Sporting Madness

One problem with the holiday season is it leads to a lack of blogging time, especially when busy writing for other publications. I did manage to get some thoughts on the Roy Halladay trade and what it means for the Blue Jays up over at The Rookies However, I've finally cleared some of the backlog of work, so I should be able to get a few things up here pretty soon. One of the things I've been working on is a three-part series on concussions, which I'm planning to run today, tomorrow and Thursday. The first installment will go up shortly. Until then, here are some of the other pieces I've previously written on the subject: - " The heads up on head injuries " ( Queen's Journal , Sept. 28, 2007) - " NHL's stance on concussions is troubling " ( Queen's Journal , Dec. 28, 2007) - " The school of hard knocks " ( Queen's Journal , Jan. 29, 2009) - " Take concussions seriously " ( The Phoenix Pub , Aug. 11, ...

Work unfortunately got in the way of writing here again, so I haven't been around for a while. That should hopefully change in the next little while, and the first item in the line is a live blog; I'll be live-blogging the Vancouver Whitecaps - Rochester Rhinos game tonight from the press box at Swangard, and then should have a post-game piece up tomorrow. Kickoff is at 10 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Pacific, so come join me here (or at The 24th Minute or Epic Footy ] then! In other programming notes, the daily Link Trains will return Monday and I should hopefully have a few original pieces up here this week as well. Until then, here's some links to my stuff and the best of the Interwebs from the past week, as well as some music. Video of the Day: Spirit of the West - Home for a Rest A classic party song from a Vancouver band. Many people have probably heard this one in bars or clubs without any idea of who it's from, but the band's actually pretty good and quite well-know...

This is a new daily feature I'm going to be running (and yes, I did steal the name ). The plan is to post a music video and a list of the most interesting links from the various sports I tend to write about each night. There will be a partial focus on the teams I tend to write about, but there will also be plenty of room for stories from around different leagues and other sports. Submissions and comments are welcomed, either in the comments section of the previous night's post or via e-mail or Twitter . Enjoy! Video Of The Day: To go with the efforts (led by Stephen of Stephen on Stuff ) to make Rush a trending topic, here's Rush with Limelight. My Links: - A piece I wrote on Y.E. Yang 's unexpected victory over Tiger Woods in the PGA Championship [ The Rookies ]. The Best Of The Intertubes: Soccer: - Duane Rollins weighs in on yesterday's Toronto FC win (which I live blogged here ) [ The 24th Minute ]. - Jason Davis has some good thoughts on the similariti...

I'll be live-blogging the B.C. Lions - Toronto Argonauts game here and at Out of Left Field at 7:30 Eastern/4:30 Pacific. Until then, here's some links to the other stuff I've been writing and some of the best stories from around the web, as well as some tuneage to get you all pumped for the game. My pieces: - Here's the story of Canucks' prospect Sergei Shirokov and his quest to escape the KHL [ Canuck Puck ]. - Here's a link to the newest edition of The Whole 110 Yards , my weekly CFL column over at The Rookies . - The Vancouver Olympics are now only six months away. I have a story on one local group's Olympic preparations in The South Delta Leader , where I'm working for the next few weeks. - My weekly Phoenix Pub column took aim at the lack of proper standards and treatment around concussions in sports. - As part of those aforementioned Olympic preparations, the Richmond-Vancouver-Vancouver Airport SkyTrain line is opening on Monday. It will s...

Well, I'm off for the weekend for a softball tournament, so things will be light around here for a little while. I should be back with fresh content Monday, and I've got plenty planned for next week, including my thoughts on the latest developments in the Phoenix Coyotes' case, a few thoughts on ESPN's Twitter policy, a post on how Rogers' approach to the Blue Jays is all wrong, more interviews from my The Good Point piece and much more. Until then, here's a couple links to other pieces I wrote this week that you may not have seen and a few things from around the web. - The initial instalment of my new weekly CFL column, The Whole 110 Yards , over at The Rookies . - My weekly The Phoenix Pub column focused on the success of the B.C. Premier Baseball League this week. - A piece I wrote at Canuck Puck on the elevation Mike Gillis to president and general manager. - James Mirtle has a good take on the Coyotes' mess [ From The Rink ]. - Why The Denver P...

Apologies for the lack of content around here lately. I've been working full-time for the past couple of weeks, filling in for editor Kurt Langmann at the Aldergrove Star , and have been swamped with other writing in my downtime, so I haven't had a lot of time to blog here. Don't panic, though; today's my last day, so things should hopefully return to normality soon and anything you still can't cope with will then be your own problem ! Anyway, I'll hopefully have a real post up before the end of the day. I'm also planning to live-blog the B.C. Lions - Hamilton Tiger-Cats game tomorrow (7:30 P.M. Eastern) and the Vancouver Whitecaps - Cleveland City Stars game Saturday (7 P.M. Eastern) but until then, here's a few links to some of the other pieces I've been writing. - A report on the BC Peewee and Bantam baseball provincials coming up this weekend. [ The Aldergrove Star ] - The second part of my list of annoying fan traditions. Everyone's favo...

Hope everyone had a great weekend. I'm taking off for a few days to go camping, so things have been somewhat light around here due to preparations for that. I do have a lengthy essay on sportswriting and Malcolm Gladwell scheduled to go up tomorrow morning, though, and I should be back with fresh content Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Until then, here's a few links to tide you over: My work: - A post on the Canucks' acquisition of Mikael Samuelsson [ Canuck Puck - A piece on the death of former NFL quarterback Steve McNair [ The Phoenix Pub ] - A piece on the Sedins returning and a few other signings [ Canuck Puck ] Other good pieces: - James Mirtle sees the Canucks as a team with cash still to spend [ From The Rink ] - Joe Posnanski on the Royals' lack of speed - Neate on the Raptors picking up Turkoglu [ Out of Left Field ]

Apologies for the horribly long absence; I had to spend most of the past week preparing for a move and then flew across the country yesterday. I'm back in the blogging saddle now, though, and have plenty of stuff planned here for the next few days. Until then, here's a link to two of the pieces I've managed to write in the meantime and some other pieces I've enjoyed reading recently. - A piece I wrote Monday at Canuck Puck on the Canucks' involvement in free agent rumours and laying out my blueprint for Vancouver's free-agency moves. - A piece analyzing the top 10 picks of the NHL draft I co-wrote over at The Rookies . - An interesting piece by First Derivative over at The Phoenix Pub on why the acquisition of Marian Hossa may hurt the Blackhawks thanks to the length of his deal. - Neate has a breakdown of the CFL players from the CIS ranks over at Out of Left Field . - A great piece from Joe Posnanski on the Royals' problems handling injuries. Th...

Apologies for things being slow around here lately; I've been pretty swamped with other writing work. I'll try to get a full new post up tonight, but until then, I thought I'd share a few of the other pieces I've been working on. Hope you enjoy them! Feel free to leave comments on them at those sites or here, or send them to me via e-mail (andrew_bucholtz AT hotmail.com) or Twitter . Thanks as always for reading! - Over at my new blog, Canuck Puck , I have an analysis of how the Sedin twins stack up against other elite NHL players and why resigning them would be a great Moneypuck move. - At The Phoenix Pub , I have a few thoughts on how the recent increase in statistical analysis has changed sports. It's a bit of a follow-up to the piece I wrote here the other day about the (partial) demise of Moneyball . - At The Rookies , I have a piece looking at the most annoying fan traditions in sports.

Hello, readers! As you might have noticed, there have been a few changes around here. I'm now part of the excellent TheScore.com Sports Federation , which will be a lot of fun, and have a real domain name to boot (sportingmadness.ca)! Check out some of the other sites in the network if you get the chance; they're all listed by category in the black bar at the top of the page, but I figured I'd spotlight a few of my personal favourites. For you baseball fans, there's a lot of great sites in the network,including Drunk Jays Fans and Ghostrunner on First . For hockey nuts, check out the likes of Down Goes Brown and the Canucks Hockey Blog . In basketball, RaptorBlog and DinoNation are both excellent, and for soccer, there's some terrific stuff over at TFC Connected and Arsenalist . In general sports, Sports and the City is the best comprehensive Toronto sports blog out there and there's some excellent insight into the world of sports at The Tony Ambrogio Expe...

This is a bit of a continuation of my post on anonymity the other day, focusing on the mainstream media's relationship with the blogosphere. One of the big stories this week was about New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd apparently lifting a paragraph [ Craig Silverman , Regret The Error ] from Talking Points Memo writer Josh Marshall via a shady friend ( Alex Rodriguez 's cousin , perhaps?) and then apologizing for it afterwards. To Dowd's credit, she's been much more apologetic than certain other plagiarists , but her inclusion of a paragraph word-for-word from a friend without any mention that it wasn't her original work is still very troubling. The Dowd situation is just one extreme example of a larger problem, though. One of the things that's troubled me for a long time is the indifference shown by many traditional media outlets towards proper citation of others' work. A particularly egregious recent example comes from that noted bastion of journ...

Everyone and their sister seems to have joined the Twitterati recently, including Steve Nash , Shaq , Will Leitch and Jeff Blair . Normally, I try to resist jumping on the bandwagon, but I saw quite a bit of potential in what Neate has been doing with his feed , especially the links. I'm a long-established fan of throwing out links , but haven't had a lot of time to write those kind of detailed posts recently, so this seems like a good way to get those out along with a few quick observations here and there that I don't have time for an entire post on. Thus, I'll be adding the Twitter feed to the right-hand bar for the time being. We'll see how it develops; feel free to e-mail (andrew_bucholtz at hotmail dot com) or tweet me suggestions on what to do with the feed!

Friend of the blog Norman James of A-Channel London has posted his interview with OHL hockey phenom John Tavares on his site . It's definitely worth a look.