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Saturday December 11, 2021

December 12, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday December 11, 2021

Fans feeling the love, excitement as CFL’s premier game set to kick off

Chants of “Oskee Wee Wee” are echoing through Hamilton, the streets flooded with CFL jerseys from across the country and rival fans are taking part in some good-natured ribbing.

It’s Grey Cup Sunday and the energy surrounding the biggest game in Canadian football can be felt around much of the city.

“The excitement, the fans, the crowds. It’s just going to be an amazing game,” said Pam Broadley who’s been cheering for the home team, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, for two decades.

The Ticats take on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at 6 p.m. ET.

It’s a rematch of the last time the Grey Cup was awarded in 2019, in Calgary, after last season was cancelled amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (CBC) 

 

Posted in: Canada, Hamilton Tagged: 2021-41, blue bombers, cfl, football, Grey Cup, Hamilton, Mascot, Ticats, tiger-cats, Winnipeg

Monday September 7, 2020

September 7, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Fantasy Classic 2020

Illustration by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Labour Day, September 7, 2020

‘It’s like they made the whole thing up’

The Tiger-Cats, the Argos and their colourful fans provide a 2020 Labour Day Classic completely unlike any before

August 20, 2014

Unless Labour Day is part of your geographic and cultural DNA you’d never assume that a single play more than 30 minutes from the end, could determine the final outcome.

Especially when the margin of victory was the minimum one point and the combined score — Hamilton 57, Toronto 56 — was the highest in CFL in history.

But that’s why when we assume on Labour Day, it makes an ass out of u and me, and not just the Toronto Argonauts. 

There were the Argos presuming they could finally add another chapter to the one of the shortest sports books ever written: Great Argonaut Labour Days. But the smug smell of football assumptions turns into a performance-enhancing drug when the Ticats and their fans inhale even a whiff of it.

Toronto captains Joe Krol had correctly predicted Vic Copps’ coin toss to get the northern gale at their backs for the long fourth quarter, a win-advisory in itself. Ever since Environment Canada designated the stadium a National Wind Tunnel, games have been divided into two distinct personalities: you can score with the wind but not into it.

Which is where the final minute of the first half takes over the story of the 50th Labour Day Classic.

With the Argos riding first-quarter wind advantage to a stunning 44-12 lead, they confidently lined up for a short field-goal attempt into the wind from the Hamilton 20-yard-line. Even a single point would make it a five-score game, and it’s over.

High in the open grandstand, man of the of the people and former Argos owner John Candy, was whooping it up beside his glum Hamilton-raised SCTV buddies Martin Short, Dave Thomas and Eugene Levy, egging on the surly citizens who love him every day but this one.

“I think you meant ‘Don’t Suck!’” he yelled. 

Bad karma, John-Boy.

July 9, 2014

The snap from Norm Stoneburgh, Royal Copeland’s hold, the Lance Chomyc’s powerful swing, the ball soaring 50 feet into the air like a helium balloon … then abruptly plummeting like a lead one as it caught the head wind.

“ I thought I was back in Guelph,” Ticat lineman Mike Filer said.

“I thought I was back in the ’65 Grey Cup,” the Argos’s Dave Raimey and Ticats’ Ellison Kelly said in unison.

Speedy Banks thought he was in returner’s heaven. He caught the ball like an infield fly, dashed past 12 frozen Argos then zigzagged into the South End zone around members of the Ticats Cheer Team who’d prematurely hit the field.

After Troy Davis pounded in the two-point convert everyone, including the instantly-paranoid Argos, knew things had completely changed. Down only 24? On Labour Day? Got ‘em right where we want ‘em.

As Banks tore into the end zone, Evelyn Dick — a season’s ticket holder since the 1950s — dressed all in black screamed with innocent joy.

“I was absolutely out of my head,” she said. then paused “ … just like my husband.”

She was joined in her private box by Johnny Papalia who, like a lot of folks in the Murderer’s Row suites, was there in hologram form only. Deeply-experienced in gory history, they knew what was coming next for the Argos. Down the hall, though, blissfully unaware Toronto mayors Rob Ford, John Tory and Nathan Phillips gloated it over Hamilton’s Lloyd Jackson, Bob Morrow, and Fred Eisenberg.

“They’re just like the fans,” grumbled Ticat owner Harold Ballard. “You can’t get the $#%&*’s to come to regular games, but discounts on Labour Day? You can’t get rid of them.”

Just five minutes before Banks’ 109-yard return Ballard had spontaneously sold the Ticats to Bob Young, muttering “maybe this tech nerd can save them.”

Young immediately asked the Argos to immediately sell him Pinball Clemons for the second half. Clemons had already scored touchdowns in three different ways — by run, by catch and by grinning — but Ticat front office interns, Shawn Burke and Drew Allemang, gently explained why it was against CFL rules.

November 28, 2014

“What kind of business model is that?” Young asked.

By the end of the intermission, Young’s right hand man Scott Mitchell had bought back the stadium naming rights from Krispy Kreme and sold them for five times as much to Ron Joyce and Tim Horton, and through commissioner Randy Ambrosie’s CFL 2.0 Japanese connections, had positioned Hamilton as the default site if Tokyo can’t stage the 2021 Olympics.

Banks’ wind-aided home run sent anticipatory adrenalin surging through the entire stadium, including the halftime massed choir and orchestra. When Crowbar, Terra Lightfoot, Junk House, Frankie Venom and Teenage Head, Arkells, Monster Truck, Garnett and Stan Rogers, and Neil Peart struck their first note, conductor Boris Brott’s glasses disintegrated.

And, over the next 30 minutes, so did the Argonauts. 

The Argos crumbled under a revived and ferocious Hamilton defence, and did not score a second-half point while touching the ball. Ralph Sazio surrendered six safety touches. “Not my first rodeo,” the Ticats’ head coach growled.

Tobin Rote who had combined with Flutie for five touchdown passes in the opening 30 minutes, soon left the game, missing a part of his left ear later found embedded in Angelo Mosca’s face mask.

Meanwhile Danny McManus and Bernie Faloney, sacked a combined eight times in the first half, threw only one incompletion and an interception in the second, while flinging surgical touchdown passes to Hal Patterson, Earl Winfield and Banks. They controlled the clock against the wind too handing off to Willie Bethea, Lee Knight and Bernie Custis, the only guy in the game with a school named after him.

Banks added a punt-return major to his missed field goal and reception touchdowns and scored again when he recovered a fourth-quarter fumble by Dickie Thornton, whose interception seconds earlier should have locked it up, again, for the Argos.

And late in the fourth quarter, Banks lined up deep in the backfield and as Joe Zuger’s punt hit the stiff breeze, caught it on the fly and ran 65 yards for the game-winning touchdown. It was his fifth different method of scoring, equalling in one game the CFL season record set by Ticat Marcus Thigpen.

The Argos still had one last chance, with the wind, at victory. But Garney Henley stepped in front of Mookie Mitchell to pick off Flutie and it was all done. The Ticats outscored Toronto 45-12 in the second half, enough by just one point.

The visuals painted the entire picture. Every Box J Boy, tailgating since Sunday, rendered totally limp; Henley and Banks buried under an avalanche of fans, Custis and Toronto’s Uly Curtis walked off arm in arm; brilliant Argo linebacker Mike O’Shea’s shoulders slumped in dejection, as he stood exactly where he had whenever he wasn’t on the field — which almost the entire second half — on the sidelines, distanced from his safety-conscious teammates, while a ReStore employee picked up the hundreds of tiny batteries Ticats fans had lobbed at him.

What if, he was probably wondering, that first-half place kick hadn’t hit a wall of wind? 

He’ll never know, what if, and neither will we because the 50th Labour Day Classic goes into the books just like another 35 before it. Ho-hum, just another win for the Town Team. (Steve Milton – Hamilton Spectator)

Posted in: Hamilton Tagged: 2020-29, argonauts, Argos, cfl, Classic, Coronavirus, covid-19, dream, fantasy, football, Hamilton, Labour Day, Ontario, pandemic, Pandemic Times, psychedelic, Sports, tiger-cats, Toronto

Wednesday August 30, 2017

August 29, 2017 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 30, 2017

“We made a large and serious mistake:” Bob Young apologizes to TiCat fans

Hamilton Tiger-Cats owner Bob Young is apologizing after a controversial near hire that sent fans and corporate partners into a frenzy.

“We made a large and serious mistake. We want to apologize to our fans, corporate partners and the Canadian Football League. It has been a difficult season and we are searching for answers. This is clearly not one of them,” Young said in a statement on Tuesday.

Art Briles – whose invitation to be a coach here was pulled late last night, was fired as the head coach of Baylor University last May after an investigation discovered the school mishandled numerous sexual assault allegations, including some against football players and that “football personnel chose not to report sexual violence and dating violence.”

CEO Scott Mitchell says the franchise was caught off guard by the level of anger that would follow the hiring of Briles, who’d been at the centre of one of the largest sexual assault scandals in U.S. college history.

“We underestimated the tsunami of negativity that was going to happen,” Mitchell told The Fan590 radio station in Toronto.

Mitchell said he believed Briles deserved a second chance after being fired from Baylor but society and the media decided it wasn’t the time. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Posted in: Hamilton Tagged: Art Briles, Baylor, coach, disaster, Hamilton, Scott Mitchell, Ticats, tiger-cats, Tim Horton Field, winless

Friday October 2, 2015

October 1, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Friday October 2, 2015 O Canada: Nationalism soars as Jays head into postseason glory For most Canadian baseball fans in the last 22 years, the red maple leaf as a fall classic has been the preserve of trees in their autumnal splendour. But not this October. We as a nation are about to be reminded of that little red symbol on the Toronto Blue Jays logo, during what is hopefully a full month of October baseball in the Great White North. The maple leaf is once more going to be the totem of a Canadian nationalism not seen since the days of Kim Campbell, Pearl Jam and season five of Seinfeld. Whether the players are Canadian Ð it matters not. The Jays are CanadaÕs only Major League Baseball team Ð and their incredible success over the last two months gets the nationalist blood flowing. ItÕs a tribal instinct that makes us all feel like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. When Josh Donaldson won the teamÕs last home game in September with a walk-off home run, the SkyDome Ð ahem, Rogers Centre Ð physically shook. It was a tremor felt across the country, united once more by the possibility of whatÕs to come. Part of the reason for the current passion is the excruciating time that has elapsed between anything meaningful (read: winning) in Canadian professional sport. The last World Series and Stanley Cup wins by Canadian clubs both last occurred in 1993. The nationalists have been gnashing their teeth ever since. WeÕve seen this phenomenon before: I remember the overwhelming patriotism fuelled by the Blue Jays in 1985, when the team first won the American League East. Elspeth Cameron wrote in this paper that the club had done Òmore for Canadian nationalism than Terry Fox or Anne Murray.Ó A few years later, in 1992, when the team won its first of back-to-back World Series championships, the country hit peak patriotism. The only comparison journalists could draw upon for the key moment was Pau

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 2, 2015

O Canada: Nationalism soars as Jays head into postseason glory

For most Canadian baseball fans in the last 22 years, the red maple leaf as a fall classic has been the preserve of trees in their autumnal splendour. But not this October.

We as a nation are about to be reminded of that little red symbol on the Toronto Blue Jays logo, during what is hopefully a full month of October baseball in the Great White North.

The maple leaf is once more going to be the totem of a Canadian nationalism not seen since the days of Kim Campbell, Pearl Jam and season five of Seinfeld.

Whether the players are Canadian – it matters not. The Jays are Canada’s only Major League Baseball team – and their incredible success over the last two months gets the nationalist blood flowing. It’s a tribal instinct that makes us all feel like we belong to something bigger than ourselves.

When Josh Donaldson won the team’s last home game in September with a walk-off home run, the SkyDome – ahem, Rogers Centre – physically shook. It was a tremor felt across the country, united once more by the possibility of what’s to come.

Part of the reason for the current passion is the excruciating time that has elapsed between anything meaningful (read: winning) in Canadian professional sport. The last World Series and Stanley Cup wins by Canadian clubs both last occurred in 1993. The nationalists have been gnashing their teeth ever since.

We’ve seen this phenomenon before: I remember the overwhelming patriotism fuelled by the Blue Jays in 1985, when the team first won the American League East. Elspeth Cameron wrote in this paper that the club had done “more for Canadian nationalism than Terry Fox or Anne Murray.”

A few years later, in 1992, when the team won its first of back-to-back World Series championships, the country hit peak patriotism. The only comparison journalists could draw upon for the key moment was Paul Henderson’s famous goal in 1972. (Continued: Globe & Mail)


 

Some Toronto love, Hamilton?

Posted by The Hamilton Spectator on Thursday, October 1, 2015

Posted in: Canada, Hamilton, Ontario Tagged: Baseball, Blue Jays, Canada, fair-weather, fan, football, Hamilton, rivalry, Sports, Ticats, tiger-cats, Toronto

Friday November 28, 2014

November 28, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Friday November 28, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 28, 2014

Rare football double-double brewing in Hamilton this weekend

(By Scott Radley) It was a brisk November Saturday in Winnipeg — aren’t they all? — when the undefeated, second-ranked McMaster Marauders showed up to go head-to-head with the Manitoba Bisons in a Canadian university semifinal game. The next day, it was the Tiger-Cats’ turn as they visited the hometown Blue Bombers in the Canadian Football League’s East final.

Nobody at the time was thinking much about geography and how it might be awhile until a similar story could be told again.

Yet it turns out that weekend 13 years ago was the last time a city hosted a CFL and interuniversity semifinal on the same weekend and won them both. Meaning the McMaster Marauders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats have a chance to do something incredibly special this weekend.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013On Saturday at 4 p.m., the Marauders will take on the Mount Allison Mounties in the Mitchell Bowl at Ron Joyce Stadium. The winner goes to the Vanier Cup to play for the national championship in Montreal. The next day at 1 p.m., the Ticats face the Montreal Alouettes at Tim Hortons Field. Winner goes to the Grey Cup in Vancouver.

Win them both and this city will kick off one of the great weeks of football anticipation and pigskin partying this country has ever seen.

“It would be one hell of a week in Hamilton,” Ticat legend Angelo Mosca says.

A handful of Canadian cities have attempted to pull the home-victory double since Winnipeg last did it. As recently as 2013, Calgary hosted both games. While the University of Calgary Dinos advanced, the Stampeders lost. Just as had happened in 2010. In 2002, the Alouettes won when the double took place in Montreal, but McGill lost.

There have been other permutations and combinations. Cities have had their two teams play on the same weekend, but not both at home. Cities have had their two teams win the semis but on different weekends. But it’s been a while since the stars aligned and both hosts won and advanced to their championship games within 24 hours of each other.

It’s already a huge deal. Amazingly, there’s more.

Adding an exclamation mark to Hamilton’s claim as Footballtown or Gridironland or whatever the souvenir T-shirt manufacturers might come up with, is the fact that next week this city is hosting the OFSAA Bowls. Nine high school provincial championships will be played at Ron Joyce Stadium, three each on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)


 

SOCIAL MEDIA

Cover of @TheSpec football champ. special section featuring brill cover by @mackaycartoons #ticats #vanier #greycup pic.twitter.com/3LIWLJphCR

— Jim Poling (@JimatTheSpec) November 28, 2014

 

Posted in: Canada, Hamilton Tagged: football, Grey Cup, Hamilton, Marauders, McMaster, Ticats, tiger-cats, Vanier Cup
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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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