The very notion of Jeffrey Loria giving out the heftiest contract in sports history doesn’t jibe with his reputation as one of the most successful tightwads in the history of sports ownership. But it sure fits his somewhat "whimsical" approach to owning the Miami Marlins.
Of course, if Giancarlo Stanton’s contract with Loria’s Marlins gets done this week and comes in at the reported 13 years and $325 million, keep in mind it will likely include at least one opt-out clause. Translation? Stanton will be with another team before the deal is half over, either because he will lose faith in Loria or Loria will do the same thing he did two years ago with Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and others when he conducted an impromptu fire sale.
It doesn’t make the deal any less intriguing – especially from Stanton’s viewpoint. It’s one thing to agree to a deal that carries you through the final few years of salary arbitration and a couple years of free agency; it’s another to sign a deal that carries you through the last two years of arbitration and the entire prime of your career.
In the meantime, think about the route Loria has taken to get to this point: purchasing 24 percent interest in the Montreal Expos in Dec. 1999 for $12 million (U.S.); selling the team for $120 million in 2002; buying the Miami Marlins for $158.5 million – including a $38.5 million interest-free loan from baseball; winning a World Series, watching the Marlins value hit more than half a billion dollars in 2013 and getting a new stadium built for $155 million out of his own pocket. Now he’s giving out the biggest deal in pro sports. Hard to believe that the Montreal businessmen who were his limited partners with the Expos thought he was some kind of dilettante when he joined them.
BULLISH ON GASOL
A nice week ahead for the Toronto Raptors, as the team gets set to play the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday, Milwaukee Bucks on Friday and Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday. Leave aside LeBron James, for now: the Raptors came out of Saturday’s win over the Utah Jazz averaging 106 points per game, fourth-highest in the NBA, and in the Grizzlies and Bucks — yes, the Bucks! — they will be battling two of the NBA’s top three stingiest defences.
But they won’t face what they faced this past week in the Chicago Bulls, who with a healthy Derrick Rose and a fully integrated Pau Gasol were simply too much for the Raptors. Gasol seems like the happiest man in the NBA — clearly considering himself lucky to be away from the twin messes that are the Los Angeles Lakers and the waning of Kobe Bryant’s career.
Beyond everything else Gasol brings, Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau said that the Spaniard’s presence has helped energize the Bulls three-point shooting.
"We’re taking a lot more ‘rhythm’ threes," Thibodeau said. "Pau is very unselfish. He’ll back in and kick the ball out. That creates a ‘rhythm’ three, which is a lot different than shooting a three off the dribble."
Kirk Hinrich said that Gasol "changes our dynamic. We have five guys out on the court who make good basketball plays. Plus, you know, Pau’s been through it. He’s won it all, and when he says something it carries weight. We’ll need to lean on it during the season. I mean, we already have."
Just in time for the Raptors break-through, the East has become tougher.
WHAT I LEARNED
The things you learn in a week hosting a sports talk show:
"One of the real cool things I do remember when he (Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos) called me is that basically the first thing he said was ‘Welcome to the Blue Jays, we’re excited to have you and that outfield glove you have? You can throw it away.’ So that was pretty exciting to hear that off the get-go, I am viewed as a second baseman again."
— Devon Travis, the highly-touted Detroit Tigers prospect who joined the Toronto Blue Jays in a trade for Anthony Gose, will not be asked to make a transition to the outfield with his new team.
Devon Travis on The Jeff Blair Show
"Pat was a hard coach on players. Very demanding. But he also was really smart enough to gravitate toward the key players on the team that would make it all happen most nights. When he was here he had great relationships with Wendell Clark, Doug Gilmour, Dave Ellett and Felix Potvin."
— Former Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Cliff Fletcher, now a senior advisor with the team, discusses his hiring of Pat Burns as head coach in 1992 ahead of Burns’ induction in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Cliff Fletcher on The Jeff Blair Show
"The day I left Kitchener to go overseas, my mother and sister were at the doorstep and they were crying like babies … ‘We’ll never see you, Milt, again’ but I fooled them. Anyways, I got halfway down to the car that was there to take us to the railroad station and I turned back and went to Mom and said: ‘Mom, do you mind if I change my name from Schmidt to Smith?’ She said: ‘You can do anything you want to.’ I gave it further thought and said to heck with it – what was good enough with mother and dad is good enough for me."
— Hockey Hall of Famer Milt Schmidt reminisces about the day he left home – and interrupted an NHL career as part of the Boston Bruins ‘Kraut Line’ – to join the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War.
Milt Schmidt on The Jeff Blair Show
QUIBBLES AND BITS
(*) As professional sports have dealt with the issue of performance enhancing drugs, no group of individuals have escaped as much scrutiny or blame as player agents, who in many instances serve as enablers for the whims of their clients. That’s why Newsday.com’s report last week that Scott Boras had been fingered by disgraced Biogenesis head Anthony Bosch as having attempted to fake medical records and come up with a cover story to explain a failed drug test by one of Boras’ clients, Manny Ramirez, resonated so dramatically through the industry. Boras, who also represents Alex Rodriguez, issued a statement after the story surfaced denying that he has ever spoken to Bosch or met with him, as Bosch reportedly told federal investigators. Boras claimed his office didn’t know that Ramirez was being treated by Bosch until after Ramirez’s failed drug test, and that he had no role in negotiations between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA surrounding Ramirez’s suspension.
(*) If you watched any of England’s UEFA qualifying win over Slovenia at Wembley Stadium, you no doubt saw the mess the hybrid grass field was in after an NFL game the week before. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out online and ask yourself if it’s worth wrecking BMO Field — a facility that should be our Wembley, given the growth of soccer in this country and already can’t grow grass properly — for the Toronto Argonauts. The answer is, of course, a resounding "no." For a team that for more than a decade has had neither the ownership moxie nor financial clout to find a home, the Argos possess a remarkable sense of entitlement.
(*) I’ve come around to embracing the use of video replay in baseball, in large measure because I like the logistical approach being taken and the sensibilities shown by Joe Torre and the folks in the commissioner’s baseball operations department. So it was good to hear that Torre told MLB general managers that starting in 2015, managers will not have to walk out to ask the umpire crew chief to review a play. It was in fact Torre who insisted on the manager’s coming out as a means of adhering to the spirit of manager/umpire relationships, but the time-wasting and often embarrassing stroll turned into the most ludicrous aspect of the system. It is likely, now, that the manager will merely have to signal from the dugout that he wants a review.