Earlier this year, I wrote a post in which I tried to sum my feelings about Edwin Encarnacion's time as a Blue Jay because I assumed that his then-impending free agency meant that his time on the team was coming to a close. It turns out I was correct, because Edwin just signed a contract with Cleveland.
:(
Edwin played on the Blue Jays for eight years. That is a big chunk of my life. Eddie played on the Blue Jays for 29% of my life. I was a very different person when Edwin came to the Jays. That was one band, two degrees, and many relationships ago.
As I said in the post I linked above, he wasn't an immediate hit, but was a big project, which in turn made me love him even more and gave me a sense of ownership about him. His time in Toronto ran the whole gamut of emotions: disappointment, frustration, hope, awe, and, mostly, just pure fucking joy. He was amazing to watch. I have said it many times while watching games that Eddie is my favourite player to watch hit home runs.
But I don't want to just re-type my previous post. If you know me, you know that I love Eddie and if you don't, you'll get a good idea from that blog.
I'm pretty sad about Edwin leaving. It sucks. As much as things about baseball can be great, there is always an inverse part that pulls you back down. We got the best of Eddie, but now we have to watch him go before his time in the league is done. It sucks. I more or less knew that he was going to leave, but it still feels crummy. Crummier than I thought it would.
Here's my official eulogy for Edwin Encarnacion as a Blue Jay:
It's fitting that Edwin's last game as a Blue Jay was a home game during the 2016 ALCS, because watching him mash home runs was the only fun part of watching the Blue Jays in 2012 and the Jays being in the playoffs seemed so impossible that I never even considered it.
I'm trying to find a silver lining to all of this and this is what I've come up with so far:
The fact that I feel so sad about a baseball player leaving a team after 8 years is, if anything, proof of the substantial positive emotional impact that sports can have on your life. Sports can be simple reactions like muttering "fuck" at a call or they can be over the top reactions like when I ran into my kitchen after Edwin walked off the Orioles this year. Underlying all of that is the reaction I am currently having, which is informed by a very emotional connection that many people are a part of. My personal connection to baseball can never be replicated by anyone else. Thank you so very much Edwin Encarnación for playing such a big role in that.
I'll never forget your time in Toronto as long a I live.
"I certainly feel like I need to eulogize Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, but maybe I'll wait until the team's playoff fate is decided before I do that."
I think that one of them, uhhhhh, did something yesterday?
An incredibly exciting game. One of the very best in Blue Jays history.
After playing what then could have been his last home game as a Blue Jay against Baltimore last week, Edwin said something to the effect of "That's not the way I want to go out." He did much more than that, providing me, and all Jays fans, with a moment that will live forever. I jumped up and yelled "Oh my god!" immediately running back and forth across my apartment. The raised arms with the bat falling. Taking the parrot for a walk in the most dramatic fashion possible. These are the moments that you wait and hope for as a baseball fan and Toronto Blue Jays fans have been lucky enough to experience many of them over the last two years because of the high number of special players on the team.
In Eddie's words, from his post-game, champagne-soaked interview:
"Yeah, that's why I want to come back here. And I did it. Yeaaaaahhhhhh!"
Before I go on to give my thoughts about Edwin Encarnacion, I feel that I should link to an excellent article by John Lott on Edwin from last week:
I feel a fierce sense of pride and ownership towards Edwin Encarnacion. He's been on the Jays for a long time (came in a trade for SCOTT ROLEN in 2009!) and the early days of that was markedly different from the huge success he has achieved with the team over the last few years. He hit for a bit of power, hitting 5 home runs in four-game series twice in 2010, but was abysmal playing 3rd base and ultimately a mixed bag. He was thrown into the trade because the Jays needed someone to replace Rolen at third and that made me a little antagonistic towards him at first. The joy of watching Scotty fuckin' Rolen play third base for the Jays had been taken away from me, so naturally the guy who replaced him seemed like just the worst.
Eddie's nickname at this time was "E5", the scoring note for an error by a third baseman, and boy, was it ever apt. Throws kind of went everywhere. But he had his moments. I remember going to a game early on in the 2012 season with my brother while talking with him about which player t-shirt he would like to get, him jokingly suggesting "E5" because he had piled up a decent amount of home runs early in the season. The thing is, though, that Edwin never stopped hitting them that year and ended up with 42 at year's end to go along with a move to first base. After Jose Bautista had his coming out party in 2010, Edwin followed and the Jays all of a sudden had as potent of a 3-4 combination that existed in major league baseball.
Edwin hasn't let up since and has turned into one of the true offensive forces in the game. A once-in-a-generation player for this team. Edwin and Jose Bautista are Toronto's "Bash Brothers" or "Manny and Papi". An offensive force that is as fun to watch as they are talented and something that the rest of the league wishes they could have. During Spring Training in 2014 my dad and I were talking about the team and he described Edwin at-bats as "just a joy to watch". There is no better way to describe them.
While Edwin was still struggling through his 2009-2011 seasons with the Jays, Jose Bautista was at the peak of his career. Jose was everything. Maybe the best position player in the league and a peerless power hitter. Couple this with a fiery temper, and we (Jays fans) all thought he was the best thing to happen to the team in a long time. The prospect hugging that I had gotten used to with the Jays suddenly turned into "We can't waste this version of Jose Bautista." Something I thought was weird though, was that out of all the players on the team, Jose seemed to be best friends with Edwin Encarnacion.
The first time I noted this was when the two of them went on a fishing trip together on a day off. Why wasn't Jose friends with the better players on the team? It didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time, but is really funny to think of in hindsight. The two of them started to do a "flex" celebration after one of them hit a home run, which is absolutely the precursor to the popular wild and complicated handshakes that the Jays have with each other now.
Only after a few seasons did I start to get a sense of Edwin's personality and how he is the most care-free, joyous, and funny guy on the team. A big part of this is that he rarely does interviews in English, so Torontonians who receive most of their information on players through English media outlets aren't as privy to his character as his teammates are. His teammates all seem to love him, so it's been a neat ride over the 8 years of discovering the type of guy he is through small snapshots of clubhouse life through twitter and instagram.
Once I saw what Edwin was actually like, it was hard to believe I ever disliked him and thought he was bad at baseball. I hate that I ever thought he was bad at baseball, because he brings a great joie de vivre to the Jays is absolutely integral to the team's identity and also its success.
Case in point is the interview he did after hitting a colossal moonshot in the 11th inning yesterday that also sent the team to the ALDS.
First he gives a fairly standard answer, through a translator, to the fairly standard question of "What were you thinking in that at-bat?" The reporter then asks about his apparent goodbye salute to the 'Dome and Edwin responds, in heavily-accented English:
"Thass why, thass why I wanna come back here because that happened tonight! Yeaaaahhhh!"
This sounded like it was little league player talking about a walk-off home run he had just hit to give his friends the victory and I think that that type of boyhood astonishment and "Man, that thing I just did? That was awesome!" tone is so endearing and amazing. It makes me happy to see him succeed after he endured early in his career here and it certainly contributes to the "older brother" feeling I have towards him, despite him being a Dominican man who is 6 years my senior.
I never want him to leave because there is no doubt in my mind that if he stayed he would become a David Ortiz-type figure for Toronto. And I just love watching him play so much. But he might. He probably will.
But that's also a conversation for December. For now the conversations should all be about the home run he hit last night and how we've seen him do it so many times before and we're going to see him do it a few more times this October.
