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  September 22, 2018 9:51 AM EEST

  You are the President of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. Your name is Tim Leiweke. You are appalled at the pathetic effort Toronto FC has put out on the field during their seven-year existence. You have publicly pledged to turn it around. You talk about the team in the same breath as the Toronto Raptors and Toronto Maple Leafs. Toronto FC is no longer the unfortunate adopted son. Unfortunate, yes; adopted, no. You have a plan to turn them around. The company you work for might as well have a printing press producing dollars in the basement of the ACC, it is that rich. In an ideal, much fairer world, you would be able to spend, spend and spend some more to improve the team in all areas. However, this is professional sports where salary caps are implemented to create parity. You belong to the filthy rich MLSE, but in Major League Soccer there is only so much you can do with the money. Except in one area. An area you helped develop when David Beckham joined you in Los Angeles. You know full well you are allowed at least two designated spots where players can be paid whatever you want.When it comes to filling out the names in these positions, money is not the issue. Finding the players who will come is. You know you are an exceptional salesman, but you also know just how hard it is to sell this team to anyone. Simply getting the attention of international players should be an accomplishment. Only now are you fully aware of just how bad Toronto FC have been. They have produced atrocious performances season after season. Word on the street is out on them and the feedback is not good. Incompetence off the field with poor decisions from upper management has led to incompetence on it for far too long. On the pitch, they are the equivalent of Coventry City, a club stuck in the middle of the third tier of English football after ending five years of misery in the second tier (known as the Championship) when they were relegated at the end of the 2011/12 season. The Championship has often been compared to MLS in terms of quality but, unlike Coventry, Toronto FCs poor run didnt end in relegation. Back when Toronto FC began, much like at Coventry, when you were dining with Becks, they averaged over 20,000 people per game to watch the occasional good game, but ones that usually flipped between mediocre and miserable. Poor performances continued, yet the fans stayed, averaging over 20,000 in each of the first five seasons. After seven, remarkably, the club still averages over 18,000 per game, but as a businessman you know that is tickets sold and not bums on seats. That being said, it is still an extremely impressive number considering the awful entertainment on show. By now, fans have usually bolted in much more excessive numbers than that. In Coventry, for example, fans tired of watching a team flirt with relegation in five straight seasons. Coventry fans from the 2007/08 season to the 2011/12 season witnessed: 41 home wins, 37 draws and 37 losses for a home winning percentage of 36 per cent. They scored 133 goals in 115 games for an average of 1.16 goals per game. At the start of that run, Coventry averaged 20,342 fans per game at home. Last season, they ended their first year in League One averaging 10,950. This is what happens when teams go from bad to worse. Except in Toronto, where an amazingly large number of fans continued to show up despite having a remarkably similar home league record in their first seven seasons than Coventry had in the Championship: 36 wins, 39 draws and 36 losses good for a winning percentage of 32 per cent. They scored 135 goals in those 111 games – an average of 1.21 goals per game. Many people discussed the rise of red seats not being filled at games, but you know the the real story was how many were still being sat in. You know if you dont get this right quickly, more and more seats will stay empty for a long time. Yet, on the field you are in charge of selling Coventry City-type talent and performances to potential new signings. You know much of the sales pitch must be directed away from what has happened on the field in the past seven years. You can talk of the turnaround in form near the end of the season and, while looking ahead, the need for continuity on the bench with Ryan Nelsen. But who are we kidding here? You are trying to attract high-calibre, international players to a team that would have struggled in the third tier of English football in the last couple of seasons. But this is where you come in. This is where you become the X-factor. You talk of Toronto with a passion that would make even the most negative Torontonians realize their city is actually half-decent. For a country, and a city, that is so wonderful, your ambassadorial style is a breath of fresh air. Toronto and Canada are an easy sell, but the team is the exact opposite. You can talk about a bright future but, in reality, if you are from a club who has been as bad as TFC has, you usually wouldnt get past the door, let alone to the negotiation table. Except you are shopping with very deep pockets. You work for a company that is paying a basketball player called "Rudy" over $340,000 US per week. English newspapers this week called Jermain Defoes potential TFC wages of 90,000 pounds per week (approx $145,000 US) ‘incredible, but in reality, they are nothing more than a first-liner on the Leafs or a starter on the Raptors can make. You know the money plays a massive part in trying to persuade a talent like Defoe to come to Toronto, but you also know there are few players in a position in their careers who will accept such an offer. Players past their best, looking for a pension? A dime-a-dozen. Genuine Premier League or Serie A goal-scorer,s at a good age, who could play for at least half of the teams in that league if they offered the money you can afford? Absolutely perfect. That is what the DP is for. You have listened to fans worry about service for these strikers, but you have been here long enough now to have watched every current Toronto FC forward miss chances. You know the hardest thing to do in the game is score goals. When you work for MLSE and you have a soccer club in desperate need of help, it is very easy to throw money at old international players and hope for the best. While this team was playing like Coventry the past seven years, they have already had too many of them. No, this time it has to be right and you know it. The Daily Mirror can call the wages ‘incredible all they want, but you know they could be more if it were the right player. Subsequently, you know you could increase the wages and many stars would not leave the heights of Champions League football to come to MLS, even for Rudy Gay money. It appears you are closing in on Defoe and Alberto Gilardino and, if that is the case, they need to be signed. The fact that such players are even considering it is, of course, a step in the right direction since, after all, you know they wouldnt go to Coventry even if Man Citys owners bought them tomorrow. However, you also know how bad it would be if players like these say no. The next level, where hundreds of players are waiting to accept your cash, is not an area you want to invest in. These two giant DP pieces of the TFC puzzle remain left in your hands. You know this is the area created by the league to give the mega-rich owners a significant advantage over the simply rich, slightly tighter, owners. In this game, there are no poor crosses, there is no bad defending or weak finishing. This is a game where Toronto FC are finally superior than most. This is a game you have to win.  Josh Sweat Jersey . Cellino was ordered by a judge to pay a 600,000 euro ($800,000) fine for evading import taxes on a yacht he purchased in the United States and brought to Italy, the ANSA news agency reported. Philadelphia Eagles Jerseys . The Incheon-based tea, of the Korea Baseball Organization said the deal for the 35-year-old Scott included a $50,000 signing bonus. Scott reached the major leagues with Houston in 2005 and hit 23 homers or more for Baltimore each year from 2008-10. http://www.eaglesrookiestore.com/Eagles-Mike-Wallace-Jersey/. -- Catriona Matthew remained atop the Airbus LPGA Classic leaderboard Friday, birdieing four of the last seven holes to take a one-stroke advantage over Charley Hull into the weekend. Markus Wheaton Eagles Jersey .Chanathip Songkrasin opened the scoring in the sixth minute before Kroekrit found the target twice in the 57th and four minutes from fulltime.Vietnam and Malaysia play their second leg on Thursday. Vietnam won the first leg 2-1. Josh Sweat Eagles Jersey . -- For one night, Nick Calathes provided a big reason to believe the Memphis Grizzlies might be able to withstand the loss of Mike Conley on a short-term basis.While reading this week that two very good players - Lance Berkman and Michael Young - had decided to retire, I started to wonder about the perfect way to go out. Berkman and Young both could have kept on playing, but decided the time was right. Ive alway been fascinated by Ted Williams final at-bat for the Red Sox. He homered off Jack Fisher of the Orioles in the bottom of the 8th at Fenway Park on September 28, 1960. "The Spendid Splinter" trotted out to left field for the start of the 9th, whereby his manager Mike Higgins took him out of the game so he could get one last ovation from the fans in the Bosox final home game of the season. Boston rallied for two in the bottom of the 9th to win 5-4. Williams opted to retire immediately and did not go to New York for the final series of the season against the pennant-winning Yankees. So Williams, arguably the best hitter of all time, ended his career with a home run. What I was surprised to discover is this isnt nearly as rare as I thought it would be. Twenty-three American League players have homered in their final at-bat and 22 have done it in the National League. The last to do it was Jim Edmonds on September 21, 2010. A couple of others who accomplished the feat had Blue Jays connections. Wille Mays Aikens slugged his final homer in a Jays uniform on April 27, 1985, and Tony Kubek, star shortstop with the Yankees who later worked on Blue Jays telecasts, homered in his final big league at-bat on October 3, 1965. The saddest of all though was the home run hit by Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane on May 25, 1937 off the Yankees Bump Hadley. Next time up in the game, Hadley nailed the Tigers player-manager in the head with a pitch. His skull was fractured, and it was weeks before Cochrane recovered. He never played again so for the record, his final official at-bat was also a home run. Mickey - for whom Mickey Mantle was named - returned and finished out the 1937 season as manager only of the Tigers before calling it quits at the end of that season. Cochranes .320 career batting average for a catcher was the all-time record, until the Twins Joe Mauer broke it in 2009. Hitting a home run in your first Major League at-bat is far more common. It has been accomplished 113 times - 47 in the American League and 66 in the National. Twenty-eight were hit on the very first pitch the batter saw. Four were grand slams and 19 of those who homered in their first Major League at-bats never hit another one in their entire careers. Three Blue Jays homered in their first at-bats. Al Woods hit a pinch homer in the Blue Jays first-ever game on April 7, 1977. Junior Felix followed that up nearly a dozen years later on May 4, 1989. J.P. Arencibia, the last in the trio, did it more than 11 years after Felix on August 7, 2010. All three homered on the first pitches they saw. This is the real rarity though, and I didnt even realize it had ever happened before. There are actually two players inn Major League history who slugged homers in their first and last Major League at-bats.dddddddddddd John Miller, a journeyman first baseman who later played five years in Japan, played parts of two seasons in the Majors back in the 60s. His first was with the Yankees where he hit a homer in his first Major League at-bat and then on September 23, 1969, he connected in his final Major League at-bat for the Dodgers. Oddly enough these were also his only two Major League homers. The first to accomplish the feat was a catcher by the name of Paul Gillespie who was a back-up catcher with the Chicago Cubs during the Second World War in 1942, 44 and 45. He connected for his first in 1942 and then belted his final home run in his final regular season at-bat on September 29, 1945. If you want to add a caveat to Gillespies mark, he did play in the World Series for the Cubs in 1945 - their last World Series appearance - and went hitless in the three games he played. I started with Ted Williams, so let me add this personal footnote. Im not old enough to have seen Ted Williams play in person, however there is a bit of a connection. The first Major League game(s) I ever saw was a doubleheader at old Tiger Stadium in August of 1968 against the Chicago White Sox. Pitching for Chicago in that first game was the man who gave up that final home run to Williams, Jack Fisher. He was nearing the end of his career which would wind up the following season in Cincinnati. This particular night in Detroit wasnt good for Fisher. He only lasted four innings and wound up taking the loss. Strangely enough he gave up a home run to the Tigers Gates Brown. Brown, a veteran by this time, is one of the 47 American Leaguers to homer in their first bat and so it comes full circle. Dud of a Deal Michael Youngs retirement re-ignites the debate over the worst trade in Blue Jays history. This one just might be it. The Jays sent third base prospect Young to Texas along with swing reliever Darwin Cubillan for right-hander Esteban Loaiza. Esteban was supposed to help round out the rotation when he was picked up on July 17, 2000 for a Blue Jays playoff push under manager Jim Fregosi. Instead Loaiza went 5-7 the rest of the way and was basically a non-factor. Adding on the next two seasons with the Jays, he went 25-28 with a 4.96 ERA. Then in 1993, he had the best year of career after signing with the White Sox, winning 21 games and coming close to winning the Cy Young Award. Young, meanwhile, played 14 seasons, was versatile enough to play all four infield positions and wound up with a career .300 batting average. Hes not a Hall of Famer by any means but was a classy talented player who would have been of far greater value to the Blue Jays than Loaiza was. Michael Youngs best friend in his early years in the Jays organiztion was Vernon Wells. Still not sure yet if Vernon is going to try to play out the final year of his contract or like Young, call it a career. 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