The Dook of York

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York
-The Bard, Richard Part Three

Well, Toronto really should have stepped up in New Jersey last night, but once again they failed. It may still be early in the season, but this was a big game against an important conference rival. When you add in the personal animosity and past playoff battles, this really should have been a statement game for Toronto. Instead, they went into the swamp and only managed to win by 37 points.

A disgrace.

Of course, the best thing about the Raptors annihilation of the Nets last night was imagining Marty York watching the game at home and throwing his remote control at the TV at some point during the second quarter as his least favourite team (Raptors) put up 35 points against his favourite team (whoever is playing the Raptors).

You could tell on Friday morning that Marty was licking his lips in anticipation of a Nets win:

Superstar Vince Carter, whose abhorrence for Raptors coach Sam Mitchell was one of the reasons he wanted out of Toronto, needs only six more points to become the third-fastest active NBA player to reach 15,000.

Torontonian Jamal Magloire, incidentally, made his debut Wednesday as Carter's teammate with the New Jersey Nets and looked exceptionally strong inside. He's told friends he's pysched to play well again tonight against the Raps, who made no attempt to obtain him in the off-season.

What can Marty do now? His beloved (superstar) Vin-sanity did manage to get his 15,000 point, but it was Vin-tage Vin-effectiveness: achieving a personal milestone while doing absolutely nothing to help his team win. Maybe Marty will argue that Vince went above and beyond because he racked up seven points last night, which was one more than he needed. Congrats Vince. Your mom must be proud.

The inference in Marty's quote, of course, is that the Raptors would be better off without Mitchell and with Carter, and I'm sure his tone wont change on Monday. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that early next week we'll see him criticize Mitchell for running up the score by keeping Carlos Delfino on the court when the game was already out of reach.

It's hard to believe that Marty York - back in the days when people actually had to pay at least 50 cents to read his work - was one of the most high-profile sports columnists in Canada. Now, like a rolling stone (how does it feel, Marty?), he plies his trade for one of the free subway rags - and not the decent one, mind you, but the one that you pick up only when the 24 Hours box is empty.

Now, I am aware that Schadenfreude isn't a noble feeling, but I must confess to some joy in watching K-Marty's downward spiral. As Richard III so emphatically proved, if you spend your life being a total prick to pretty much everyone, there aren't going to be many people feeling sorry for you when you're lying prone on Bosworth Field (metaphorically speaking, of course).

The people that Mega-Lo Marty has pissed off, besides me, are legions and they go way back before the Raptors roamed the earth. The Blue Jays (players and coaches) once wasted away the hours on a late-eighties post-game flight by throwing everything from peanuts to trash at poor Marty. According to the Ryerson Review of Journalism, a fellow reporter was once almost beaten down by a ball-player because he was mistaken for Marty. "[O]ne of the athletes...grabbed him and was threatening to beat the shit out of him. And here was this poor guy with his hand in front of his face pleading, 'I'm not Marty York, I'm not Marty York.'" According to another unnamed source quoted in the Review, York was too frightened to enter the dressing rooms at the 1989 Grey Cup. He resorted to paying someone to go in and get quotes for him.

The fact that athletes preferred to pelt, beat, and ignore him may explain why York allegedly got into hot water for plagiarism in the early 1990s. It only makes sense that if you can't get sources for your stories (because they want to kick your teeth in) the next best would be copying those who can get people to talk to them. According to Globe and Mail sources cited in the Ryerson Review (once gain...and thank you so much for existing), York was warned by Globe editors after his fellow reporters researched and ratted out the similarities between York's work and stories by other reporters.

One story that dogged Marty during his baseball days was that he didn't actually watch the games that he wrote about. And, if you believe the response from the Toronto Star's Doug Smith when he was asked how he gets along with Marty, it seems our old friend still doesn't feel a need to talk to the players and watch the events that he comments on:

In the last 10 years of covering the Raptors full time, I've probably seen an average of 70 games a year, never missing more two in a season at home, and taking in probably 90-100 practices a year. Never once, not one single, solitary time, never, ever, ever in a decade, have I once laid eyes on that last fellow you mention at a practice, game, press conference or media availability. To cast him as a beat grunt does a disservice to all the honest, hard-working, legitimate beat grunts in all sports. Please never, ever, ever use that name in that context again.

The Sun's Steve Buffery also has no love for No-York, writing on November 23, 2006 that York "is a veteran muckraker with no credibility, who was long ago run out of the mainstream Toronto media. In fact, the writer in question has rarely, if ever, been spotted inside the Raptors locker room at the Air Canada Centre. His sources are said to be certain season ticket holders desperate for a sense of importance."

Notice a pattern here? Of course, not following the Raptors hasn't stopped Marty from writing negatively about the team every chance he gets.  I'm not sure if York hates basketball or just the Raptors, but he has campaigned against the team with such vehemence, and treated the fans with so much contempt, that it makes Steve Simmons's vendetta against JFJ seem like the good-natured ribbing on Mr. Till's beloved Corner Gas.  

York, you may recall, "broke" the news of the infamous Mitchell v. Carter slapping match, and quoted an unnamed Raptor (MO PETE) at length last year in a column which claimed Mitchell did not have the respect of his players. York has even gone as far as to to call Raptors coach Sam Mitchell a "borderline lunatic" (in the same 2005 interview he also said that the Raptors were the worst team in the NBA "if you take away Chris Bosh and Jalen Rose" - really, Marty? They would be the worst team if you took away their two best players? The L.A. Lakers wouldn't have won three NBA titles in a row if you took away Kobe and Shaq. Is this what you teach the kids at Sheridan College?).

All of this makes people like me angry, but York committed no greater crime last year than when he took a break from predicting the imminent firing of NBA COACH OF THE YEAR Sam Mitchell to bash poor ol' Chuck Swirsky.  Just like any schoolyard bully, York tried to make himself look like a big man by picking on the harmless kid with the goofy looking face and bad clothes.

Sure, Swirsky's exuberance can be a little grating, and his 'Ring it up from downtown Pickering' shtick is annoying (and completely ridiculous, since a stretch of highway dotted by strip-malls, townhouses and a nuclear power plant doesn't technically have a downtown) but at least Swirsk, unlike too many of Toronto's sports media types, doesn't seem to actively hate the sport that he covers. York, though, felt it necessary to take Chuck to task for "brainwashing thousands of fans and even media types."

Normally I would be all for snarky criticism of media types, but York's column was so mean-spirited and bitter ("misleading and mindless cheerleading for the Raptors continues to emanate from ignorant, irresponsible and self-serving suckups and shameless shills in the Toronto media") that it deserves nothing but scorn. Swirsky's show is nothing but mindless entertainment, and he is so far off the serious-sports radar that we wouldn't bother criticizing him even if he devoted two hours to making a case for McCabe for the Norris and Simmons for the Pulitzer.

As for Swirsk's brainwashing abilities...I'll admit that staring at the man for prolonged periods of time can be disorienting (and that some of the small-brains in the Toronto press may be easily manipulated), but I think Swirsk's mystical powers may be somewhat overstated.

While it may seem like we've covered York pretty extensively in this monstrous post, there is a lot of info that weren't able to include and we can count on Marty to spew a lot of Raptor player-hatin' over the next few months, so get used to seeing his work displayed prominently on the pages of Cox Bloc.

Marty, you are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker.