Jim from Montreal keeps e-mailing to ask when I’m going to write my Montreal Canadiens column.
Jim asks nicely, but he is insistent. He’s sent me a few reminders … let me check here … about a hundred million of them in the past little while.
Jim and others are upset at something I wrote at the beginning of the NHL season about the Canadiens and their prospects. In it, I rubbished the team’s chances, mocked them freely and decided that Montreal would be better off taking a year-long sabbatical from the game and coming back in late 2019, refreshed and ready to lose again.
Well, in prognosticatory terms, that turned out to be more palm-reader-who-works-out-of-a-room-behind-the-deli than Nostradamus. Halfway through the year, the Canadiens look like class.
Jim would like me to take it back. And, after trying to squirm out of it for several months, I’m doing that here.
Jim, I apologize. I was wrong. You were right. Mea culpa.
Just thinking about admitting my errors of sports judgment had me feeling lighter.
(This is distinct from my errors of fact, which are numerous, occasionally egregious and almost always caught by editors who are smarter than me. I like to tell people that I am a ‘big-picture’ person rather than a ‘detail’ person. That goes over about as well with your average professional copy editor as you would expect it to.)
I made the mistake of telling my colleagues in the Globe’s toy department about my Carlos Castaneda moment. I thought maybe that way I could just say it out loud, rather than publish it.
They liked the idea.
A lot.
Too much, in fact.
“Maybe you should do more of that,” my editor said.
More of what?
“Falling on your sword.”
Wasn’t that what I just did?
“I mean, maybe you could find a couple more swords.”
More swords?
“Don’t you think there’s a bunch of swords you need to fall on? Like, a field of swords?”
Then she gave me this look. I started writing things down in anticipation of my next performance review.
Another editor began rhyming columns I’ve got horribly wrong off the top of his head. He would’ve kept at that for a while, but he only has 10 fingers.
“We can’t just go sport by sport or team by team,” he said. “You’ll have to eat crow on multiple things under a single topic.”
Except he didn’t say “eat crow.”
He opened a research tool I don’t understand and showed me the display on his desktop. He’d been keeping a list.
“Maybe I should set aside two pages in the paper for this,” my editor said.
“He could do it yearly,” the other editor said.
“More like quarterly.”
“Weekly.”
And then they laughed and pointed.
I was beginning to suspect this was not the right time to ask for a raise.
I tried to defend myself. I was mostly right about the Blue Jays. Generally speaking.
“Mostly?”
Largely.
“What about Tiger Woods?”
Okay, I may have got that one wrong. “You called him the next John Daly.”
How do you remember all of this?
Milos Raonic’s name came up. Sure, I may have been a little hard on Raonic, but I don’t think I was wrong wrong. It’s not like I said the guy is trying to lose. The man can’t make his soft tissues stay connected by force of will.
Then Raonic beat hot, young thing Alex Zverev at the Australian Open and, when I came into work, that editor was also giving me a look. So, sure, I apologize to Raonic. I was wrong.
Somebody recalled that I had said some critical things about former Blue Jay Steve Pearce – none of which were objectively incorrect when I said them – and also recalled that he was chosen MVP of the past World Series for the Boston Red Sox.
In my defence, everyone in baseball who does not work for the Boston Red Sox got that one wrong. All of them make a lot more money than I do. Unlike some people I could mention, I am habitually wrong at a reasonable wage.
What did Peter Chiarelli get paid to trade away half the Edmonton Oilers for a half that doesn’t play hockey? Surely, that makes some sort of difference?
“Are you making this about class?” an editor – I was losing track now – said. Would that work? Then yes, I am.
Nonetheless, sorry Steve Pearce. You were always a lovely guy. I’m happy to be wrong in this instance. Perhaps I would be happier about it if it wasn’t being presented to me in struggle-session format, but okay, whatever.
“Remind us why Jose Bautista hated you so much?”
I think ‘hate’ is a strong word.
“Fine. Extreme dislike.”
I think we’re getting off topic here.
“Just answer the question.”
You know, there’s no point arguing about this any more. Bautista doesn’t even live here any more, or play baseball. But I apologize to him. For what, I’m not sure, but I apologize.
The slaps kept coming. It was by now a Vaudeville act. I’ll skip to the apologies.
I was wrong when I suggested, repeatedly, that Tom Brady is finished. That was more wish-fulfilment than anything else, which is not an excuse, but also sort of is.
Toronto FC? I’ve kicked it like a kid with a can for years. I’ve done so many drive-bys on that club, I could drive to its house blindfolded. I do not apologize for that.
But then the team president gave me a signed paintbrush to rub it in after it won a championship – a play on a joke I’d made about painting the town red – and, despite myself, I was charmed. I hate when that happens.
In lieu of admitting being charmed, I apologize instead. Take that.
I said that Kawhi Leonard didn’t want to come to Toronto. I was wrong about that. But then, years ago, I said the same thing about Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri, and was galactically wrong about that, too. So this isn’t so much a mistake as my own NBA tradition.
I have written off every Olympics and World Cup over the past decade as a disaster in the making and, eventually, I will be right about that. Not yet. But eventually.
Still, wrong for now (which is word-for-word what Isaac Newton said right before he got the light bulb right).
“Tell them that I’m beating you in our Premier League fantasy league,” an editor said.
He is beating me in our Premier League fantasy league. Him and a whole bunch of other people who do not write, in small part, about the Premier League for a living.
I could go on about being wrong, but there must be some space in the Sports section left to my colleagues who are busy getting it right.
This is the point at which I should round back and offer some perspective on all this columnistic guessing. Say something about aiming for the successful gambler’s benchmark – being right 51 per cent of the time.
But I’m not exactly sure where I heard that and it might be wrong. So, sorry, I can’t.