Published at The RaptorNest and RaptorBlog.
The Blue Baller is back and I’ve been busy. Since the doors to TheBlueBaller.com have opened, I have been receiving a flood of email. As a service to my readers, I thought I’d share a few, in a segment I like to call The Male Bag.
Email #1
WHAAAYAAsAy Bloo Ballaaah!!!! It’s Kenny Thomas!!! Just finished VC’s Charity game and stopped in at an Internet Café on Dundas to HOLLA AT MY BOY!!! I AM FU#*%ED UP!!!! I’ve been rollin down Yonge street all nite with Toots and the Maytals in some old van. He’s got this wicked homemade bong-steel drum thing in the back that is SLAMMIN!!! I LUV CARIBANA!! LOL. Yeah Ballah, the Charity game was dope, I was the MVP! Wait , Toots told me I wasn’t, wait…ok I wasn’t the MVP, well whatevh..I LUV TORONTO!!! Jump upJUPM up!
PEACE
K-TO
Kenny,
You scored 4 of your team’s 171 points. Jalen Rose pulled down 7 more rebounds than you. You could have at least pretended to be interested in scoring with something other than a Caribana float performer. You’re just lucky that no one actually wanted to see you play. Kenny, get it together. Seriously.
And next time you’re in town remember to return my Young MC cassette.
- BB
Email #2
I hate you. My eyes vomit when I read your column. You suck worse than the Raptors.
- Dave Feschuk
Chuckles,
The cynical questions, the mean-spirited articles, your pouty picture in the Star—it’s time for some Dr. Phil. What kind of masochist torments themselves by covering a subject or sport that they hate? You following the Raptors is like a staff writer from The Humane Society covering the Jayson Williams dog-shooting case. And your columns? I’ve read sunnier stuff from guys working a genocide beat. In fact if Vince Carter scored a triple-double to win the NBA Championship, I’m convinced you’d write about how he slacked off on defence, didn’t send his grandmother in Florida a birthday card, and somehow link Michelle Carter to Al Qaeda.
Listen Chuckles, its time for you to stop writing about the Raptors and start covering a section that better suits your darker tastes: Obituaries. Speaking of which, good riddance.
- BB
P.S. Thank you for your interest and please say hi to Norm DaCosta for me.
Email #3
Dear Blue Baller,
I play for the NBA franchise in Toronto and became a restricted free agent this summer. Although I really wanted to return to the team, I was never offered a new contract. So I decided to go out and find another one, and I did. A pretty good one too. But then, as soon as I was ready to pack my bags, my original team decided to match it. In some ways I’m glad, but if they really wanted me, why didn’t they just offer me a contract in the first place?
Signed,
Confused
Dear Confused,
If you hadn’t showed up to training camp last season wearing a KFC bib and decided to model your game after Craig Hodges, you wouldn’t be in this mess. You were supposed to be a solid second option on offence, but you spent so much time running the baseline and standing in the corners people started to confuse you for an ACC waiter. And what is with all of the flopping? JYD might have cheered each time you took a charge, but you can’t make a career in the NBA lying on your back. This isn’t porn.
So Confused, my advice to you is this: start playing like you did back in college, and spend more time in the Flight Deck as opposed to the food court. Then you’ll be fine. And speaking of college, please tell your former coach to drop that whole “Izzo” thing. It’s so old.
- BB
Email #4
Oh Blue I can’t stand it anymore…your 80’s pop culture analogies, your Oliver Miller references, your steadily improving Photoshop skills. I want you. I could barely get through the segment on the Jamal Crawford trade yesterday without thinking of you. I crave your diction.
But Blue, you’re still such a mystery to me. Can you please tell me just a bit more about yourself so I can round out my fantasy?
Yours,
Hazel Mae
Dearest Hazel,
Like I told Martine Gaillard and Kathryn Humphreys before you, my heart belongs to Norma Wick. But since you asked, I can tell you a bit more about myself. It’s a simple story really…
It all started 30 years ago in Toronto. My mother was working as a barmaid at the El Mocambo and met my father, Wilt Chamberlain, when he was on one of his reefer binges north of the border. They had a passionate affair and I was born 9 months later upon the very pool table where I was conceived.
Unwanted by my parents, I was sent away to New York City, traveling up the Hudson River on a raft made of father’s Sixers jersey, shoelaces, and Rizzlas. 
I ended up in a Coney Island orphanage where I learned to speak from watching Brent Musburger call NBA games. Growing up, my days were then filled with playing basketball. That was until I had my legs broken when a dice game with Lloyd Daniels turned sour. It was then I began to write, mostly articles covering local pick-up games. The elders would pay me for my words with food, mostly cough syrup and cheese.
Fast forward to 1995 when I returned to Toronto. I was penning a biography on the Bronx’s favourite son Ed Pinckney at the time, and he was selected by the Raptors in the expansion draft. After Ed left town and I couldn’t get “Pretty in Pinck” published, I turned my attention and writing solely toward the Raptors, and it’s been there ever since. I now live in a garage at Nav Bhatia’s Hyundai dealership at peace with the fact that covering the Raptors is not a blessing or curse, rather, it is my destiny.
- BB