TORONTO – Along with everything else, Muhammad Ali’s death should remind everybody who earns a living or gets enjoyment from watching sports about the debt all of us owe African-American athletes.
Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, Curt Flood, Tommie Smith, Arthur Ashe. We will never see their type again in part because they were so good at what they set out to do. The world isn’t perfect and their battles haven’t been completely won, but they made those of us of a certain age aware of things our parents never talked about and heightened our sensibilities to the sensibilities of others.
But they have also created a burden for African-American athletes that isn’t shared by white athletes.
Face it, we never question when a white guy hits the jackpot, never wonder why he isn’t doing more for society. But let a Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Usain Bolt or LeBron James come along and in addition to winning and making money hand over fist we expect them to adopt causes, to be agents for societal change because, well, that’s what Ali did.
It’s an impossible task.
So as we spend the week discussing a life that transcended everything around it – George Foreman provided some of the most memorable comments about Ali the African-American athlete, including gently chiding in an NPR radio interview when he warned, “Don’t put him [Ali] in that little pocket of one. The man was a great man beyond anything as far as colour.” Let’s not fall into the whole “they don’t make them like they used to,” trap.
Because of Ali and his contemporaries, they don’t have to make them like they used to.
CONTROLLING THE EAST
Soon the Toronto Blue Jays will be done with the American League East until the trade deadline. Think about that. Only seven games against the Baltimore Orioles remain until the Blue Jays spend a month (June 30-July 28th) playing teams outside of their own division. They’re finished with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays until then.
Which is why there was an unusual early-season importance to this most recent run of success, capped off by Sunday’s 5-4 win over Boston. The Blue Jays are 7-6 against the Red Sox, 7-2 against the Yankees and have gone 9-3 against the two teams, part of a 12-4 run since some of the Blue Jays veterans approached manager John Gibbons about changing the lineup and putting Jose Bautista in the lead-off spot.
Starting pitching has continued to be the Blue Jays hallmark and the team’s ability to carve up two hitters who have enjoyed success against them is part of the reason.
The Red Sox’s Mookie Betts, for example, is 9-for-55 (.164) against the Blue Jays with four runs batted in. In 2015, he was 28-for-73 (.384) with three homers, six doubles, two triples and 12 runs batted in. Meanwhile, Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner has gone 0-for-27 against the Blue Jays in 2015. Put in context, he has a .282 lifetime average against them and has hit more home runs (13) and doubles (19) against the Blue Jays than any other team.
The Blue Jays, in other words, have whipsawed two top-of-the-order hitters who have created issues for them in the past.
“Most of it comes down to the fact that we’re just pretty aggressive and we have a good game-plan,” said Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin. “Against Brett, it seems like we’re always 0-1.”
QUIBBLES AND BITS
• The NHL and NHL Players Association are on sound tactical turf by holding the IOC’s feet to the fire when it comes to the involvement of NHL players in the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Winter Games. The IOC has more than enough money to foot the bill for the cost of the competition, which causes NHL owners to shutter their arenas for two weeks, and if it can’t manage it? Well, that’s only going to make the World Cup of Hockey a more meaningful competition.
IOC president Thomas Bach says he won’t provide subsidies for any sport but he has misplayed his hand here and he can’t even fall back on turning the hockey competition into something similar to the men’s Olympic soccer event, which is an under-23 tournament with a maximum of three over-aged players per team, since that won’t address the timing of the event (the summer Games don’t conflict with club soccer seasons) and since many of the best under-23 hockey players are already key performers for their teams, which means insurance will still be an issue.
• A quick impression from watching interviews at the world championships and at this weekend’s prospect evaluation camp: Auston Matthews could very well be a much better player than Patrick Laine, but he’s going to rival Connor McDavid for on-camera blandness – which shouldn’t matter to Toronto Maple Leafs fans, of course, and is likely a big checkmark in the ‘positives’ column of Lou Lamoriello’s notebook.
• Much chagrin in the fake world of UFC over the banning of journalist Ariel Helwani and two of his colleagues this weekend after Helwani reported the return of Brock Lesnar to UFC, which, I gather, is something of a scoop in the world of men in tights with cauliflower ears and bad tattoos.
Apparently this angered the UFC, who had the journalists punted from a post-fight event.
No surprise here as it has long been rumoured that Dana White, UFC’s chief scriptwriter and director (who proves you sometimes can judge a book by its cover), paid reporters to cover his events – including those from mainstream outlets – and as a result exercised the type of influence that turned reporters into fart catchers.
It was genius. Get the mainstream media to treat a ludicrous sport with made-up rules and storylines as legitimate and watch the lemmings come running.
But it also reveals why the UFC and MMA will eventually cave in on itself and become even more like WWE – no disrespect meant to the wrestling folks, who at least know their own soul and have a sense of self-deprecation.
THE ENDGAME
The Cleveland Cavaliers’ performance in the paint through the first two games of the NBA Finals has been woeful – 44.1 per cent is 14 percentage points off their figure through the first three rounds of the playoffs – and makes me wonder yet again what a difference a fully healthy Jonas Valanciunas might have made in the NBA Eastern Conference finals.
The Cavaliers are toast. They’ve been beaten by the Golden State Warriors‘ bench and Draymond Green through two games and head coach Tyronn Lue, whose major contribution seems to have been to tell James to push the pace, has been exposed.
Jeff Blair hosts The Jeff Blair Show from 9-11 a.m. ET and Baseball Central from 11 a.m.-Noon on Sportsnet 590 The FAN.