey club as religion.

Are the Montreal Canadiens a religion? Well, they do have a goalie nicknamed Jesus Price, and some have claimed that touching Rocket Richard's jersey has healed them.

If the Habs are a religion, then the Leafs are Scientologists.

Blue Jays end another mediocre season

On Sunday I got to go to a Toronto Blue Jays game. My wife snagged the tickets: excellent field-level spots normally costing $44, which were free because it was "Fan Appreciation Weekend," or, as it really should be called, "please come to the stadium and watch because it's the last game of the season and we're out of the running and without free tickets the whole place would be empty Weekend." Anyway, the ploy worked because the place was respectibly full and lively. In addition to the free tickets, they also gave out free Jays toques, and since they struck out 7 opposing batters, we all got a free slice from Pizza Pizza. Hooray for free stuff.

I hadn't been to a Jays game in about 8 years - back when they had players like Shawn Green, Carlos Delgado, and Alex Gonzalez. They were still mediocre back then but at least I knew the players. I haven't followed baseball for about 6 years and the only baseball I've watched this year was the homerun derby. Not that having a more intimate knowledge of the Jays roster would have helped much, since on Sunday the team consisted of regulars Alex Rios, AJ Burnett, and a bunch of minor leaguers. Still, they played pretty hard at times, so it was fun. I miss the glory days of the early '90s though.

In typical mediocre Jays fashion, they were actually doing pretty well against Tampa Bay (up 4-2) but completely blew it in a disastrous 6th inning, yielding 5 unanswered runs. Meh.

Interesting things about the game:

1) There was one minor league guy who the Jays brought up recently who came in batting 1.000. Amazingly, through his next two at bats, he belted in some RBIs with a single and a triple, causing some drunk guys without shirts to yell things like "greatest hitter of all time!" He unfortunately got out in his next at bat, dropping his overall average to 0.750.

2) Speaking of triples, I've never seen so many in a game before. There were four triples in total, two for each team.

3) I couldn't understand all the thousands of people eagerly lining up for $8 domestic beer and $9 nachos. Are they crazy?

4) I don't remember pre-game warmup looking like this:
There's the trainer working on one of the players. The other guy is soaking it all in a little too intently, don't you think?