SIMMONS: Edward Rogers doesn’t know Vladimir Guerrero Jr. very well, but is happy to give him $500 million

In the midst of all the smiles, the gratitude, the ceremony and the signatures, Edward Rogers, who rarely speaks in public,, admitted he doesn’t know Vladimir Guerrero Jr. very well.

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It was a rather astounding admission for the most powerful man in Canadian sport to make on the day the unofficial became official. That Guerrero Jr. will be paid $500 million of Mr. Rogers money to play baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays for the next 14 seasons, which is essentially the rest of his professional baseball career.

This is a Jays contract unlike anything before it. More money. More term. More time to cringe. Dave Stieb signed the largest contract in Jays history about a million years ago, a lifetime annuity of sorts long before Shohei Ohtani, but the money of today seems almost surreal when compared to other deals signed in other seasons.

The truth: This is still almost shocking in its totality — $500 million U.S. That’s more than $700 million Canadian for Guerrero. As the great Lou Lamoriello, once a Yankees’ executive, often says rather casually of free agency today in any sport: When a player signs he signs for too much money and too much term.

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This is another level, way too much money and way too much term and Rogers seems all right with the largest individual investment of his time as a sporting magnate — not knowing Vladdy all that well.

He knows the smile from afar. Everybody on the outside knows the smile. Guerrero has a baseball smile that lights up the skies on good days and bad. Mr. Rogers knows the statistics. Everybody on the outside knows the statistics. What he can’t know — and hopes for now big picture — is that the future he talks so earnestly about will include a World Series championship victory by the Jays.

That came as an answer to a question Mr. Rogers was asked at the cramped Guerrero signing news conference Monday. This was an announcement unlike any made before in this city. Guerrero’s family was there. His teammates were there. His coaches were there. His agents with their calculators were there. This was a wedding without an open bar and a dance floor and only one cheque to cash. And this was a day of warmth and exuberance.

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Mr. Rogers was asked about the return on investment of signing Guerrero, the big shots call that ROI, and thankfully he avoided economic theory in his answer. Instead, he spoke rather succinctly.

How will he get his money’s worth here with this deal? With a World Series championship coming back to Toronto. Mr. Rogers said that with a straight race. He puts no actual price on that. But he believes that, honestly and earnestly.

And this is where Mr Rogers’ naïveté mirrors the naïveté of so many of the wealthy owners in professional sports. They believe in their teams. They believe in the men they have hired to run their teams. They believe, so often, that a championship is just this far away, even when the evidence to the contrary can be overwhelming.

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Rogers was seated on the dias beside his baseball CEO and club president Mark Shapiro on Monday. He thanked Shapiro for getting the Guerrero deal done. He’ll soon thank him, we suspect, with a new contract. That’s how this kind of big business works.

You deliver for me. I’ll deliver for you. Rogers must have believed in Shapiro to have handed him $400 million to renovate the Rogers Centre and believe in him even further to pass on another $500 million of his money, so much of that in up front bonuses, to renovate Guerrero’s bank account.

That’s a whole lot of renovation dough to pass on a man who has been in baseball for a quarter century and has no World Series rings to call his own.

The failure here, assuming there is one, isn’t from paying Guerrero $100 or so million more dollars than they should have paid him two years earlier. The failure here, big picture, comes from believing that Shapiro can deliver something he’s never been able to deliver before.

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Rogers believes in Guerrero’s record and there is reason to believe in it. He’s a phenomenal hitter. Is he a franchise changing kind of hitter? That we don’t know yet. Shapiro made reference Monday to Tony Gwynn, Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken Jr., all recent Hall of Fame players, who played their entire careers with one franchise and became known as the face of those franchises. Guerrero is already the face of the Blue Jays. What that face looks like a decade or so from now — could he be the new generation’s Mike Trout, the greatest player to never have won anything — will tell you how long and how wide that beautiful smile will become over time.

“This is my second house,” said Guerrero, doing his first Toronto press conference in semi-comfortable English, displaying a youthful, playful but confident side of himself he’s rarely shown in public before. When asked about the length of the deal, and how it might affect him, he gave the perfect baseball answer. “I just think day by day, year by year…I believe in myself.”

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There was almost romance in his words. Shapiro called the day both special and appropriate. He too referenced winning a world championship in Toronto. A man has to dream, doesn’t he? Even when you’re dreaming in hundreds of millions of dollars, the lottery ticket Guerrero has been awarded with here.

“We consider him family,” Edward Rogers said, sitting next to Guerrero on the podium. The Guerrero he barely knows.

ssimmons@postmedia.com
x.com/simmonssteve

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