For reasons I can’t explain, few weeks have elapsed in the past decade when I haven’t been asked by someone in this country about TSN’s Michael Landsberg. And usually the question is something like: “Isn’t that guy an arrogant son of a bitch?”
“Actually, no,” I reply. “He’s really a wonderful guy.”
And then I proceed to divulge that this 50ish broadcaster from Toronto is giving and kindhearted and donates lots of time to charity work, quietly, and is friendly and warm. Funny, too. He’s as sensitive as he is sensible.
Granted, he comes across as an arrogant SOB — or worse — as the host of his daily show, Off The Record, where he’s often confrontational and abrasive, probably because he knows such schticks produce good television.
Tonight, Landsberg could alter opinions about him when he appears as a guest on his own show. Filling in for him as OTR’s host will be Argonauts coach Michael Clemons. TSN propogandists vow that Landsberg will be compelled to answer rapid-fire questions from Clemons — some personal. It could be revealing.
Landsberg, incidentally, says he expects Clemons to reciprocate down the road. “I want to coach a football game,” he says, “and it better not be pre-season.”
•I’m looking forward also to the pre-game festivities tomorrow night at the Air Canada Centre, where the 1967 Maple Leafs will reunite and where the enigmatic and irascible Dave Keon will resurface.
And I can’t help but wonder how Keon will treat ex-teammate Eddie Shack. When I last talked with Keon in the late 1990s, he told me he had no time for Shack and called him “an idiot.”
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