Bengals 34, Bills 21

It was not a very good weekend for the professional sports teams I root for. The Leafs apparently won a hockey game in Columbus, Ohio on Friday night but, other than that, the loss column filled up as the Jays dropped 2 games to the Royals in the ALCS and the Bills slipped to 3-3 with a loss to the Bengals in Orchard Park. En route to London right after the game, the team has to feel that it has under-achieved through the first 6 weeks. And the injuries at key positions continue to pile up. Assuming that the Bills can handle the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley on Sunday morning, that would leave them at 4-3 entering their bye week. Is there really hope that they can make a run for the playoffs through the season's last 9 games? It doesn't seem likely.

If the Blue Jays are going to win the ALCS, they will clinch in in Missouri as the best they can hope for is a 3-2 series lead after the 3 games in Toronto which start tonight. Games 4 and 5 are 4pm starts as the US networks obviously prefer to have the Mets/Cubs series in prime time, Tonight is a big night for TV watching and many viewers across the country will be working their remotes switching back and forth between the election seat count and the ball game. I like their chances with Stroman tonight.

I almost cancelled my Globe and Mail subscription in June of last year when, to the surprise of many, it endorsed Tim Hudak and his "Progressive" Conservative Party a few days before the provincial election, only to see the Liberals win a majority. The Globe's endorsement this time around is a bit of a mystery as it says that the Conservative Party deserves to continue governing but without Stephen Harper. The party is somehow our best option, claims the Globe, but the Prime Minister has to go and all will be fine. But the Conservative Party, as it now exists, is Stephen Harper and what another incarnation of it might look like after he's gone is hard to say, if not hard to imagine. I'll keep reading the Globe but I do wonder what value there is in endorsing an option which not only isn't on offer but that doesn't even exist. In fairness, the editorial urged the party to return to its roots - its progressive roots and not its Reform roots - by being "fiscally conservative, economically liberal and socially progressive". In other words, a return to kind of values the party held under the likes of Diefenbaker, Stanfield, Clark and Mulroney. There was a good reason why the word "progressive" was dropped when the Reform Party hijacked the PC party and drove it into the right wing ditch. The Globe and Mail may want the party to return to its real roots but it will take more than just a new leader.

Robyn Doolittle tweeted the photo of Harper with the Fords from the weekend and reminded us that it was a photo of the Prime Minister of Canada two days before a federal election. The decision to try to leverage the Ford brand (presumably to rally the base) in the final day or two of the campaign almost seems fitting and, as this is one of his final photo opps as Prime Minister, sort of looks good on him I guess. He's been a mean-spirited and divisive leader. Whatever we get tonight, I'm confident that most of us will feel better about it and that will be a good start.