Canzano: If I Did It

The sidebar here at GFT looks different today, because this past weekend two things happened in Portland pro sports.

First, Portland's box (indoor) lacrosse team lost a first-round playoff game to San Jose 20-16.

And then the Lumberjax ownership announced that the game was the last that the team would ever play in Portland.

Well.

I'm sorry. I enjoyed the game, I liked the team, despite all the ridiculous bush-league nonsense (the roaring announcer, the ass-shaking "dance team") that went with the events.

But as irking as the entire debacle was, the MOST irking thing was a column that Portland sports columnist John Canzano wrote the next day.

"The LumberJax will cease operating immediately?

Wonderful. Because this city has had enough with skateboarding, riverboarding, and low-level golf and motor sports events. We deserve more than to choke in the nauseous fumes left from those trying to sell us sideshow sports as if they're main events...the sports sediment that floats around the bowl makes Portland feel, and look, like a smaller market than it really is."

I have no problem with Canzano hating the indoor lacrosse game, or the particular team. My beef with the guy is that he spent his entire column slamming the Jax, the NLL and the sport without ever mentioning his own, and his paper's, responsibility for the failure of the franchise and all the other "non-Blazer" professional sports in Portland.

Seriously.

I have never picked up the Oregonian sports page and seen a Jax, or a Timbers, or a AAA Beavers story on the front page above the fold. OK, there's usually one story right before their seasons open and one on opening day/night. Every so often they'll run something about a special event, like a U.S. Soccer match or a visiting team, or an all star game in PDX. But most of the time? Page four, at best, behind the Blazers, pro baseball (critical for all the Mariners fans here...), the NFL draft, NASCAR...Canzano and the O have never accepted their part in building support for local pro sports here. I'm not talking cheerleading, but, damn, man! You have a pro lacrosse team in your town! Isn't that more important sports news that what the hell happened to the Mariners in Seattle? You have a pro soccer team in your town? Shouldn't that be front page news when your NBA team isn't playing?

Canzano could have generated buzz for the Jax. He could have talked about players, trades, game strategies, the connection between the pro game, the big colleges, box lax in Canada, the OSAA and the clubs. He could have badgered the sports editors into doing more features on the club. He didn't. And then, when the team dies, instead of having the tact to shut his piehole, he vomits all over the sports page about how the NLL and the Jax were "muddled and forced" on Portland.

OJ would have been proud.

Give 'em the axe, the axe...

...go get 'em, Lumberjax!!
Back when I was just a slip of a lad, living back East, I used to play lacrosse. Helluva great game - probably the only real "American" game, if you want to split hairs, since what we call "football" was originally rugby and our baseball descended from a bunch of at-and-ball games but probably principally "rounders". Fast, exciting to watch and play, requiring considerable skill but easy enough to understand: ball, stick, goal. Easy, right?

I still have a love for the game that has survived age, increasing slowness and a move to the Pacific Northwest, where LaX is just catching on. I've even scrounged up a little stick for the Peeper and played catch with him this summer (he calls it his "hawk" stick - for "hawkey"?). Tonight my lovely bride gave me the night off to go play, so I took in the first game of the season of our Portland Lumberjax.

The Jax looked pretty ragged tonight, losing to New York 14-11, with a better second half salvaging possibly the worst single period of lacrosse I've seen in twenty years: Portland trailed 7-1 at the end of the first fifteen minutes and even pulled their starting goalie, perennial All-Star Dallas Eliuk, who was getting shelled.

Portland's defense was...mmm...sketchy at best, and the team looked out of shape and disorganized at times. I have to say I was embarrased for the Jax, and that's saying something since I still remember the fucking child-abuse comic book...


One thing I noticed tonight is that I really HATE the "offense/defense" style of play that appears to dominate the NLL. This involves a complete turnover of players on the floor everytime possession of the ball turns over. It's not necessary, it looks idiotic and it slows down play tremendously. Ted Montour at e-lacrosse called it back in 2006: "O/D lacrosse is no longer "the fastest game on two feet". Field lacrosse middies run possibly several thousand yards a game, every game...surely an indoor "transition" can run more than a couple of hundred feet!

And, Angie? (Angela Batinovich is the team owner and husband of one of the players) The damn dancers don't really add anything. And it's really OK for there to be times in the game where there isn't any canned music, fakey chants and hyped-up crowd noisemaking announcements. Lacrosse is a great game - but if you act like you don't think it an work without the hokey "professional sports" crapola, well...we won't either

But minor bitching aside, I still had a lovely evening; I enjoyed watching skilled players play the Creator's Game, luxuriated in a late steak dinner at the Widmer Gasthaus at N. Interstate and Russell and home to a sleepy house. A little blogging and a little internet surfing and it's time for bed...I love my wife, my kids, my home and my life.

But it's nice to take a couple of hours and just be me.