Flags Fly Forever

I’ve recently had two separate trains of thought returning to my mind and have only just located why.

The first is that baseball is back and I have been thinking a lot about it. It feels good. I’m already rediscovering the routine of putting on the game while I make dinner, passively soaking in what’s happening while I’m preoccupied and then reading articles by John Lott and Andrew Stoeten the next morning about the night before. Rebecca is already outraged that The Boys somehow manage to be on the radio every time we get in the car. It’s familiar and comfortable.

But while it is comfortable, it feels different. The character of this year’s team is much different than last year’s and that is due to a huge turnover in players, which was the biggest since the now-legendary trade deadline acquisitions in 2015. I knew that this would be a “new look” team taking the field but had underestimated how much the change in players would change the experience of watching the Toronto Blue Jays play baseball. It’s slight, but noticeable. Not everyone is gone, but many of the big players in Toronto’s 2015 march to the playoffs have steadily departed and been replaced by players who, while still capable, do not seem as dynamic at first. As I was trying to pinpoint what exactly was at the root of this feeling, it came upon me like turning a corner and hitting a tree:

Jose Bautista does not play Right Field for the 2018 Blue Jays.

I suppose that I had expected this sort of impact to come after a franchise icon left the team, but I was still surprised by it. Sure, David Price led the march to the playoffs and Josh Donaldson won the MVP, but make no mistake, the Blue Jays have been Jose Bautista’s team since 2010.

This was brought up by second thought, which was me reflecting on the story “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” written by John Updike for The New Yorker in 1960. His story follows him as he goes to Fenway Park in Boston to see Ted Williams’ last game for the team he played his whole career with. Updike’s piece is masterpiece and perfectly sums up the career of one of the greatest to ever play the game. Not only running through Williams’ extensive list of accomplishments, Updike also does an amazing job of covering exactly what it means to be a franchise player. You are never universally loved by the fans. You are criticized by the sporting press for not coming through in every high-pressure situation you face. You are deemed greedy for… some reason. There is an ebb and flow to periods of intense scrutiny when you are not singlehandedly carrying the load of an entire team and then even more intense affection when you miraculously manage to do just that.

In hindsight, many fans manage to forget the bitter feelings they used to hold when the occasion for a celebratory farewell comes along. Updike describes Boston coming together to see off Ted Williams, all of them realizing the significance of the situation. Similarly, last year I was present, standing, and applauding as Jose ran out to right field by himself for the last time. Fittingly, Marcus Stroman ensured that the P.A. played Drake’s “Trophys”, which was long Jose’s signature at-bat music, for the occasion.

Saying farewell to an athlete is a unique and intimate situation. It doesn’t carry the finality of visiting a dying relative or going to a funeral. They aren’t dying. They aren’t even going away, necessarily. They are just stopping to do what you have grown to love them for doing. Seeing Jose play his last game at the SkyDome instantly reminded me of all the great things he accomplished for the team. Essentially, you are watching the end of a hero, only instead of a hero valiantly dying, like in the movies, he retires to Florida to play golf.

This past weekend, Rebecca and I visited my parents for Easter dinner. As always, the Jays came up in conversation and shortly after that, Jose. As of this writing, he has still not signed a contract for the 2019 season, so he wasn’t playing baseball. My mom rued that he hadn’t simply retired as a Blue Jay in 2018, which was the right and honourable thing to do in her eyes. She said that that would have been a perfect way to end his time with the team.

This struck me as weird because in my mind his farewell was perfect. It was an organic response by the fanbase and incredibly sincere. Everyone understood the importance of Jose Bautista and giving him an earnest, emotional send off. We stood and applauded when he was introduced, before every at bat, and once more when he was taken out of the game in the top of the 9th inning. To me, there was no way to better honour his legacy with the team.

I started to think about “perfect situations” and whether they exist or not. It certainly would have been great to have pregame ceremony in which his name was added to the Blue Jays’ “Level of Excellence”, permanently adding his legacy to our park, but that was out of the question given the circumstance and him not retiring. The reality is that even if you meticulously plan something out, it will never come out completely perfectly. Perfection is achieved by being present. It is only in hindsight that we can look back on something, disregard any flaws and accept what we received as perfect.