Simmons Says: touch the back of your throat with your index finger

In 1965, well past deadline and struggling to finish an article for Esquire magazine, Tom Wolfe transcribed the contents of his notebook with disregard for style and structure. In the process, he produced a classic of fly-on-the-wall reporting and helped create an entirely new form of literature known as New Journalism.

Every week, Steve Simmons dumps the inane jottings from his diary into microsoft word, and the Sun publishes them in a column called Simmons Says. I know comparing The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby to Simmons' ramblings is like comparing apples to oranges, but for the record I would like to state that Wolfe's orange is massive, seedless ball of exquisite flavour that wards off colds and cures cancer, while Simmons' apple is so withered and nasty that even worms won't touch it.

Today, Simmons informs us that:

What Josh Towers lacks in arm strength, he makes up for in stones. If more Blue Jays had his fight, this team wouldn't be languishing in the middle of all of baseball ...

Steve Simmons is correct. If more Blue Jays were like Josh Towers, they wouldn't be languishing in the middle of all baseball. They would have a team ERA of 5.36 and have a winning % of .357. They would be in last place.

Numbers that don't add up: Bonds has had 12 100-RBI seasons. Aaron had 11. The great smiling phony, Joe Carter, had 10

Joe Carter had a decent career and played a large role in bringing two World Series to Toronto. Steve Simmons doesn't like him on a personal level, so he trashes him in a newspaper column. Simmons probably thought that was a quick and biting remark that would make Truman Capote jealous. Everyone else probably thinks Simmons is petty and childish and sounds like the kind of jerk who would start a blog just to trash the sports and media personalities that he doesn't like...

I see where the Pittsburgh Penguins signed defenceman Mike Weaver. Apparently, Earnie Shavers, Ron Lyle and Tim Witherspoon were unavailable ...

FYI, that is a boxing joke. Except jokes are supposed to be funny...At least we finally got a hockey reference in here, since this blog is supposed to be about Toronto Maple Leafs hockey and the cartel of idiots that write about it, and not some second-rate version of Fire Joe Morgan (which does what this blog attempts to do, only first, funnier, and mostly about baseball)

Little known fact: Joe Torre played the first eight seasons of his big-league career with Aaron in Milwaukee and Atlanta ...

...A lot of people know that Joe Torre started his career in Milwaukee, and everyone knows Aaron played for the Braves. I would wager that most hardcore baseball fans know this, as does everyone in Joe Torre's family, everyone who read his autobiography, Hank Aaron, me, people who heard Joe Torre's comments regarding Bonds' 756th home run, and anyone who read the New York Times on Wednesday. By my calculations, 64.7 million people know of this little-known fact, making it, in fact, a well-known fact... An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain - now that is a little known fact. It is legal to duel in Portugal as long as both duelers are registered blood donors - little known fact. A snail can sleep for three years...

...And hey, whatever became of Turner Ward?

I know I know! Turner Ward retired as a player in 2001, is now a manager in the New York-Penn league, and he still gets asked all the time about that catch he made when he crashed through the wall in 1998. It took me three seconds to find that out on Google. Simmons ends every Sunday column with this "hey, whatever happened to," bit, and I'm not sure if this is a fun game for his readers or if he is just too lazy to do research for himself, but either way, the whole thing strikes me as rude: "My god, that Turner Ward sure disappeared into a lifetime of insignificance because I haven't heard about him in years and now I can stick him in my column with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge and feel superior because I am Steve Simmons, the most-read sports columnist in Canada."

Dick.

Turner Ward seems like a nice guy, with a family and a job doing what he loves. I'm sure the fact that you don't know what happened to him after his name disappeared from the Blue Jays Media Guide means little to him.

That part about Simmons being the most read sports columnist in Canada is actually true, according to TSN. I'm sure this says more about the number of Sun papers in Canada than it does about the tastes of the Canadian public, but it is still mind-boggling. If there was any justice in this country, Stephen Brunt would have that title. Stephen Brunt writes thoughtful and detailed columns about a wide range of sports events and issues. Simmons writes stuff like this:

Just re-read the bestseller Moneyball, a book that doesn't age very well. The very premise that computers can pick ball players better than scouts becomes almost laughable upon further review ...

That quote comes from a column that Simmons wrote in December 2005. I saved it just in case I ever found a public forum to announce that those two sentences are easily the stupidest lines every written in the history of the English language. According to Simmons, he just re-read Moneyball. That means he read it at least twice. That means he has the reading comprehension of a three year old, because nowhere in that book does it say that computers can pick ball players better than scouts. Nowhere.

And hey, whatever happened to Al Strachan?