Rebecca Marino’s got serve

By Nancy Macdonald - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Evaan Kheraj

In June, during her first appearance at Wimbledon, Rebecca Marino, Canada’s top ranked female player, almost missed the tournament’s gala dinner. An hour before it began, as she was getting ready to hit the gym, she suddenly realized that as a top 50 player she needed to be there, and would be fined if she missed it. The 20-year-old Vancouverite tore through her suitcase, shook out a $10 dress from H&M, jumped in the shower, then into a cab to London’s Intercontinental Hotel. She made it, looking stunning, if a bit wrinkled, and walked the red carpet alongside players decked out in Alexander McQueen.

This time a year ago, few outside the tight-knit Canadian tennis world even knew her name. That changed in a heartbeat last September, at the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. Marino, then 19, competing in just her second World Tennis Association tour event, came close to knocking off Venus Williams. The Vancouver teen routinely overpowered the two-time U.S. Open champion, then ranked No. 4 in the world, matching Williams’s supersonic boom, hit for hit, with a serve hitting 193 km/h—Venus can hit 195 km/h—and mesmerizing the stunned colour analysts, who’d prepped for a blowout. “I guess I know what it’s like playing myself,” Williams said afterwards—high praise from the female game’s best server.

That steamy summer day at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Marino went from tennis no-name to the game’s next big thing. It also gave the reserved young player a needed confidence boost. “It helped me realize I was good enough to crack the top echelon—that I can actually play with these girls,” she told Maclean’s. “After that, I clicked.”

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How to hit a 241 km/h serve

By Richard Warnica - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Milos Raonic, currently ranked 29th in the world, has a harder serve than almost anyone else alive. The 20-year-old from Thornhill, Ont., who will miss this year’s Rogers Cup due to a hip injury, regularly tops 230 km/h with his serve. (His top speed of 241 km/h in Memphis this year is the fifth-fastest serve ever recorded). Casey Curtis, who coached Raonic for nine years, breaks down his former star pupil’s number one weapon.

The building blocks:

“He’s got a lot of leverage,” says Curtis. “Most of the great servers are six three, six four.” (Raonic is six foot five.) He also has long arms and unusually flexible shoulders. “Some guys just have the ability to contract their muscles faster than others.”

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Novak Djokovic: the man to beat

By Chris Sorensen - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Stephen Pond/Getty Images; Miguel Medina/Getty Images.

A little less than a year ago, Novak Djokovic, then the No. 3 tennis player in the world, found himself labouring in the sweltering late summer heat at the U.S. Open in New York. Flushed in the face and lead-footed, he was on the brink of being eliminated by fellow Serbian Viktor Troicki, who was ranked 47th. Fans were no doubt wondering if Djokovic would simply pull the plug on the match, as he had done before at big tournaments when his body seemed to fail him. Even the announcers had settled into a familiar patter about Djokovic’s lack of fitness and mental toughness in a sport dominated by two of the best players the world has ever seen: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

But Djokovic did something few expected: he battled back. “He ended up coming back and winning it,” says Bobby Mahal, a former national-level player for Canada and the current coach of the Indian national team. “Then he beat Federer in the semifinal. Although he lost to Nadal in the final, to me that was where everything, mentally, kind of changed for him.”

After several years of uneven performances, the 24-year-old Djokovic roared into 2011 and won every match he played for six months. His near-record-breaking streak came to an end in early June when he was ousted from the semifinals of the French Open by Federer, but that was only a minor setback. Djokovic handily beat Nadal during the Wimbledon final a month later, securing his eighth title of the year. And he stole the 25-year-old Spaniard’s No. 1 ranking in the process.

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Coming out swinging

By Alex Ballingall - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 8:55 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Big Mac attack

Last month, John McEnroe, the 51-year-old retiree famous for his brash directness and fiery temper, said tennis players should forego any sort of warm-up and “go out there like boxers, to huge applause and announcements, have a coin toss and then, boom, first serve.” Andy Roddick, who has a reputation for one of the biggest serves in the game, was nothing short of flabbergasted. “I have to sit around for 4½ hours, and he wants me to go serve 145. That’s irresponsible.” Roddick went on to tell the New York Times that it’s easy for someone to dismiss the necessity of warming up when they’ve been retired for nearly 20 years. But the champion-turned-pundit had some more advice for Roddick. After Roddick lost at Wimbledon this year, McEnroe quipped that he should “freshen up” his game now that he’s married to beautiful actress Brooklyn Decker, suggesting that his off-court happiness makes him vulnerable as a tennis player. And maybe he was on to something. A few weeks later, the two squared off in New York for a World Team Tennis match. McEnroe took Roddick—ranked No. 9—to a tiebreaker before being defeated. Evidently, McEnroe’s still got it, and he’ll be showing it off again at the Rogers Cup Legends series, alongside other old-timers, including Andre Agassi. No word yet on whether McEnroe will warm up.

Power couple

U.S. Open golf champ Rory McIlroy has a lot going for him these days. He’s a young, up-and-coming superstar who’s widely regarded as the next Tiger Woods—in a good way. Now, if the rumours are true, he also has a new girlfriend: Caroline Wozniacki, the top-ranked female tennis player on earth. After a tennis blogger saw them at a London restaurant, photos of the couple enjoying a meal and sharing a kiss circulated on the Internet. What’s more, the two stars have openly flirted on Twitter. McIlroy teased Wozniacki for getting older when she turned 21 on July 11. Her response: “At least now you can buy me a drink in the U.S.”

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From ordinary poker players to big-league pros

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, July 18, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photo by Roman Cho/Getty Images

Jeffrey Pollack has a pithy way of describing his career: “I specialize in things that haven’t been done before.” Like starting the first trade paper devoted to the business of sports. Or creating the Emmy-winning pastiche of in-car cameras and onscreen telemetry that makes NASCAR watchable. Or transforming the World Series of Poker from a Vegas sideshow into an “anyone can enter, anyone can win” big business. And now, if things go his way, catapulting card sharks into the ranks of pampered sports celebrities.

Epic Poker, Pollack’s newly created professional poker league, will host its inaugural tournament at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas next month, promising to turn top players into a gaming elite. “In any other sport there are platforms, brands or associations that are focused on the best of the best. Poker doesn’t have that,” says the 47-year-old entrepreneur and half-brother of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. (Joy, their late mother, married Pollack’s father Howard, an accountant, when Gary was 11.) “We’re going to celebrate skill and strategy above moments of luck.”

Players will be ranked by performance and earnings as in tennis, and awarded “cards” as in pro golf, providing them with entry to Epic’s events for three to five years. All of the US$20,000 entry fees will go into the prize pots (traditionally organizers take a 10 per cent “rake” off the top), which will be sweetened by the league with US$400,000 for regular tourneys, and $1 million for the annual championship featuring the season’s top 27 performers. And players, long used to paying their own way, will receive free food, drinks and hotel suites. “It’s elevating the service level that the pros are used to,” says Pollack.

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Grandest slam

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Michel Setboun/Getty Images

There is nothing even remotely intimidating about Milos Raonic—until he has a tennis racquet in his hand. Galumphing across the lobby of his Paris hotel in his size-14 Nikes, he makes you think of Bambi on ice, or Michael Phelps out of water: a collection of limbs that appear to be moving in all directions at once with no common purpose. The handshake is limp, the smile is shy, and his voice cracks when he talks. Sure, he’s six foot five, but at just 198 lb., the 20-year-old still has the face and frame of a teenage boy. And, as it turns out, the serve of a natural-born killer.

At the Australian Open this past January, he clocked the fastest serve of the tournament with a 143 mph (230 km/h) slam in an upset victory over France’s Michael Llodra. In the final of the SAP Open in San Jose the next month—his first career ATP championship, and the first singles tournament win by a Canadian player in 16 years—Raonic touched 149 mph (240 km/h) playing against Fernando Verdasco, then ranked No. 9 in the world. In early March, at a Davis Cup match in Mexico, he hit 152 mph (245 km/h) tying for the fourth fastest serve in history. (Ivo Karlovic holds the current record of 156 mph—251 km/h—established during a Davis Cup match in his native Croatia that same week.) Heading into Wimbledon, Raonic had scorched opponents for 479 aces and counting this season, 83 ahead of Karlovic for the lead on the circuit. Which makes his claim that he isn’t even trying to hit it that hard all the more frightening. “When I get high numbers, I’m not thinking full-out bomb. It just comes off the racquet that way,” Raonic says as he sips mineral water in the lobby bar. “Some days, the ball is going close to 150, and I just feel like I’m swinging my arm.”

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Milos Raonic’s grandest slam

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Michel Setboun/Getty Images

There is nothing even remotely intimidating about Milos Raonic—until he has a tennis racquet in his hand. Galumphing across the lobby of his Paris hotel in his size-14 Nikes, he makes you think of Bambi on ice, or Michael Phelps out of water: a collection of limbs that appear to be moving in all directions at once with no common purpose. The handshake is limp, the smile is shy, and his voice cracks when he talks. Sure, he’s six foot five, but at just 198 lb., the 20-year-old still has the face and frame of a teenage boy. And, as it turns out, the serve of a natural-born killer.

At the Australian Open this past January, he clocked the fastest serve of the tournament with a 143 mph (230 km/h) slam in an upset victory over France’s Michael Llodra. In the final of the SAP Open in San Jose the next month—his first career ATP championship, and the first singles tournament win by a Canadian player in 16 years—Raonic touched 149 mph (240 km/h) playing against Fernando Verdasco, then ranked No. 9 in the world. In early March, at a Davis Cup match in Mexico, he hit 152 mph (245 km/h) tying for the fourth fastest serve in history. (Ivo Karlovic holds the current record of 156 mph—251 km/h—established during a Davis Cup match in his native Croatia that same week.) Heading into Wimbledon, Raonic had scorched opponents for 479 aces and counting this season, 83 ahead of Karlovic for the lead on the circuit. Which makes his claim that he isn’t even trying to hit it that hard all the more frightening. “When I get high numbers, I’m not thinking full-out bomb. It just comes off the racquet that way,” Raonic says as he sips mineral water in the lobby bar. “Some days, the ball is going close to 150, and I just feel like I’m swinging my arm.”

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How do you solve a problem like Roberto Luongo?

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 5:26 PM - 15 Comments

He’s never been one to pour out his soul, so one might reasonably interpret the phone call Roberto Luongo placed on April 21 as a full-on cry for help. After two straight blowout losses to the Chicago Blackhawks, Vancouver’s superstar netminder had lost the starting role in Game 6 of the Western Conference quarter-finals to his backup, Cory Schneider. Now, with the Hawks threatening to erase a 3-0 deficit in the series, Canucks coach Alain Vigneault was having a public crisis of confidence in his $10-million-a-year goaltender. Luongo’s future hung in the balance.

So he reached out to his brother Leo, a goaltending instructor in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and like any good coach, Leo steered the conversation toward the positive. Roberto’s recent failures went unmentioned, as did the attendant pressures of his epic 12-year, $64-million contract. “We talked about him staying focused and sharp and being ready,” Leo told Maclean’s. “In hockey, you never know what’s going to happen.”

As it turned out, Schneider went down in Game 6 with leg cramps, and Luongo entered the game in the third to make a series of impressive stops in an overtime loss. Continue…

Concussions: they're not just for men anymore

By Cathy Gulli - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Bob Strong/Reuters; Adrian Wyld/CP; Todd Korol/Reuters

If all you ever heard about concussions was what turned up in the sports news or highlight reels, you’d be justified in thinking that they mostly only happen to elite male athletes­, especially NHL players. A couple of weeks ago, Nathan Horton of the Boston Bruins was rocked by a hit so hard it knocked him out of the Stanley Cup finals. In May, Derek Boogaard of the New York Rangers, who’d been battling concussion symptoms since before Christmas, accidentally overdosed on alcohol and painkillers. In March, scientists announced that the late Bob Probert, a famous brawler, had brain degeneration. Days later, Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadiens had a head-on collision with a thick metal stanchion. And, of course, superstar Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins is still recovering from back-to-back blows he received in January.

Despite such evidence to suggest that men are the main victims of concussion, an unsettling body of scientific research reveals that the rates of concussion among female athletes are significantly higher than for male athletes. “What we know right now is that females are about two to three times more likely to have a concussion than males,” says Dave Ellemberg, a professor at the Université de Montréal, who has a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to study the effect of gender on concussion outcomes. There are also early indications that females might take longer to recover, and that their symptoms might be different from, or worse than, those experienced by males.

The problem is widespread: high rates of concussion in females are occurring at both the youth and adult levels, and across the sports spectrum. Recent studies have found that in gender-comparable sports such as soccer and basketball, which have the same rules and equipment for both sexes, females are far more likely to receive a concussion per number of “athlete exposures” (one player participating in one game or practice). Dawn Comstock, a principle investigator at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, runs the national sports surveillance study, which collects detailed injury data from 200 high schools across the U.S. on a weekly basis. Between 2005-2010, female high school soccer players received on average three concussions per 10,000 exposures compared to 1.98 among boys. In basketball, girls sustained 2.01 concussions versus just one among boys per 10,000 exposures.

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Vancouver's 40-year-old virgins

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 6:04 PM - 9 Comments

Deep in the fuggy, aromatic basement of TD Garden, in a corner of the Boston Bruins’ dressing room, Johnny Boychuk’s words to live by loom above his stall: “Move your feet, play physical, shoot the puck!” They are not so much a credo as a command, penned on a strip of yellowed masking tape like a reminder to an errant child. The defenceman reddened last week when a visitor noticed. “Just something I wrote to myself,” he mumbled through his playoff beard. But there was no need to be sheepish, because here was Bruin hockey boiled to its essentials—skate, hit, shoot. Thus did Boston find its way to the 2011 Stanley Cup final. They would forget it at their peril.

They didn’t, of course. The Bruins championship was a masterpiece of blood and sweat, forged from the work of role players and a goaltending performance for the ages. And the Canucks? They might have used that bit of tape. Continue…

The return of NHL hockey to Winnipeg

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, June 6, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 12 Comments

Tom Pidgeon/AP

There’s something about the intersection of Portage and Main that only Winnipeggers get. Two busy roads ringed by tall commercial buildings that offer no shops or attractions that might make a visitor stop and linger. But somewhere deep in the city’s DNA, it is imprinted as a gathering place on momentous occasions. Most especially in relation to hockey. It’s where Bobby Hull signed his million-dollar deal with the World Hockey Association’s Winnipeg Jets. Where fans feted the selection of the great Dale Hawerchuk as the first overall pick in the 1981 NHL draft. And where the desperate vigils were held as the franchise started to slip away in the spring of 1995.

And so it was on the morning of May 31, 2011, when big league hockey finally made its long-awaited return to Canada’s heartland. There were kids playing road hockey on a strip of sidewalk complete with goalies and nets. Jersey-clad men, waving Jets flags and hoisting a replica Stanley Cup. Even a couple of guys who had brought along red chairs from the old Winnipeg Arena. But the crowd of around 1,000 mostly stood and watched a press conference being beamed onto outdoor TV screens from the basement of the MTS Centre down the block. Waiting for the words that would set their fandom free.

The preamble took a few minutes, but finally Mark Chipman, the chairman of True North Sports and Entertainment, made it official. “I am excited beyond words to announce our purchase of the Atlanta Thrashers,” he said. “We received the call we’ve long been waiting for.” It’s not a done deal—the purchase still needs the approval of the NHL’s board of governors and is contingent on the organization selling at least 13,000 season tickets over the next three weeks—but close enough to touch off celebrations around the province and across the country. A couple of weeks of frenzied deal-making that continued right through the final night, and then Winnipeg’s civic pride restored at a reported purchase price of US$170 million—US$110 million for the fractious owners of the Thrashers, and a US$60-million “relocation fee” for the league.

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LIVE: NHL in Winnipeg

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 11:44 AM - 0 Comments

A different kind of full-court press

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, May 30, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 2 Comments

Rocky Widner/NBA/Getty Images

After yet another dismal season on the basketball court (22-60, third-worst in the NBA), the Toronto Raptors have a long list of decisions to make. What to do with Clarence “Sonny” Weems is one of them. Although the high-flying forward struggled on defence and eventually lost his starting job, he still reached career highs in points (9.2 per game) and assists (1.8). Now a free agent in search of a new contract, the 24-year-old will soon find out whether the Raps want him back.

One thing, though, is already certain: wherever Weems plays next season, his entire salary will belong to him. Three years and three court judgments later, he finally paid back the thousands of dollars he borrowed from a former Canadian Football League all-star.

As Maclean’s reported last year, Weems quietly took advantage of a lucrative but little-known enterprise: companies that loan wads of cash to elite college athletes, on the condition that the money be repaid (with interest) as soon as the client inks a pro contract. In his case, the lender was Felix Wright, a one-time Hamilton Tiger-Cat who went on to play nine seasons in the NFL before dabbling in the financial services industry. Back in 2008, after a standout senior season at the University of Arkansas, Weems and Wright signed a contract of their own: a cash loan worth US$23,500 (at eight per cent interest) plus the use of a Ford Taurus—“all of which,” according to court documents, “was to be repaid and returned respectively when the said defendant was selected as a draft pick on a National Basketball Association team.”

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Sometimes when we punch

By Dan Hill - Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 23 Comments

Tom Donoghue

“Sugar Shane Mosley will be getting a personal rendition of Sometimes When We Touch from Manny on May 7–on his chin and ribs—all night!”—Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach

February 1964—47 years before the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley fight in Vegas on May 7

“Daggum, Liston is going to chomp up that blabbermouth Cassius Clay, and then spit him out like a bad meal,” my dad is howling. Dad, who used to teach boxing in the U.S. Army, is out of his mind with excitement as the transistor radio blasts out the preamble to the Cassius Clay vs. Sonny Liston bout. Ducking and weaving as he shadowboxes with an imaginary opponent, his meaty fists are a blur of left jabs and right uppercuts. Bam! Carried away, he smacks the kitchen wall, the dishes on our kitchen table rattling as forks and spoons tumble to the floor. I’m transfixed.

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Concussions: the untold story

By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 15 Comments

Photograph by George Widman/AP

Before there was Sidney Crosby, there was Eric Lindros. Both were hockey prodigies as young teenagers. Both were drafted first overall into the NHL. Both won the league MVP in their early 20s, both were captain of Team Canada at the Olympics, and both were hailed as the next Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux. And then, in a fraction of a second, both fell victim to devastating concussions. The toll on Crosby, who has been sidelined since January, remains to be seen. But most fans know that Lindros was never the same after a series of blows to the head—at least eight by the time he retired in 2007. What few know, however—what he’s never talked about publicly before—is the psychological and emotional toll of those concussions.

That a Herculean hockey legend such as Lindros (he is six foot four and 255 lb.) is speaking out with disarming candour about the panic and desolation that he has endured is unprecedented. “You’re in a pretty rough-and-tumble environment with this sport. Talking about these things—you don’t talk about these things,” says Lindros. So while he was playing in the NHL, Lindros mostly kept his game face on. “You got to understand, you want to wake up in the morning and you want to look at yourself and say, ‘I’ve got the perfect engine to accomplish what I need to in this game tonight.’ You are not going to look in the mirror and say, ‘Boy, I’m depressed.’ ”

But there were signs that the concussions had transformed him, both as a man and a hockey player, for the worse. “I was extremely sarcastic. I was real short. I didn’t have patience for people,” says Lindros, 38. That rudeness mutated once he stepped on the ice into fear that the next concussion was just one hit away. “That’s why I played wing my last few years,” he explains of changing positions late in his career. “I hated cutting through the middle. I was avoiding parting the Red Sea.” Off the ice, Lindros developed a paralyzing sense of dread at the very thought of public speaking or of being in a crowd—once routine activities for the sports superstar. “I hated, absolutely hated, that. I’d avoid those scenarios. I didn’t like airports. I didn’t like galas. It would stress me out.”

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Ultimate ticket

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, April 29, 2011 at 7:10 AM - 10 Comments

Rogerio Barbosa/AFP/Getty Images

Maybe it has something to do with the Maple Leafs missing the playoffs for six straight seasons, but Toronto the Good has a lot of pent-up blood lust. Enough to account for all 55,000 seats for the first-ever Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts staged in the city being snapped up in just 20 minutes. Enough to hand the Las Vegas-based promoters of the April 30 beat-downs a gate estimated at more than $10 million, the most lucrative single event in the history of the Rogers Centre, née SkyDome. So much that even the Bay Street suits have gotten in on the action, with more than 90 per cent of the stadium’s luxury suites sold to bankers, stockbrokers and head office honchos. “We’re not going mainstream,” says a satisfied Tom Wright, the UFC’s point man in Canada. “The mainstream is coming to us.”

Once feared, and infamously reviled by John McCain as “human cockfighting,” mixed martial arts (MMA) has gone from outlaw sideshow to big-time sport in just a decade. In 2001, only Nevada and New Jersey sanctioned the punishing bouts—kitchen-sink combinations of wrestling, boxing, jiu-jitsu, Thai kickboxing and pretty much every other type of weaponless combat ever devised. Today, it’s legal in 45 of the 48 U.S. states that permit prizefighting, as well as nine Canadian provinces. UFC, a privately held company and the sport’s biggest brand, is estimated to be worth more than US$2 billion. Propelled by stars like Montreal’s Georges St. Pierre—who will defend his welterweight title against American Jake Shield in Toronto’s main event—it attracts corporate sponsors like Anheuser-Busch, Bacardi, Burger King and Gatorade. Fights are now broadcast to 150 countries worldwide, and in 2010 UFC’s pay-per-view offerings drew more than nine million “buys” in North America alone, generating upwards of $400 million in revenue. (By comparison, WWE wrestling, which once dominated the sector, sold less than two million buys.)

But for all the global growth, the epicentre of MMA fandom is Canada in general, and Ontario in particular. “On a per-capita basis, this is by far our largest market in the world,” says Wright, a former commissioner of the Canadian Football League. The first card ever held in Vancouver last June drew more than 17,000 people. Two title fights with St. Pierre in Montreal both packed 23,000 into the Bell Centre. The Toronto event will be the biggest live show in the sport’s history. (UFC title fights in Vegas usually draw around 11,000.) Maybe Canada, like Australia, another MMA hotbed, simply has a culture that embraces any and all sport. Or perhaps decades of watching hockey goons duke it out has created a deep-seated appetite for pugilistic mayhem. “What happens at a hockey game when a fight breaks out? It’s 18,000 people on their feet,” says Wright. “We, as a people, just get the UFC.”

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Joey Votto: baseball’s anonymous superstar

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 1 Comment

There’s an etiquette about batting practice in the big leagues. It’s fine to goof around outside the cage, talking to teammates, opponents, or the various hangers-on, as you wait your turn. But once you’re standing at the plate, it’s all business—take your hacks and make way for the next guy.

Then there’s Joey Votto. It’s not that the Toronto-born first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds violates the convention—far from it. He just makes it seem like an extra commandment. The preceding hitter has barely cleared the box before the 27-year-old is in his crouch, bat at the ready. He slashes the first pitch down the left-field line, then works his way right across the diamond—tock, tock, tock. The next five balls get launched into or over the high netting that tops the outfield walls at the Reds’ spring training complex in Goodyear, Ariz.—three in a row to right, then two to left. It’s all so workaday that Votto doesn’t even bother to watch them go, he’s already waiting for the next pitch. Focused is a term that hardly does him justice.

So when the reigning National League MVP, coming off a season where he hit .324, smashed 37 homers, and batted in 113 runs and led the Reds to their first playoff berth in 15 years, proclaims that he can get better still, who’s to argue? “I want to be great at what I do. I take a lot of pride in it,” says Votto. “And I try not to sell myself short in my work and preparation.” Between awards ceremonies this past winter (Votto also collected the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s top athlete, and the Hank Aaron Award as the NL’s top hitter), he worked out five hours a day, six times a week at his Florida home. The guy who had the best on-base percentage in baseball, and went an entire season without an infield pop-out, talks about how he hopes to be a more efficient hitter, stronger defensively, and a better teammate. He speaks earnestly about proving himself all over again, and how he really measures himself against the man who finished a distant second in the league’s MVP voting, Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals, “the best player in baseball.”

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Dust-up in the Phoenix desert

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, April 11, 2011 at 11:32 AM - 39 Comments

Norm Hall/NHLI/Getty Images

The clock is ticking for the Phoenix Coyotes. Down 1-0 to the St. Louis Blues with less than three minutes left in the first period, the team is fiddling away a two-man advantage. The wingers are having trouble controlling the puck, and the one shot Keith Yandle manages from the point misses the net by a country mile. When a fumbled pass results in a short-handed rush for the Blues, the boos rain down in Jobing.com Arena. It’s surprisingly loud given the size of the crowd—10,977 tickets sold or given away, but at least a thousand fewer actual bums in the seats. On a Tuesday night in late March, matched up against a team bound for the golf course instead of the playoffs, hockey is a tough sell in Phoenix. Hand it to the fans who do show up, though—they’re as apt at expressing their displeasure as any in the game.

The chant that rises out of the upper bowl during the second period isn’t quite as lusty, but perhaps even more telling. “Goldwater sucks! Goldwater sucks!” NHL catcalls aren’t usually directed at libertarian think tanks. Then again, nothing about the saga of the Phoenix Coyotes is business as usual.
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What really happened to Max Pacioretty?

By Cathy Gulli - Friday, April 1, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 5 Comments

Shaun Best/Reuters; Andrew Post/Neurotrauma Impact Science Laboratory/University of Ottawa

By now, the stomach-churning footage of Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadiens slamming headfirst into a post during an NHL game on March 8 is well-known. The hit, delivered by Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins, happened in less than a second, but it took several unnerving minutes for medical personnel and teammates to carry an unconscious Pacioretty off the ice. Doctors later diagnosed him with a concussion and a fractured vertebra, from which he is still recovering. Considering the powerful collision, it’s stunning that the 22-year-old wasn’t hurt worse or even killed, as many fans and players feared that night.

But to truly marvel at the dangerous blow that Pacioretty survived, one must watch a precise five-second black and white video just created by scientists at the University of Ottawa. Led by Blaine Hoshizaki, director of the elite Neurotrauma Impact Science Laboratory, researchers have reconstructed a hit similar to the Pacioretty-Chara one. The footage shows a dummy head wearing a helmet similar to the one Pacioretty uses. A metal rod covered in two-inch foam mimics the padded stanchion that Pacioretty struck. An air compressor unleashes the rod on the head form, which is pummelled at the exact same speed and location as when Pacioretty rammed into the post. The impact launches the dummy into a sideways extension—the neck stretches until it’s perpendicular to the rod, before the head form snaps back and slightly rotates.

WATCH THE RECONSTRUCTION

Witnessing the hit recreated in the isolation of a lab makes it all the more disturbing to watch. But for Hoshizaki, the goal is scientific. His team is determined to understand the relationship between brain injuries such as concussions, helmet performance, and the risky hits that hockey players give and take during a game—and to find out whether equipment should be improved or whether certain hits should be banned in the future.

YOUTUBE; Andrew Post/Neurotrauma Impact Science Laboratory/University of Ottawa

The Pacioretty-Chara reconstruction confirms that hockey helmets excel at preventing catastrophic brain injuries such as skull fractures and subdural hematomas, which are caused by “linear acceleration” (which happens when players fall and hit the ice or receive an impact directly through their centre of mass). On the other hand, it also demonstrates that helmets are not built to prevent mild traumatic brain injuries such as concussions, which are caused primarily by “angular acceleration” (a rotational impact such as when a boxer throws a hook punch to the side of an opponent’s head).

What’s more, this reconstruction explains why Pacioretty will probably recover from his concussion faster than superstar Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who has been sidelined since Jan. 5. As Maclean’s recently reported, Hoshizaki’s team has reconstructed the first of two hits to the head that preceded Crosby’s concussion diagnosis. That hit occurred on New Year’s Day, when David Steckel (then of the Washington Capitals, now playing for the New Jersey Devils) collided with Crosby—shoulder to the left side of the head—and sent him flipping through the air and crashing onto the ice.

By comparing the two reconstructions, especially the 3-D brain models generated by sensors inside the dummy, Hoshizaki’s team can see the different risk of brain tissue damage each player might have experienced. The results are as fascinating as they are perplexing: the brain model from the Crosby reconstruction shows a rainbow of tissue stress, while the brain model from the Pacioretty reconstruction is mostly blue, representing less risk of tissue damage.

Hoshizaki suggests that although the Pacioretty-Chara hit happened at a higher speed than the Crosby-Steckel one (36 km/h versus 27 km/h), and even though Pacioretty was knocked out, the angular acceleration lasted longer in the case of Crosby than Pacioretty (20 milliseconds compared to seven milliseconds, respectively). Since angular acceleration is so closely connected to the risk of concussion, that might explain why the brain model generated by the Crosby-Steckel reconstruction indicates so much more tissue stress. As well, the researchers hypothesize that the location of the impact on each player’s head may explain why the tissue damage varies. Hoshizaki says that the front of the brain, such as where Pacioretty was hit, may be more robust than the sides, which is where Crosby was struck.

Going forward, Hoshizaki’s team are working toward mapping which parts of the brain are most vulnerable to hits to the head. Meanwhile, fans await the return of Pacioretty and Crosby—whenever that might be.

2011 Blue Jays season preview: The boys of summer return

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 6:33 PM - 0 Comments

2011 Blue Jays season preview: Around the horn

By Mike Wilner - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 6:28 PM - 0 Comments

J. Meric/Getty Images

WELL-ARMED
Already blessed with one of big league baseball’s strongest starting rotations— Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt were a combined 40-22 in 2010—the Philadelphia Phillies landed the biggest catch of the off-season when free-agent lefty Cliff Lee signed a five-year deal worth US$120 million (Lee turned down the New York Yankees, despite their offer being worth US$28 million more). The Phillies’ rotation, which some say is the best in major league history—at least on paper—now boasts three Cy Young Awards, 13 All-Star appearances and a World Series MVP to its credit.

Mike Cassese/Reuters

PLAYING IT SAFE
Justin Morneau’s season ended abruptly last July when the Minnesota Twin took Toronto Blue Jay second baseman John McDonald’s knee to the head while sliding into second base. The 2006 American League MVP, who was one of eight big leaguers last year to miss games due to a concussion, was hitting .345 with 18 home runs and 56 RBIs at the time of the injury and was scheduled to start in the All-Star game. But even by the time spring training rolled around, the 29-year-old New Westminster, B.C., native had yet to be cleared to play. Morneau, who carries many of the Twins’ hopes for a repeat trip to the post-season, managed to work his way into some pre-season games by mid-March; he believes he’ll be back for opening day.

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2011 Blue Jays season preview: How to build a winner

By Shi Davidi - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 6:28 PM - 0 Comments

Thomas Roy/Union Leader

Development always takes precedence over winning in the minor leagues. But if a farm team enjoys some success, all the better. The New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, succeeded on both fronts last season. Many of the Jays’ top prospects—including pitchers Kyle Drabek and Zach Stewart, as well as shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria—blossomed, and the club finished second in the Eastern League’s Eastern Division with a 79-62 record. The result: plenty of post-game dance parties. “There was a strobe light hooked up to the rafters in the clubhouse,” says left fielder Eric Thames, his face brightening at the memory, “and there was a fog machine.”

Though the party ended abruptly in the semifinals when the Fisher Cats were swept in three games by the Trenton Thunder (the New York Yankees’ AA club), the way the club groomed its players has become a model for what the Jays hope to achieve system-wide. This season, the organization will implement what assistant general manager Tony LaCava calls “a major-league-centric approach” to player development. The plan is to institute uniformity throughout the organization when it comes to coaching, ingraining the game’s fundamentals from one level to the next.

The goal is to create “an expectation that when you come to the major leagues, you do things a certain way,” says LaCava. “It’s really going to be a lot of the mechanical things. Certainly the different bunt plays, pick-off plays, our approach to stopping the running game—every aspect of the game.” In theory, this would prevent players from needing to decipher different coaching philosophies as they rise through the ranks, allowing them to focus instead on adjusting to the stiffer competition.

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2011 Blue Jays season preview: The view looks good from the bench

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 6:10 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Blair Gablea

In the summer of 1987, the biggest story in sports was Paul Molitor’s bat. The future Hall of Famer had smacked a hit in 39 straight games—one of the longest streaks in baseball history—and was threatening to break the unbreakable: Joe DiMaggio’s 56-gamer. On the last Wednesday of August, with all eyes on Milwaukee, Molitor and his Brewers hosted the last-place Cleveland Indians.

On the mound for the visitors was a rookie right-hander named John Farrell. “I shouldn’t have even pitched that night,” he says now, smiling at the memory.

He is not exaggerating. At 25, Farrell was mere days into his big-league career, and only got the starting nod because a teammate twisted his ankle. Even then, the game almost never happened; heavy rain hit Wisconsin all afternoon, drying up just in time for the national anthem. “There was no batting practice,” Farrell recalls. “Did that have something to do with what happened? Possibly.”

What happened, of course, was Molitor went 0 for 4, with a strikeout, a double-play groundout, and nothing close to a base hit. The streak was snapped.

Nobody knew it at the time, but for Blue Jays fans, the box score from that night offered a glimpse of the glory to come. Playing first base for the Indians was Pat Tabler, who, five seasons later, would help hoist Toronto’s first-ever championship trophy. The Cleveland left fielder—Joe Carter—was destined to be a post-season hero (“Touch ‘em all, Joe!”). And Molitor, who joined the Jays in 1993, would bat .500 (12 for 24) and earn MVP honours in the same World Series that ended with Carter’s bottom-of-the-ninth blast.

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2011 Blue Jays season preview: How the young guns live

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 6:00 PM - 0 Comments

Three young men with money to burn, living in a mansion in Clearwater Beach, Fla., while coeds on March Break stroll nearby streets in their bikinis. What could possibly go wrong? Fortunately for the Blue Jays, outfielder Travis Snider has a well developed sense of responsibility. The 23-year-old has rented the digs for the duration of spring training, and agreed to house rookie catcher J.P. Arencibia, 25, along with infield hopeful Brett Lawrie, 21. The idea is to keep them out of trouble—or at least, try to. Reassuringly, Snider’s father Denne is there to help, while Lawrie’s parents, Cheryl and Russ, also drop by for a visit. The atmosphere is frat-house deluxe: a typical night entails a dinner of barbecued chicken filets and hamburger patties (no buns—too many carbs), followed by games of Nerf basketball and dips in a lavish-looking outdoor pool featuring faux rocks and a waterfall.