Monday Morning Halfback: Here come the Blue Jays, and the culture war that’s latched onto the WNBA

Jamie Ross is the sports editor of the Globe and Mail; Cathal Kelly is the national sports columnist.

J.R.: Cathal, the Blue Jays have crawled within striking distance of the Texas Rangers for the last American League wild card spot. A couple weeks ago they were unloading one of their best players at the trade deadline. Are you seeing any flashes of the same team that went all the way to the World Series last year?

C.K.: Jamie, what people forget about last year is how nervy the Jays’ September was. They’d jogged out to a strong lead in the AL East. On this date a year ago, they were up five games on Boston and New York.

But right at the end, they tried to give the division back. Their attempt at collapse was only halted on the final weekend of the season.

There was this Sliding Doors moment where they might have fallen apart in the wild card, and everyone gets fired. Instead, they become (Jeff Hoffman aside) unstoppable.

Cathal Kelly: The part-time professional athlete is here, and you can’t get enough of them

All to say, this is starting to feel like the same process using the opposite approach. It’s a team that runs on its luck. Was last year, and is again this year. Until about a week ago, you’d have said most of that luck was bad. But as I write this on Sunday morning, that luck may have turned.

They’re not going to win the division. If they get the third wild card, it’ll be a statistical marvel. But if they do do that, what team would want to play them? Forget about man match-ups. This is a team that’ll beat you with the ninth guy in the order, with the bullpen catcher pitching. They Ernie Clement you to death.

You’ve watched this team play a lot of baseball. Look into your crystal ball for me. How does this end?

J.R.: There used to be a guy on the beat who always said, no matter how far back the Jays had fallen, at any point in the 162-game season, “it’s early.” You might’ve rolled your eyes then, but the last couple have seasons have proven him right.

There is something to be said about peaking at the right time. The Colorado Avalanche can’t seem to figure out when that is, but the Blue Jays have a knack for it. The last time I covered this team, they steamrolled their way to the top of the American League East in 2015. The next year, in a lesser form, they sneaked into the playoffs on a wild card (and made it to the ALCS).

Feels the same this time around, no? Should I be making more coverage plans for a deep fall run?

C.K.: You know how much of an irrepressible optimist I am. It’s why I keep 20 gallon jugs of potable water in the basement.

As I wrote this week, I got a feeling here. It’s a combination of the Jays’ lucky streak and the shocking incompetence of most of the rest of the American League. More the second thing.

As things stand, they’d have to play the Astros in Houston for the wild card. That’s not a gimme, but it’s not not a gimme. Then it’s Tampa – another team that has a habit of realizing it’s been nude this whole time once it gets to October.

After that, who knows? If you told me they were headed back to the AL Championship Series again, I would not be at all surprised.

All I pray is that this doesn’t become the Climate Crisis Playoffs – trips to Houston, Tampa, Atlanta. I will grudgingly accept your apocalyptic wildfires, but crushing humidity is a meteorological bridge too far.

The big Canadian game this week will not involve the Jays. That’ll be the Toronto Tempo against the Indiana Fever at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday.

Not so long ago, the storyline of this game was ‘The Arrival of Caitlin Clark’. Now it’s ‘Culture War Comes North’.

I’ll ask you as someone who often has to handle enraged people who’ve read my column – why can’t the WNBA figure out how to move past the Sophie Cunningham/transgender participation story? We’re nearly a month into this thing and it feels like its still picking up speed.

J.R.: Beats me. Sports are supposed to be about having fun – whether you’re playing or watching. Even at the highest level, it’s still only a game.

You may think this is naive, but it is disheartening to see something that at its best brings people together become so divisive. Think of the outrage that follows every time a random NHLer wears pride tape in warm-up on a promo night. The worst version of this is playing out at the WNBA.

Of the more ridiculous developments, two former NBA players claimed they would declare for the WNBA draft based on the league’s language on the issue. If it’s all about getting market share in the attention economy, then it is working. But I think eventually people will change the channel, won’t they?

C.K.: Under contemporary attentional rules, the worry isn’t that they’ll change the channel because you’ve upset them. It’s that they might change the channel because you’ve bored them.

What interests me is why the league won’t come out and say what its actual position is on this. Is it possible for a non-biological woman to play for them? It’s a simple question. There is only one sensible answer to it – only women who were born women may participate in the league. The clear majority of people support that position.

The WNBA is going to have to make a call eventually – as the Enes Kanter stunt you’ve referenced proves. Yet it continues to dither and hedge, which is the real accelerant to the controversy.

The WNBA is either hilariously inept or this is a marketing strategy. I’m going with Door No. 2, with a soupçon of Door No. 1. Seeing your formerly fringey product in the top slot on ESPN.com every day can be addicting. I’m sure many WNBA owners don’t want any channels changed, literally or figuratively.

J.R.: Moving to another brand of basketball, I now have the misfortune of knowing who Josh Kushner is. He’s the brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law to Donald Trump.

Along with Bob Iger, he just bought the Lakers, a few weeks after he tried and failed to buy the World Cup.

This continues a long, slow death of the Interesting Owner. What were once brash, emotional and win-at-all costs types have become boring dollars-and-cents drones.

In a recent profile, Brian Cashman described what it was like to be a Yankees intern chauffeuring around The Boss, and the hell that awaited when he made a wrong turn. Steinbrenner may be an extreme version of what I am lamenting – maybe Mark Cuban is the modern update – but what are we missing when there are no Harold Ballards left in sports?

C.K.: People don’t run sports teams any more. AIs run sports teams. The humans run between this team’s AI and the other team’s AI.

The only thing about this that baffles me is how open so many GMs and presidents are about the change. They do realize they’re cutting their own professional throats, right?

The owners are all AI superfans, because they all made their money in finance (Kushner) or tech (Jeff Bezos bought a chunk of Liverpool this week). They are the ones pushing our coming automatocracy.

Conn Smythe had a gravel business. The Molsons made beer. These were tangible things created by real people. Now sports is being turned over to an aristocratic class that produce nothing but wealth.

The loss of the unhinged owner is bad enough. Though it’s not yet gone, what I already miss is a human-centred media environment. Eventually, you’ll go to the game to watch 3-D projections of players, or maybe robots, slap each other around.

On the one hand, they are not people. But on the other, they never go on strike.