Bribing public officials isn’t unique to Chicago, Washington DC or even this country. Canadian officials are down for a little quid pro quo although their demands are uniquely America Jr.

Montreal is caught up in the rapture of the Charbonneau corruption inquiry. It’s got everything you would want. Bribery, mafia involvement, bid rigging, price fixing and free hockey tickets.

A half-dozen employees from the city’s engineering department have testified and every single one of them has admitted to taking free hockey tickets whenever they could get them.

They were wined, dined and bribed by construction bosses. Some took gifts ranging from golf vacations to free home renovations. Some accepted money, some said they refused it. One witness said he drew the line at prostitutes and declined to accept the paid company of young women.

But nobody said no to Habs games — the hottest ticket in a hockey-mad town.

Imagine if Richard Daley could have bought off Chicago aldermen with nothing but Blackhawk tickets. Flying cars and moving sidewalks everywhere. A Kuma’s and Tuman’s Alcohol Abuse Center on every corner.

Habs tickets are serious business in Montreal. Individual tickets can go for almost $100 before they hit the resale market. Once they do, forget about it unless you work for the city of Montreal.

Some Montreal municipal employees managed to get tickets for $0.

In exchange, they did a few favours for construction bosses.

Some allegedly doctored work plans, approved false expenses, or shared inside information that ensured certain companies won bids and subsequently inflated the price of a project.

Their work helped businessmen set up a construction cartel in the city, in which a small cabal rigged bids and overcharged for public works. Under that system, illicit profits were divvied up between companies, municipal officials, political parties, and the Italian Mafia.

In at least one case, the hockey tickets appeared to have been as coveted as a bribe.

Taking Habs tickets in return for favors was “standard procedure”.

Hockey tickets also work as currency at the national level. Ottawa is flush with lobbyists handing out Senators tickets like hot cakes. One can only hope they’re more discreet and have a little more pride than Mayor Adrian Fenty and the DC City Council members who fought over Nationals tickets like children. That’s nothing new to DC residents.

Then there was the recent report of a Canadian diplomat charging taxpayers $10,000 to host business officials in a private box at a game in Pittsburgh — a practice that Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird ordered stopped.

Forget international fact-finding junkets to exotic locales. We goin’ to Pittsburgh to see the Pens and get some Primanti Bros. for the drive back to Ottawa! Saku Koivu! That’s what I’m talkin’ aboot!

It’s good to see the Canadians aren’t letting a little inquiry get in the way of business as usual. The Star reports that the Montreal City Council is still awarding contracts to construction firms that are still under investigation. Keep it réel, Habs.

I was catching up on some MLB transactions yesterday and I saw that the Texas Rangers just signed 23 year old Cuban defector and outfielder Leonys Martin to a Major League contract. Great move for the Rangers. They gave this 6’2″, 190lbs, left fielder a $5 million signing bonus and $15.5 million total for the second richest contract given out to a Cuban defector ever. This guy must be good huh? Judging from his stats in the Cuba league, he should be. Here’s what he did in Cuba:

He hit .398 in 2007-08 in Cuba, garnering some attention with the second-highest batting average in the league. He also had 13 stolen bases and nine triples.

In 2008-09, Martin batted .311 and had a .491 on-base percentage. He stole 17 bases and was fifth in the league in walks with 78.

To my keen baseball eye, this kid looks like he could be quite the leadoff hitter for a few years to come. He’s got a good eye, gets walks and hits and he steals bases. I mean, he sounds ideal as a leadoff hitter if he can duplicate his success in Cuba at the Major League level. He looks like everything that Nyjer Morgan wishes he was! Now, which team that I follow does not have one of those leadoff hitter type players I was just speaking of…hm…oh wait, THE WASHINGTON NATIONALS.

This really begs the question, “Why didn’t we even hear any mention of the Washington Nationals with regards to this player?” We heard their name bandied about in discussions with Aroldis Chapman who eventually signed with the Cincinnati Reds for the largest contract ever handed out to a Cuban defector (over $30 million) but we didn’t hear a peep about the Nationals with regards to Martin at all. WHAT GIVES?

Currently the Nationals have no legitimate lead-off hitter on their team. Ian Desmond and Danny Espinosa have failed miserably at the #1 spot in the Nationals’ lineup. Also, the highest batting average of a regular starter on their team belongs to a pitcher, Jason Marquis, who is batting .385 in 14 at bats. Not to mention the highest on base percentage of a position player is the .415 belonging to their catcher Wilson Ramos with no other active regular player having an OBP over .333. In light of all of this lack of offensive production, do you think the Nationals might want to make an attempt to get in on the bidding of a player that could help them out sooner and/or later?

Besides being a weak hitting team with no lead-off man in sight for the immediate future, its not as if the Nationals’ outfield, as currently constructed, is under-going some sort of youth movement. Mike Morse is 29, Rick Ankiel is 31, Laynce Nix is 30 and, recently signed to a big money seven year deal, Jason Werth is 32 years old.  That is old!  Obtaining the services of  what looks like the 23 year old Cuban version of a skinny Tony Gwinn might be something a GM would want to do to keep the overall “youth” movement of the team going forward. Sure phenom Bryce Harper is going to be joining the outfield as early as next season but wouldn’t it have been great if the team could have a second young guy that could get on base in front of Harper so that he could pick up a few RBI opportunities?

Sure it is way too early to know if Martin is the real deal but the point is that Leonys Martin could be that guy and certainly appears to have a better chance at being that guy than the majority of the outfields the Nationals currently have on their roster.

Sure we don’t know all the behind the scenes discussions between agents and front office types, but the media knew about the Nationals’ discussions with Chapman and so far no one has said any of the same discussions happened with Martin. If Mike Rizzo was too busy celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s death at the White House when he could have been making phone calls trying to get another talented young outfielder on his team, then maybe the Nationals need to hire a new GM.

It was painful to miss out on the flamethrower arm of Chapman but at least the Nationals tried. Not making the same attempt to gain the services of Martin, especially in light of the lack of organizational depth and lack of production from the current Major League roster, is practically inexcusable.

Young Washington National, Bryce Harper, played in his first simulated game against real major leaguers yesterday afternoon and do you want to guess how he fared in his two at bats?  Well he struck out twice.  Disappointing?  Totally! Surprising?  Not in the least.

It just can’t be surprising if you’ve followed sports in this town for the last twenty years.  DC has been full of young athletes with promise that only serve to let us down over and over again.  We have had several high draft picks or young phenoms that have come into this town and failed, sometimes in spectacular fashion.  DC might actually be one of the worst cities in all of sports in terms of positively assisting in a young athlete’s growth.

Plus, he’s super young (big strike against him), he’s super confident (can he handle not having immediate success), and he’s super inexperienced (can he handle injuries, can he handle the life in the big city, can he handle his money). The odds really are stacked against this kid unless the stars align.

The stars rarely align in DC however. If history is our guide, Harper will be yet another huge disappointment. So let’s look at a brief history of the other highly touted disappointments DC has had, at least in recent memory:

Stephen Strasburg

Ok, so sure, its a little early to judge the whole career of this kid but c’mon, he blew out his arm in his first taste of the majors.  That is a huge disappointment.  Especially from a pitcher who can only be compared to the likes of Doc Gooden, who never took care of his body and in fact abused it to hell with drugs and partying but still managed to avoid Tommy John surgery his entire career.  This city named the day that Strasburg pitched “Strasmas!” for crying out loud. What a huge disappointment that in his FIRST YEAR he blew out his arm.

Sure he could recover from it and be as good or even better than what he was those first few starts he had for the Nationals.  On the other hand, he couldn’t.  Knowing DC superstar disappointment history…he probably won’t. As of right now, this whole city is disappointed that Livan Hernandez will be tossing out the first pitch on opening day instead of Strasburg.

Alexander Ovechkin

This guy was supposed to be a combination of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux with a dash of pre-concussion Eric Lindros in there.  A big guy, unafraid to mix it up, who was agile, fast and an unstoppable scorer.  He was supposed to be the best. For a little while, there might’ve been an argument that he was the best, this year however, he isn’t even close.

With 24 goals in 63 games, Sidney Crosby is STILL ahead of him even though he’s been out with a concussion for what seems like half the year.

This isn’t even the real problem with Ovechkin however.  All of this season stats could just be a massive, season-long slump. A blip on the career of an incredible player.  Its way too early to tell.  The real problem with Ovechkin is that he has never won anything, anywhere.

Great players are supposed to elevate the talent around them…or at least win a championship at some point.  That Ovechkin hasn’t been able to do that yet, despite teams full of massive talent and promise, is INCREDIBLY disappointing. Read the rest of this entry

A couple weeks ago the Washington Nationals put out a list of the top “81 Ways To Use Your Season Tickets” for its fans. Now, call me crazy, but I thought there was really only a couple ways to use your tickets, sell them or use them yourself. Luckily the Nationals were there to tell me that, no, there are other ways that one can use their Nationals season tickets.

The remarkable thing about this list is that there are at least 20 suggestions they offer up that involve you not going to the game.  The team itself is saying “give these tickets away that you paid your hard earned dollars for”!!

Lets take a look at some of the best suggestions.

81. Offer them to your neighbor who takes in your mail while you are on vacation

80. Show your mail carrier you appreciate him or her

79. Get in good with your in-laws

76. Give your tickets to a youth team

75. Give them to a prospective employee who is interviewing from out of town

Right away, five of the first seven suggestions they give the fans are to give away their tickets and make some poor neighbor that cant afford a vacation or a poor mailman or your old ass inlaws or some kids or an unemployed bastard your tickets.  So there you have it Nats fans.  These will be  your demographics for the stands this year: Old people, kids, the unemployed and/or poor and underemployed people.  Sounds like a rollicking good time, what say you chap?  Lets continue. Read the rest of this entry

Nothing spells clichéd journalism like a “second coming.”  There’s no doubt in my mind that what will take place tonight in a weird little neighborhood in southeast Washington, DC will be a benchmark moment in the history of the Washington Nationals franchise, but it will also be wholly unsatisfying.  Why?  Sports journalists have already ruined it.

As I read countless Strasburg debut articles last night and this morning, they all spit out the same story over and over again: un-athletic kid comes from nowhere, shows up one day throwing 100 mph, then gets $15.1 million.  The phenom is the “real deal,” loves his wife and hates the spotlight.  He’s the next Walter Johnson (hell no) and half Barack Obama (I hope it’s the half that smokes!).  It’s tired, it’s boring, and it’s been done.  I guess there’s something to be said for the brick-brain who came up with “Merry Strasmas!” but I think that would be, “Please jump off a bridge.”

So before 45,000 “fans” sweat themselves silly tonight on the Green Line, Bill Plaschke will write about the 90 year-old retired scout, who in between hocks of Skoal will recount how he once saw Bob Feller unfurl a heater in 1946 that beat Triple Crown Winner Assault by a few furlongs, who says that Strasburg “can’t miss.”    

What’s going to happen tonight, and hopefully for the next 15 years, is something that will be unique and different.  God willing, it’s not going to be a canned story that comes straight out of a Bernard Malamud novel.  To all the Jay Mariottis of the world, give it a rest.  A guest spot on “Around the Horn” isn’t worth it.

And by the way, Strassy (see, I can make witty nicknames, too!) will go 5 1/3, give up 1 run on 4 hits, walk 2, strike out 7 and get the hook mid-inning so he can get the standing ovation.  Tomorrow, I will stop reading newspapers for a month.