TORONTO — I don’t think I’m giving away state secrets here when I tell you about a conversation Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi and myself had during the post-season. Mulling over what lay ahead for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2017, the topic of conversation got around to the fact the team had hired Ben Cherington as vice-president of baseball operations and Davidi wondered aloud whether the Blue Jays off-season might look a whole lot like that of the 2013 Boston Red Sox.
I’m not sure Toronto’s ready for that. Hell, I don’t know if I am. Cherington was general manager of that team and his key off-season acquisitions were: David Ross, Jonny Gomes, Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino, Koji Uehara, Mike Carp, Brock Holt and Joel Hanrahan. Nary a sexy name among them. Dan Shaughnessy, the Boston Globe’s sage columnist, wrote on Feb. 24 of that year: "The reality is the 2013 Red Sox might be really bad." The reality, of course, was that after much gnashing of teeth the Red Sox won the American League East by six games — leading from the trade deadline to the end — and won the World Series. The Globe’s Pete Abraham described them as a team whose mantra leaving spring training was "Please don’t hate us."
Now, I don’t know if that’s the exact template for the Blue Jays this off-season. Even with those low-key signings, Cherington still forked out over $100 million in free-agent deals, but damn if Kendrys Morales’ three-year, $33-million deal with the Blue Jays doesn’t sound a lot like the three-year deals Napoli and Victorino received from Cherington. The point is, don’t be surprised if the Blue Jays take a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" approach to filling in for Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista, in the event neither re-signs. And then we can begin guessing which local scribe will pronounce them in spring training as being doomed …
TRUMPING LOGIC
It’s nice that Toronto Raptors president and general manager Masai Ujiri continues to talk up Canada and Toronto and it’s nice that Norman Powell and Patrick Patterson tweeted about dual citizenship, but the fact is the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president won’t result in a spate of free-agents coming to Canadian-based teams or viewing approaches from Canadian teams any differently.
Because, unless I miss my guess here — and I have been accused at times of being Nostradumbass, to borrow a phrase from Bill Maher — people who earn millions of dollars a year are going to be just fine under a tax-reducing Trump presidency, at least initially, or in the very least insulated from the more draconian aspects of having a megalomaniac in power. That includes high-earning black athletes.
But as Dr. Harry Edwards told Stephen Brunt and myself on Friday, there must be implications from the fact that in many instances there will be a disconnect between the people who pay for tickets — in most sports, largely suburban or urban whites — and the people providing the entertainment. This really was at the root of Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy’s comments at shootaround the morning after Trump’s election: how does he as a white coach deal with the reality of an increasingly diverse group of athletes in a sport already dominated by black athletes, many of whom will feel that the people in the stands voted for a president who has found favour with the most racist, extremist elements of society?
Some might think sports can serve as a unifier in times such as these. They might point to the way the 1968 Detroit Tigers emerged from the ashes of urban riots to help bind the wounds of their city, but this is a different time and a different media environment. Besides, at this point I’m not certain that unity is what’s called for; seems to me unquestioning neutrality in public discourse is what created Trump — that everybody deserves a say, no matter how poisonous their rhetoric.
QUIBBLES AND BITS
• Youth is being served on a nightly basis in the NHL — no, actually, on most nights youth is doing the serving — but Sidney Crosby is still the measuring stick, isn’t he? Crosby’s goal in Saturday’s win over the Toronto Maple Leafs gave him 10 goals through his first nine games played and that’s a career-best, three more than the seven he scored in his first nine games in 2013-14 and 2014-15).
• I’m not sure this bodes well for the Blue Jays: Ken Davidoff of the New York Post had an interesting interview with Chicago Cubs executive vice-president and general manager Jed Hoyer in which Hoyer relayed how his experience in a failed attempt to build the San Diego Padres around young starting pitching convinced him young position players ought to instead be the focus of player procurement — a philosophy embodied by the Cubs. Hoyer described the high risk/low risk balance of the approach by comparing it to "tech stocks and bonds." Interesting stuff.
• You know by now that Toronto’s Andrew Wiggins set a single-game scoring record for Canadians on Sunday night with 47 points, but can you guess the eight other Minnesota Timberwolves players who have scored at least 40 points per game? Kevin Garnett, Kevin Love, Corey Brewers, Mo Williams, Michael Beasley, Isaiah Rider, Tony Campbell and Randy Breuer. I’m a big fan of Timberwolves head coach Tom Thibodeau, and like many I was wondering how he’d handle the laid-back Wiggins. Unlike many, however, I had no problem with Wiggins skipping responsibilities with the Canadian senior men’s team this summer. He isn’t paid to be an amateur; his first loyalty should be to himself and his NBA team. "He’s driven," Thibodeau told Jerry Zgoda of the Star-Tribune on Sunday. "I think sometimes people mistakenly take it that he’s laid-back. He’s just scratching the surface. I think he can be a lot more. I don’t want to put a lid on it; it’s what he wants it to be."
THE ENDGAME
This just in from the Let’s Find Something To Keep Us Occupied Until The Playoffs Department: The Toronto Raptors can do something on Tuesday night for the first time in franchise history: win five consecutive road games to start the season. And in Cleveland no less, in what will be the first of back-to-back games against last year’s NBA finalists, including Wednesday’s meeting at the Air Canada Centre with the Golden State Warriors. It’s a good time for DeMar DeRozan to be on fire: only five other players have chalked up 300 points in the first nine games of a regular season: Michael Jordan has done it four times, the last in 1989-90; Rick Barry did it twice (1966-67 and 1974-75); Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1970-71); World B. Free (1979-80) and Nate ‘Tiny’ Archibald in 1972-72. That’s one helluva list …
Jeff Blair hosts The Jeff Blair Show from 9 a.m.-noon ET on Sportsnet 590/The Fan. He also appears frequently on Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown.