I have seen the future and it looks loopy. 18 to 25 year olds are flocking to be neutered in the Strathmore, Alberta Running of the Bulls.

A big fat guy got gored. It only took one ornery bull one ordinary minute to find this guy standing still, with the deer-in-the-headlight look, to bull-bowl him over.

The rescue crews were on the guy faster than mosquitoes are on ears. I counted eight or nine concerned, caring men and women at his side. I wondered, if a few more folks got flattened, would there be enough rescuers to alleviate the alive or deep-six the dead? I wondered, too, why running with bulls is allowed; where in blazes are the helicopter parents? One can see why the bulls do this: they are ordered to. And one, truly, can see why the kids do this too: they are disordered.

Fortunately, as blind luck would have it, the fat guy’s injury was the only one needing immediate attention. (Later a broken nose, and a busted rib needed mending.)

The fencing needed mending, like now. Never have so many fences been leaped, clambered, shinnied, and bashed as the bull sprinters fled – trying to avoid a thrashing in gashing. The ability to scramble over fences makes this a G version of the XXX Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. There, runners get squashed against unmovable, unscaleable walls. Both events insist that the runners, before starting out - afterwards all bets are off - aren't on booze or drugs. At least if they were, one could understand why they’d do such a kooky thing.

The bull’s stereotype, at least from cartoons, always show them pawing their front hooves. They really do this in real life. Often.  Especially when kids goad and showboat, waving shirts at them matador style, and especially while incessantly louder rock music drums up the bulls further. No bull, these bulls don’t need Red Bull.

Many think that the color red incites bulls to craziness but these muscular animals are color blind. It is movement, like the blink of an eye, or a wave of a pinkie, that sets them off. (Dairy bulls are very unpredictable and farmers - who like to live - cage them in bull-pens, or lead them by the nose with an inserted ring in the septum.) 

The folks’ running style, to a man and a woman, is colorful. It's a unique feat with the feet. Feet and bodies go forward while heads crane backward: brain and body completely split the chores. 

Many runners wore pink in honor of beating cancer. Later, to broaden their sartorial ensemble, some will be fitted with strait jackets.  

To get your block knocked off all you have to do is pony up $25 and you’re eligible. The 2014 running was the 11th edition. Up to 80 contestants can run at one time. Besides the no drugs or alcohol stipulation, you must sign your life away. You must wear suitable footwear to be “safe.” And no runner may mistreat the animals “in any way.” For sure, I never saw a runner drop kick or sucker punch a bull, being too concerned with, well, staying in one piece, but you have to think the bulls feel a bit put out - running with a bunch of kids who, given this choice of activity, would be far better off in summer school learning logic.

The Giraffe Man won $1,000 in the Sunday August 3rd 2014 race for being the best bull runner. Eric Hanson was dressed as a giraffe and he’s 22. The day before, a bull broke his rib in that running. The judges were unanimous in awarding him for, get this, his second victory. When asked by the presenter what he did with his bucks earned previously he remarked, he didn't know, he could not remember the next day.

From days of yore, the bulls, being naturally territorial, have been honed for smarts, stamina, and strength and today those genes run down folks bred for balls and bravado and not much else. It is true, however, that some folks compete in this to complete their “bucket” list. (One trick: try to stay slightly out of the bull’s territorial range or radar.)

Fortunately for the bulls, they don’t get spear-stab-killed in the bullring later, like they do in Spain. But, upon reflection, they did get shunted off into a corral and we viewers did not see them again…so, who knows?

Will Strathmore introduce other bullish events, like bull-leaping? That bonkers happening still takes place in the south west of France and in our aforementioned Spain. The athletes must be extremely acrobatic to grab the bull’s horns and somersault backwards. But given that the participants’ heads aren't screwed on right they might confuse the horns with the tail and somersault atop the beast.

Which brings us to bull riding.

But that’s an inanity for another day.

Basically, the Strathmore Running of the Bulls is not only a scene but a slice of how life should or should not be lived; not just a voyeur exhibition but a voyage expedition into the vain and insane; not just a microcosm of life’s mysteriousness but a macrocosm of all that is nuts about it.

Nevertheless, it is great theater for the hoi polloi and all who watched in awe, slack jaw, would not miss it for the world.

Go bulls go!

The Toronto Maple Leafs brass hired a 28 year old. To be their assistant GM. They've got their head up - you know where. As one should avoid a movie whose trailer praises the writer who wrote “so and so” and the director who directed “such and such” one should also avoid a team that extols an assistant ingénue paper pusher.
The only reason the world can't ignore this sad, soft organization is because it became the first NHL franchise worth US $1 billion.

Its ability to make money hand over fist despite playing under every other team's thumb since time immemorial is infuriating to die-hard hockey fans. At worst it’s a travesty.

They've been living worst, liverwurst, really since 1968. No wonder so many Torontonians like Rob Ford. He’s fun. And competitive. Especially when he’s out of it.

Here’s something out of it. The Leafs are hoping to have their players actually compete for position during training camp. This is part of the culture change that Michael Traikos reports on. If it takes an organization, one of the oldest in the NHL, almost a million years to decide that a little internal competition might help the team along, god help us all. Next thing you know, they’ll cotton to skilled players instead of goons.

Spoke to soon. They've decided they might actually try to draft, trade, or acquire talent instead of picking dregs and desultory knuckle draggers. Toronto has, the past few centuries, liked ardent efforts from fifth line players.

There is no fifth line in professional hockey.

Which makes the Leafs even more unique: they've been serving up fifth line results, fulsomely, 90% of the time, since the Beatles broke up and the sixties busted apart.

The Leafs do vary, however, in when they kill the season, go bust, and “mail it in” as they say. Sometimes they collapse at the gate, and rally furiously for the last 15 games of the 85 game schedule when they have a probability of 1/1000 to make the playoffs and when other teams are looking past the blue and white and could care a rat’s ass if they win or lose, what with their playoff position, or tee-off times, assured. Other times they’ll start strong – for the Maple “Laffs”, that means playing a bit better than .500 hockey before they slump over the last 20 games, and lose 21 games in a row to miss yet another playoff post season.

They made the playoffs ONCE in the last 10 years. That was in 2013 when they gave up three goals in the last 11 minutes to the Boston Bruins who then went on to win in overtime. It was a record breaking seventh game collapse of epic, septic proportions. Bounced in the first round. 

Just like a negative person can suck the wind out of a positive party, the Leafs can take a gruff, but competent, hockey executive like Brian Burke and leave him playoff-less. That was his record after four seasons in the city of the big choke. Even with his penchant for big strong men who could play somewhat-sometimes-half decent hockey, the Leafs cratered. Burke was fired.  He's now in Calgary. Great city. 

Hockey.?.?.

Anyway...

Who is, ultimately, to blame for an organization an ESPN survey in 2008 ranked 121st out of 122 big league teams?

The fans and corporations that buy the tickets. They've supported this organization through thin and thin and they've put no pocket-book pressure on the team to clean up its act and put a reasonable facsimile of a competitive unit out on the ice.

The Detroit Red Wings (valued at US $346 million) are as far ahead of the Leafs in every which way as is the city of Toronto ahead of the city of Detroit. It’s weird. For the 15 people who live in Detroit, their Red Wings have made the playoffs 23 years in a row. Incredible.

As for Kyle Dubas, the neophyte Leaf assistant GM, he’s been described as “likeable.” Likeable is what the Leafs deal in, in spades. Every other team likes, heck loves, the Leafs because they’re an easy two points any time they’re played. Mr. Dubas may be a genius at analytics and a phenomenon in assessing contract clauses and tyro talent but to extol this young man as a real-prize find is sad. Not for Kyle, more power to him. But for this team. This move is something that crackpot owner Harold Ballard would have sprung. Has Harold come back from the dead to haunt the Leafs?

Dubas is also said to have a “relentless pursuit for knowledge.”  That’s nice. Most of us like learning new things. We were all happy when we could tie our shoes. That’s hardly unique. It sounds good on a resume. Walmart should hire him. But the Leafs are so desperate, to do anything “out of the box” (other than win of course) that they’ll take a flyer on a gentleman who was an agent before he went to the hockey management side – all before the age of 25. Okay, let’s say he’s a smarty pants. Good for him. And for his family.

But wait, here’s another crackerjack thing about Kyle: he loves to “talk about and debate hockey.” Sweet.

No matter how refreshing and neat this man is, no matter how easily he can speak in platitudes, no matter how president Brendan Shanahan describes Kyle as a “worker” - the organization top to bottom, in style and sense, lacks.

Sad sacks. 

Steven Seagal puts an opponent down with his baby finger and that’s Aikido. This Japanese martial art uses energy, not strength, to thwart an attack. It is perhaps the least aggressive of fighting styles.

Aikido has been thought of as “moving Zen.” Technique trumps power.

Seagal may be a tad portly and past his prime now, but back when he had his dojo in Japan many studied under him. He achieved the rank of aikikai, or seventh dan

Think of an aikidoist as a kind of alchemist, who blends elements of an attack upon him and transmutes them into a neutral, safe grounded place as he stymies the aggressor.

Moving right along: is ki like chi? What a question. Of course it is.

And isn’t.

Chi or qi comes from the Chinese, who disagree on its meaning. Similarly, ki came from chi, sometime in the seventh century, and the Japanese disagree on its meaning. Consensus exists, however, when it is said that ki has a place in aikido. The debate begins on whether it is a physical state, or spiritual, or both, or a mix. Let’s say breath, energy, relaxation, and awareness are possible parts of ki and are definite parts of aikido.

Philosophizing and parsing aside, what should we make of a martial art that is decidedly not martial? That does not have the participant drop kicking the heck out of somebody? Or smashing somebody’s face in? Should we allow such an art to exist?

Well, we’re a little late to de-exist it. Aikido is here to stay. And if we fight that very fact, it will work with our anger and aggression and have us muffled in no time. And for those bar boozing buffoons…instead of us calm, aikido-knowing types working up a sweat punching, and clenching, and tensing – all very tiring to the body – let the oaf’s momentum, with a little assistance from ourselves, have them head out, head first, out the door, mannerly -  but firmly.

Don’t mistake gentility for passivity. Or non-aggression with slow-poke action. The disabling of an attack is so fast that, for the uninitiated, the move or moves must be watched over and over. Then in slow motion. Then explained. Anticipation is key because if you sense a kick coming, you can duck it or side step it. And for a martial arts’ expert unfamiliar with aikido, a common refrain is: “the aikidoist’s moves were not telegraphed. I wasn't even in a fight, I was down, and held down, so fast. What the heck just happened?”

It’s a classier form of fitness – and a way of living too. Instead of wrestling with a pig and mucking yourself up, you let the pig do the dirty work while you stay above the fray. But you make the pig pay and pray for your joint lock, pin, or throw – to stop.

Aikido is not a striking, hitting, or kicking martial art. It has an array of defenses against such thrusts but its best, boffo hit is when the opponent is hit by the ground as the aikidoist lays them out.

You might ask if there’s something spiritual about such a fighting form. There is. Aikido’s backbone, in part, stems from the religion of Omotokyo.

Aikido has its Yin and Yang: Uke and Nage. Uke is the aggressor - yet gets thrown by nage - the defender.

Whether an aggressor or defender, if you practice this art long enough there’s a good chance you’ll suffer some bruising, and will likely have experienced some straining of tendons and ligaments. It’s the nature of the beast as joints react naturally - or unnaturally - to your efforts. Now, with aikido will come falls and rolls, so the question comes up: can old folks participate? You bet. Because aikido involves non-stop learning - a senior will likely have more mental tools at their disposal, to dispose of younger, more head strong practitioners.

Who founded this unique art which eschews violence and promotes love? Morihei Ueshiba. Though small in stature, at less than five feet tall, his martial art and his influence within it, to this day, is huge. He was a fan of poetry and art, and first took up Sumo wrestling and Jujutsu. With his long white wispy beard and mustache and his prominent cheekbones, the guy just looks wise beyond his years. And agile. Here’s he’s training the younger generation, back in 1957.

The Aiki Shrine is said to be the home of aikido, and aikido as the term for this fitness form, came to be in 1942.

Some wonder if aikido is all there, if it is really real? Can one hold down another with only their toes?

“It’s done in a flash.” That’s an essence of aikido. Another is to be able to read an opponent’s mind. Budo, Japanese Martial Arts – retains and maintains the Samurai spirit. Winning at all costs isn’t the deal – but knowing how to fend off five attackers wielding swords, is.

Watch the aikido master school the pro fighter, who enters the fray a skeptic - and leaves, humbled, but with his mind opened to aikido’s power of efficiency made more amazing by the seemingly lack of power in the parry.

As with almost any sport or discipline, variants occur due to disagreement on emphasis or focus. Aikido also shares this unfolding. Kokikai aikido is said to stem from Ki aikido. But if its website header line is any indication, it shares a major precept of aikido: minimum effort maximum effect.

That, alone, is worthy of respect.

We are getting old. Alarmingly so. This year’s Little League World Series will feature players all born in the year 2000 or later. It’s the 75th anniversary of the event and will be held where it always is, in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

16 teams will play, 8 from the USA and 8 from the rest of the world. The internationals. Taiwan has won this series 17 times. They are the kings of the baseball castle. Why is that? And why have they not won since 1996? Samuel Chi, Editor of RealClearSports and ex-Taiwanese baseball player from the 70’s, thinks their 17 year funk might be largely due to political reasons. During the country’s little league heyday in the 70’s it was isolated diplomatically. (It was kicked out of the United Nations in 1971.) Winning was more than an ephemeral joy to be enjoyed for the instant. Winning meant everything. It validated Taiwan’s precarious existence, being independent from mainland China.

Japan, in this century has held the hot hand, winning it five times.

Pretend you are 12 or 13. You rock in baseball. Your bat smashes that fastball 225 feet to left, centre, or right field. You've homered. Now take your dinger trot around the bases.

But you are a golden oldie now. And while most of you who played here naturally gravitated to MLB, a couple of you became NFL quarterbacks and a couple of you played NHL. Pro baseball players extol their Little League experiences.

Lamade Stadium is the venue for the August 24th 2014 championship game. It’s got the night lights and two wings of stadium seats. Add the berm - “the hill” - that wraps the outfield and you've got seating for 45,000 fans. And all will have to fidget, wondering if Johnny will play today. The lineup cards are not known until an hour before game start.

The kids will have butterflies sure, but they’re used to pressure-packed situations. On average, each team will have won 25 times just to get to this World Series. And the umpires have been trying for ten years to get a chance to call World Series small-ball. You're an American umpire? You and 400 to 600 others compete for the allotted 12 spots Americans have.

And if your son doesn't have his media sound bites down pat, tends to speak candidly, or has a finger in an ear, don’t worry. During media interviews a parent, league - or team official, must be present to set, or put, things right.

And the kids will hopefully exhibit character, courage and loyalty. But to cover the bases, just in case they don’t, each uniform has the words printed on their uniforms. 

Uniformly, MLB, as most of us are dizzily aware, loves the statistic. It lusts to know the consequential and longs to know the peripheral, the how many homers so-and-so swatted in the World Series, the number of times a pitcher balked in innings 5 to 7, on a team 30 games out by August 1st. This Little League World Series also is chock full of stats. Did you know, for example, that Jason Snow of Canada holds the record at nine, for most wild pitches? (He did his Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh impression in 1994.)

These days the pitchers throw not only fastballs - but curveballs. And the batters aren't cowering. They've been hardened through their team’s qualification process – they've seen enough “heaters’ to know how to whack ‘em. Watching them in batting practice, wow, they have home-run swings like ex MLB star John Olerud.

But you know what? These kids don't have time or temperament to rest on their laurels while at the series. Sure, the super-main thing is to have fun, but hitters, for example, are put through their paces thanks to Easton’s “Hit lab.” There, players swing in the cages but also stretch their minds as they watch different pitches on computers and learn to recognize their types, speeds, and where they’ll end up by the time they reach the plate. While they’re focusing on batting concentration, anticipation, and relaxation, all in the quest to flatten that baseball, they can later gander out at “the hill” and see their kid brothers and sisters sliding down on flattened cardboard. But the batters are holding something almost as fun. Most of the kids use Easton double composite bats. They have enlarged sweet spots but also feature reduced sting and vibration sensation(s).

One sensational aspect to grow the game globally is having teams represent their corner of the globe. For instance, the Czech Republic has qualified for the second year in a row. They’re the best to come out of the Europe-Africa region. Who knows, maybe baseball will compete with ice hockey and tennis as a Czech favorite sport one day.

Players go through, today, a pressure cooker to qualify. But once they are crowned regional champions, then the Little League stress subsequently soars. That organization has to pony up and pay about $250,000 - for all the teams to get to Williamsport - on basically one month’s notice. Airlines hold up to 14 seats for the kids, and more for team officials, without yet knowing their names. That is the clout of this championship.

If you want a glimpse of what’s in store in 2014, check out this 2013 highlights reel.  And check this out. Ex-baseball greats, Roberto Alomar and Dave Winfield, are slated to appear this year.

Play ball.

Is it OK to be obese and kill people? The Canadian military doesn’t think so. They are ordering their super fat troops to the operating table. There, they’ll undergo weight-loss operations. Have standards fallen so low that the rotund qualify for the service in the first place? Or is there an impression that it’s not a problem to employ overweight troops because the enemy’s ranks are chock full of the adipose too?

You might have wanted to pick a fight with the Canadian Military in 2007 to 2008. Only 29% were of normal weight. The rest were overweight or obese. That's what the sampling of 3,700 full time members showed. The obese folks were unlikely to deploy on missions. Unless they were to raid fridges. One supposes they might not squeeze into tanks or cockpits. For sure, flying on a commercial airline with their sardine packed seats, to get to the field of battle in balmy climes, would be out.

These operations give a new, literal, definition for "thinning of the ranks."

What accounts for the state of the unit? Perhaps the military police should look at sub-par dietary choices and a lack of exercise as being prime suspects. And perhaps someone should invent marching...

An astounding 80% of the members had "very sedentary" jobs. Talk about a top heavy staff. Perhaps fewer bureaucrats and far more brawlers might help.

Back in 2007 the military conducted a national physical fitness test - the first in ten years. They might want to conduct these more frequently, say every five. They might also want to ensure they stay pals with the USA so they don't have to use the four second-hand submarines they bought from Britain that don't work or fly the new jets they have been trying to buy, and get built, for years now. They also better hope Putin is happy having swiped Crimea. If he turns his full attention to North Pole energy-potential booty... will the Canadian Rangers, a volunteer mix of about 5,000 Inuit, Métis, and non-Aboriginals, supplied with a Canadian Ranger sweatshirt, safety vest, and a Lee-Enfield rifle, when not using their own personally-supplied, but reimbursed, snowmobiles – be able to shoo the ex-Soviet scallywags out of their part of the Arctic? The Rangers must be in pretty good shape from shivering like crazy in that frigid, rigid anti-hell hole of the world. Shivering burns calories.

Are fat soldiers a national threat to safety and security? You'd have to think so. Fortunately, other than the Canadian government's staunch support of Israel - which pisses off many - it doesn't go out of its way to poke sticks in the eyes of others. Its contributions to NATO are pretty miserly, despite the country's economic heft. It did fight in Kandahar province in the south of Afghanistan - where resistance was fierce, but that mission is over now. Currently there is no mission on the horizon where the few fit, and many fat, fighters are needed.

Aah, but Canada is full of snow. And shoveling that stuff is onerous. Perhaps the forces could help clear driveways and roads. They've done it once before.

Remember when Toronto mayor, Mel Lastman, pleaded for the military to shovel the white powder after Canada's largest city was dumped on in early 1999? The military, good boy-scouts that they were, gave 400+ of its best to help shovel the snow out of “TO”. Perhaps they could have lost some collective weight if they used only shovels and spades and not plows and Bisons – mini vehicles that could get into narrow places where plows couldn't. No doubt the fat cat bureaucrats would have favored sitting on their duffs telling everybody the spring season would solve all. Total “Snow Job.”

Back to the real job, or jobs, at hand. So, 12 or 13 of the largest Canucks get the surgery. They are defined as morbidly obese. Does political correctness prevent others from remarking, say 50 pounds before the morbidly point, that one is beginning to pack on more pounds than a polar bear on a seal fest? The forces fork over 16 to 18k for each vertical sleeve, gastric banding, or gastric bypass surgical operation.

Canada is not alone in the corpulence of its corps. Germany had way too many porker patrollers back in 2001. It declared "war" on the waisted wayward types. By 2008 the battle was decidedly un-won. 40% of their soldiers between 18 and 29 weighed too much. 35% of the civilians there were in the same sinking boat. The Americans need 190,000 bodies every year to replace those retiring. A full 27 percent of American adults are too overweight to be admitted. Picking from an arbitrarily defined smaller pool of eligible employees is never good for quality control, no matter what the job.

A glance at the first page of the Canadian Armed Forces website shows an article on the stigma of mental illness, but nothing on the sad-sack shape its workers. Apparently the forces hope 13 weeks of basic training will whip the out-of-shape recruits into shape. Pushups, sit ups, and running are three core exertions. They are to build strength, speed, and stamina. They train in the military clothing, no big shock there, but they also dive and swim in their clothing. Orders must be followed. And the obstacle course must be beat. And there is a five day four night mock-operation test to top it all off. Frankly, it would seem inconceivable for a portly person not to shape up and slim down what with all the barking and hectoring of instructors “encouraging” the newcomers to find an extra gear.

So if the Canadian Forces Basic Training is up to snuff, the decline into obesity, and the rise of the rotund, comes after the training ends. Why are so many jobs in the Canadian military sedentary? What gives?