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Bar Chat

06/01/2017

The Tiger Woods Saga

[Posted Wed. a.m.]

NHL Quiz: 1) From 1970-79, three players won 8 of the 10 Hart Trophies (MVP).  Name them. [This is pre-Gretzky.]  2) Who are the two teens to win the Hart?  Answers below.

MLB

--What a bummer for every baseball fan out there.  Mike Trout tore a ligament in his left thumb in a head-first slide into second base as he was stealing it in a 9-2 Angels loss to the Marlins Sunday.  At first X-rays were negative, but the tear was discovered Monday and he is to undergo surgery on Wednesday.  Trout will be out up to 8 weeks.

This is a guy who has played 157-159 games each of the last four years and you thought he was indestructible, but he had already missed six of the team’s first 53 this year due in part to a nagging hamstring issue.

Aside from the fact Trout will miss his first All-Star game in six years, and won’t finish first or second in the MVP voting after doing so each of the last five seasons, Trout was off to his best start ever, with 16 homers, 36 RBIs, a .337 average and a stupendous OPS of 1.203.

So we’ll see just how poor the Angels do in his absence.  For the record, they were 26-27 thru Sunday’s action.

[Angels shortstop Andrelton Simmons had surgery for a similar injury last season and missed five weeks, but Washington superstar Bryce Harper missed eight weeks in 2014 with the same surgery.]

--Speaking of Bryce Harper...

We saw a huge basebrawl on Monday in San Francisco during the Nationals’ 3-0 win over the San Francisco Giants.

Harper and Giants reliever Hunter Strickland have a history, going back to the 2014 playoffs and two monster home runs Harper hit off Strickland.  The two hadn’t faced off since then.

There were two outs in the eighth, none on and Washington ahead 2-0.

Strickland drilled Harper in the hip, and Harper, after pointing his bat at Strickland, went after him, fired his helmet and traded punches to the head.

“You never want to get suspended or anything like, but sometimes you just got to go and get them and can’t hesitate,” Harper said.  “You either go to first base or you go after him and I decided to go after him.”

One of the chief stories that emerged after, though, was how Giants catcher Buster Posey, who could have tackled Harper from behind as Harper rushed out to the mound to confront Posey’s pitcher, stood back and let it all unfold.

“Strick and him are the only ones that can answer why” the fight happened, Posey said.

Granted, Posey has had his share of injuries, including a recent concussion, but....

Neither Harper or Strickland were injured.

Strickland said he missed his spot.  “I left the ball over the plate a couple of times to him.  He’s taken advantage of that, so I went inside.  Obviously, I got in a little too far.”

Harper, still pissed off after, did say he appreciated Strickland didn’t go after his head.  “(He) hit me in the right spot, so I do respect him for that.”

Ironically, Buster Olney of ESPN had some of the following in an essay for ESPN the Magazine’s June 12 issue, which I imagine he wrote about three days before the Harper-Strickland tussle.

“Major league baseball is in an era of enlightenment in which organizations are filled with the bright minds of men and women who won’t accept the status quo without examination.  The phrase That’s the way it’s always been done is routinely ignored, and more informed decisions are now made about defensive positioning, pitch selection, bunts, platoons and trade value, as well as about whether it’s worth sacrificing an All-Star catcher to the act of blocking home plate just to prevent one run in one game in a 162-game season.

“But as the sport has evolved, the practice of retaliation – through the use of a baseball thrown at a prone human target – is still in play, left over like a horse and buggy in the middle of an interstate highway.  Take the Braves-Blue Jays series in mid-May, when Jose Bautista clubbed a home run with Toronto down 8-3 and flipped his bat with joy, momentarily glaring in the direction of Atlanta pitcher Eric O’Flaherty.  Bautista’s emotional reactions can’t be a surprise to anyone who has watched him play during the past decade, yet before the next day’s game, it was determined by somebody that Bautista was going to get drilled.  This might have been exacerbated by the Braves’ losing Freddie Freeman to  a broken wrist on an Aaron Loup fastball in the series, but whatever the primary motivation, Julio Teheran threw his first pitch to Bautista inside at 95 mph.  He hit him in the thigh with his second pitch at 96 mph – the fastest pitch thrown by Teheran to that point this season. Bautista said nothing, dropped his bat and went to first base.

“A lot of Toronto runs followed. Three in the first and six more before Teheran’s three-plus-inning pitching line was completed. So what was the point of the retaliation?

“Earl Weaver, a really smart manager who believed in statistics and reasoning, thought this through about half a century ago and decided his Orioles teams would not participate in the beanball thing. If you retaliate, he told his pitchers, one of our guys might get hurt, and our guys are better than their guys.  According to ESPN Stats & Information, from 1969 to 1982, Weaver’s first full 14 years as Orioles manager, Baltimore pitchers hit by far the fewest hitters of any staff in the AL (excluding the expansion Jays and Mariners, who played their first seasons in 1977). Baltimore played in the World Series four times and won more games than any other team in those 14 years, with a 1,306-885 record.  So Baltimore was not hurt because the pitchers wouldn’t participate in the American League’s HBP wars, and it is possible Weaver’s strategy helped to keep Hall of Famers such as Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Cal Ripken and Jim Palmer on the field.

“There is no sound reasoning behind a pitcher intentionally hitting a fellow member of his union with a 96 mph fastball and placing that person’s body and career at heightened risk for serious injury.  Yet MLB still fosters this antiquated practice....

“In what other sport are game officials and league executives looking the other way on retaliation?  If a defensive lineman goes down to a cut block in the NFL, referees aren’t giving his team one free shot at wrecking somebody’s knee.  If an NBA player is hit with a flagrant-2 type of violation.  Even in the NHL – a league of enforcers – an act of retaliation leads to a penalty, a game misconduct, a suspension.

“But when Teheran intentionally fired a baseball into the leg of Bautista at 96 mph, you know what he got?  A warning.  Under the unwritten rules, the message to Teheran is that what he did is the Right Way to Retaliate.  How crazy is that?  How inane?

“Earl Weaver was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996, and he passed away four years ago. But hopefully the rest of baseball will catch up to him sometime in the next century.”

Tuesday afternoon, Major League Baseball suspended Strickland six games, Harper four.

--Albert Pujols hit home run No. 599 on Tuesday in the Angels’ 9-3 win over the Braves.  He will become the ninth to reach the 600 level.

--The Mets have suddenly won three in a row, including 5-4 in 12 innings against the Brewers at Citi Field on Tuesday.

But in typical Mets fashion, they did all they could to lose last night, with shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera flat-out dropping a pop in short left field that would have preserved a 4-2 lead in the seventh and instead tied the game up at 4-4.  Totally inexcusable, but as it was his seventh error in 33 games this season, after committing seven all of last year, the drumbeat is growing for the Mets to bring up top prospect Amed Rosario, who is hitting .357 at AAA and is a gifted fielder.

--So much for that...it’s been confirmed the Jeb Bush-Derek Jeter bid for the Miami Marlins has collapsed, as the two did not come close to raising the money needed to buy the team for $1.3 billion.  Jeb Bush was to raise the money, with Jeter part of the deal to attract investors.

Jeter may still try to put a deal together on his own.

A Tagg Romney-led group, which includes former pitchers Tom Glavine and Dave Stewart, remains in the picture.

--Wake Forest is hosting one of the 16 regionals as the NCAA baseball championship gets underway.  It is so tough to get to the College World Series, but the first step is winning your bracket of four.  [Then the 16 advance to eight, best-of-three super regionals, the winners of those moving on to Omaha.]

Meanwhile, Miami’s 44-year streak in the tournament came to an end as the Hurricanes were not one of the 64 selected.  44 was the longest in any sport in NCAA history.

Florida State now has the longest streak at 40 years. FSU won the ACC tournament last Sunday.

Oregon State is the overall No. 1 seed.  The Beavers were a stupendous 49-4, 27 of the wins in the Pac-12, a record.

So like I’ve been saying, it’s never too late to order some Beaverwear as a hedge, just as we have in the sports drawer here at Bar Chat.

North Carolina is the No. 2 seed after winning 18 of its last 22.

Stanley Cup Playoffs

--What a first game of the Final, Nashville at Pittsburgh, Monday, the Penguins emerging with a 5-3 win that was beyond bizarre.  [I watched the entire contest.]

Nashville totally dominated the first period, except for a stretch of about three minutes when Pittsburgh scored three goals to take a 3-0 lead at the intermission.

This came after the Predators had appeared to score the first goal at 7:13, when a shot by P.K. Subban from the top of the right circle got past Penguins goalie Matt Murray, but Pittsburgh challenged the play, claiming it was offside earlier and after review, the goal was overturned.

The call sucked, but was technically legit, it’s just that the offside happened steps before the Subban shot and it didn’t seem fair in the least to Nashville. The Predators then lost their composure and the Penguins scored their three goals on seven shots on Predators goalie Pekka Rinne.

But then a funny thing happened on a way to a rout.  Picture the Nashville locker room between the first and second period.  They knew they were the better team yet somehow down 3-0.  I can’t remember such a situation before.  The Predators took that knowledge onto the ice in the second period and began to chip away, and resume their total domination.

How much did they dominate in the second?  While the Predators only managed one goal to make it 3-1, they held the Penguins without a shot on goal the entire period, something that had happened only once before in a Stanley Cup Final.  Nashville then tied it up with goals at 10:06 and 13:29 of the third, with the Penguins streak of minutes played without a shot extended to 37, before Pittsburgh rookie Jake Guentzel scored at 16:43 and then they added an empty-netter for the final tally.

For the game, Nashville outshot Pittsburgh 26-12.

I’ll be shocked if Nashville doesn’t now win the series.  Despite the loss they should have all the confidence in the world.  Game 2 in Pittsburgh tonight.

--TNT basketball analyst Charles Barkley had some interesting things to say in an interview with USA TODAY Sports’ Kevin Allen, specifically on the NHL playoffs.

“Stanley Cup playoff hockey is the best thing going, and not just now,” Barkley said.  “I think overtime hockey is the most nerve-wracking thing in the world. There’s nothing to compare it to.”

Barkley insists running the playoff gauntlet in the NHL is a lot harder than the NBA.

“Let me explain it like this. Every broadcaster and sportscaster in the world knew seven months ago that the Cavs and Warriors were going to play for the championship. There’s not a single person who had the Nashville Predators playing for the Stanley Cup championship.”

Barkley added that everyone knew the Penguins had a shot to be in the Finals, “but most people picked the Capitals to beat them.  No one thought the Predators would sweep the Blackhawks.”

Yup, Chuck knows his hockey.  He said he has “pretty much watched every Stanley Cup playoff game” for the last two months. During Game 5 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals, Barkley said he wanted to go back to the hotel to watch the rest of Game 7 between the Penguins and Ottawa.

Barkley said he started liking hockey when he began following the Eric Lindros-led Philadelphia Flyers in the 1990s and became friends with Jeremy Roenick and Chris Chelios in Chicago.

Roenick, an analyst on NBC, said of Sir Charles, “He’s a huge sports fan, and he knows hockey.”

In the TNT studio, when he’s there for his NBA duties, he makes sure two of the 20 monitors have the NHL on.  Too much.

Mostly, Barkley says he likes to root for the greats who haven’t won a championship because he’s on that list, so at the start of the playoffs, “I was rooting for Henrik Lundqvist, (Alex) Ovechkin and Joe Thornton.”

So Sir Charles wants Nashville, but he said it’s tough because one of his best friends is Pittsburgh assistant coach Rick Tocchet.

Roenick predicted that if NBC let Barkley join the NBC team for a game one of these days, “it would be the highest-rated hockey program of all time.”

Golf Balls

Yes, the following is a classic example of my dictum, ‘wait 24 hours.’

--Just last chat I relayed Tiger Woods’ last note on how he appeared to finally be pain free following his latest back surgery, but that a return to competitive golf this year was highly unlikely.  I mused the statement was really all about nothing, but he’s under pressure to keep his name out there, what with all of his endorsements.

Well, 12 hours later he was right back in the news, big time.

[The following is chronological in terms of the flow of the reports.]

Tiger’s life hit another new low when he was arrested at 3 a.m. near his Jupiter, Florida home for “driving erratically, all over the road” and charged with driving under the influence.  Police sources told website TMZ that the 14-time major winner was “arrogant” when an officer smelled alcohol on his breath – and refused to take a breathalyzer test.  That refusal led to his automatic arrest, which meant his mugshot would be released and it wasn’t a good one.  Hardly the role model long ago he was held up to be.

But Tiger, in a statement, insisted he had not been drinking alcohol, and that the incident resulted from “an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications.”

TMZ reported that Woods’ entourage repeatedly called the police station to enquire if there was any dashcam video footage of the incident, but it being a holiday, Monday, it seems this news wasn’t available. But if there was, it would be released Tuesday, along with the initial police report.

Woods’ latest girlfriend of a year, Kristin Smith, 33, who resides in Texas, reportedly found about the arrest while shopping at a Neiman Marcus store in Dallas.  TMZ reported that eyewitnesses said when she received a phone call, she “went crazy,” repeatedly saying: “I knew it, I knew it.”

“The site reported that she began crying, then bought $5,000 worth of merchandise and left.”  [Harriet Alexander and Ben Curtis / Daily Telegraph]

In the statement, Woods said: “I understand the severity of what I did and I take full responsibility for my actions.

“I want the public to know that alcohol was not involved.  What happened was an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications. I didn’t realize the mix of medications had affected me so strongly.

“I would like to apologize with all my heart to my family, friends and the fans.  I expect more from myself too.

“I will do everything in my power to ensure this never happens again.

“I fully cooperated with law enforcement, and I would like to personally thank the representatives of the Jupiter Police Department and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office for their professionalism.”

Christine Brennan / USA TODAY Sports

“The mug shot is so jarring, you have to look at it again just to make sure you saw that right.  The once-great Tiger Woods was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence early Monday morning at the age of 41.  The very public demise of one of the greatest athletic icons of this or any generation is there in that photo for all to see – sad, horrifying, unacceptable, shocking.

“Woods, the rich, powerful, popular American cultural rock star who should metaphorically be on top of his game in every way – even if the game itself, golf, the sport he once dominated, now eludes him – has come apart once again in the most public way possible.

“During Thanksgiving weekend in 2009, there was the run-in with the fire hydrant in front of his Florida home, which quickly cascaded into a jaw-dropping personal scandal that ended his marriage and changed forever the way many golf fans look at him.

“This is worse....

“How could he possibly make that decision?   How could he not call someone to take him home?  Call a cab, an Uber, something? Tiger is 41.  He’s not 21.  He’s the father of two children.  He has to know better....

“How sad is this?  How troubling?  For those of us who have been critical of him over the years, as I have, this is unexpected, and it’s terrible.  No one would want to see Tiger Woods in  a police mug shot.

“What happened to the young man we all thought we knew, the one we saw in another photo in 1997, the most famous photo of Tiger there is?  Only 21, pumping his fist, roaring in triumph after winning his first major tournament, the 1997 Masters?

“Where has he gone?

“What a stunning contrast these two photos are, taken 20 years and seven weeks apart.  They chart the rise and fall of a man who had it all, then watched it crumble away, all of it self-induced.

“We thought it was bad when he couldn’t play golf anymore. We had no idea.”

Jaime Diaz / Golf World

“Callous though it might sound, my guess is that in the short seconds after the initial impact of the headline, the next reaction by many among the multitudes immersed in all things Tiger would be ‘Not shocked.’  Because for all the happy talk from and about Woods by those who wish everything was all right, it’s not unreasonable to surmise that the 14-time major-championship winner’s life has been troubled for awhile. 

“That doesn’t dismiss how the stark juxtaposition of the historical Tiger Woods and the latest facts continue to feel disorienting and surreal.  The mug shot that will live forever (thanks to the Internet) of a disheveled and unshaven Woods looking into the police camera with hooded eyelids seared from the television screen.  As ESPN’s David Lloyd intoned on SportsCenter late Monday morning.  ‘THIS is the mug shot of Tiger Woods, one of the greatest players ever,’ the camera slowly zoomed in for a close-up of the image, and then froze for a silent extra beat.

“The man whose excellence as an athlete was built on his supreme self-control is not in control. And we may have reached a tipping point in which we will worry more about Woods as a person than as a golfer.

“Of course, at this point, no matter how unsettling the latest incident, there are only questions and maybes.

“The first maybe is that Woods’ arrest was the result of an isolated slip.  An athlete in the midst of a long recovery from major surgery, very likely bored by inactivity, letting loose one night and in the aftermath using poor judgment.  Woods has no history of unlawful conduct.

“But common sense and past experience tells us such things – among celebrities and non-celebrities alike – don’t usually happen in a vacuum.  Woods has unavoidably been subject to rumors, and some have involved speculation about excessive drinking or the use of painkillers....

“It would seem unlikely that Woods will publicly be forthcoming about his inner life, including this latest ordeal, even though some professionals in the mental-health field would advise him that it would be productive.  If he follows precedent, after an initial statement he and his camp will never voluntarily mention the DUI, and hope that if and when Woods begins playing competitively again, public curiosity will have dissipated, and even transformed from condemnation to sympathy and forgiveness.  Especially, as has been the pattern, if Woods gives indications that he can play well again.  His historical greatness is such that the majority of those who love golf will continue to hope that he can again exhibit a genius the game has arguably never seen....

“Through all this, the words of longtime Woods’ friend, Michael Jordan, spoken to Wright Thompson in a 2016 story in ESPN the Magazine, take on extra significance.  ‘The thing is about T-Dub, he cannot erase,’ Jordan said.  ‘That’s what he really wants.  He wants to erase the things that happened.’

“All pretty dark stuff. But at the moment, there’s no other way to spin it. The Tiger Woods story, sad for awhile now, has grown sadder.”

So after these two columns were written, we learned, first, that the TMZ report was incorrect (surprising, because in all seriousness it normally gets things right).

It turns out that the real police report that was released Tuesday showed they found Tiger asleep at the wheel on the side of a six-lane road, the engine running and his right blinker flashing.  Woods’ speech was slow and slurred, though a breathalyzer, yes, TMZ got this wrong, showed zero trace of alcohol.  Tiger didn’t know where he was.

Police described him as “cooperative as much as possible,” saying he had trouble keeping his eyes open.  His car was parked in a direction headed the opposite way from his home on Jupiter Island, about nine miles away.

Woods reported taking four different prescription medications, including Vicodin.  The FDA has a warning for Vicodin, that it “may impair the mental and/or physical abilities required for the performance of potentially hazardous tasks such as driving a car or operating machinery.”

The police report said Woods was “extremely sleepy.”

Jack Nicklaus, speaking at his annual meeting with the media ahead of Thursday’s start of the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village said, “I’m a fan of Tiger’s.  I’m a friend of Tiger’s. And I feel bad for him.

“I think that he’s struggling. And I wish him well.  I hope he gets out of it, and I hope he plays golf again. He needs a lot of support from a lot of people. And I’ll be one of them.”

To be continued....

--In the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship, it’s going to be defending champion Oregon vs. Oklahoma in today’s final.  What is kind of surprising here is that Oregon was in serious danger of not making the field of 8 for match play, but in the fourth and final round of stroke play, the Ducks shot a 293, at least 10 shots better than the teams immediately ahead of them to qualify for the quarterfinals.

Mississippi’s Braden Thornberry won the individual title.

Stuff

--Three weekends ago, I was with my high school buddies at the shore and three of us had a little discussion about sportswriting, for no particular reason, and somehow the conversation turned to Frank Deford and we all agreed he was as good as any in our lifetimes.  So we note his passing the other day at the age of 78. 

Deford began his career with Sports Illustrated way back in 1962, leaving in 1989 to become the editor of The National, a daily sports newspaper that lasted only 18 months.  Deford returned to SI and was a fixture on HBO’s Real Sports, retiring earlier this month from a commentary gig on NPR that he held for 37 years.

He is the only sportswriter to receive the National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Obama in 2013.

Deford, who lost a daughter at age 8 to cystic fibrosis, worked tirelessly to put an end to the crippling lung disease and was national chairperson for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Sally Jenkins / Washington Post

“Frank Deford practically invented the notion of multimedia: He exported his voice to radio, TV and film, and if you didn’t know him you might have thought he was an actor, because he wore purple suits and looked like Clark Gable.  But Frank...was a writer above all things, and an important one.  His work...was identified by two qualities that made it important.  The first was sincerity, which is a form of truthfulness.  The second, and this is not unrelated to the first, was a kind of sweetness.  You always came away liking his subjects for their flaws.  Not in spite of them....

“Frank’s work taught the aspiring sportswriters who grew up on him that games are stories about who we really are – and to forget that was to be in danger of drifting into cliché and template and myth, and those weren’t nearly as affecting or moving as the truth....

“Who are athletes really, and do they have qualities that are actually worth admiring?  He asked that question in every story, and in every one, the answer he arrived at was emphatically yes – just not in ways you thought.

“To me, the most meaningful and complicated if not the best story Frank ever wrote was about the German heavyweight Max Schmeling.  He was an Aryan poster boy for the Nazis, who had enjoyed the attentions of Hitler and admitted he had knowledge of the camps.  Yet he had also refused to join the party and tried to aid Jews.  Frank’s piece portrayed Schmeling in all his aging complexity, his mixture of pride and sin of omission, expedience in the face of evil, and his tangled sense of moral responsibility.  Frank wrote: ‘Most Americans of a certain age know for an absolute fact that, long ago, Max Schmeling was the dirty rotten Nazi who got lucky and beat Joe Louis, but then got his comeuppance when our good Joe demolished him in the rematch – sticking it to Hitler in the bargain.  Schmeling, though, was never a Nazi.  He was sometimes credulous and sometimes weak and often an example of what the road to hell is paved with.’....

“There is a wonderful line from Schmeling in the story.  He says, ‘I was given a life and I used it.’  The same with Frank Deford.  He was given a life – and he used it.”

--Who is the third team to be promoted from the Championship League to the Premier League, after Brighton & Hove Albion and Newcastle United?  It’s Huddersfield Town, which will be playing in the Premier League for the first time in its history after a 4-3 penalty shootout win over Reading on Monday.  Huddersfield has been playing since 1972.

Last year, manager David Wagner’s side finished 19th in the league (out of 24...three of them are relegated too...to League One...).  For winning the promotion, Huddersfield can expect a windfall of at least $215 million over the next three seasons.

And that, boys and girls, is why Huddersfield (also called ‘Town’) fans should be pumped, especially seeing as they have reportedly the fifth-lowest budget in the second tier.

Reading fans, on the other hand, have to be besides themselves as it was their fourth playoff final defeat. 

Reminder...In the Championship League, the first two are automatically promoted; Nos. 3-6 have a playoff for the final spot. But, the last three Championship playoff final winners have been relegated straight back to the second tier.

--Maryland defeated Ohio State 9-6 on Monday to win its first NCAA men’s lacrosse title since 1972.  [They lost the title game to Denver in 2015 and North Carolina in 2016.]

And the Lady Terrapins won the women’s title, defeating Boston College.

--The Denver Post dismissed sportswriter Terry Frei for tweeting after Takuma Sato won the Indy 500 that he was “very uncomfortable” with the Japanese driver taking it.

Frei issued an apology Sunday after facing backlash on social media

--ESPN the Magazine has its annual ranking of “The World Fame 100,” which is put together by asking ESPN reporters across the world to identify the top active athletes in their regions and the list of nearly 400 was run through a formula that factored in endorsements, social media following and Google search popularity.

And since it’s about the world, not one MLB or NHL player made the cut, yet Chinese table tennis player Ma Long did (No. 71).  And there were 38 soccer players.  Tom Brady was the only NFLer in the top 50 (No. 21).

I was shocked skiers Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin weren’t on the list...or maybe I shouldn’t have been.

Top Ten:

1. Cristiano Ronaldo
2. LeBron James
3. Lionel Messi
4. Roger Federer
5. Phil Mickelson
6. Neymar
7. Usain Bolt
8. Kevin Durant
9. Rafael Nadal
10. Tiger Woods

11. Stephen Curry
12. Novak Djokovic
14. Rory McIlroy
16. Jordan Spieth
19. Serena Williams

--A 34-year-old female zookeeper was killed after a tiger entered an enclosure at the Hamerton Zoo, Cambridgeshire, England.  I’m only going to give the victim’s first name, Rosa, but her mother paid tribute, saying “she wouldn’t have done anything else, it’s what she has always done.”

The zoo described the keeper’s death as a freak accident, and police confirmed it was not suspicious.  The tiger that killed her has not been put down and was unharmed, police said.

A witness told the BBC that he was at the zoo with his family, late Monday morning, when he heard a “commotion” near the enclosure. A photographer was on the scene, he ran for help, and within seconds a half dozen zookeepers were there, but they had to steer clear as staff immediately shouted for everyone to leave the park.

At no time did the animal escape from the enclosure, police confirmed.  How the tiger got into an area it wasn’t supposed to be is not known, but it has emerged the zoo was criticized following an inspection in 2013 – which ordered the owners to “review and replace ageing safety barriers where the structural integrity of the barrier is compromised.”

The inspection also criticized the lack of a good emergency communications system.

Top 3 songs for the week 6/5/65: #1 “Help Me, Rhonda” (The Beach Boys)  #2 “Wooly Bully” (Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs)  #3 “Back In My Arms Again” (The Supremes)...and...#4 “Crying In The Chapel” (Elvis Presley)  #5 “Ticket To Ride” (The Beatles)  #6 “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter” (Herman’s Hermits) #7 “I Can’t Help Myself” (Four Tops)  #8 “Just A Little” (The Beau Brummels)  #9 “Engine Engine #9” (Roger Miller)  #10 “It’s Not Unusual” (Tom Jones)

NHL Quiz Answers: 1) Multiple Hart winners / 1970s: Bobby Orr, 1970-72; Bobby Clarke, 1973, 75,76; Guy Lafleur, 1977-78.  [The other two winners that decade were Phil Esposito, 1974, and Bryan Trottier, 1979.]  2) The two teenagers to win the Hart were Wayne Gretzky, 19, 1980, and Sidney Crosby, 19, 2007.  For Gretzky, that was his first of eight in a row, 1980-87.  He then picked up a ninth in 1989.

Next Bar Chat, Monday.

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