Gallagher - Big league babble on: the misadventures of a rabble-rousing sportscaster and why he should be dead by now

1 How to Provoke Thousands of Rabid Soccer Fans

2 I Should Be Dead by Now

3 How Drinking with John Gallagher Saved Mark Wahlbergs Life

4 Hey, Wanna Go to the Playboy Midsummer Nights Dream Party at Hugh Hefners Mansion?

5 Karma. I Hate That Bitch.

6 I Hope I Die at the Age of Ninety-Nine in Bed After Being Shot in the Back of the Head by a Jealous Boyfriend

7 Lets Talk About Chicks, Man

8 Sportscasting: Turning Your Passion into a Profession

9 Radio Dazed

10 CityTV Everywhere

11 So Fleetwood Mac Is Making Another Comeback. Also Making a Comeback: Cocaine, Wife Swapping, and Royalty Cheques

12 G.O.A.T.: The Greatest of All Time

13 Captain Hairplugs to the Rescue!

14 No Longer Destinys Doormats

15 I Kissed a Man (Robbie Alomar) and I Liked It

16 Smugglers Blues

17 You Can Take the Girl Out of the Trailer Park, but You Cant Take the What Out of Her Mouth?

18 Blue Morning, Blue Day

19 Yogi, Teddy Baseball, the Yankee Clipper, Spaceman, and the Duke

20 Yes, Mr. Gallagher, Your Net Is Ready

21 Killer Instinct

22 Listen, Buddy. If You Say Another Word, Im Gonna Kick You Out and Drive the Fucking Thing Myself.

23 The Kid Stays in the Picture

24 Just. Great.

25 Comedy Isnt Pretty

26 Spanning the Globe

27 Spring Is Sprung, the Grass Is Riz, I Wonder Where the Blue Jays Is?

28 The Prizefight Wasnt a 10, But Bo Was

29 Champagne Showers and Roid Rage Dreams

30 Jurassic Prank: The Early Salad Years of the Toronto Raptors

31 All Talk. No Acting.

32 (Not Such a) Rock n Roll Suicide

Acknowledgements

How to Provoke Thousands of Rabid Soccer Fans

(or, as the police run alongside my convertible,
I hear shots ring out and hundreds screaming,
Death to Gallagher!)

A hh , soccer, the beautiful game. Question: Whats the highlight of the night in a nilnil tie with zero shots on goal in a game? Just asking. For decades now I have enraged soccer fans by suggesting its the stupidest game ever invented. I still believe I may have a point when a team can play a whole game without a shot on goal and still win the league championship. Hello, Seattle Sounders (who beat Toronto FC for the 2016 MLS title without one shot on net). Just saying I hate soccer. I know hate is a strong word, but its such a strong hate. Ive seen the game on grand scales World Cup qualifying matches in London and Dublin. And, more importantly, Ive played the game. I get it. I made senior varsity soccer in high school. It was a joke. My team at Montreal West H.S. was brutal. Maybe thats why I hate it so much. Honestly, we looked like the Island of Misfit Toys. You didnt, and still dont, have to be fast or big or coordinated or smart to play. Soccer players are usually the guys who couldnt make the cut in other sports. And soccer players are pansies. I yell, laughingly, at my siblings and neighbours who take their kids to soccer games. Let the kid play hockey, baseball, football come onnn! Buy the kid a glove; let him or her play a real sport, I plead

You see, soccer is the most popular sport simply because its the least expensive to play. Lets just break that down. All one has to do is look at the economic status of the countries where its popular to understand that. Hell, if you have five cans and two old boots for goalposts, then youve got a game. Soccer isnt popular because it earned acceptance; soccer is popular because most countries, underdeveloped or otherwise, had no choice but to accept it.

Soccer players openly weep when they trip over another player, as if theyve been shot. Hey, here comes the stretcher! Wait, the magic sponge will bring them back to life. Miraculous! And footy is freaking boring. Bore-freaking-ing. My standard line on soccer is that the eyes of North American sports fans arent trained for the sport. We want goals and runs, damn it. Lots of them. Perhaps its because the first NHL game I ever saw was at the Montreal Forum back in 1972 when the Canadiens beat the L.A. Kings 102. I like ten-goal games from flying Frenchmen playing fire-waging hockey. Baseball? Love it. Listen, I saw Bob Gibson of the Cardinals pitch a number of times at Jarry Park in Montreal. The good news is all of his games were under ninety minutes. The bad news is that they ended 10 Cardinals. You want a pitching duel, fine. A goaltending duel, great. World Cup soccer? You watch it. But where? When I was growing up there was no ABC Monday Night Soccer game on TV. Or an NBC game of the week. All we saw were snippets of the great Pel scoring for Brazil during the opening montage on Wide World of Sports, for goodness sake. Truth be told, if there was a soccer game on, you wouldnt see me tuning in. And what is this with kicking backward? We like our offences moving forward, not backward. Then theres the fact that theyre not allowed to use their hands what the eff? David Letterman and I have a lot in common when it comes to sports. He made a great suggestion for improving NBA basketball, and Ive been quoting him on it for twenty years: give both teams one hundred points and let them play the final two minutes. Smart, eh? Dave hates soccer, too. Among his reasons? Here are some from one of his famous top-ten lists:

• Loud horns make it hard to nap through boring parts;
• Bench-clearing brawls not as much fun without bats or sticks;
• Lots of players with umlauts in their names;
• Doesnt have the heart-pounding action of a five-hour baseball game;
• Too much kicking, not enough rasslin; and look out
• Too many foreigners.

Ouch. Yet some of these foreigners kill people over soccer matches. Hundreds of fans have been killed before, during, and after harmless footy matches. The worst killing was that of Columbian defender Andrs Escobar, who accidentally put the ball in his own net at the 1994 World Cup and became a massive national disappointment. Ten days later, the twenty-seven-year-old Escobar was shot dead in a Columbian disco parking lot in a killing that sparked national outrage. The killers yelled, Thanks for the own goal! as they shot him six times. Charming.

I certainly dont want to get killed over a soccer match, but it almost happened. This brings us to the 1994 World Cup final game. I was in Torontos Little Italy reporting on the championship finale of a sport that I categorically, without question, unequivocally, and beyond any doubt, despise. Well, these observations and more were all contained in my wildly popular Q commentary just before the World Cup final. Not to worry; there arent any foreigners living in the Greater Toronto Area. Or soccer fans, for that matter. I kid.

Thousands upon thousands of fans gathered at the corner of College and Clinton, a perfect storm of Brazilian/Portuguese and Italian fans waiting for the outcome of this classic footy tilt. Classic, my classical gas. After 120 tedious and goalless minutes yes, it ended zero fucking zero the match was decided for the first time by a penalty shoot-out. After four rounds, Brazil led 32, and Roberto Baggio had to score to keep Italys hopes alive. He missed by shooting it way over the crossbar, and the Brazilians were crowned champions for the fourth time. That made for a lot of pissed-off Italians. And a lot of drunken Brazilians pouring in from the surrounding neighbourhoods. And theres me, Mr. Soccer himself, on top of the CityTV live eye truck broadcasting the results to the football-crazed masses. It wasnt even my regular shift! I was just filling in for the weekend anchor, whod taken the day off. Remember, hockey fans tried to burn down Vancouver after they lost the Stanley Cup. Hell, my hometown of Montreal attempted the same thing and they