MONDAY -- Flipping my pencil in the air

I had my very own Dave Hodge moment yesterday while driving home from spending Easter with the in-laws in North Battleford Saskatchewan.

After much aggression directed towards my car stereo and a good couple of minutes of road rage I had to explain to my wife why Dave Hodge was fired by CBC.

On March 14, 1987, Hodge was the in-studio host as the CBC carried a game between the Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs, which ended early. The network then switched over to a regional game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Montreal Canadiens for the end of the third period. It ended in a tie just before 11:00 PM Eastern Time, meaning it would require overtime. CBC executives, however, decided that only viewers in Quebec, who had seen the game from the start, would get to continue watching after 11:00, while the rest of the network would cut away. "That's the way things go these days in sports and at this network," Hodge said in disgust, flipping his pencil in the air. "We'll leave you in suspense. Good night from Hockey Night in Canada." Hodge was replaced the following week by western correspondent Ron MacLean and eventually fired from the network.

So why am I relating this story to you and what does it have to do with road rage?

Well it's about a three hour drive from the Battlefords to Bonnyville and we didn't want to get home too late so we ended up starting to drive just as Tiger and Phil were on 13. It took us half an hour to get far enough west to be able to pick up The Fan 960 out of Calgary. It was slightly overcast, for Easter Sunday there was relatively little traffic on the road and with Fox sports radio basically doing play by play of the Masters off there television monitors it was shaping up to be a very pleasant ride home.

A quick stop in Lloydminster for car and human fuel and we were back on the road with the kilometres falling behind and my only thoughts were that ESPN radio probably would have been doing a little better job than Fox radio but I've already complained about The Fan switching so I wasn't going to worry about it too much at least I knew it was going to a three way playoff.

After in-depth analysis of the three tee shots the Fox sports guys had to fit in a commercial break before 5:00, alright no big deal, they gotta pay the bills. After the break though do you think we went back to the Masters coverage? Nope. We had to go to "Blue Jays this Week" or whatever it was called. While I might normally be interested into what Travis Snider is expecting in his first full year with the team this was not something I was interested in hearing at that particular moment.

Now I don't know if Blue Jays this Week is only a 15 minute long program or what but at 5:15 on comes the Sunday Night Baseball pre game show.

I was home before I found out what happened.

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Quick before there is a copyright claim made here's the final three minutes of regulation of the NCAA championship.

And the rest.

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It's Vernon vs. Grande Prairie for the Doyle Cup. The Vipers were 2-1 winners last night on home ice clinching the BCHL crown.