Referenews

For about three years now, most of the baseball world has wanted various current and former Houston Astros to just admit what happened in 2017. It wouldn’t change much, but everyone wants to be right to the biggest level possible. It wouldn’t really sully these players any more than they already have been, nor wash away how they’ve moved on. They’ve either proven what players they are without doing their own Stomp act in the dugout, or they’re out of the game. They’ve all made whatever money was coming to them. Even A.J. Hinch got another job, and Alex Cora is back in the dugout. Only Carlos Beltran has had to still eat it.

Apparently, all it takes for one former Astro to come clean is to get loaded and not have Drunk Mode set on his phone. Evan Gattis, ladies and gents…

This isn’t anything you didn’t know, but Gattis has so far just been the only person to admit to what went down in 2017. In vino veritas, as they say.

Although Gattis does kind of shoot his own credibility to pieces not too much longer after…

Hey, Jose Canseco blew the roof off the whole PED thing in baseball, so I suppose a drunk, racist ranting Evan Gattis can be just as acceptable of a source for this. It’s baseball — 60 percent of the league is drunk and racist at minimum.

It’s been six years now, and there’s nothing much left to be done about whatever went on in 2017. The Astros have piled up three more World Series appearances, and another championship — and thanks to that are basically the gold standard in baseball. It’s obvious by now that they weren’t merely products of going around the rules. All the stars have proven to be just that — stars. Gattis is the exact kind of fading palooka that the cheating scandal would have benefited most. He seems to know that, however addled he may have been when authoring this confession.

But there’s a reason your friends take your phone away at last call.

Erik Karlsson notches 100 points

Couple of hockey notes to wrap up. Erik Karlsson notched two points in the Sharks’ loss to the Jets, making him the first defenseman to rack up 100 points in a season in 31 years. The fact that he’s done it with an utter garbage Sharks team is truly bewildering. If any of the teams that were rumored to at least be considering stumping up the cost in both trade and the rest of his contract were watching, they’ll almost certainly rue not making the choice to do what it takes to get a player who can bend a game as much as EK65.

Eddie Olczyk, gatekeeper

And then just some hilarity and petulance. Eddie Olczyk, as he is the self-appointed governor of all that is right and true in hockey and broadcasting, apparently took it on himself to admonish ESPN’s Leah Hextall over the weekend.

A quick primer, during ESPN’s coverage of the Kraken’s win over the Coyotes last Thursday, Hextall did use a goal call that has been made famous by Kraken play-by-play man John Forslund. Maybe she thought it was a cute nod to the local guy while doing a national game in Seattle, maybe it was a slip, who knows, and who cares?

Well, apparently Olczyk does. On Saturday’s local coverage, Olczyk was certainly referencing Hextall, though not really having the stones to do it by name. You can hear Forslund in the background trying to move things along. Maybe Forslund didn’t want to make a thing of it, or maybe he was caught off-guard by Olczyk’s comments, but is this really worth making time for during a game?

If Olczyk were concerned with anything other than himself, which would be a true miracle, he would know that Hextall has come in for enough shit from the hockey world since she got to call playoff games last year. Some of the criticism is valid, but most of it is over the top because she has committed the crime of having a uterus while calling hockey games. You’d like to think that Olczyk would have sense enough not to pile on to a fellow broadcaster already swimming upstream in the industry. But that would call for awareness outside a mirror, something Eddie O has generally failed to have.

If Forslund was upset about it, he could make it his fight. He’s got a microphone too. If he didn’t feel the need, there’s no reason that Olczyk should, only to make Hextall’s life that much harder. Hope he’s happy.