Tim and Sid big up the TBL on today’s radio program!
April 12 2012-- It’s 3:30pm, and TBL commissioner Adrian Golombek gets a call from former TBL player, Mark Aloisis exclaiming that on today’s Fan590 radio show with Tim Micallef and Sid Seixeiro, they had a field day reminiscing about burby(mostly Tim), which sent in emails and twitter comments from old school heads all around Toronto, talking about their wallball memories from the 80's and 90's! The remarkable part about the program, was that a gentleman by the name of Tim Gallant (random Fan590 listener), emailed Tim and Sid about our very TBL website and how dedicated we are to the beautiful game of burby!
The show began with the well-known personalities’ interviewing Blue Jays fan favourite, Jesse Barfield. In the middle of the interview, Micallef decides to mention to Barfield, “I gotta admit, when I played burby, growing up in this city, anytime, anyone needed to unleash the cannon, they assumed the Barfield name…”. And this became the pseudo-theme to the Fan590's April 12th Tim & Sid program for the next 2 ½ hours.
Micallef was a more serious player than Seixeiro. He had his own crew of bricklots…his buddies, Spiro and Fond(I think), who were able to really throw some ‘junk’ back in the day and also the Moose, a friend who would go on to lose “800lbs”, only to have his nicknamed changed to ‘Moose-like’. He also talked about his school’s janitor, Cosmo, who would climb to the roof, to get the tennis balls they would lose up there.
It was quite a familiar recollection to any TBL member.
From here, Twitter caught a bit of burby fever, with 140 character max wallball comments being sent to hashtags that included #oldschoolthings and #burby.
The comments recalled, spray painting the boxes on walls, losing your last tennis ball off a foul ball, using a broom stick instead of a baseball bat and ‘doctoring’ your pitches with skinned, furry or wet tennis balls.
Then the question of, ‘what is burby?’ was asked of Tim and Sid and their response echoed just how we feel here at the TBL…IF ANYONE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT BURBY OR WALLBALL IS…YOU DON’ MISSED OUT! (Their complete response is pictured at the top of the page)
This was when Mr. Tim Gallant sent the Fan590 a link to the TBL site and Tim and Sid gave the Toronto Burby League a shout out, live on the radio show! It went a lil' something like this...
“(Micallef)For those who don’t know what burby is, Tim Gallant sent an entire website dedicated to the Toronto Burby League, it has several teams, it’s hilarious, including the, Warden Warriors, who use the symbol of the Wu-Tang Clan as their logo, which I find AWESOME!...(Seixeiro) Do they know the significance?...(Tim)I think so.”
This was a great moment for any players who’ve had the chance to listen to the program. Most of the burby content is towards the end of the 2pm hour and especially at the beginning of the 3pm hour segments(3pm link>>); April 12th edition of Tim and Sid Sportsnet Radio the Fan590.
Officially, the Toronto Burby League would love to invite Tim and Sid to watch or be an honourary part of league games, the AllStar event or our Championship weekend at the end of the season. We’d also like to say thanks to Tim Gallant for following the league site and bringing it to the attention of the Fan590 nation!
The TBL continues to make intrepid strides to bring back burby or wallball as Toronto’s favourite summer past time. Being a fan of Tim and Sid for a long time, as I’m sure many of you are, and listening to them talk about the joy of burby, it reminds me of why we do what we do in the Toronto Burby League…To Live the Dream!
--Rocky Parejo
