Thursday, June 12, 2008

Mike Toth: Media Critic

Before anyone takes Mike Toth too seriously when he starts to act as a media critic, burying vastly superior broadcasters on the air, let us take a moment, and remember the time when Mr. Fun Stuff said the following on the air in the middle of a highlight package:

"Antero Nittymaki, smoking that wacky tabacky..."

Yeah, he said that. So clearly he has the moral high ground.

25 comments:

Andrew said...

Toth should stick to the CHL.

Brendan said...

Whatever he sticks to, I just want him to stick it where I can't see it or hear it.

Stoeten said...

Nice picture though. So serious. So dignified.

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

toth is the most annoying personality this city has ever been forced to watch/listen to...he's so ridiculous...tries way too hard. what a douche.

Andrew said...

When you look serious and dignified but aren't, you are pretentious.

Anonymous said...

At least his collar isn't popped.

Tao of Stieb said...

I think that photo comes from his days as a model for Jack Fraser Menswear.

Brendan said...

In that photo he reminds me of Bruce Campbell(guy from the Evil Dead movies) but Campbell knows he's a doofus and poses like that as a joke.

Anonymous said...

After Toth used the word "gas" in terms of firing Gibbons, I got the feeling Wilner wanted to either reach through the phone line to strangle Toth or just hang up on the dumb fucker.

Apparently these two have had words in the past over the improper usage of the word "gas".

Anonymous said...

the drunk jays already covered this but thanks for telling us like 10 hours later and in a much briefer fashion

also thanks for looking so hard for a new pic too

Anonymous said...

This is also the same yahoo who would say "special agent Peter Bondra". If sportscasters want to be stand up comedians, they should go to Yuk Yuks, not air them during their sportscasts.

Tao of Stieb said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tao of Stieb said...

Dear anonymous,

Thank you for your constructive criticism, but for the record, there was no gratuitous "wacky tabacky" reference in the DJF story, nor in Wilner's blog.

So you see what we did there: we ADDED to the conversation with a little tiny smidget that we thought was relevant.

Now please fuck off and choke to death, or start your own blog if you're such a fucking authority on how it should be done.

Anonymous said...

Tao I think that your writing is shabby and I don't like you very much and I'm just going to go out of my way to say that your blog sucks.

Thanks for coming out guy!

Joanna said...

I'm going to have to agree with anonymous.

Colin said...

Anonymous, I hear that you don't know how to spell hear.

Besides, if TSN reports something, does that mean Sportsnet shouldn't report it if they don't find out until later? The Tao and the Drunks may be similar media outlets but they are different blogs and not everyone reads both.

Joanna said...

I didn't really mean it. What's that guy's problem?

Darren Priest said...

Tao's writing is shabby? Not compared to your boys at DJF.

Tao of Stieb said...

Ah, what are ya gonna do? Some days, we get praise we don't deserve, and some days we get anonymous criticisms that we don't agree with. It probably evens out in the end.

It's probably that same attitude that keeps Steve Gutenberg going these days.

Darren Priest said...

Maybe you should change your blog to analysis of the career of Jenny McCarthy. I mention this because I just saw a commercial for her movie Witless Protection and it reminded of when I first saw her in Playboy and then I felt sad.

But then the star of that movie is Larry the Cable Guy and I see DJF (who are quite good) compared Toth to Larry the Cable Guy. Anonymous would probably accuse you of ripping them off again.

sager said...

Toth arguing with Wilner about baseball is like someone who owns every one of Nickelback's CDs debating music with a graduate from the Juilliard. There's no way they can even talk to each other, and they both think they're right.

Toth actually wrote this week that's there "something seriously wrong" with John Gibbons, who only had a cup of coffee in the majors, being the Jays manager while Gary Carter manages in a bus league.

But who do you think has the brighter baseball mind?

Carter, an all-star catcher who drove in 105 runs in '86?

Or Gibbons, a back-up catcher with 19 at-bats that season


(Cox Bloc already took care of the rebuttal.)

There doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast rule whether being a good player informs how well you'd fare as a manager.

Anecdotally, Ted Williams' winning percentage as a manager was .429 -- not much higher than what he hit back in '41.

Look at some of the Hall of Fame managers ... Earl Weaver never played in the majors. Nor did Joe McCarthy or Billy Southworth. Tommy Lasorda's lifetime pitching record was 0-4. Walter Alston got one at-bat in the majors. Sparky Anderson hit .218 with no homers in his one-and-only season in the bigs.

Tony La Russa got 176 at-bats in the majors spread out across 11 years and hit .199 with zero home runs.

Genius, Toth.

Colin said...

Sager, if you listen to Friday's Prime Time podcast you'll probably quite enjoy Jeff Blair tearing apart Toth for that article.

Anonymous said...

"Ah, what are ya gonna do? Some days, we get praise we don't deserve, and some days we get anonymous criticisms that we don't agree with. It probably evens out in the end."

Your words are full of humility and a vivid consciousness that has changed my approach to life.

sager said...

So many people ripping Toth, so little time.

Tao of Stieb said...

We've been in the hinterlands all weekend, and have yet to lay our ears on the PTS Blair v. Toth incident, but it makes us happy to know that it happened.

It almost makes up for losing two of three to the Cubs and dropping back below .500.