TORONTO — It was early in the year – February, to be exact – and Mark Shapiro was discussing a team he had seen up close for only a couple of months. They were terrific months, mind you, what with a wonderful ride into the American League Championship Series for the first time since 1993, but also months of flux created by the very human process of establishing priorities and figuring out boundaries in a new city with a new team.
Shapiro, the Toronto Blue Jays president and chief executive officer, was never the soulless infiltrator many in this city painted him out to be and, in some cases, still paint him out to be. That was and is an easy lie to fit a lazy narrative. But Shapiro did allow in that discussion that he was interested in seeing how this core group of Blue Jays players handled what was, by baseball standards, quick and almost shocking success.
That was hardly earth-shattering news. After all, this was a team that hadn’t experienced anything remotely resembling success as a group or even individuals, a team that was losing a key emotional component (David Price) and had two others (Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion) about to play out their final seasons before free agency – late-bloomers both. No success changes a person like sudden success and this was a team of extremes both in terms of personality and experience: old position players, the oldest core in baseball in fact, a young closer and starting pitcher in Aaron Sanchez who was destined to play an important role in some capacity. As manager John Gibbons has noted on several occasions – never in a pejorative tone, mind you – this is a “high-maintenance group,” at times.
There will be time for Shapiro and an overhauled front office to process everything they’ve seen in 2016. There will not likely be a radical payroll shift either way – the market and players’ whims will largely dictate how the 2017 roster looks. But right now, at least, they owe the fact that Game 5 of the ALCS is just hours away to the labour of players who can expect to be back here next season: Troy Tulowitzki, Josh Donaldson, Sanchez and Roberto Osuna. One game does not make or even change a reputation or a suspicion, neither does one players-only meeting. But, my goodness, in the Blue Jays’ darkest hour of 2016 it had to be reassuring to see Donaldson take the lead.
It was Donaldson’s third-inning solo home run that gave the Blue Jays their first lead of the series on Tuesday at Rogers Centre, and an inning-ending diving catch off Carlos Santana in the fifth with the score 2-1 and the tying run on second that suggested to a sell-out crowd and his teammates that maybe this was going to be their day. The shackles of baseball history weigh heavily on teams that have found themselves down 3-0 in seven-game series, but all you can do is loosen them a little at a time and that’s what Donaldson did.
On a team that has seemed resolutely clueless at times in this series, Donaldson showed up on this particular day with a plan: toss out some truth in the clubhouse and play his ass off. His homer was celebrated by a scream and double fist-pump as he approached second, his play in the field heralded by a couple of hippity hops, another yell and a sprint into the dugout. The Bringer of Rain? More likely The Saviour of Ass.
“I mean, I feel I have the capability to help my team win,” said Donaldson. “There’s a lot of guys in that clubhouse that also have a capability. But there was no way that I felt like I was going to try to leave … if we were to lose today, there was no way that I was going to leave this series and not feel like I had an impact on it.”
Point made.
“Off the bat I’m like: ‘Damn,’ and then he gets up and throws a bullet to first base? Motivating play right there,” said Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin, who is also here for the long term but will be in desperate need of a capable backup so as not to finish on fumes as is the case right now. “You could see that nobody wanted it more than him today.”
Truth is, probably no one else did. Let’s be blunt about this: Donaldson is, as Felipe Alou would say, a “challenging man” to his teammates, media and mostly, opponents.
“The fact of the matter is, I’m not ready to go home,” Donaldson said later. “I still figure we’re capable of winning the whole thing. I’m not going to give too much away of what I had to say (in the meeting,) it was just moreso getting everybody’s attention and focus and understand coming into today how important today was.
“I just wanted to kind of reiterate that and let the boys know I was coming to play. If I didn’t feel like we had a chance, I would roll over and just say: ‘All right guys, go ahead.”
