Poor Toronto! Snubbed again!
Please feel sorry for the Centre of the Universe finding out it isn’t the Centre of the Universe. Again.
Juan Soto is the second Major League Baseball star in two years to get a hefty contract offer from the Toronto Blue Jays, then use those numbers to leverage a better deal somewhere else. Soto signed a free-agent contract with the New York Mets for $765 million (US) over 15 years, reportedly turning down more lucrative offers from Toronto and his former club, the New York Yankees.
That’s a billion-dollar deal in Canadian funds. It sounded like the Blue Jays were ready to pay that much for one of the game’s great hitters and a below-average outfielder. After losing Soto, Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins said, “We were grateful to be part of the process.” Sheesh! How belittling!
One year ago superstar Shohei Ohtani left the Los Angeles Angels and was looking for a new team. It got downright comical as social media tracked a private plane flying from L.A. to Toronto with the belief Ohtani had accepted the Jays’ offer. Nope. Ohtani instead drove across town to the Los Angeles Dodgers and signed a 10-year contract worth $700 million, the richest in pro sports until Soto’s new deal.
Both rejections left Toronto’s media and fans wringing their hands, whining about the results and wondering why Ohtani and Soto couldn’t see the greatness of a city that worships the NHL’s Maple Leafs and forces Canadians to sympathize when Auston Matthews is sick or Mitch Marner is slumping. The Blue Jays and NBA’s Raptors sometimes get the spotlight while the CFL’s Argonauts, the city’s most recent champions having won the 2024 Grey Cup, rarely get mentioned because they don’t play in the big-time NFL.
Face it, Toronto: The big names don’t want to play there. They’re only using you. In Saskatchewan, we can relate.
Kawhi Leonard did it, too. Leonard got traded to Toronto in 2018, led the Raptors to that season’s NBA title and feigned interest in staying. Then he bolted for the Los Angeles Clippers.
Toronto’s NHL team has big names who receive big-time salaries but the Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967. John Tavares, the last big-name free agent to join the Leafs, simply came home. Players like Tyler Bertuzzi and Ryan O’Reilly, who may have provided the grit needed to vie for a championship, ran away from Toronto upon becoming free agents.
Saskatchewan knows how that feels. For decades this province’s lone professional sports team, the Roughriders, was the laughingstock of the CFL. Coaches and general managers across the league would regularly threaten their players: “If you don’t play better, we’re trading you to Saskatchewan.”
The Roughriders were bad for a long time. They played in the CFL’s smallest centre. Saskatchewan’s culture and geography were ridiculed by everyone from Winnipeg to Hamilton, believe it or not. Their old stadium was decrepit and outdated.
Canadian players drafted by Saskatchewan could hardly wait for their contracts to expire so they could move elsewhere. Future Hall of Fame quarterback Anthony Calvillo was one of numerous free agents to spurn Saskatchewan’s offers.
That started changing in 2000, when Roy Shivers became Saskatchewan’s general manager. Shivers was Black, something then-Riders president Bob Ellard comically didn’t know when he first interviewed him for the GM job. Shivers recruited good, young players with the belief that talented, Black athletes from the southern States didn’t know anything good or bad about Saskatchewan.
When Jim Hopson was hired as the Roughriders’ first fulltime president/CEO in 2005, he insisted the community-owned franchise cease its self-pitying and become “the little engine that could.”
Hopson also fired Shivers, but sparked by their revisionary work the Roughriders appeared in four Grey Cups in seven years, winning twice and parlaying that success into a brand-new stadium that serves as a recruiting magnet. Saskatchewan is now considered one of the CFL’s top destinations, a place where coveted coaches and players are no longer wary of coming.
It is admittedly tough for the Blue Jays and Raptors to attract top-quality players, partly because they’re the only Canadian franchises in their respective leagues. But if a perceived hick town like Regina, in the middle of the Canadian Prairies, can change its image enough to become a popular and successful destination for pro football players, with a little humility Toronto should be able to do the same.
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