Blast off

First up, a shout-out to my little brother. He’s 16 today, so if you live in the Niagara Region, it’s probably best you stay off the roads. Now, back to business.

I’m not a homerun guy. I can count the number of dingers I’ve hit in my life while wearing mittens. It’s just not something I’ve done in my life. So to play baseball, I learned to hit a lot of line drives, get on base a lot, and play pretty good defense. As a general rule, I don’t think very highly of the long ball, even if Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Heather Locklear and Mark McGwire taught us all a long time ago, chicks dig the long ball.

That said, there’s something special about the spectacle of the annual Home Run Derby the night before the All-Star Game. As we all know, baseball is a game for fathers and sons, and one of my fondest memories as a child is the pride I felt watching my father (who, like most of our fathers, never got a sniff of the big leagues) hit home runs. Seeing the young players with their young sons watching and adoring every minute of the event is a touching image. Some of my highlights from the night:

· Albert Pujols, of 266 career home runs, asking his song “think I got three more in me?” I don’t know a child under age eight that doesn’t think his dad could hit three home runs.

· Early on, when it looked like Matt Holliday of the Colorado Rockies just might run away with this one, and he put a big rubber stamp to that idea by launching a ball over the left field seats, into the parking lot.

· The interview with Willie McCovey, when he talked about the kinds of home run derbies he participated in during his playing days. His line: “Willie Mays always won.”

· Watching the relative light-weight Alex Rios hold his own against Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero, defending champ Ryan Howard, Justin Morneau and Prince Fielder. It was especially nice to see Rios’ old teammate Orlando Hudson cheering him on. Teammates are teammates for life, and that’s rarely more evident than in baseball.

· Vlad launching a ball more than 500 feet, nearly hitting the giant glove in left-centre field. Followed by a reporter asking Vlad if he’d ever hit a home run like that before, and Vlad recounting a 502-foot blast at Stade Olympique in Montreal. A home run which is still marked on the seat it landed in.

Lastly, Vlad may have won the final round, but Rios still hit more homers than anyone else in the competition.

TOUR TRACKER

Gert Steegmans claimed victory in stage two of the Tour Monday morning. The Belgian rider rode into the Belgian town Gent in three hours, 48 minutes, 22 seconds, and was followed by fellow Belgian Tom Boonen. Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara remains the overall leader and will retain the yellow jersey heading into Tuesday’s third stage.

Stage three sees the riders head south from Waregem. After passing Flanders, they’ll pass into France near Brunehaut, Belgium and continue south to Denain. They’ll head southeast from Denain to Fontaine-au-Bois, then south to Guise before heading south and southwest to Trosly-Breull. From there, it’s due-west in a 15-km sprint to Compiègne for the completion of the 236 km stage. Stage three is the longest stage of the Tour, will start around 4 a.m. EDT, and is expected to yield a new overall leader.