The question before the house this morning, beagles and baubles, is whether a Japanese superstar can save baseball from itself.
Can Slugger West Shohei Ohtani team with Slugger East Aaron Judge to provide a truly compelling post-season in a sport that hasn’t seen one since the Red Sox junked the jinx? Will we see the Dodgers vs. the Yankees in a throwback World Series for all the marbles?
Alas, our trusty crystal ball is murky — but I fervently hope so. I’ve hated the Yankees since forever and the Dodgers since Tommy Lasorda, but I’m pulling for Judge and Ohtani, two towering figures who bestride the game like comic-book superheroes.
I prefer the old-fashioned box scores, the kind I used to cut out of the newspaper and save when Hank Aaron or Willie Mays had a big day. Thursday night’s line for Ohtani was stunning: Six at-bats, four runs, six hits, 10 runs batted in.
Add three home runs, a double and two stolen bases and you have a night for the ages — no need to dress it up with exit velocities, launch angles and WAR. That Ohtani also became the sole member of the 50-50 club with 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases hardly mattered. A Japanese player who is taking a year off pitching had taken a very old game to a very new level.
It came Thursday night against the Marlins in Los Angeles, the Dodgers running up a 20-4 score against pitching that was hardly worthy of the name. The Grand Old Game had stolen the spotlight from the NFL, which offered a pitiful struggle between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots the same night.
Until Ohtani zeroed in on 50 homers and 50 steals, Judge was all the talk in baseball. His season is unreal: As of this writing, he is hitting .323 with 55 home runs (two more than Ohtani) 138 RBI, a .458 on-base percentage and a .695 slugging percentage.
Like Ohtani, Judge is apparently doing it without the aid of either performance-enhancing drugs or trash cans. Baseball needs to see these two go head-to-head. A reason to stay up until your average World Series game ends — around 1:27 a.m.
And the Als just keep on trucking: The Alouettes’ defence made Ottawa quarterback Dru Brown look like a high-school kid Saturday. Special teams crackled.
The offence, as my trusty sidekick Zeke Herbowsky pointed out, is more station wagon than Ferrari.
Yet here are the Als, after a 24-12 road win in our nation’s capital, at 11-2-1 and almost certain to finish the season with the league’s best record.
Without receivers Tyson Philpot (gone for the season) and Austin Mack (out six games after playing just one in his return from the NFL) the Alouettes on offence are a bit one-dimensional: Pound the ball with running-back Walter Fletcher via the run and the short pass. Fletcher was superb against the Redblacks but will it be enough?
It says here that the Alouettes are headed for a Grey Cup rematch against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Who wins? Flip a coin.
A punch too far: I didn’t see the fight but by all accounts, 27-year-old Daniel Dubois, boxing’s newest superstar, destroyed his fellow British heavyweight Anthony Joshua in their IBF title bout Saturday. Four knockdowns, beginning in the first round and ending in the fifth when Dubois dropped Joshua for the last time.
Unfortunately, it’s “last time” only for this bout. Joshua, who has absorbed punches from some of the hardest hitters boxing has ever seen, will probably fight on even though he turns 35 next week. It’s what boxers do.
Closer to home, 41-year-old Jean Pascal knocked out Terry Osias in the 10th round to win his bout Saturday night. Osias, a former Pascal sparring partner, is 37. Should they go on fighting? Almost certainly not. Will they?
Boxers have no union to negotiate for them. They aren’t in the company pension plan. The good ones earn substantial purses that are picked to the bone by agents, managers and promoters.
So they fight on.
Silly Sulayem: It’s hard to understand why FIA boss Mohammed Ben Sulayem would go out of his way to pick a fight with the top drivers in F1. Ego? Boredom? Sheer pettiness?
Whatever, Sulayem electing to punish Max Verstappen for dropping an F-bomb is absurd. It’s gotten to the point where Verstappen is threatening to leave F1 and Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris are backing him.
Sulayem’s popularity is somewhere between punctured tire and blown engine. His intrusion into a rare competitive season is incomprehensible.
It’s enough to make you wish FIA had Max Mosley back, whip and all.
Heroes: Dionté Ruffin, Geoffrey Cantin-Arku, Walter Fletcher, Daniel Dubois, Lando Norris, Sam Darnold, A’ja Wilson, Bridget Carleton, Chris Wideman, Mercury Morris, Josef Martinez, Caden Clark, Aaron Judge &&&& last but not least, Shohei Ohtani.
Zeros: Mohammed Ben Sulayem, Deion Sanders, Aaron Rodgers, Jim Harbaugh, Jerry Jones, Bev Priestman, John Herdman, the White Sox, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.