For a special group of kids, the chance to meet Brett Lawrie means more than meeting a role model.
There are role models and there are living, fire-breathing, tattooed examples of exactly what you want to be when you go to bed at night clutching your baseball glove.
Jose Bautista is a role model.
He’s very likely the best player in major league baseball. A powerful, intelligent hitter who is an alert, dedicated defender and a teammate who looks out for others, as Yunel Escobar would tell you.
But Brett Lawrie, the pride of Langley, BC, is an inked-up flesh and blood example of what is possible. He’s a role model and something more.
For the dozen members of the Langley Majors, the Canadian Little League champions who were at the Rogers Centre on Sunday to take in a Blue Jays game and meet Lawrie, the Blue Jays third baseman is the guy from their hometown who is on his way to being a major league star.
Present, past and future met on the green carpet at the Rogers Centre before the Blue Jays took on the Tampa Bay Rays Sunday as the Lawrie waded into a crowd of nervous, peach-fuzzed kids from home to slap backs, exchange high-fives and pose for pictures.
They may have fallen short of their goal of a Little League World Series, but a trip to Toronto en route from Williamsport, PA is a nice consolation prize.
Do examples matter? Are role models important?
Cole Cantelon seems to think so. He’s a 12-year-old power-hitting third-baseman for the Majors and hopes to one day play in the majors. And yes, his favourite professional baseball player comes from his hometown.
"I want to make it here," said Cantelon, standing a few feet from where Lawrie and the rest of the Blue Jays were taking batting practice. "I think I can if I try hard. Meeting a guy like Brett makes you feel like it can happen because he’s from Langley and he did do it. He did get drafted."
For Jason Andrew, head coach of the Majors and Lawrie’s former minor baseball coach, Lawrie is the ultimate trump card.
It’s a lot easier insisting on a few extra reps for infield practice or having players sprint to and from their positions between innings when you’ve coached the best prospect in Canadian baseball.
Just say "this is how Brett did it" and everything falls into place.
Who the Blue Jays biggest star is right now is an interesting question. There is little about Bautista not to like and he takes his leadership position on the team seriously.
But as the Canadian kid with the bounce-off-the-walls energy, as long as Lawrie keeps hitting the buzz will keep building.
And as the Blue Jays work hard to connect with a younger fan-base nationwide, they can take comfort in knowing that Lawrie takes his role as role model seriously. At 21 he doesn’t have to think too hard to remember, what it was like to be 12 again.
"This is the dream," he said. "This is what you work for your whole life and you have to look inside yourself and decide if you really want it and what are you going to do to beat whoever you’re going against, whoever you’re fighting with for a position. Who are you going to show today that you belong up here? That’s what it’s about. It’s about having that want to be the greatest, to be the best at whatever you’re going to do."
It might not have been a perfect day at the park. The best lesson Lawrie (2-4, 1 K) and his Blue Jays teammates could provide in facing the Rays’ David Price – he of the 14 Ks in Tampa Bay’s 12-0 win – is that sometimes you just have to fight another day.
Such is baseball.
The irony is that the role model didn’t really have any of his own in his break-the-mold fast-track to the majors.
He connected with New York Yankees catcher Russell Martin during his years with Baseball Canada, but by that time Lawrie was already on pace to play professionally and Martin was more a mentor than a role model.
During his Little League years Lawrie couldn’t really sit still long enough to follow the game and have heroes in it.
"I didn’t really watch much baseball," said Lawrie. "I liked to go play in the backyard. I couldn’t really sit and watch a whole game. My Dad would say ‘sit down and watch the game one time’ and I’d say ‘I can’t’. I found it boring. As soon as I watched it I wanted to play."
His urge to hit, run and throw took him into the orbit of Andrew, who was the head coach of the top minor team in Langley and runs a baseball academy there.
"I had an 18-year-old team and this little punk 10-year-old would come out and want to practice with us," said Andrew. "It was Brett. His Dad would bring him out and he would shag balls for us and take BP at the end and it just shows how hard work pays off. If a kid wants to work, we’ll work him. That’s what it’s about."
Andrew says he’s got a lot of talent on his current team but knows that Brett Lawrie’s only come around once in a lifetime. But the presence of one phenom can light the trail.
"For these kids here it’s about getting a scholarship, first and foremost," says Andrew. "But when everything clicks and the baseball gods are on your side, you never know."
