Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Bruce Dowbiggin: Toronto Mike'd #1464
Episode Date: April 2, 2024In this 1464th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Bruce Dowbiggin about gambling in sports, the legacy of Ben Johnson and so much more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lak...es Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Yes, We Are Open podcast from Moneris, The Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Team and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at mike@torontomike.com
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Welcome to episode 1464 of Toronto Miked, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery,
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Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA.
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the city outside the dome, with Rod Black's mustache returning for the home opener at
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our electronics of the past.
The Advantage'd Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada.
Valuable perspective for Canadian investors who want to remain knowledgeable, informed
and focused on long-term success.
Season 6 of Yes We Are Open, a Monaris podcast hosted by FOTM Al
Grego and Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning
to Toronto Mike, is Bruce Dobigan. Welcome back, Bruce.
Good to be here. Good to be here. But by the way, just real quick for Joe Flaherty today. Yeah, you know, actually here a little bit of off the top, sad news this morning. I woke
up to this news, but I got a just a little taste of Joe. Oh, my God. Oh!
Hi, everyone. Count Floyd here.
Reminding you to watch this Saturday night at 11 o'clock
for Monster Chiller Horror Theater.
We got a scary one for you this week. It's that
three-dimensional semi-classic Dr. Tong's House of Cats. It's in 3D so you'll have
to send away for your special glasses. Now let's take a look at some chilling scenes
from Dr. Tong's house of cats. Woo!
Some Count Floyd there. Yes, sad news, you were a big SCTV fan?
Yeah, huge.
Knew a couple of them.
Catherine O'Hara, I knew a little bit
back in high school days, oh, university days.
And did some stuff side by each with them.
And just the fact that they did all those shows
up in Edmonton is always, is a killer.
There's nothing to do up there.
The Ruppert, I think it was Demarcovitz,
has owned the studio up there and they were stuck.
And there was nothing else to do,
but just do that goofy stuff.
He did a good Dick Betos, by the way,
Joe Flaherty, when they did the ripoff of Face Off.
Yeah, he did a Dick Bedclothes, he called himself,
and he inserted himself in there.
And you know, for those, the younger set,
although I think even the younger set,
if they're listening to Toronto Mic,
they love their SCTV, if they find the clips on YouTube.
Let me get back to the Scorsese doc in a second,
but Freaks and Geeks, Joe Flaherty played the dad
on Freaks and Geeks and very good.
He's just a great loss and he's a Pittsburgh guy, right?
He was a, you know, one of those guys,
I remember growing up, you know, watching SCTV
and realizing they weren't all Canadian.
This was like a big moment when I said,
oh, wait a minute, like, you know,
Andrea Martin's not Canadian.
Like, you sort of like, you just assume
they're all kind of Canadian,
and then you learn some of them were imported,
and Joe was one of those imports.
I ended up one night, I don't remember what the year was,
and in those days we used to go to the fire hall
to see the stage show. I remember ending up like one in the morning sitting on a sofa at somebody's house watching old movies and Dave Thomas
Was on the sofa and I and I think Moranis might have been there anyhow
They were just cutting up about them about the movie and I just thought this was the funniest thing and we always rooted for them
right, you know, there was there was Saturday Night Live and that was the American show and SCTV a lot of the time
handed their hat to them really you know it was just very creative and the guy
they were nice people too I mean you know there wasn't none of them came to a
bad end particularly right? No you're right and shout out to Dave Thomas who
is the FOTM in the bunch right? He'll take my calls actually I think I'll hook
up with him and chat a little bit about Joe Flaherty
for the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial episode
for the month of April.
But yeah, sad news, Joe, I think he was 82, I believe.
82, okay.
And by the way, 82, and speaking of ages,
I want to say happy birthday to you, Bruce.
You turned 70 last week.
Yeah, the big seven-oh. How does it feel like the parts falling apart are how you feeling?
Well, I used to say that 50 was the new 40 and 60 is the new 50 70 is the new 70
It's at that point. It's your age catches up with how you feel
As long as I get enough sleep. I'm okay. I think. And I get to go and go away for two months to Florida.
Okay, so you're just coming back from Florida right now.
Yeah, we have a family place down there.
I went down to spend some time.
Nice.
Yeah, we have friends who live down there.
And so it's kind of a nice place to get away
from Calgary winters, that's for sure.
Well, I have a little, so not every guest has their own
like music that they want for the intro.
I'm going to play a little bit of this song
and talk to you about it.
And then I'm going to let the listenership know
how they can catch up on previous Bruce Dobigan
episodes. And then we're going to have a great chat as usual. I'm glad you're here. You're
going to be well rewarded. You're actually setting a record today. So you're the first
episode of April. You're going to receive more swag for being in the basement than any
previous guest in the history of Toronto, Mike.
I'm touched.
Like soak that in, okay? Let's not bury this lead here.
Okay, so that's 1,464 episodes.
The record is being set today.
No one left with more value than you, Bruce Dobegian.
You're touched.
I am, no.
I can't find the words.
And your son's still in Long Branch?
Yeah, he lives down the road.
Alderwood? Is that Alderwood or Long Branch?
Lives down the road from here, still at TSN.
Yeah, I follow him on Twitter.
I get all my fun facts and mind blows.
That was with him yesterday.
His daughter and his wife, yeah.
Yeah, a little music for the Bruce Dole begin.
Morning, morning, morning is 18.
Another West trip, I'll ride you to Calgary.
Always knew she'd get used to me leaving Sunday
A lot less words now, her tears have run dry
I can tell by the way she doesn't hold me it's tough
And she's thinking maybe she's better off alone
Maybe she's better off alone
Nobody warned me, nobody told me I'd leave there so broken Come back so lonely, I'm killing my soul for the life that I'm leaving behind
Two weeks on it, two weeks off My blood is wearing thin and my stomach's in knots.
Too much thinking about the time you've lost when it's two weeks on, two weeks off.
Bruce tell me about this song, Two Weeks.
Two Weeks On, Two Weeks Off, it's the East Pointers.
It's a fantastic band out of the Maritimes,
out of Prince Edward Island.
And the song is about a reality in Canada
that doesn't get a whole lot of attention,
which is the transportation of people
from the Maritimes to Alberta,
flying across the country to go and do well.
In his case, he's talking about two weeks on, two weeks off.
A lot of the time, it's six weeks on and six weeks off. Guys sharing beds and one guy will share a bed
with a guy who's working the night shift etc. And it's a song about the lifestyle and you know
what's happening in the maritimes. That people can't stay home and it doesn't get a whole lot
of attention. And those of us in Alberta of course we know the people. Some of them come and stay,
some of them come to become Albertans.
And the East Pointers, again, if you don't know them,
last summer was our 40th wedding anniversary.
So we did an Airbnb and we rented this beautiful big house
in PEI down near the strait.
And it turned out that it was owned by the guy
who is the lead of this band.
Get out of here.
Yeah.
EastEnders? Yeah. No, East Pointers. Sorry, yeah, EastEnders is the lead of this band. Get out of here. Yeah. Eastenders?
Yeah.
No, Eastpointers.
Sorry, Eastenders is like a soap boat of England.
So there's all the room is covered with Juno awards
and Atlantic, East music, whatever it's all this stuff.
And it's like a fuse blows and he has to come over
and we meet him and chat with him a little bit.
But I'm thinking, you know, there's Kaylee players,
there's fiddle players all over the place in the Maritimes. Great ones.
Kay Brett in them. Yeah, for sure.
I'm not diminishing them. So I don't think of a lot of it. So we go back to New Brunswick
in November and my wife says, oh, look at this. The East Pointers are playing at the
Fredericton Playhouse. So I said, let's get tickets. Off we go. And they just blew me away.
I mean, if you don't know their music they're kind of a little
bit like Lord Huron, they're kind of a little bit like uh what's the name Mumford and Son,
they've got a combination of stuff and Tim Chason who's the lead they were a threesome and his
cousin uh Casey was the banjo player and Casey during Covid died of an aortic aneurysm. So we go to the show and there's this really sadness
about it because they're just trying to find themselves
and where they are.
They have these songs they've written about this guy
that's gone and the legacy and where are they going?
And these guys travel the world
and if you just give them a listen, they're fantastic.
And let's just say the kind of the connection to Alberta
and the connection to the West seemed important.
No, absolutely.
I heard Calgary name checked and off the top of that song.
WestJet, the WestJet flight.
WestJet would book all of these unique flights
from different places in the Maritimes
to Fort Mac usually.
Sure.
Well, now you're reminding me of the SCTV parody
of going down the road, which features Joe Flaherty, right?
He's going into surgery and then John Candy's there
who's a lawyer and he's like,
this is in the Maritime somewhere.
And he says, we're going to Toronto.
They got lawyer, that's a hard word to say,
lawyer in jobs and they got doctor in jobs
and they're full of jobs
and it's the going down the road parody.
And they were looking, those were Maritimers
looking for jobs so.
Well it's still a reality,
not to bring down the room and whatever.
No, the real talk.
Yeah.
Okay, yeah, thanks for introducing me
to the East Pointers and I think all guests
should bring a jam when they come over
and introduce me to them.
Well we did Frank and we did Tony with Steve Paikin.
Yeah, well okay, let me cover that ground here before we dive into it so your debut on trauma so this
is your second visit in person right yes okay so your first visit in person was
December 2019 like the before times okay everything was normal the Raptors that
just won the NBA championship they did you guys don't talk about that in Alberta? Hard to remember.
I heard it was Canada's team.
They are.
That was episode 5. So that was 5.56.
It was almost a thousand episodes ago.
In episode 5.56, Mike chats with sports writer and broadcaster,
Bruce Doe,
about his years at CBC,
the Calgary Herald, the Globe and Mail,
his thoughts on Don Cherry,
Alan Eagleson, Donald Trump.
I will get back to Alan in a moment later in this conversation. Donald Trump, I wonder
if he'll come up, his Twitter persona in his new book, Cap in Hand. So we talked for like
95 minutes in December 2019. So if you were here in person before, that means you did
receive a Palma pasta lasagna, right?
I did.
Okay. You're going to get another one.
And beer. And beer.
Well, you're getting both.
Okay, so fresh craft beer
and another frozen Palma pasta lasagna
are both yours for making the trek here.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
That's why you gotta make the trip to Toronto
because you zoom in, you don't get all that.
I gotta feed my son and his kids.
Absolutely, absolutely.
We did get you back during the pandemic.
You zoomed in and that was December, 2021.
So two years later, Mike chats, sorry,
Mike catches up with Bruce Dobigan
before he kicks out the jam.
So you did play and we chatted about your 10 favorite songs
of all time.
It was 10 favorites, that's right.
And then you're right with, you mentioned this earlier,
but Steve Paken, we had this idea.
I'm trying to remember what was the impetus for this. It was before Tony Bennett passed away.
That's for sure. It was March 2022 and it was episode 1010.
See, I could have done like a CFRB retrospective. That's what I do, right?
Like I did a 1050 and I did a 1430, which we'll get to in a moment, but I did like, it was pretty cool, episode 1430,
but I did not do a CFRB retrospective.
So we, mainly because I never listened to the station,
but Mike is joined by Steve Paken and Bruce Dobigan
as they discuss Frank Sinatra versus Tony Bennett
with songs and stories.
That was great, we did an hour and 48 minutes
and I re-released a good chunk of that when Tony passed away.
Yeah, it was fun because we both grew up with those guys and we had to decide who would
take Tony and who would take Frank. Eventually. I think Steve took Frank.
Well, you weren't going to pry Frank from Steve's hands.
His cold bloody hands. He loves Frank.
Good luck with that one. By the way, speaking of Steve Pagan,
a question came in from Dwayne claiming who actually it's not a question.
It's a comment as I reread it. It says, I loved his show on the fan with Steve Pagan, a question came in from Dwayne claiming who actually it's not a question it's a comment as I reread it it says loved his show on the fan with
Steve Pagan so remind everybody about the show that you co-hosted with Steve
Pagan on the fan and then remind me that was 590 right now 1430. It was 590 yes
they were up on Cherry Street at that time I think just at Young and Egg and
I was doing I was doing a million things I was doing, I don't know, I was doing a million things. I was doing the CBC six and 11.
I was doing weekend stuff. I was writing books and Steve came up with the idea,
Oh, you know, why don't we fill the morning slot nine to 11, which as you know,
in commercial radio is a dead zone. The programmers don't care. Right.
I think we came up with an advertiser too. And so we had it for,
you have to sell your own ads. Yeah. So did you receive any money from whoever,
telemedia, whoever the hell on the station?
No, they said, you can have the time.
We will take, I think two commercial spots per half hour.
I can't remember what the formula was.
We knew we weren't really gonna make money.
It was kind of a fun thing for Steve and I to do,
and we did two years with them.
Kind of ahead of its time, really.
Like that became a model for many a broadcaster
as time went on, but did you consider,
you know, hiring a salesperson or did you?
Oh, we had salespeople.
They just weren't very good.
Sorry, Howard, sorry to say that.
No, we had people.
As I said, it's a bit of a dead zone in commercial radio.
In those days though, it still was,
the template still worked, you know?
That was nine to 11 was,
and on the fan was still
a much listened to spot.
And so we thought we'd get in on it.
And we hear from people all the time.
Yeah.
Who used to listen to the show and
Dwayne claiming himself here.
I hope I'm saying that right.
Dwayne claiming loved that show
and he's still talking about it years later.
Well, we, and we, you know, it was called double play
because Dobrigan and Paken the DP and all that sort of stuff.
And yeah, we were, we were working very hard in the creative.
And now he, um, he and I come from different backgrounds.
He loves sports, but he's a Paul political guy.
Uh, I was a sports guy and I liked politics.
And so we sort of came met somewhere in the middle.
What was your ball team?
Now you're 70 years old.
So I know you predate the Toronto blue Jays.
Did you have a team pre blue Jays that was your your team or did you adopt the Jays as your team? Because
I know that's Pagan's story where he was a Red Sox guy and he just simply couldn't stay the Red
Sox guy. He couldn't give them up. What a coward. Now in the 60s, I was the Detroit Tiger fan. So
it was the Denny McLean years. I used to model my pitching motion on Denny McLean. He was my hero.
And then the Expos came to Montreal. I was in Montreal.
And one day somebody knocked on my door and said, Hey,
you know who moved into our neighborhood? And I said, Oh, I was 14 years old.
He said the catcher for the Montreal Expos moved in and sure enough,
it was John Bateman.
The first catcher for the Expos was three doors down from us.
And the second baseman moved into the same development, Gary Sutherland
and Steve Ranko as well.
So those three guys and I got to know and become a baseball fan through John.
And I sort of became his caddy in the neighborhood.
I babysit for his teams.
He showed me how to throw a curve ball, gave me my first cleats.
He gave me a Jimmy Wynn baseball glove.
So I became a dyed in the wool Expos fan.
My wife was worried about me when they'd lose.
She'd have to leave the room.
That's how bad it was.
It was bad.
Okay, so Blue Monday was a tough day
in the Dobegan household.
It was pretty rough.
It was pretty, the week before that,
and we're just staying downtown around Bay and Bloor,
and it reminds me that my brother got married
at the church on St. Mike's campus.
And unfortunately for him, the Sunday game,
I believe it was the Sunday game,
or Saturday, it must have been Saturday,
was the game five of the Expos playoff game
against the Philadelphia Phillies,
the only series they ever won.
And my brother's getting married
and all of us have transistor radios.
Of course this is the days before cell phones or anything.
And people are scuttling off to the washroom. Why has everybody got to go to the bathroom all the time?
We're scuttling off and giving each other updates
on the score of the game.
So we were that committed to it.
And in the old days, again,
if you remember before the Blue Jays came in,
I think there was a station in Oshawa.
I do not actually, but I love hearing the stories.
I have no memory pre-Blue Jays.
Oh really? Okay.
Well, there was a station in Oshawa
that used to bring the Expo games in.
I think that was somewhere down in the southwest
of Ontario too.
And so we could listen to the games
and they were the national team, et cetera.
And then pretty much the Blue Jays killed the Expos,
eventually.
And that was because they did business better
than the Expos.
The Expos had a market,
but they couldn't make money out of it.
And the Blue Jays sure learned how to make money.
So I have in the, you know, vast archives of Toronto mics, where you get those three
previous Bruce Doe began episodes.
And as I liked your tweet yesterday with something like people can now ask, why does he keep
having that guy on the show?
Do you, Bruce, look at me.
Do you think I care?
Like, if I get these, like why you have this Bruce Doe began, you know, conservative, Western
Canadian, if his's Trump, Trump,
not that you're a Trumper, but that you are sympathetic
to much in the Trump world.
Do you think I care?
Would that make me say I'm not booking this guy anymore?
I've been in the business long enough to know
that that's a more interesting tease
than I'm gonna be joining Toronto Mike
and we'll have a good conversation.
Nobody gets interested.
No, I know, I know, I know.
I'm just letting the listeners know.
I'd have really gassed it up if I wanted to put Trump in there.
You should see the emails I get when I announce
that Steve Simmons is returning to the program.
Whoa, okay, no, that just makes me want to book him.
And what do they say about Steve?
Oh, I'm not, Mike, this will be a typical no, don't get.
Mike, I love your show,
but I am not listening to this episode with Steve Simmons. I might always reply like, okay, like you don't, you don't even have to tell me you're not listening. Like I'll, I won't know if you listen or not. You can just not listen. You have to listen to people who you disagree with.
You have to hear their argument.
You have to understand where they're coming from
rather than create a little, you know,
sort of a caricature of them
and just put them in the corner.
I won't talk to them.
Right, like you dehumanize them somehow.
Like, oh, those are monsters.
And then you're in your echo chamber
and then you're just getting back what you put out.
And then of course it validates everything.
Like it edifies everything.
And I like, I personally like having conversations
with people who have different, maybe different,
different values or beliefs or different, you know,
different religions and all these different,
I just like talking to different people
and collecting their stories.
I mentioned, I mentioned to you off mic
that when we were coming north,
we'd done a sort of tour of Civil War battlefield.
Right.
And I was at Antietam,
and for people who don't know that, 1862,
and it was the single most lethal day
in the history of American military combat,
23,000 casualties in the same day.
Wow.
So we were walking the field, and I've seen the pictures.
It was also the start of Matthew Brady,
who was the first sort of famous photographer
who went live to places and took pictures of dead bodies and stuff.
And I'd seen all those pictures and I was standing there at Antietam and it led me to
thinking about how do we get to the point where people who have so much in common are
willing to bayonet a guy or shoot a guy or kill somebody or blow them up with a cannon.
How did they get there and how do we avoid getting there ourselves?
And it just kind of struck me that I'm not saying
we're gonna have a civil war, but we're reaching that point
where we've demonized people that we don't want
to talk to anymore.
No, exactly, demonized, you know, yeah, exactly.
And quick little, quick, quick, quick little,
by the way,
Dale Cadot is on the live stream and he agrees with you.
He says the days of proper respectful debate are gone.
So Dale, I'm here to tell you, look, I'm this is the home for that.
Like, I'm not afraid to talk to somebody who maybe we're on different sides of the political spectrum or whatever.
That's fine. We'll have a civil conversation.
We're not going to call each other ass. We're not going to break out into a fight, Bruce.
I'm not fighting you.
Well, the ratings would be good.
That's why I got the cameras down here. Just in case a fight breaks out,
but real quick to catch up. Cause I want to revisit the expos.
But Hayref also points out, he just reminds us that the fan was on Holly street.
I don't remember. I said, yeah, you said Jerry's street. So it's Holly street.
You're getting a fact checked in real time. One of those shrubs.
Thank you to Robert Lawson for the fact-checking,
but he just points out that the Bruce Dobigan Steve Pagan show was great because he liked it
because he thought it was intelligent sports talk. And I'll say there's something to be said about
intelligent sports talk, you know, and if you're delivering those goods, I'll be buying. It was
also at the time, my biggest hero in sort of sports writing and sports broadcasting
was Bill James.
Yeah.
Because Bill James just, he brought into the idea that you can actually think about these
things.
You don't have to be an analyst.
You don't have to believe in analytics.
Right.
But the idea that you could think about things.
And so we tried to bring a little of that stuff early on.
One of my favorite memories of doing the show is we decided, I can't remember why,
our kids had the day off,
so we brought our kids into the studio
and our backs were pointed to the apartment building
across the street so we couldn't see
what was going on across the street.
And our kids were sitting on the other side
and we're having fun and they're very excited.
And then I find out from my producer
and they said, take a look what's going on
across the street.
So we look across the street and literally
in the third floor opposite us, a couple is going,
they are going heroically.
It was like the sky dome, they're heroically.
So now we know this is going, we're trying to protect
our kids from watching this sort of thing going on.
We're also trying to stay on topic.
What fun, what fun we had.
That's when you want cameras in the broadcast booth.
Okay, so shout out to Bill James. Now, uh, back to
the expos real quick here is that, uh, in the vast feed,
there is an episode I did a deep dive because I like the
expos quite fine. Cause, uh, in the Toronto star, when I would
read my box scores and stuff, they always, they bolded Toronto
in the American league of standings and I would check in
every day. Where are we in AL East? You know, uh, that was, that was every morning. I day, where are we in the AL East? You know, that was every morning,
where are we in the AL East?
And then of course they would bowl Montreal
on the National League side.
So I took them as like your second team.
Like I sort of like, I took this hint to like,
oh, you know, that's the only other Canadian team.
And I was rooting for them,
but I didn't really appreciate
the traumatic history of the team.
Like, so Danny Gallagher came on Toronto Mike.
Danny Gallagher has written many books
about the Montreal Expos.
And we did like a deep dive
and there's lots of great audio in there
and shout out to Leslie Taylor,
who's listening right now.
And her father would call games for the Expos.
And-
Russ, Russ Taylor?
Yep.
Oh, I used to listen to Russ and Dave Van Horn year one.
Yeah, the late great, uh, yeah.
I was Taylor and, uh, yeah, his daughter listens and, uh, he's got another daughter
who is actually one of the, uh, comedians from the Baroness Vaughn sketch show.
Oh, they're funny.
Yeah.
And also you might've heard of a series on crave about figure skating called
the eye of nothing where anyway, Carolyn Taylor is her name.
I don't know that one.
And she's also an FOTM.
So shout out to the,
the Taylor's and Russ Taylor and all the expose memories with sound clips and
everything all in that episode of Toronto Mike with Danny Gallagher.
So dig that up. But before we move on from baseball, just one, one,
Russ Taylor, anything about Russ Taylor,
Russ Taylor,
he was famous in Montreal because he was a local guy.
He was kind of like the CFTO sports guy
and then he was doing play by play
and he wasn't really into play by play
and they had him as the analyst.
Anyhow, the famous one is Rusty Stobb.
He goes into the gap.
He's running, he's running.
He one gloves it in the game.
One gloves it.
He one gloves it.
Anyhow.
There you go.
Famous.
The cannonading play there, okay.
So the book in front of you, Mr. Dobegain, loves it. There you go. The canonating play there. Okay. So, uh,
the book in front of you, Mr. Dobe again is called the Toronto Maple Leafs
history book. And that is the trauma, please baseball team.
And I think you'll really dig that book. It's a hard cover, uh, well researched,
very informative book about the baseball team.
They play their games at Christie pits here in Toronto, just to be clear,
because I was told, maybe I haven't been clear.
There is no tickets for these games.
Like this is an unticketed event.
You literally just come to Christie Pitts and watch them.
The best baseball outside the dome.
And it's gonna be a great year.
Rob Butler is the manager,
and he was over here a couple of weeks ago.
His story is quite wild,
him and Rich Butler coming out of East York.
And you know, Rob Butler's on that 93 World Series team.
So there's a lot of stories in that episode of Toronto mic, but there's a
lot of cool cats, including Steve Paykin, who are going to make an appearance at
this, uh, May 12th home opener at Christie pits.
And I can tell you that I can't name, name a guy yet, but I can tell you that
Rick vibe will be there and I can tell you that Rick Emmett from triumph is
coming with Blair Packham and I can tell you that Stephen Emmett from Triumph is coming with Blair Packham.
And I can tell you that Stephen Brunt is making the trip from Hamilton.
There you go. Then it is a big event.
It's now, now when you hear Brunt's going to be there, right? You know, speaking of
smart people talk in sports, there's you and there's Brunt, you're in the same club there.
So come out to Christie Pitts and hang with me. I got my own like section there. Again,
it's a free event and the official funeral home of the Toronto Maple Leafs
baseball team has announced last week on Toronto. Mike is Ridley funeral home.
So there's a measuring tape for you to go along with your history book that
measuring tape is from Ridley funeral home. The book is from the Toronto Maple
Leafs baseball team. This is a new for April that card there and this so you have a wireless speaker
so you Bruce Dobegin can listen to season six of yes we are open which is a
fantastic award-winning podcast from Monaris and it's hosted by FOTM Al
Gregor who will be returning soon to kick out jams from season six you ready
for this he just came back from Calgary where he's been interviewing small business owners
and sharing their stories in this wonderful podcast.
So his most recent episode, which just dropped,
is about Sal Howell and her staff at River Cafe
on Princes Island in downtown Calgary.
Fabulous place.
If you've never been, it's a great restaurant
and it's right in the middle of the river
and that's where they hold the folk festival
in the summer.
Yeah, it's one of those things about Calgary
that's surprising to people who come from away.
From away.
Okay, well I was actually gonna ask if you were familiar
with the cafe and I'm glad you are.
So you can hear that story from Sal and Al.
Sal and Al.
Great wine list.
Sal and a great wine list and a great duo here.
Sal and Al. Season six has dropped everybody, a great wine list and a great duo here. Sal and Al.
Season six has dropped everybody, it's starting to drop.
That's episode one from season six of Yes, We Are Open
and I'd like to welcome back the good people at Monaris.
Okay, you got a new book.
Let's talk about the new book quickly here
and then I have some questions for you
and then I have topics I wanna talk to you about.
All right.
You know, it's easy to talk to you
and I got my eye over here.
Lots of time.
Tell me about the new book that is not yet available, but coming very, very
soon is called deal with it.
What's it going to be about?
It's the six greatest trades in NHL history.
The ones that changed the business.
My son, Evan, who works for C, uh, for a TSN, uh, we did a previous book and it
was called inexact science and we did the, I think it was the 10 greatest draft or I should know this because I wrote the book, but anyhow, uh, and it was called Inexact Science and we did the, I think it was the 10 greatest drafts or,
I should know this because I wrote the book, but anyhow.
And it did quite well and it's still getting lots of pubs.
So we said let's do something else,
but this time the differences were self-publishing.
We're going that way.
So can I understand, so you're paying to print the books
and then you're selling them directly or like how do they work?
The way it goes with Kindle, and maybe I'm missing way, the way it goes with Kindle and maybe, maybe I'm missing something.
The way it goes with Kindle is digital, is you, you download your book, you,
you create a cover and they will print on demand and,
and thus you will reach an agreement with them for how much it costs to print
each book, what you'll get from it, what they'll get from it,
their shipping and all that sort of stuff. So we're, listen, again, we're not trying to get rich.
We enjoy doing these things.
My son runs a stat center for TSN online.
I know you see him there.
Yeah, I follow him on Twitter.
He's a rain man, so he's the one who tells me
all the stuff that I'm getting wrong,
and we get to correct it.
And we start with the Phil Esposito trade, 1967,
to the Ored Bruins.
That makes the Bruins into the big bad Bruins.
Famous team.
And we go from there, obviously, the Gretzky trade,
the Frank Mahavlach trade.
Does the Lindroth's trade make the cut here?
You know, we didn't do it this time
because we did a lot in the previous book,
and I've written about it three times.
And it's a hugely significant trade.
Chris Simon was in that trade.
We just lost him, sadly. Well, Chris was with the Simon was in that trade, we just lost him.
Well Chris was in with the Flames in 2004
when they almost won the cup, anyhow.
And he did win a cup with the Avalanche.
Oh yeah, no, no, not taking that away from him.
He was a valuable part of Darrell Sutter's team anyhow.
But yeah, so we do the Esposito trade,
we do the Frank Mahovlich trades, plural, of course.
Can I ask about one more?
And again, I can't wait to read this thing,
but is the Gilmore trade in there?
Oh yes, at length about Gilmore.
And Gilmore, I think it's the only trade we put in there
that didn't result in a Stanley Cup for the team he went to.
But living in Calgary for 20 some odd years,
I mean that's a legendary,
the fact that he was there when they won the Stanley Cup,
the fact that he left under highly suspicious circumstances
at Doug Rysbrough.
There's a great little story in which Frank Orr,
you remember Frank Orr,
he was there for the start.
He was standing there with Tom Watt,
the coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs,
and Watt is reading out the results of that trade
between Calgary and Toronto.
And at the end of the list, Frank sort of says in his style,
Thomas, what else is on the list?
And he says, that's it, that's all it is.
And Frank Orr's eyebrows shoot up because it was larceny.
It was clearly larceny.
And I knew Doug in Calgary, I knew him obviously
here in Toronto, I was covering him when he was here
in Toronto, nearly killed him with a golf ball once
And yeah, he's it's a fascinating trade because it allows us to talk about
Cliff Fletcher and all sorts of other people and then follow the progress of poor old Gary Lehman who in your day was a hero
He was part of a 50 goals on a team
You know I mentioned Rick five moments ago because Rick five is going to be at this May 12th
I mentioned Rick Vibe moments ago, because Rick Vibe is going to be at this May 12th
Toronto Maple Leafs baseball game at Christie Pitts.
And that was when, you know, he scored three times.
I think he scored 50, he was the first guy.
It's funny, because last night I watched Austin Matthews
score 62, which is a franchise record.
That guy's unbelievable.
But yeah, Gary Lehmann, rare relief to score 50.
I was there last night, actually.
I watched the game last night.
Okay, you were there. And left when it was five to two. Right, it was five to two. Well, the person I was with relief to score 50. I was there last night, actually. I watched the game last night. Okay, you were there.
And left when it was five to two.
Right, it was five to two.
Well, the person I was with wanted to go home.
He's a little older than me, and he wanted to go home.
Yeah, I want me with one nail-biter.
Did it change at all?
Did anything happen?
Did I miss something?
When the opposition pulls that goalie down two goals,
you're like, okay, you know,
but I get flashbacks of that 4-1 collapse
in game seven against the Bruins.
I think it was 2013.
I'm trying to wipe it from my memory,
but you're mentioning Gilmore not winning a cup
with the Leafs, and then I gotta wipe game seven,
what happened in game seven against the Kings.
So.
Well, we do that in detail.
And people forget that earlier in the game,
the killer had high-sticked someone else
and had not got a penalty.
He had been given the discretion,
and if you talk to Fraser, the referee, he admits he blew the call. He didn't get
the call right, but he also mentions that he had kind of given Doug a little bit of
a free pass earlier in the game.
Well, don't let the facts get in the way of a great Toronto story. Did I mention 2019
NBA champions?
People are so stigmatized here. And look, I was covering the Blue Jays those two years.
They were the best team in baseball.
Maybe one of the best back to back world series teams
in the last quarter century.
No, more than quarter century now, maybe 50 years even.
They go back a little bit.
Well, thanks to Rob Butler.
Yeah, well, he was an integral part of making sure
the bench didn't come off its hinges.
He got a hit against Curt Schilling in game five,
he reminds me.
Not to tease him too much, but a friend of mine
who was a bench warmer in the NHL said,
oh yes, they told me that I was good in the room,
so they left me there.
Someone's gotta warm that bench there.
So yeah, Gilmore's part of it, the Patrick Gouat trade.
Of course. But towards the end so yeah, Gilmore's part of it, the Patrick watch trade,
uh, but towards the end, we sort of changed the formula a little bit. Uh, we'd talk about how the Vegas Knights were built through just the trades and,
and the creativity of what they did. And then the final one, of course,
and then you saw him last night was of course, Matthew Kachuk,
the Matthew Kachuk and, and, uh, Goodrow escaped from Calgary,
which has devastated that team and that franchise.
That's the last one we deal with.
Looking forward to it.
So can people pre-order it now?
When can people buy, deal with it?
As far as I know, it's going to be available on Amazon the 15th of April.
I'm trying to download the manuscript into it and it keeps telling me it doesn't fit
or there's something.
Well, you're trying to upload it. Upload, what did I say, download it?
Download it.
I'm here to be the pedantic asshole host here.
Fewer and less, I'm one of those kind of people.
I produce Humble and Fred Show
and forever they were saying nonsense.
They were saying it was most downloaded podcasts
in the country and then I would just privately,
like you know, that claim is funny and all
but it's not even close to being true.
And then I said, you know, I said to them,
I said, you know what, you really are.
And I said, until I'm proven wrong,
I believe this to be true.
I said, you are the most uploaded podcast
in Canadian music,
because they had been many years doing a daily,
and then, you know, they got more episodes than I do,
because I'm catching up, but they still have.
And they still keep you around, you say those things.
They still keep, yeah.
You're still bored.
But then they started using it.
Like, Howard would say that instead
because at least that was something I believe to be true
which is that Humble and Fred,
the most uploaded podcast in Canadian podcasting history.
And until somebody points out one that's got more,
I'm gonna keep rolling with that.
But you were on that show very recently.
That's always fun because Fred reads your blog.
Remind people how they can read your controversial blog
that gets Fred Quaid to rile them.
I have a website that's called Not The Public Broadcaster for people who still think I'm
a CBC guy. In case they're dis… I have to disabuse them.
Well that means they don't listen to Toronto Mic'd if they think that.
And on Mondays I do a sports column. This week it's about the show Hayne gambling.
We're going to get into that.
Telling people about that. And on Thursdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, it's culture and politics.
And most of the time now it centers on the media
and my former business and the issues with that.
Well, okay, let's.
That's what gets Fred's eyes popping.
So yeah, so Fred, and I know we always have the conversations
because I'm a big advocate for Bruce Dobe again,
believe it or not, okay, and I'm always like,
I see he's not like, you know,
he's not one of those guys who's gonna yell.
They had Chris Skye on the show
because they wanted to talk to this guy, Chris Skye,
who became kind of notorious
during the anti lockdown demonstrations and stuff.
And all he, this Chris Skye did was kind of like yell
over them and tell them that like he got them
and own them or something.
It was no conversation at all.
Like it was like, okay, but he's just whatever.
He just wants to be yelling on your shoulder or whatever. But I said, with Bruce, I said,
he's calm, he's cool, he's going to articulately explain why he thinks what he thinks, and
you're going to have a civil discussion. So you're the kind of guy that, you know, I said,
you know, humble and Fred can talk to without it erupting into some Chris Sky noise or whatever.
And once in a while they let me book you.
Yeah.
So there you go.
My logo used to be, or my sort of calling used to be, I give good panel.
You get, I give good panel.
I love doing panel shows, grew up watching them and I did, I hosted many of them.
So I also know what the host wants.
And now when I go on, I try not to direct the show.
I let the host do it himself.
But occasionally I walk up over the people.
It's my sport.
When I introduce my new series, my Crossfire,
you're gonna be my right winger, I bring on the panel.
So, Bruce, wait for that call.
But there was a question that came in.
So.
Does it pay?
Yeah, well, you're getting,
I'm gonna do the math real quick, okay?
You got the speaker. You got the book. That book, you buy it online for like 45 bucks. You got the speaker
You got the fresh craft beer. You got the lasagna
You've got hundreds of dollars worth of swag and you got that very expensive measuring tape from Ridley funeral home
Okay, you've done well for yourself. I'm looking at this. I'm jealous. I'm humbled you did quite well
You have to my wife reminds me I've got to stop working for
nothing because I do people call me up. I did something from Pittsburgh the other day. We're
driving through New York State and I stopped the car to do a thing with John Steigerwald in Pittsburgh
and my wife says why are you doing all this stuff for free? Well do you enjoy it? I of course enjoy
it. Why else would I pull over the side of the road? You're a 70 year old man, Bruce. You only live once here.
In upstate New York to talk to a guy in Pittsburgh about God only knows what.
Home of Joe Flaherty, gone in 82, my goodness gracious.
So this question came in from, I'm going to protect his identity, so I'm just going to call him Mike.
He is a Mike. That's your clue.
This is a Mike, and he's in the media.
Let's call him Media Mike, not me by the way, if people think.
I just, I take ownership of my questions. Okay, if Bruce Dobegin is so anti Oscar
anti Hollywood, why is he watching?
So there's a question he had specifically about has he watched the five best
supporting actor nominees before he criticizes Robert Downey Jr. I don't even know exactly what we're referring to.
I don't know if this is on social media or on your blog,
but maybe you had a take on Robert Downey Jr.
winning Best Supporting Actor.
How did you feel about that award?
I thought his performance was fantastic.
I thought he was good.
So did you say anything negative about it or criticize it?
Well, what I said was he was the favorite because in
Hollywood, overcoming a drug addiction is seen as some sort of sanctified thing.
And it puts you, I mean,
everybody in Hollywood seems to be in rehab from something.
And the fact that he rehabbed himself and then did this fantastic performance,
there was no way he was going to lose. There was no way.
And so I was pointing out that I never had any doubt.
Okay. You had no doubt,
but that's different than saying he only won because he's a recovery.
No, I don't think I said he only won because he's a recovering alcoholic.
I don't think I said it only won.
I hardly at all.
I said it was a slam dunk he was going to win.
You didn't know we were going to be talking Hollywood and Oscar talk here.
I didn't listen to it live per se.
I was in the next room.
My wife watches it religiously and she calls me in on the points that I'm supposed to hear
about and then I read about them and I get the transcripts.
I just, it's whatever.
No, very interesting.
So thank you Media Mike.
Just wanted to know if you're,
why you were watching if you're anti Oscar,
but it sounds like your wife is watching
and you're sort of catching onto parts here and there.
But what did you think of Oppenheimer?
I personally, this is my hot take here on the,
we're on Siskel and Ebert now.
I thought it was a fine movie.
I just didn't think it was as good as the awards it won
and the buzz it got.
There were a few movies I preferred in 2023.
What was your take on Oppenheimer?
I'm really glad they made a movie like that.
That they will still make a movie like that.
Three hours of pretty much indulgent stuff, really,
about a subject which most people are not really keen on.
I was really pleased. And I enjoyed it for what it was.
It's two hours of making a bomb
and then one hour of the House Un-American Hearings Committee,
whatever, HUAC, and the chasing of communists after the war
and using Oppenheimer as that.
Little showbiz story, my younger son, Reese,
used to work in the film business,
and one of his jobs when he was at Con
was shepherding Killian Murphy around.
Wow!
He knows Killian, says he's a wonderful guy.
I think Reese even sent him a note afterwards,
congratulating him, and he said,
Killian sent him a response.
Well, that's everything, right?
Because a lot of people you can text,
but when you get that text back,
that's next level there but I thought
the performance I thought Downey's performance was fantastic he's become
such a good actor and he doesn't look like all of the bump around him is
impressing him anymore I think for a while that was important to him that he
beat one of those people and now I don't think he cares he's he's knows who he is
he did a documentary about him and his father when his father was dying,
and it's an interesting documentary.
But I like him, and I even like Matt Damon.
That was a role that Matt Damon was good at.
Sometimes he does roles he's not good at.
That one he was really, really good for, I thought.
Absolutely, and Killian Murphy,
you mentioned a favorite of Christopher Nolan.
I think the phone will ring
when Christopher Nolan makes a new movie Killian's usually offered's usually offers me Christopher Nolan. I'll be in this movie
too. He's fantastic. And I think you have to be Christopher Nolan to be given that
budget for that that kind of a movie in 2023. So yeah I am glad they're still
making movies like that too. All my favorite movies. Which was your favorite
this year of the ones that were nominated. I think it was Past Lives. Like
I really liked The Holdovers as well. I think it was past lives like I really liked the
Holdovers as well. I was a big but all these but these movies are and there was the the other one
I I mean quite like I quite liked I'm trying to remember the name of it the one about World War
Two the Auschwitz. Oh yes yes. Why am I struggling? What's wrong with me? The guy who plays Rudolf
Haas the the guy who ran Auschwitz.
Yeah, the name will come back to me. I could Google it, but then I'd have to delete the comma.
But bottom line is, the other one I liked is the Emma Stone one I quite liked too.
There were a bunch of movies I liked and that I put ahead of Oppenheimer, but Oppenheimer was a fine movie.
The one I didn't like and I feel like I missed it, I maybe need to revisit it because I seem to be the only one who didn't care for it is Barbie. I watched it very carefully with people I adore and ready to love it. And
I thought it was, I didn't, I didn't think it was very good. And I was shocked that people
deemed it, you know, Oscar worthy. But what do I know about film? I'm no, I'm no Gene
Siskel.
I think a 70 year old white man to assess Barbie would be just wasting everyone's
time. I appreciate it for what it was.
My daughter and my wife both loved it for what it was. The empowerment message.
Uh, I liked, uh, Ryan Reynolds does a dance thing in it. Does he?
I think it's Ryan, uh, goss. I think you're confusing your Canadian Ryan.
I get them always. Your handsome Ryan's. I do like Gosling, but yeah,
I think most of the cans were played by Canadians if not all of them, right?
Because the guy from Kim's convenience and then you had Michael Cira was a Ken like an in addition to I feel they were all
Canadian the Kens were all Canadian was that Edie. Did he play by the way? That's uh,
That's the final four you're talking there and that's Purdue Boilermakers one of my favorite nicknames in the in NCAA play and
Zack Edie 7-4 my son and I had a debate the other day Do Boilermakers, one of my favorite nicknames in NCAA play. And Zach Eadie, seven, four.
My son and I had a debate the other day.
How will he be a good NBA player?
I think you can't teach height.
He's seven, four.
And I've been watching him pretty closely.
He's got a good touch with the ball.
I think he will be a great NBA player.
Do you have any thoughts on Zach Eadie's NBA?
You have no take on the Zach Eaddy NBA.
The pride of Leeside.
Yeah.
From Leeside.
I was listening to Dan Patrick's show coming over
because I listened to everybody.
And Patrick and his guests didn't think he was going
to be a great NBA player, mostly because he doesn't play
the NBA style, he plays a low post.
Right, no threes coming out of him.
Yeah, that, and as you may have noticed,
he scored 40 points,
but he gassed five of his six free throws in the last two minutes.
I noticed just watching him mainly in the,
in the tournament here, Merge Madness, that he does hit his,
he's not a shack, right? Like he does hit, yeah, you can play hack a Zack.
Instead of hack a shack, but he does hit his free throws. Like he,
either were a few down the stretch. He missed, of course,
but the thing that I'm most interested about him for,
and I spent a lot of time this winter
at three in the morning watching
the Canadian men's basketball team
playing in the world championships.
I'm really interested to see if they can somehow get
Edie on the team for the Olympics this summer in Paris.
I think, I don't know how much he could do,
but he might have a contribution.
And anybody who's seven foot four,
you can put him out there when you need a rebound, right?
So I'm hopeful for him.
Yeah, he's one of those guys where I don't think
he leaves the ground when he dunks.
It's not like he didn't.
But yeah, that'd be interesting to see
if he can make the, I'll be watching that.
Because I thought he'd be a first rounder,
but the people on the Patrick show said
maybe second rounder.
This is where I'm out to lunch too,
because I thought I was thinking Raptors, right?
So I'm thinking, oh, Raptors, I think there's going to be six or whatever.
They're, they're going to be a lottery pick, but it'd be a late lottery, whatever. And
I'm like, uh, Oh, he, he should still be there. Oh, he will. Yeah. He will be there. But my
son was telling me, yeah, but you know, and then I'm like, Oh yeah, I really am not a
basketball analyst. Like I really don't know what I'm doing because I would be like, he's
a hometown guy, for two-time NBA
NCAA player of the year
Maybe on his way to winning the March the NCAA championship in this year and
Still gonna you know be a second rounder. So what do I know?
You know it we're talking about this seriously because also the kid from NC State. I call him the buffet
He's a little he's a little chunky. But anyhow, they were talking about him,
but also maybe about Edie, and you know what?
Maybe they could go and play offensive tackling, the NFL.
They got the good feet, they got the big wingspan,
which is of course what you want.
And I was like, well, there you go.
I feel like Dave Winfield was the guy,
was drafted by four different, I know,
Sports, yeah.
Two basketball, NFL,
and definitely baseball.
No hockey.
He, just a great Dave Winfield story.
Back in 92, the first of the World Series years,
the Blue Jays, as you remember, kept staggering.
There were character flaws in the team up until then.
And there were guys who were fundamentally
not serious people, and that's one of the reasons
that they lost. in any event,
they went and got Dave Winfield cause Winfield was a winner and they felt he'd
be good in the clubhouse. And I was kind of skeptical about it.
So anyway, we go down to Dunedin and my producers say,
could you please get Dave Winfield for a one-on-one outside in the
sunshine, the hot sunshine to talk with us live in Toronto? I said, okay, sure.
And you're always trepidatious when you went in to see people. Hey, Dave,
could you do as a, oh yeah, no problem. No problem. He comes out,
we put the mic on him, we get the whole thing.
And then I get my death sentence in my ear. Uh, sorry, uh, delay 15 minutes.
Can you tell Dave Winfield 15 minutes? I'm going to Dave Winfield 15 minutes.
This guy, he just, you know, he is what he is.
So I went to him and I said, Dave, I said, I got a problem.
We need another 15 minutes.
He says, that's all right, I'll just read the newspaper.
And I thought, but I thought,
now you've got a guy in the dressing room
who understands what it's about,
not just the baseball part,
but a guy who understands how to deal with media and stuff.
And I think he really helped the team that year
for that reason.
And the next year, Paul Molitor was the same kind of guy.
And there's a digression about Dave Wintree.
No, anytime.
I will let people know I'm gonna be broadcasting live
from the Joe Carter classic.
Since we're talking 93, 90, 92, 93 Blue J action here.
So I'm told by Rod Black that I'll have an audience
with Joe Carter.
There you go. That's the promise he's made to me.
So, cause he's got me setting up there at 7 30 in the morning.
So if I'm there and all I have is Rod Black, I'm going to be pissed.
I'm like, I got up at six fucking in the morning for Rod Black.
I'm like, sorry.
No, I was promised to touch them all.
Joe, I was going to say, well, you have to touch all 18 holes as part of it.
It's part of this thing.
Touch them all. Yes.
Oh, and I'm also told not promised, but told I might get
and I don't even know yet what I'll talk to him about.
I'll just talk about Ace Ventura maybe.
But Dan Marino apparently is going to be there.
Could you imagine Dan Marino?
FOTM Dan Marino, by the way, in the live stream,
Canada, Kev's son played against Zach Eady in baseball back
when they were like 13 years old.
And parents had documentation to prove that he was actually age eligible because you can imagine and he was so
tall it took him so too long to bend down and get a ground ball through his
legs like I could it's like he's got a bend down again a ground ball give him a
couple of minutes here okay so what the hell what the hell were we just we were
we just talking about the we just talking about?
The, we were talking about, oh yeah, Dave Winfield.
So Dave Winfield wants noise.
Who were those players that you were telling me there
were kind of immature or whatever and weren't about winning?
Can you tell me who they were?
George, George Bell, Dave Winfield, not Dave,
Dave Steebe.
These are my heroes, you know? Okay.
I got a few notes here. Kelly Gruber.
Who did, who was a key part of that 92 team?
Kelly Gruber, right? Cause it's great.
He played the third base, but I feel like he was living at large.
I've heard a lot. I mean, Kelly Gruber, I mean, we talked about this the other day
with, I think it was with Rod Black that, uh, you know, obviously Roberto Alomar
is banned from baseball. Like you won't obviously Roberto Alomar's banned from baseball.
Like you won't see Roberto Alomar in any Blue J sanction.
He's gone.
But the other guy who's not banned from MLB baseball,
but is like soft banned in that he's not invited anymore
to these reunions and stuff is Kelly Gruber.
He's not invited to like a 92 reunion show.
So, um.
He, he didn't leave a good taste in people's mouths
at the Blue J organization.
And I think, I think he's sort of turned his life around.
I think the last I heard is he's become a Christian and he's leading an upright life.
But yeah, people-
Like weezers, he's cleaned up, found Jesus.
That's right. Well, a lot of them do, believe me.
When you retire and there's nothing left, all of a sudden Jesus seems like a good alternative.
He'll talk to you. I wonder if there's like, if he cleans himself up
and he's sober and he's regretful,
I wonder if he's a guy I feel there's a redemption story
there, like we're a forgiving people.
Like we're not told what Alomar did,
we're just told that it's such that you would agree as well
that he should be banned, right?
So it's like, just trust us, he should be banned.
But Kelly Gruber, there is room for redemption
and a comeback there, right?
I'll tell you one of my stories
about the Blue Jays' attitude.
In those days, again, trying to get Dave Steep
for an interview or to cooperate or whatever,
it was just pulling teeth.
And Dave was about Dave, et cetera.
Okay, well you're the best pitcher in the American League
most of the time, good, go for it.
He leaves Toronto and if you remember,
he came back for a cup of coffee at the very end.
Of course I do, yeah.
Like a 40 in his early 40s or something.
Yeah, so I'm on the sidelines with my camera crew
and we're waiting for somebody,
I can't even remember who it was,
who doesn't show.
And I'm expressing my disappointment to the camera guy
about what am I going to do?
I've got a three minute hit, I need somebody live,
and Dave Steebe overhears me and comes over and says,
oh, I'll come on with you, and I said,
Dave, all those years that I came to you
and asked you for just two minutes of your time,
and you made me look like my fly was down,
you're the last guy I'm gonna interview.
And it was one of the few times
I ever had revenge on an athlete like her.
No, good for you, because I did hear he came back kinder, gentler, more media friendly.
Well, he was then, sure.
He was humbled, right?
Sure, he didn't have his slider anymore.
He was coming out of the bullpen, yeah.
He didn't have his slider.
Because I co-hosted a show with Mark Hebbscher for five years and I've heard the stories of how
Dave Steeve was treating you guys in the media.
Oh yeah.
But here's a guy who I did quite like.
Hi, I'm George Bell. You listen to Toronto Mike.
There you go. Okay.
So the immature guys were the Steve's in the, in the Bells and then you replace
them with guys like a, I suppose like a Joe Carter, right?
A Joe Carter comes in with that big trade and whatever that was 91 or whatever.
He and all of them are together. Yeah.
Together from San Diego for Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez. That,
that made them put that in your book.
Bruce real, real.
It's a hockey book. Sorry. I love to do a
baseball. Why are you, why are you so keen on
these details? Okay. That's the trade I want to
read about in that book, but they were, they were
fun team. And I think Toronto people hate to hear
this. And it was the same in Montreal, but a lot
of the ballplayers just didn't take being in
Canada seriously.
They just felt like they were in Siberia,
that they weren't around their peeps,
they weren't around things they were familiar with.
What's this metric system?
Why can't I get ESPN?
Just hating going through the border,
the whole thing with passports.
It just, for a lot of them,
it was hard to get their heads around.
And George was a fun loving guy,
but he used to, every time he'd hit a home run
in batting practice, he'd shout out a word in Spanish
which refers to a part of the female anatomy.
And he was just not clued in about some things
that he should be doing, right?
And when you got people in the dressing room
who had won and who knew how to win
and knew how to do the whole thing,
George was irrelevant and he kind of moved out the side door.
I'm glad Dave Winfield got the game winning RBI
in that 12th inning in Atlanta.
Yeah, good man.
We were all, another story from that game,
we were all down there live of course,
and they had all the camera crews
and we were behind the fence in right field.
And of course you remember the Blue Jays had the lead
and then they blew it.
And all of a sudden we're standing there.
What are we doing?
We're going to extra innings.
And for the entire extra innings
there were about 20 TV crews there.
Cause in those days the local center people,
there were about 20 crews there
waiting for this thing to be resolved.
And finally of course, last out, they make the out.
Otis Nixon drops a bunt.
Otis Nixon, where was he last night
to break up the no hitter?
Come on.
Anyhow, he-
That's the eighth time the Jays have been no hit.
And that, and in his career,
Nolan Ryan no hit other teams seven times.
So it took that long for the Jays to pass.
He had a few, he had a few, he had a few,
I think he had a couple of perfect games in there,
Nolan Ryan.
In any event, they finally get the final out, the doors open in right field and it's, it's kind of like
the land rush in Oklahoma, all of these crews and there's a few people there who shouldn't
be running carrying cameras and we sprint to the infield and they're all jumping up
and down. If you look at the video, you might see the CBC Mike flash in there.
Okay. I will, I'll, I'll check that out. What I like is that. So they had a Joe Carter
playing first base for that bottom inning, right?
Typically that would be John all the route on first base.
So when you think about it,
cause Joe catches the ball from Timlin and he starts doing the jump,
the Joe jump, right? And he's jumping up amazing moment, right?
First world series in a, for a team outside the USA and imagine John Hall heard,
he makes that catch from, uh, from Timlin and he kind of just kind of maybe shakes his fist a little bit like he
would just kind of smile and shake his fist. He was subdued. He was so
subdued. What a hitter though. What a batting swing he had. What a sweet swing.
Head control. I would be really interested if Olrud came up today with the Shohei sort
of example, whether they let him pitch and play at the same time. Because Olrud was a
really top collegiate pitcher. In those days they wouldn't let him.
What about Dave Steeb? He was drafted as an outfielder.
I don't know that he hit well enough. I mean, you know, there's some guys that they're bad
infielders and then all of a sudden they find out they can throw in their pitchers. Okay you you mentioned Shohei Otani so I'm reminded
of TMLX 14 which took place the day after the ghost flight of Shohei Otani
to Toronto to announce he had signed with the Blue Jays okay this never
happened but I remember Stephen Brunt Stephen Brunt was at TMLX 14 to open up and we were recording and we were just talking about that crazy day of like misinformation flying around and how you know once I can't remember the gentleman's name but once the the the gentleman who had some integrity as a sports reporter tweeted that Otani was on his way to Toronto we all kind of bit in in and then another guy, Adam Seaborn talked about a Rogers had,
was gonna have a 4pm press conference.
And then we had this rumor about Kikuchi had reserved
a Japanese restaurant for 50 or something
in downtown Toronto.
And all the pieces were coming together.
Otani chose to play for the Toronto Blue Jays. Let's talk about
this current... Not a great moment for Toronto journalists. No, well, yeah. Oh, that's the other
thing too. The fan, 590, decided an unscheduled Blue Jays show with like Barker and Blair,
which was unscheduled, but basically tapping into this ridiculous buzz
about Ohtani on his way to the Blue Jays.
So that fed the whole thing too.
Okay, whoa, wow, they must know,
because of course they know
it's the same damn mothership, right?
They're all working for the same people.
No Blue Jays stories are ever broken
by sports net journalists.
Have you noticed that?
Yeah, it's like the number of CBC stories
that have been broken out of Washington.
You know, they have people there all the time,
but funnily enough, it just sounds like
they're reading the LA Times
or the Washington Post editorial that day.
But yeah, I digress.
You digress, talk to me about-
But I was in Florida when all the show,
the Otani stuff was coming down.
No, the Otani stuff was coming down
before the time of the Blue Jays.
And my next door neighbor in Florida works for MLB.
And it was, and people in MLB, did they laugh?
They laughed till they cried about Toronto thinking
they were gonna get O'Tonnie.
Everyone knew he was going to the Dodgers.
I'm a pretty skeptical guy, but when all the pieces,
and I'm trying to Google his name,
but the guy who tweeted, he wasn't just some guy
like me in his basement, okay?
He was a well connected, uh,
he was a guy sports net would put on as an MLB insider.
Like he had some weight behind him when he did the tweet. I said, Oh,
this is happening because they were tracking a flight, right?
It was one of the dragons.
Robert Horchkovic.
No, it wasn't going to happen. Uh,
the people in major league baseball knew he was going to L.A.
because he was going to ask for 700 million dollars.
And it would have been the biggest mistake the Blue Jays ever made if they did it.
So we should be happy if you're a Blue Jays fan that this didn't come to pass.
And not only for the 700 million dollars, but what has happened since.
Let's talk about that.
OK, because you just wrote on your blog about sports betting and sports betting and, uh, sports and the blurring of the line.
So let's talk about showy Otani and then let's bring up, uh, Raptors, uh, superstar, John T Porter,
who I didn't really realize I've kind of unplugged from them this season cause it's terrible to watch.
And I did not know that name when this story broke. So talk to me.
Well, see I've been betting, sports betting,
for I'd say about 25 years.
I used to bet with a guy named Harry
that was here in Toronto,
and he would show up on Sunday at your door
with a little piece of paper and a pencil
and take down your bets,
and he used to have a trunk full of irons
or other things that were hot that he was also marketing.
So things have come a long way
from when I first started getting into it.
But I have used the offshore sites for a long time here,
like Pinnacle and Bodog and those kind of people.
So I'm kind of, you know, and there's a station out
of Vegas called Vson, the Vegas Sports and Information
Network, it was set up by Brent Musburger.
So I listen to these people a lot,
and you know, I've learned a lot about,
mostly about money management
when it comes to betting and all that stuff.
And as soon as I heard the Porter stuff,
I'm going like, whoa, hang on a second.
This is a sleepy night in betting.
And the biggest thing on the board is a guy
who's a bench warmer for the Blue J, for the Raptors.
We're talking about a guy who is,
I think it was the under on threes
and it was a small number and all of a sudden,
everybody was maxed out.
The word was out on this thing.
And that's when your bullshit meter comes out and says,
no, no, something's going on.
Now whether he orchestrated or not,
and of course I think, was that the one where he pulled out
because he had a sore eye or was that the one
because he had a sore elbow?
I can't remember.
He's been in the habit of pulling himself out of games.
And that just, none of it goes together,
as it doesn't with the Ohtani thing too.
The Ohtani thing just stinks.
If you know betting and how it works,
is there's no booking out.
For people who don't follow the story,
the guy who was handling the action is out of California.
There's no legalized betting in California.
So this guy is the equivalent of my friend Harry,
who did stuff out of his trunk,
but just a little more sophisticated with a computer.
There's no way he's advancing any kind of credit to it.
But it's his translator, right?
So I mean-
To that who's a translator,
and unless he knows that it's backed up by Otani money.
So somebody somewhere-
We're talking millions of dollars.
Oh, well, he ends up 4.5 million owing.
Probably, he's probably won about 4 million
but lost 4.5 million.
That's how these things go.
You think you're just about ahead
and you just keep going and next thing you know,
they're coming and breaking your ankles.
But there's no way the guy gave that money to them.
The second thing about it would be is somebody
in Otani's organization, and I can believe a guy
who just signed a $700 million contract
might not notice everything that is wired out by his bank.
But I can promise you somebody who's handling
his accounting and stuff has been alerted to the fact
that a sequence of $500,000 transfers
are going to some guy in California
and that your hackles would come up. Now did they protect him not tell him?
Did he consciously not hear? But somebody knew what was going on. Someone knows something there.
He's got there's got to be alerts, right? Like this is a pro tip for everybody making you know, almost a hundred million dollars or whatever.
You got to have alerts like when the wire transfer exceeds X, maybe send a text or something.
Well, I know this happens to you all the time
when you go and transfer $500,000 all the time.
If you transfer more than $10,000,
the banks are very interested in you.
They wanna know what's going on,
and the fact that he's doing $500,000 transfers.
I can tell you, I got a couple of kids in university,
and once in a while, let's say, let's say a number,
like I'll need $5,000 for tuition or whatever and I will email transfer the 5,000
and then I'll be quickly reminded.
That exceeds your maximum.
You're not allowed.
I have to literally say, okay,
it's gonna come in over a couple of days,
every 24 hours it resets that limit.
Did you tell him that Otani was backing you?
Maybe that would have.
The other thing about the Otani thing, sorry to interrupt.
Yeah, yeah, then I have questions about the Otani thing.
Well, the other thing and the biggest thing abouty thing, sorry to interrupt. Yeah, yeah, then I have questions about the Otauny thing. Well, the other thing, and the biggest thing about it
that nobody's talking about is that the translator
was his employee.
For four or five years, however long he was with California,
that employee was in the dressing room,
the inner sanctum of a team,
who would have seen who was hurt,
he would have known who had had a fight with his wife,
he'd have known all this stuff.
Plus the guy, everybody knows this guy enlarged to them to the the gambling people
He'd have been an easy you to cut a sprung information out of him like instantly
So if Major League Baseball sort of washes this away
I'm gonna again a big bullshit meter on this thing
This guy was in trouble and I'm sure he sold information from time to time to get himself off the hook.
Wow, it smells.
Now, okay, so at this point, right,
there's no evidence that there's any sports betting
on baseball, am I right about that?
Do you have that?
We don't know, I guess, at this point,
but my understanding was that sports betting,
but not baseball,
because that's the third rail, right?
Well, my understanding is that there was no betting on the angels okay but but then of course because people do this type of work
somebody was basically charting the games that otani had pitched in and there were big big blips
in japan on those games wow and every one of those games over the course of about a year
otani had a bad performance, either at bat or pitching.
And it could be strictly coincidental,
and if it is, God bless him,
but the connection of people putting a lot of money
on single games and then all of a sudden,
Otani not playing well,
and now we know his translator is a guy who is,
well, his translator is the Janet Gretzky, really,
of this story.
You remember Janet Gretzky? Of course. A terrible. Rick Tawket was involved in this, right? Rick Tawket the Janet Gretzky really of this story. You remember Janet Gretzky?
Of course. Rick Taukett was involved in this, right? Rick Taukett and Janet Gretzky, apparently
recidivist gamblers. Wayne never touched gambling. That's why the minute became legal. Although I see
him on TV touting gambling all the time. Yeah, I was going to say the minute it became legal, he becomes the
gambling face of, I think it's MGM casinos. It's just, it was hysterical.
The way that story was treated here in Canada,
protecting Gretzky's ass, you know,
we can't have the great man be brought down
about gambling, et cetera.
And the fact that he let his wife take all that stuff
was just, and then she complained.
She said, what do you people want from me?
I'm like, your husband's the greatest hockey player ever and there's betting going on. Sorry.
No, don't be sorry. I want to talk about this because showy Otani's translator who is implicated
in this, this whole thing. Like if, if the story is told that the translator did steal
this money from Otani, like he didn't
know this money was going to pay off boogies, as much as that smells. But if that's the
story and there's zero evidence that Otani did any sports betting, they can kind of,
this is their unicorn, right? Like this isn't a John Tay Porter.
No, it is not. It was his money. It was his money that was involved in the betting.
And you can go up and down about it was stolen
or it was misappropriated.
It's saying so show.
Like you can't, you know what I mean?
Like this is the unicorn.
Touch them all, show.
Touch them all, show.
He, yeah, I mean, it's just his money.
There's so many things here that have to be done.
Now, I will say this, in Japanese culture,
what I understand about it, this guy is, he's
right up there with the Emperor in terms of popularity, and everything will be done culturally
and business-wise to protect him and to make sure that the translator is the one who falls
on the sword for this thing.
So I don't underestimate that the Japanese protecting Shohei will be a big factor in
this.
Okay, so a couple of, we gotta clean up a little bit here, which is that it's John Morosi, that was the guy
who sent the tweet that I bid on,
and it wasn't an April Fool's Day joke,
he was just wrong.
But John's used to be good.
Yeah, that's why I believed it,
because I have a pretty good sniff test
of who am I gonna believe on Twitter, right?
It's like, I believed the tweet
that Otani was on his way to Toronto,
and then when you added the other parts,
because you know, I'm not going to believe Adam Seaborn,
he doesn't have a reputation for breaking stories.
And he's now retired from breaking news
cause he's old for one and he's sitting,
now he's going to stick to what he good at,
which is reporting like TV ratings and things like that.
But Morosi was the one who tweeted.
So we mopped that up.
Canada Kev on the live stream points out that Pete Rose wishes he had a translator back in the day. So what
about, so tell me what you think is gonna happen here with MLB in this
investigation and then also Pete Rose like if they sort of give, does this
affect his lifetime? I just mentioned the holdovers. You know who's great in the
holdovers? Pete Rose! Paul Giamatti, amazing. The father was the commissioner.
Right, son of Bart Giamatti,
who is the guy who banned Pete Rose from baseball.
And many people feel the stress of the investigation
that Bart Giamatti was the one who launched it,
the stress of it caused the heart attack that killed him.
That's what I hear, the heart attack.
So see how it's all connected here?
You never know where a conversation
with Bruce Dobegint.
Six degrees of Paul Giamatti, yeah.
Who is it?
Kief Stein was telling me he likes listening
to Toronto Mike, because suddenly all these pieces
all tie together at some point.
It's like an episode of Seinfeld, right?
There's all these B-stories, and at some point
they're all gonna converge or whatever.
The sea was angry that day, my friends.
I watched the opera episode yesterday,
which is the guy who dresses up as Rigoletto.
It's really quite funny.
I quite like Seinfeld, and I've been thinking about
how they're gonna end Curb Your Enthusiasm,
because out of nowhere, I don't know if it was episode two
or three, but out of nowhere, somebody was asking
Larry David, were you writing for Seinfeld
at the end of something?
And he mentions that, no, he was gone
for the last couple years, but he came back
to write the finale.
Like this is just information just thrown out there,
doesn't tie to anything.
They kind of let it sit there and then they move on.
Like it's just to remind the listeners
that Larry David wrote the finale to Seinfeld
and it's sitting there.
So it's gotta come into play at some point
and we're pretty close to it.
I don't know if you watch Curb, do you watch Curb?
Oh yeah.
So it's coming soon.
I have to.
I felt badly watching the Richard Lewis episode
the other night.
It's like a corpse.
Yeah, well, and he is, he's pretty sick
when he's doing that.
But God bless him.
He's a trooper.
He's out there.
He's doing the thing.
And the people they bring in,
the new people that they brought into the series.
Vince Vaughn does a good job.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're just, everybody's,
I think, who is it that's one of the sports guys?
I think it's Rich Eisen who's been on it.
And Rich Eisen talks a little bit about the show
and hanging out with Larry David on his podcast
and talks about it.
I think Dan Patrick is friends with Adam Sandler.
And so he's been talking about the remake
of Happy Gilmore.
And he said, and here we're digressing again,
but he said that Bob Barker's only condition for doing that role in Happy Gilmore. And he said, and here we're digressing again, but he said that Bob Barker's only condition for doing that role in,
in Happy Gilmore was that he got to win the fight. He insisted he had to win.
I believe Joe Flaherty is in that movie as a heckler.
It might be. I think so. So, uh, see, it's all coming back to Joe there. Uh,
shout out to Ridley funeral home.
Sorry about that. One thing about the Rose story.
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to wrap up the show, hey Todd, because I want to know what you
think is going to come down here. It stinks. There's something rotten in the state of Denmark
and it's the biggest player maybe ever.
He's Babe Ruth.
He's Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth didn't stop pitching when he was traded to the, sold to the Yankees
or whatever. You know, Babe Ruth didn't pitch for the Yankees.
He's, it's hard to say how important he is to the business
and how important it is that they somehow get him through
all of this sort of thing.
The Pete Rose stuff that I never sympathize with Pete
because of course I covered him a little bit
and he was, well, he liked amphetamines and stuff
so he was always just a little agitated
when you dealt with him.
But the fact is every day when you would go into a dressing room,
major league dressing room, there's a sign there says no betting on baseball.
He saw that sign for 30 years and ignored it.
And then had the temerity to complain about being held to account for it.
But all he had to do maybe five to 10 years in was to apologize and say,
I was doing amphetamines and now I've cleaned up my act right, but but Pete hasn't changed his act
He goes and sells baseball bats with this
Autograph on him and all that stuff. He hasn't changed and and that's one of the reasons that have they haven't put him in
Everything will be done for Otani because he's been a good soldier. Otherwise, he's been wholesome
He's done the things that you wanted him to do. He hits home runs and he's been a good soldier. Otherwise he's been wholesome. Uh, he's, he's done the things that you wanted him to do. He hits home runs and he's
pitched. He's, he, you couldn't design a better person, but he's,
there's some serious questions about just what was going on and all of the
sports now. And this friend of mine, who's the MLB guy,
one of the things he's doing right now, he's working on the virtual strike zone in the minor leagues that they're,
they're, they're, they've got the umpires down there, right?
Robo lumps. Yeah. Well, and what is that forget? There's a there's an acronym for it
But anyhow they within an eighth of a second you get the call in your ear and it tells you ball or strike or whatever
One of the reasons they have to do this now is because they're taking so much money from gambling
You have to protect the integrity the outcome if. If there's, you know, NFL
games that are decided by bad flags, it's a disaster for them to try to, you know, you
go and tell a casino, hey, by the way, you know, you can't trust our, you can't trust
our results. Same thing in baseball, same thing in hockey. They, they've, that's why
the video has become so important. We've got to get it right.
Got to get it right. So any predictions, what in Shohei? You think the translator takes the fall and
Shohei somehow comes out unscathed? What's your prediction? It'll depend on
how hard the media pushes and there's a lot of people in the media who don't want
to push this too far. Baseball has the most loyal reporter base that
there is there. There are guys who've been around since, you know,
since they put a stitches on the baseball
are still voting for the hall of fame.
So I don't think that,
I don't think that there'll be a big push
from some people in the media,
but if enough high profile people keep this thing going,
it'll be tough.
If it's on 60 minutes one of these weeks,
they got a problem.
So, okay, so you got the problem of Shohei
and we talked about the Raptors player,
John T Porter.
And since he's not Otani, he he's toast, right?
This guy's done.
I can't, well, I mean, there's no evidence yet that he bet himself.
Uh, what, what seems to be the allegation allegation, I repeat,
allegation is, is that he knowingly did things that he knew would help other
people maybe in terms of betting. And that's going to be,
I'm not even sure. Like what's the difference, right? Like, like,
like if you're letting a betting line affect your play in game,
that's that's third rail stuff.
You're like the guy who buys the gun for the, for the murderer, you know,
I mean that's, that's your attachment to it. There's no, there's no escaping it.
Again, these are all allegations. I'll, I'll give him a chance to defend himself.
I haven't heard much from his side of the story yet.
His brother says he's a swell guy.
Whatever that means, that's what brothers are for,
to tell people you're swell.
But I just find it difficult to see him getting out of this,
wriggling out of this, and he'd be an easy guy
to throw to the side and say,
see, look at how vigilant we are,
because, and this is in my column.
I'm not the public broadcaster on Monday.
I don't like Mondays is the column.
Is the public betting, legalized betting,
allows you to see stuff.
What do they say? Sunshine is the greatest disinfectant.
Yes.
The fact that you can see these things in the public
and see when the numbers go up and see where the public
is going, et cetera.
It helps to a certain extent.
In the past, the mob ran things. They weren't going to tell you what was going on. They
weren't going to help you out. They weren't going to go to the police and say, hey, by
the way, we think this guy in the Raptors is doing X, Y, and Z. But now we can see that.
So I think to a certain extent, legalized gambling can help in that regard and prevent
people from being able to fix the sport. But the prop bets are really difficult
because that's just one guy and just his performance.
Only one, let's say a baseball pitcher,
a hockey goalie, a quarterback,
they're the only ones who can affect a game result.
Really, if you're bribing, that's who you'd go after.
But if you're doing props, props are easy.
I love doing props.
But yeah, you sit there and say,
throw it to them once more, one more time,
throw it to them please.
Right.
Yeah.
Right. Now you mentioned Porter buying the gun
and then you, your column there,
your blog is called, I don't like Mondays,
which of course is a line from the Boomtown Rats song
about the woman who,
there being a young lady who shot up the school,
she shot up the school.
And then she said, she doesn't like Mondays.
Yeah. They asked her why she didn't. she said, she doesn't like Mondays.
Yeah, they asked her why she didn't,
she said, I don't like Mondays.
Right.
Great song.
Absolutely, it's the best song
Bob Geldof ever wrote there, so.
Bob Geldof, by the way, I don't know if you've seen this,
but they've done a release of the filming of
We Are the World, was it We Are the World?
No, no, it was Do They Know It's Christmas?
No, that's the British one.
Oh, okay, yeah, but that was his, okay, I see. So they're doing the American one, right? That's Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie
and all these people.
And there's a great scene in which Michael Jackson and a couple of other guys
are going, well, we should do a lyric in Swahili because this is,
Oh no, the Stevie Wonder. I watched this and then Waylon Jennings walks out.
That's right. He walks out and then, and then Geldof who's there comes over and
says,
uh, boys, they don't speak.
The people you want speak English and they're white.
And he just tells them, and then they all go,
yeah, I guess that's right.
And on they go.
It was four in the morning.
I watched that, that dog get to refer into
and we are the world.
And at that moment when you see Waylon Jennings
just walk out, it's like, he just like,
with Stevie going on and singing a Swahili, he's like, I'm out of here.
Waylon Jennings tapping out.
And Sheila E.
At the minute she realizes.
And he's just bait, right?
She's just bait for Prince.
For Prince, to get Prince in.
And as soon as Prince says I ain't coming,
all of a sudden she goes from having a solo,
she's in the back there with one of Michael Jackson's
brothers.
It's cold, it's cold.
Oh my God, that's right. And that uh, that's, that's fantastic. Okay. Now, uh,
no, no, I'm going to, no, I just, one last note on that.
And then I want to ask you about something that's a big part of your
professional life. You know what? I can grab you water, but I mean,
let me set you up. You start talking and I'm going to get you a glass of water.
I'm starting to get parched. I'm going to get you guys.
I should have offered you one. Here's where I'm sending you a beer.
If you don't mind.
What's your beer?
Yeah, I'll have a beer.
Okay.
Look, uh, Bruce, don't begin, uh, cracking a beer here.
What do you, which one you grab?
Okay.
Burst.
That's actually one of my favorites.
That's a, the IPA I drink typically, but now that the sunny side is.
I did this one that allows you to do your, and all, you know what?
I'll replenish your supply before you go here because you know what what you drink doesn't count against your allotment
And remind me because I know you have a gift for me a little birdie tells me I have a gift for me
and then I have a couple of
But now that we're inundated in sports with gambling ads sports gambling like this is relatively new still
But it's everywhere like you can't you can't watch a game without seeing like, you know,
ads and it's embedded within the broadcasting.
It seems like all the money is coming
from sports gambling outfits.
So now that the sports, you know, baseball
and every other sport is cozied up with sports betting,
this story with Shoei Otani and John T. Porter,
like this is just now part of being in bed
sleeping with the enemy, am I right?
Like it's now you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. Am I out to lunch?
Well, so people know eating cake, you cannot, they cannot take any piece of the action. So the sports
leagues cannot have any portion of the action. So whatever is bad on it, that is off limits. What they can do is do
arrangements with casinos and houses and online stuff in terms of promoting the product
and saying, you know, like Gretzky does,
MGM casinos and he comes out in a lion roars
and I don't know whatever else he does and come out.
So there isn't that attachment.
The league doesn't have anything to do with the betting
and what's going on there.
They're not getting any money from it,
but the proximity is, yeah, it can be worrisome.
One of the better things I think is that
since we first have seen the Ontario wagering sites,
Alberta has one now, and I think we're going to
have a few others, but you guys are ahead of us here.
But the first commercials were so bad.
The first touches of this in the public eye
with people who I know,
I don't want to get into naming cabi,
but you know, people who were doing ads,
they just were not really good.
And I thought, who is going to watch this ad and say,
yeah, you know, this is time I got into betting or whatever.
And Dan O'Toole, I think they would do bet rivers.
They were just, the commercials are just not good enough.
And that put a lot of people off cause okay,
if you're going to waste my time with this stuff,
at least make it entertaining. Like the insurance people do.
They don't sell you insurance. They sell you the, you know,
the guy telling you, you're like your parents now, right? That's what they do.
So the same thing with the betting people is they've got to find a way to make
it seem entertaining with much better commercials.
I believe we have a law. I don't know when it takes effect. Maybe it took effect.
I don't know.
But about you in Ontario,
you can no longer have celebrities in the gambling ads.
Okay.
Cause I was at, so Dan, the aforementioned Dan O'Toole
was on this program a couple of weeks ago.
Great episode, by the way, catch up with Dan O'Toole.
He talks about everything.
And I asked him straight out
cause he's like the face of bet rivers.
And he says the way they're playing it is
he's not a famous person, Dan O'T'Toole he's an actor in these ads so he's not like he's not like it's
unlike the gretzky ads where it's like gretzky's gretzky and the gretzky is a very famous and
therefore cannot promote that in ontario i suppose with this new law where they're gonna let you know
until like somebody calls them on it dan o'Toolele can star in Bet Rivers ads as the actor playing the anchor in the Bet O'Toole ads.
That's what it looks like.
Bet Rivers ads, yeah.
Dan's level of notoriety or public.
But in the sport, in the Canadian sports world,
everyone knows Dan O'Toole.
Yeah, yeah, that's part of the problem.
That's part of the problem.
It's- Interesting, though.
And one last thing about the betting controversy
as it's been going on,
is I hear people getting very excited.
We cannot have gambling.
What about the kids?
Think of the kids.
They're watching betting information, blah blah.
First of all, you cannot bet legally
until you're 19 in this province.
At that point, you're an adult enough to waste your money.
You can drink Great Lakes beer at that age.
Absolutely, you can do all of those things.
The idea that there's these 11 year olds
who've got dad's phone and they're doing props
on a Friday night, it just, that's not the reality of it.
That's not the reality of it.
And secondarily, and here we are having a nice.
I've replenished.
I'm having a beer, one of your beers.
Is that from the time I was five years old,
we had alcohol ads on hockey night in Canada.
It was quite clear that they were married,
alcohol and hockey were married.
Who didn't fall the Molson Cup three stars, okay?
This was a big deal to me, Roland.
It was a big deal, I'm sure.
Who was leading the Molson Cup?
Especially in the bad years of the Leafs,
and they'd have the Molson Cup.
Oh, Rick Vibe once again, oh yeah, you know, Dan Daou.
Yeah, it would be Dan Daou,
it would be somebody a little more down the line, yeah.
Felix Potvan wins two games in a month, but he's-
Wow, he did get to the final four twice, Bruce.
I just had Kevin Shea in here
and he made sure to get a guitar for, apparently,
Felix Potvan was a big metalhead and got a guitar for, apparently Felix Pauvin was a big metalhead
and got a guitar for him from Sepultura.
I can't even say the name of these rock and roll groups.
Felix is the reason that my pal Grant Fuhrer
ended up leaving Toronto as well.
I did Grant's biography with him.
Story of a legend, I guess.
Good golfer, right?
What's that?
Good golfer.
Yeah, not good enough to get to where he wanted to. He basically quit school at 14 or 15 out in Victoria
when he was with the Victoria Cougars.
And when he was supposed to be studying, he was golfing.
And he put all his eggs in the hockey basket
that he was gonna be there.
And it paid off for him.
It worked out for him.
But that was the trade that he came in
with Glen Anderson from Edmonton.
Cliffy brought them in. And then all of a sudden Felix just played the ass off of
Everybody and they sent grant off to Buffalo right where he was pushed aside by what's that guy's name?
I forget the guy Oh Dominic haschick. Yes
Booted him out second greatest the goaltender in NHL history. Yeah, I would say so I wrote a book with him, too
Okay fabulous fabulous interesting guy greatest a goaltender in NHL history. Yeah, I would say so. I wrote a book with him too. Okay.
Fabulous, fabulous, interesting guy.
Uh, his, I remember we were talking about it last night because I w w with our
guests, uh, watching the hockey game at the, at the Scotiabank center.
But the best line I ever heard about goaltending was I was doing the book with,
with Dom and we're in Buffalo.
It was a snowy night.
It was about 18 feet of snow.
And we're sitting in a restaurant.
I said, who's, who's the hardest guy for you in the league?
Lemieux?
Ah, Lemieux.
He's, he's okay.
He's okay.
But the rest of them, nobody, nobody.
I said, really?
Nobody worries?
He says, you know who really worries me?
I said, who's that?
My defenseman.
He said, if they're not where they're supposed to be,
he said, I'm F'd.
I don't know if I can use that word on your channel.
You can say that.
Yeah, well, he he said I'm fucked.
And all of a sudden, goaltending made perfect sense to me.
And when I watched the games now,
and the thing in the Leafs game last night
that was very successful in the first two periods
was the Leafs kept all the shots to the sides.
And Samsonov, yeah, was Samsonov last night?
He was able to position himself.
He knew where the shots were coming from.
He looked like a genius. And as soon as the shots were coming from. He looked like a genius.
And as soon as the puck started coming from the center
of the ice, then it's more problematic for any goalie.
And Dom understood that.
And I interviewed him actually in Nagano after the shootout
when he beat team Canada.
And he just, he was laughing.
He said, I knew that they could barely hold their sticks.
They were so nervous.
And he said, I noticed out in front of the,
boy, I'm digressing.
But anyway.
No, I love this story because this is the what famous,
this is the famous shootout where Gretzky was on the bench.
And Weickhoff.
And he didn't use Eisenman either.
And he said, I knew that they hadn't flooded the ice
and I knew the ice in front of my net was chippy
and it was not going to be easy to handle.
And he said, so I went out right away
and challenged the guys because I knew
if they tried to stick handle, they would lose the puck.
And I think maybe the only guy who even got close
might've been Lindros.
I think Lindros tried to deke him
and it went beside the net.
But the rest of the time, and he just,
he saw, who was it, who was shot last?
Was it Ray Bork or somebody?
Can't remember.
Oh, I think it was Shanahan shot last.
Anyhow, he said the guy was just destroyed.
He just before he even shot the puck.
Cause there was so much pressure.
I mean, I don't say that to criticize the shooters
and the Canadian guys, they met well, but.
Well, they know that Canada, that was the big 98.
That was, we got to win gold for the first time
in 46 years or whatever.
I think so because I think in 02
and we do win gold in Salt Lake City,
I believe that was like 50 years, I think. They finished seventh, I think so, because I think in 02, and we do win gold in Salt Lake City, I believe that was like 50 years, I think.
They finished seventh, I think, in Nagano.
It was pretty bad.
We had summits.
And the American team, and I'd done work with Chellios,
with Chelly, who's just, he and Holly
and a couple other guys were going out every night
and drinking trays of beer, not just a few beers,
trays of beer, and going and playing the next day. I mean, dozens and dozens of beers after a game
or after a practice. And finally the American team started getting like, yeah, this is a good
optic for us. I love Shelley. If you ever can get Shelley, he's a lot of fun.
Well, I mean, I love these guys who play into their forties, right?
Well, I thought when I was doing the book with him, he was like 40, and I said, well,
I hope I get the book out before he retires.
He's 45 or something.
The bastard lasted til 45.
And I went to one of his workouts,
and this is before we had the really serious stuff
about conditioning.
Celly was one of the first guys who had a private guy,
and he would go and do two hours in the morning
and two hours in the afternoon,
and then he'd play a game that night.
And I'm thinking, where is all this coming from?
But that's what helped him survive as long as it did.
So your Grant fear book,
Grant of course had a cocaine problem.
Yeah, we dealt with it in the book.
I was worried.
Grant is not long spoken about things.
So I go to Palm Springs where he lives
to do the interviews for the book
and I started off with a sort of softball
to get things going.
I don't remember what it was,
but do you remember your first game playing hockey as a kid?
Oh yeah, I was a kid, it was good,
yeah, we had a lot of fun, yeah.
I'm going like, Grant, we gotta do 60, 70,000 words.
We had a lot of fun, yeah, isn't gonna get us there.
So.
As a broadcaster, those are the tough interviews when lot of fun. Yeah, it isn't gonna get us there. So as a broad, as a, as a podcaster,
those are, those are the tough interviews
when you're pulling the teeth.
So I was worried where we would go,
but he was, he was honest and two things were happening
at the same time.
One, he, he obviously he, he and other people in the team
who's who will go nameless,
we're having a lot of fun with, with, with blow,
but his dad was also dying of cancer.
And so the two things kind of married a little bit.
And he said that when the puck went in off his pad in 86,
when Steve Smith's shot hit his back of his leg
and went into the net,
that allowed Calgary to win the series.
He said, I basically fell off a cliff that summer.
He said, I disappeared into a dark place.
And we talked about it.
And he said the irony was that by the time the NHL
got around to disciplining him,
he basically cleaned up his act.
He had the ability to get past it, and he said it was kind of funny that he had to sit out a whole year
when he'd cured the whole thing for himself.
And as far as I know, he might have a beer or something like that,
but golf is his addiction now, as you just were suggesting.
Oh, like Humble Howard's. That's his drug of choice is golf.
Okay, in 1988, where were you in your career in 1988?
Remind me.
CBC at six and at 11, the studio on Church Street,
doing stuff there, and I think, yeah,
I'm trying to remember all the other things
that were happening at that time.
But that was just about the time I started being introduced
to people like Carl Brewer and the Eagles and stuff.
We were just kind of heading into that.
I read David Cruz and Alison Griffith's book, Net Worth.
And I remember reading the book and thinking,
all this stuff nobody talked about in the hockey world.
This is great stuff about these people.
And I said, how can I be doing the show every day
and miss it?
So that was kind of the start.
It took me eight years of work
before he finally went to jail
and sort of we resolved.
Alan Eagleson, of course.
So, okay, so maybe I know we've only got
about 10 minutes here,
but I feel like we didn't do a proper service.
Like your first visit, you know, we, like I said, we talked for a long time,
but there's a lot of ground I wanted to cover with you.
And then we get off on these tangents and I realized I'm having a great time.
I'm interested in your insight.
And next thing you know, it was like, oh crap, I got to think I got to do
something for money in a couple of minutes or whatever.
So I feel like your next visit, I would love to do like a thorough deep dive
into your role in the investigation of Alan Eagleson. Cause you're such a key player in that.
And we can talk about Russ Conway and we can talk about, uh,
Foster, Carl Brewer, right?
Absolutely.
All of whom have passed away now.
Carl Brewer's partner, Susan Foster.
Right.
And then, so, cause I don't want to do it in justice by burning it up
here in five or 10 minutes here.
So this is sort of a teaser.
The next time you're visiting your son here
or you're hanging out in the T. Dot,
come down here and you'll get more pasta,
you'll get more Great Lakes beer,
you know, we'll take care of you.
Maybe you'll get another smart speaker from Monaris
and we will really dive into this.
It's a fascinating story.
The more I read about it, in fact, this was my plan today
and then I realized, oh, the show got away from us here. Cause I'm going to
ask you about something else in 1988. I'll be disciplined next time. No, don't do that.
Those are boring guests. You don't want to discipline guests. You want to be able to
go around and come back. So Alan Eagleson, deep dive with, uh, Bruce Dobegin, who was
there? We're going to totally, totally do this. And I am, I was reading more about,
uh, Russ Conway, like just his role in it all and I know he's no longer with us
either and I want to... Fascinating guy, yeah. No, it's just he taught me how to be
a reporter. I mean, I was always trying to rush stories to air and and Russ was
about, let's get, let's make sure we get it done the right way. And and his whole
thing through it all was we had all of these hair-raising stories, personal stories about people involved and he said, no. He said we get it done the right way. And his whole thing through it all was we had all of these hair raising stories, personal stories about people involved
and he said, no, he said we're gonna do the documents,
we're gonna do the facts, we're not gonna get into
the gutter because then they'll start throwing stuff at us
and you know, you don't need that.
We just wanted to stick to the facts.
And I give CBC circa 1990, Slocco Klimke,
who was the producer at the time there,
I give him tons of credit because he let me do this story.
And my colleagues at other places either didn't get
the ability to do it or were not encouraged to do it
until it was much later on in the story.
So I give CBC a lot of credit for that.
Well I'm sure there were many illegal threat
and intimidation faced during this period.
So CBC had to have your back for you to do your job.
You know, the interesting thing was that
I had a phone call, somebody said,
oh, there's a bullet waiting for you type of thing.
And this was when we were kind of brushing up
against some political stuff.
And I was worried about it.
But at that point, we had no faith in the RCMP
doing this story properly.
We felt the RCMP was immediately going to take that material
to people in political circles,
and Alan Eagleson was a political person.
So the first person I called was the FBI guy
who I'd been dealing with on the thing,
and I said, what should I do about this?
And he said, well, we know about it now,
and we will look into it.
Now, that's just one small.
No, and I just, if your employer's not willing to you know protect you from the legal threats at
least maybe you know maybe the bullets end of the story. Well we had and we had
we had a libel trial they sued me for libel the Eagleson family and and we
won and it was fascinating to sit in court and watch how that happens. This is all a
teaser I cannot wait now Bruce to your next visit to the TDOT. My daughter gets
married this summer I'll be back
Okay, there's so we're gonna do the Alan Eagles and deep. I got I want the info. I want everything
I'll tell you one quick story sure relating to Florida one of my neighbors down in Florida is a guy who was a you if
I named him you would know who he is. He was a big sports guy on hockey night in Canada
and he was one of my neighbors Al Strachan I
couldn't possibly comment and
Strach has hated me with a passion
since that story happened because I don't know why.
You're on a long list by the way.
I was, well he hates everybody.
I was a TV guy and I wasn't supposed to be doing this
and I was a guy who put makeup on to do his job
and all that sort of stuff.
And he's to this day, he still grinds it with me.
Says hi to my brother, but. He's an FOTM, you know, much like yourself,
friend of Toronto Mike, Al Strachan's been on the program.
Oh really?
Oh well that's good.
He's very bitter, very bitter about a lot of things
and interesting.
And he, I'll never, I'll tell it to my brother.
You know him, like of course I know
who you're talking about, Al Strachan.
But he's one of the few, who was it pointed this out?
Was it Steve Buffery?
Somebody was pointed out, like apparently in Canadian sports media,
there's only so many staunch conservative conservatives and two of them are
talking to each other. Well, I'll talk to Al, but yes, that's true.
It's a great stuff. What it is. It's buff and me,
and Strack. And I've forgotten who the fourth come up with that fourth staunch
conservative in this sports media universe here. Okay. So they are, And Strach, and I've forgotten who the fourth is. Who is the fourth? Come up with that fourth staunch conservative
in this sports media universe here.
Okay, so they're all excited about the teaser.
We're gonna do the episode,
but I do have the actual legal verbiage
in the new sports betting rules.
You ready?
And then I know you have a gift for me,
and I wanna give you a couple of pieces of advice
after you give me a gift.
See, here I am asking for a gift,
but as of February 28th,
so this has been in effect for a while now, February 28th. So you notice how I put the
Roo in February. I'm a professional, Bruce. iGaming ads, I'm reading this courtesy of
Canada Kev who copied and pasted it. iGaming ads, even if previously approved by Telecaster,
cannot contain athletes, active or retired or celebrities and then
in parentheses, including role models, social media influencers, entertainers,
cartoon characters and symbols that appeal to minors.
Period. I guess I don't know why I put the affection on that athletes and
celebrities would be able to appear in ads promoting responsible gambling. So look look forward to the Gretzky ads. Know your limit, play within it.
Shout out to Peter Gross. Well they do they do all that stuff. They do put the
the phone numbers. The Vegas channel that I talked about all the time give you the
phone numbers etc. But the thing that they need to do is tell you what the
odds are of you winning or losing.
Seriously, if you're 57, 58%, that's good.
That's good in the gambling world.
You're not gonna get there.
And if you're trying to get somebody off of gambling,
that's probably the best way to do it.
Well, I can, as again, as a friend of Peter Gross,
everything is having the discipline to say,
okay, I enjoy this, so I'll make up numbers.
This $2,000 is what I'm going to spend on this passion of mine.
And when I run out of this $2,000, I'm done until whenever.
You know, you have to do that.
But not every, as you know, not everybody can get the problem is not everybody can do
this.
Just like some people can drink responsibly and enjoy their Great Lakes beer, like you can.
And some people need to not consume alcohol
because they'll wake up in a ditch or something.
But we're adults and we understand that 20% of the people
are gonna have trouble with gambling,
with drinking, et cetera.
How do we deal with that in a responsible way?
Do we make everybody miserable?
Or do we just try to figure out the best way
to deal with those people, help those people?
Right.
Yes, I'm with you, I'm with you.
Okay, so.
Libertarian that I am.
Let me give you a piece of advice.
Yes, go ahead.
You know, you were just in Florida, I know you're,
how would you refer to yourself, semi-retired?
What are you?
I'm working on two books at the same time,
so I'm, and my website.
That's on how you retire. You know what, I'm busy. You're a busy man, okay. I'm working on two books at the same time, so I'm, and my website. That's not how you retire.
You know what, I'm busy.
You're a busy man, okay.
I'm busy.
I'm not really making a ton of money.
You've made your money, okay.
You've got Gemini awards, two of them at least, last check.
Where are they right now, those Gemini awards?
They're on the mantle.
Okay, so they're on display somewhere.
And again.
Very proud of it.
By paraphrase, Patrick Raw, when I get in trouble with people mantle. Okay, so they're on display somewhere. And again. Very proud of it.
By paraphrase, Patrick Rawl, when I get in trouble with people on social media and they
start yelling at me, I go, sorry, I can't hear you.
My two Gemini Awards are blocking my ears.
And he, you mentioned Dominic Haschuk and I blurted out, second greatest NHL goaltender
of all time because that's the guy I put number one.
Patrick?
Yeah, that's who I put number one.
As a Red Wing fan, I liked Patrick because of course
he screwed up that one playoff series
that led the Red Wings win.
Well, he's, yeah, and I think, and again,
I only know what I saw with my eyes,
so if you're gonna tell me it's Jacques Plante,
I'll be like, I'm sorry, I didn't.
Great, Terry Sautchick, I think,
was more important than-
Sautchick, great.
But in terms of Patrick Ruval,
the chapter in the book is a lot of fun,
it was a lot of fun to research.
He played on a terrible junior team in Granby.
He was given up five and six goals a night,
but he also had 60, 70 shots a night.
So, yeah, anyhow, it's an interesting story,
and he is flamboyant.
Absolutely, a shout out to FOTM Randy Druzen,
who actually wrote a book on the greatest goaltenders,
and we had that great debate.
She says it's Hoshik, I say it's Petr Kva.
But she also spent five years I think
living in the Czech Republic,
which I called Czechia because I watch sports
and it's now being-
It is now Czechia.
Yes, but she said nobody in Czech Republic,
they laugh, they say it's not.
Oh really?
I thought they were the ones who changed it.
And I'm like, all I know is what TSN puts
on the bottom and the Chiron, okay?
They're calling it Chequia.
I always wanted a new team in the World Championships.
Who's this Chequia?
We've added them.
It took me a little while to catch on here.
I am letting you know, Bruce, whether you manage your own financial investments or you
have someone who does that for you.
There is some great advice, best practices, great knowledge to be had by subscribing to
the free podcast, The Advantage Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, hosted by Chris
Cooksey. Great insight in there. So subscribe to the advantaged investor
podcast. And if you have old electronics, maybe a drawer full of cables, you got
old phones, don't throw that in the garbage. The chemicals end up in our
landfill. Go to recyclemyelectronics.ca,
put in your postal code and it'll be like,
oh, Bruce, drop it off here and we'll properly recycle it
so that those chemicals don't end up in our landfill.
You got those two tips?
You got a gift for me or what?
I've been waiting.
I do.
Well, I can't give it to you
because that would seem like I'm pandering.
And that's, you know, it's too late.
It's too late.
I'm pandering.
So this is for your kids. And of course,
the other big story right now is Caitlin Clark. The, uh,
I watched last night, the hoops player for Iowa. 30 points. I think.
Yeah. 30 or 40, whatever it was. And they they're onto the final four, whatever.
She is the big story. So I have got you an Iowa Hawkeyes.
Okay. I watched last night. She's unbelievable. Uh,
she's shooting it like she's Steph Curry.
For people who can't see it, it's, it's got a black cuff,
but it's got the, the Iowa Hawkeye.
It's amazing.
And a big eye there. So there you go.
Well, thank you very much.
I did cause that was the rematch from last year's.
And I watched attentively and Caitlin Clark has done
something I didn't think would happen where I'm as excited
to watch the women's NCAA as I am to watch the men's. Yeah. And Caitlin's a huge part of that. My
pleasure. Thank you so much. Now just on the way out here, 1988, Seoul, Korea. Do
you know what happened there? Well, I know Mary Armsby's got a book. Yeah, so I
have it around the corner actually. So I got a copy of the book and Mary
Armsby's coming in to talk about it, but I also produce a show with Donovan
Bailey.
And my quick, my really brief chat here on the way out here, I'm checking we're good
on time for a couple more minutes here.
If you have it is again, we could have spent 90 minutes talking about the Trump Bibles.
How many copies of the Trump Bibles did you buy Bruce?
I know that was the question people were hoping I'd ask you.
You several?
How many?
How many copies?
Oh, at least 12.
One for every, every one you month. Every month, yeah sure.
Your Trump Bibles, okay.
Value at half the price if you ask me.
Okay, so,
what, you were in the sports media at CBC in 1988
when Ben Johnson, you know,
we can put an asterisk beside it.
I sometimes always want to say asterix
because I used to read these comic books called asterix
My kids do and I used to buy a mic across from the on Markham Street across from the now gone
Honest Eds there was a bookstore. I used to go there was I think was five bucks
Which is a lot actually for a book at the time and I'd save up my money and go buy copies of asterisk
But this is an asterisk and it's not an asterix. Okay, get it right Mike
But regardless, Ben
won gold medal in that hundred meters before they took it away from him. I'm curious because
I'm going to be reading this book shortly and talking to Mary about it. But do you think
it's time possibly to look back at that and maybe with a kinder, gentler spirit for Ben,
who even though Ben did cheat,
like probably everybody else in that 100 meter final,
he may have been done dirty by his country, et cetera.
I'm just curious, what are your thoughts
on the legacy of Ben Johnson
as we look back at what happened in 1988?
He was an easy target for the IOC to use him.
Canada was an easy target.
I don't think anyone thought that they could
cause a lot of problems.
The Americans were very adamant that nothing happened
to any of their people.
Coca-Cola is one of the major signet sponsors.
Coca-Cola basically bought the 96 Olympics for Atlanta.
So I think he was a convenient guy.
A lot of people were dirty in the race.
I'll be interested to see what Mary has come up with.
I did a book with Donovan which never got published.
Really?
Yeah.
Why, what happened?
Well, we delivered a first draft
and then Key Porter went bankrupt.
And then I had to spend about 18 months
finding a new publisher for it.
And of course, as time goes by,
Donovan becomes less famous to people.
There's fewer people who remember the Olympics.
And by the time we got around to finding a new publisher,
Donovan wanted to go in a different direction.
He didn't wanna talk too much about how much money he'd made
and which women he'd been with and all that sort of stuff.
I said, Donovan, that's what they wanna know from you.
They wanna know what the life was like.
And again, I'm ashamed to say,
I actually have not read it yet,
but he did put out a biography, autobiography last year.
Yes, yes, I saw it.
Great stories.
He was having arguments with his wife
on the day of the race.
He's in the green room to go out and run the 100 meters
and he's sitting there with his headphones on
and nothing else.
And he's just sitting there with his Johnson hanging out,
looking at the guys saying that you're not going to win today.
You're not going to, he's easy. That's like Patrick. Wow. Right.
So you're not beating me.
He was a very confident guy and then winning the relay.
And I still say the a hundred meters and I covered it in Atlanta.
That was probably the most exciting event I saw personally.
Well, you were there. You were there. Yeah. Yeah. I always,
whenever I talked to Donovan, which was, which is often the, the fact that 1988 happened and we had the fastest man in the world.
And then we had to watch it all unfold as it did. And then only let me do quick math. Eight years
later to have the fastest man in the world. And it didn't unravel. It just felt like it meant a lot to this country's psyche.
It's a great story about him too.
He wanted to play basketball.
He had finished at Sheridan.
He goes down to see the Canadian track and field championships
because there's a bunch of his buddies there.
And he said, I can run as fast as them.
And the next thing you know, he's there.
And of course the establishment doesn't like him
because he doesn't toe the line. Right.
And he ends up going down to LSU with Dan, I forgot Dan's last name.
All of a sudden, Dan Faff. Faff something like that. Yeah.
I think I forgot. I apologize to Dan. Anyhow, he knew,
he went down to LSU and trained and Shaq was there. Yeah, Shaq was there at the time.
And they basically created him into what he was.
And the whole time I'm interviewing him,
we've talked hours, I don't know how many,
dozens of hours and I kept going back and said,
Donovan, how can you tell me drugs weren't involved?
And he said, they weren't.
And he said, my secret, he said, I slept 14 hours a day.
He said said sleep is
extremely important you know many times I've looked him in the eyes right on
this table here and just said zero performance enhancing drugs so he's a
he's adamant he did it clean and I believe the man and then the book didn't
come out I had a good time with them I certainly know ill will is that the most
writing you've done for a somebody of that stature with a book that never came
out?
I have a full book in my drawer that I did with Greg Zahn and well we all know what
happened next.
You know it's funny you mention Greg Zahn because I almost dropped this anecdote and
I thought oh I say it too often but we were talking Dave Winfield you know Winfield wants
noise and then I remembered before he was a Blue J when he killed the Seagull at the
C&E Stadium and then I remember Jamie Campbell sitting down here making his Toronto Mike debut telling me that
he went and picked up the carcass of that Seagull and kept it with him. And then I was thinking in
that same conversation, there was a lot of Zahn talk because Jamie and Zahn were very close.
It's a great book. I wish I could publish it. He taught me about pitching.
Zon Cherry?
Yeah, he taught me about pitching.
There's a guy with no confidence problems, right?
No.
Greg Zon?
No, no.
He's got swag, you know?
That's a baseball thing.
And it just doesn't fit in today's world.
I think he's coaching a minor league team somewhere
and he looked like it was all over, but he's got one now.
He definitely wants to get into coaching and uh...
They won't let him. He's persona non grata right now.
He's been Kelly Grumberg?
Yeah, he's just a character and if you have him there's things like Scott Moore and the people
at Sportsnet were worried about him all the time that he'd say something or do something
and I think it was convenient for them to get rid of him when they did.
or do something and I think it was convenient for them to get rid of them when they did.
Bruce, I can't wait for your next appearance where we'll run out of time and we won't get to Alan Eagleson. It'll be like that, was that Jimmy Kimmel when Matt Damon is always
in the green room or whatever? They never get to him.
Hey listen, it's a lot of fun. I'm glad to come in.
Don't leave without that lasagna. Is that going to your son?
Absolutely. He's got a little daughter he's got to feed. Thanks. Thanks for the
hat. Thank you. I look forward to seeing you again and of course I listen all the
time. And that and not just when Paykin's on. Especially not when Paykin's on. And that brings us to the end of our 1,464th show.
You can follow me on Twitter and BlueSky,
I'm at Toronto Mike.
Doe begins at Doughboy, but it's D-O-W.
B-B-O-Y.
Right.
Find him and basically subscribe to the blog.
And what is it called?
Not thepublicbroadcaster.com.
Not thepublicbroadcaster.com. I wonder what that's referring to. Much love to all who
made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery. That's Palma Pasta. That's RecycleMyElectronics.ca.
That's Raymond James Canada. That's the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. That's Menaris. Welcome back Menaris and Ridley Funeral Home.
Speaking of baseball, my guests tomorrow are the Toronto Stars Gregor Chisholm
and his maritime buddy Jobs. We got lawyer in Jobs. We got baseball write-in
Jobs. Keegan Matheson. So Keegan Matheson, Gregor Chisholm together in the basement. They're
gonna consume a lot of Great Lakes beer. Ask about the East Pointers. I'm gonna
ask them about the East Pointers. See you all then. You know it warms me today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine
It won't go away
Cause everything is rolling great
Well I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain
And I've kissed you in places I better not name
And I've seen the sun go down on Shakla Court
But I like it much better going down on you, yeah, you know that's true
Because everything is coming up, rosy and gray
Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms us today
And your smile is fine, and everything is rosy and gray