Detroit Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal throws against the Kansas City Royals during the seventh inning of a baseball game Friday, July 24, 2026, in Detroit.Paul Sancya/The Associated Press
Jamie Ross is the Sports editor at the Globe; Cathal Kelly is the national sports columnist.
J.R.: Cathal, I thought with the benefit of a breather, and the World Cup behind us, we would return to this space this week and start onto a new path. FIFA, however, has forced our hand, so we must start there again. Gianni Infantino tried to put World Cup up for sale last week and it backfired spectacularly. Surely he could’ve seen the backlash coming, yet he did it anyway. Why?
C.K.: Say this much for the guy, Jamie – he knows how to stay in the news. Infantino’s entire career has been staked on making wild moves that bucked established wisdom.
Pushing the World Cup back to the U.S.A., cozying up to Donald Trump, expanding the tournament to 48 teams – these were all things a majority of deep football thinkers thought would end in total failure. Instead, they’ve all been professional triumphs for Infantino. So I get why he thought this latest bad idea would work out as well. Who was going to stop him? The same fops who’ve been backpedalling in front of him for a decade?
What Infantino didn’t reckon on was the intensity of bad feeling he’d created with his unseemly sucking up to Trump. It was so over the top that it prompted a bunch of European bureaucrats to agree on something after less than five years of debate. That’s a Lourdes-level miracle.
Cathal Kelly: Given the way it's carried on, why does FIFA continue to exist?
But I don’t think it solves the problem. Now that selling the World Cup is on the table, somebody – probably not Infantino – is going to find a more palatable way to package the idea. None of these people can say no to free money.
Speaking of money, I rise to see that the richest team in baseball just won the Lotto Max – the L.A. Dodgers have acquired starter Tarik Skubal via trade. There are prohibitive favourites to win something, and then there’s whatever the Dodgers just became.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
J.R.: That it came via trade made me think, ‘Hey, they’re not just throwing money around in free agency for once.’
Then I remembered they fleeced the Red Sox for Mookie Betts in a trade years back and the only conclusion I can draw here is that MLB owners so badly want a salary cap that they are willing concede the World Series to the Dodgers every year until they get it.
With Shohei Ohtani pitching less, the Dodgers loaded up their bullpen by acquiring Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers.Caroline Brehman/The Associated Press
With the league and players union in talks for a new collective bargaining agreement, they may finally get their wish. Are you for or against salary caps?
C.K.: I’m neither for nor against, since it’s not my money. But I think you’re onto something. Baseball is collectively conceding the 2026 season to the Dodgers in anticipation that 2027 is not going to happen.
The owners will insist on a salary cap. The players will refuse. The league will shut down. And who do you think is going to win that staring contest? Thirty billionaires who make money whether baseball is being played or not, via their team valuations. Or 1,200 of their employees, all of different ages, stages and earnings, most of whose professional prospects are aging like lettuce. There’s only one way that ends.
The mystery to me is why the players bother pretending to fight. Just take the deal you know you’re going to be forced to take in the end and save yourself the hassle.
The NHL is seeing its own change of circumstances at the top. I wonder who should be more vexed by Macklin Celebrini’s new US$18.8-million-a-year deal: Connor McDavid (two years at US$12.5-million) or Nathan MacKinnon (eight years at US$12.6-million).
Does it feel to you like their era is beginning to come to a close? They both had a miserable year in 2026.
J.R.: Their era beginning to come to a close? (That’s me doing my best you.) No, I do not think the era of MacKinnon and McDavid is winding down. Nathan MacKinnon scored more goals last season than he has at any other time in his career. And all you need to do is watch Connor McDavid to know he’s at the top of his game. They didn’t win anything , so I’ll concede they had miserable years in that respect, but it’s still their league.
Unless you have more to say on hockey, let’s pivot back to summer sports: LIV golf will reportedly cancel its big finale, the team event in Detroit, that was supposed to go off at the end of the month. The league has been circling the drain for a while. This all ends with the superstar defectors returning to the PGA tour with hat in hand, a renewed appreciation for the sanctity of golf and a generally more charitable outlook on life, right?
C.K.: The problem with McDavid and MacKinnon isn’t their skill level. It’s that they have the miasma of failure about them now. McDavid can’t fix the Oilers on his own, MacKinnon’s Avalanche are a regular-season team living in a post-season world and both of them pooched things in Milan. I still get flashes of their third-period misses in the gold-medal game.
Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid are no longer the top-paid players in the league, but the NHL is still very much their league, Globe Sports editor Jamie Ross argues.Perry Nelson/Reuters
Sports loves comers and winners, and they’re neither. By the time the next Olympics rolls around, they’ll both be professionally geriatric. If it’s still their league, they ought to do something this year to remind people of that.
On LIV, I’m convinced no one – including the people who put it together – actually thought this would work. The appeal of golf is nostalgic. It speaks to some imagined time in the past when the old empires were still ascendant.
You don’t take that on by building a league – even using that word was a bad mistake – that is intentionally ahistorical.
In the end, all it was a way for the Saudis to show that they could buy whatever they wanted, and for a few players to take that silver. In 10 years, LIV will be the USFL or the WHA – a thing that happened, but one no one remembers and nobody ever speaks about.
Last one – WNBA lightning catcher Sophie Cunningham. She made a comment in an interview about wanting to “protect young girls in a locker room” and the league is in fits. She has her winters off. Should the PWHL reach out to see if she can skate?
J.R.: The PWHL has going for it what other upstart leagues don’t: a potential for violence, which is baked into hockey. I am not advocating for fighting, but the more body contact becomes normalized, the more exciting the product will become. I don’t think they need to resort to the culture wars to attract more fans. Plus, using the WNBA’s recent run through the mud might not be the best example of how to seize the public’s attention.
C.K.: All attention is good attention in the entertainment business. It doesn’t always work out for individuals, but the collective thrives on being talked about. The WNBA has that part down. Next week, we’ll get to discuss whether or not the Blue Jays have given up on their season. If so, that’s the real beginning of the dog days. Until then, stay cool.