Monday Morning Halfback: Trying to find the good left in sports

Jamie Ross is the Sports editor at the Globe and Mail; Cathal Kelly is the Globe’s national sports columnist.

Jamie Ross: Cathal, not to throw you an existential Hail Mary out of the gate but your coverage last week focused on Kawhi Leonard and the slap on the wrist he received from the NBA for his role in the Clippers salary cap scandal; Vlad Guerrero Jr.’s confusing position that he’s entitled to be bad despite being paid a half a billion dollars and to hell with the fans; and the gall of the Arizona State University men’s hockey program and its head coach to carry on business as usual while one of their own lies in a coma in a hospital bed. Two of these are first-world problems, the third life and death. But all three reinforced a cynical view of modern sports and the idea that everyone is really just in it for themselves. Maybe I should be writing this to Dear Abby, but you’re the best I’ve got access to today. So tell me, is there any good left in the game?

Cathal Kelly: I can existential any time. Usually, it’s Fridays or Saturdays once the second cork has been pulled, but Sunday works, too.

Whatever good there is in modern professional sports is down to the ministrations of the fan.

The people who watch, the ones who find or create community in doing so, are keeping the spirit of sport alive. It also still exists in amateur sport – which I now define as any game that no one outside of your significant other will bother to come and watch you play.

But does good exist in professional pro sport? I was thinking about this as I read Roxane Gay’s essay in the New York Times this weekend imploring the WNBA writ large to embrace transgender athletes.

She has a line in there – “Surely, a league made up of such smart, dedicated players, coaches, general managers and executives can come up with a way forward that is fair to everyone involved.”

She’s talking about these people like they’re in a bible study group. It’s a business first, second and last. Moral considerations will always be subordinate to fiscal ones. We’ve seen that in the panicked, mass retreat from political proselytizing over the last couple of years. That herd includes the WNBA.

The individuals participating within the sport may be good or bad, but the sport itself is indifferent to those considerations. It exists to profit. Many of those individuals – like Leonard, Guerrero, the ASU hockey program – are receiving and then acting on that overarching signal.

So. How about those Jays?

J.R.: Thank you, professor. As for the Blue Jays, I paid my respects Saturday night watching a YouTube super cut of last year’s World Series.

Even a year later I was awed by the Dodgers’ ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto in that series. It’s possible that that will be the greatest sporting performance I’ll ever witness. Back on Earth, I was wrong about the Jays and their making it. I believed after last year, even falling short, they’d stolen the reins from the Maple Leafs as Toronto’s team. And Guerrero, not Auston Matthews, its athlete. So much for that.

You were at Rogers Centre this weekend. Give me a vibes read from inside the stadium. Is it still a good time? I remember the Blue Jays beat circa 2014 and 2015 being the best I’ve ever worked.

C.K.: Those were the salad days. The vibe was pretty okay, right up until Guerrero went all John Maynard Keynes at the end.

Had he come out with his strange ‘I’m paid for what I did, not what I do’ line mid-season, when the Jays were still in it, and he might’ve still had a decent year, it would’ve been more of a laugh. But doing it at the end of the line, just as they were eliminated, when he’d had the worst year of his career, made it terrible. That flub – and his subsequent, transparently forced apology – will be the thing people will remember about this year.

I was there on Friday, and people were all over the place – mixed boos and cheers when he came up to bat, boos when he grounded out, big cheers when he had a hit in the comeback. Jays fans don’t know what to think right now. Those feelings – good or bad – will coalesce over the off-season. I’m guessing they’ll lean toward bad. And then I guess we’ll see if there is a 2027 Major League Baseball season.

So what do you reckon – lockout or no lockout? And if it’s lockout, for how long?

J.R.: Feels like everyone is expecting one. I’m sure Guerrero’s stepping in it last week only emboldens ownership’s resolve to usher in a hard salary cap. The idea of paying someone for what they’ve done versus what they will do is really at odds with the way baseball think shifted long ago, when sabermetrics and Moneyball became all the rage. So it may be that Guerrero’s contract will be the last of its kind. With what will you substitute your baseball watching next summer? Maybe you’ll start paying closer attention to the Premier League, and your place in our soccer pool will improve?

C.K.: I’m like Seabiscuit, in that I need to see everyone else rush out to an insurmountable lead before I start to try. Unlike Seabiscuit, this never works out. That’s why Tobey Maguire isn’t calling me back.

If there is no baseball, I will let sports grow fallow for a couple of months. Watch Wimbledon and then shut it down until August. Maybe it will be the pause that refreshes. Maybe I’ll even go outside.

I’m guessing a long lockout, but not a whole season’s worth. When will the players accept that they cannot win these fights because time is not their friend? They think in terms of years, while the owners think in terms of decades. You can’t win that fight. No players’ union has ever won that fight. And they won’t win this one either. But I get that they feel they must be seen to try, so I’m guessing a lockout until June, or whenever they reach an actual drop-dead to fit in a season.

The NHL starts shortly. Rank the Canadian franchises in terms of regular season finish, one through seven. And then tell me which one gets furthest in the playoffs.

J.R.: Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver.

There aren’t really any feel-good teams here besides Montreal. The rest have some sort of bad energy about them.

As far as who goes where, I think the first three will make the playoffs. The Canadiens will reach the conference final and the Oilers will lose in the Stanley Cup final. Your turn.

C.K.: Another Leafs truther in our midst. I’ve got it Montreal, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg.

Montreal, Edmonton and Ottawa make the playoffs. Edmonton gets bounced in the first round. Ottawa in the second. Montreal makes another final in the east.