OAKLAND, Calif. – Brett Lawrie is doing his best to treat this series against the Toronto Blue Jays like any other, seeking to simply maintain the vibe he’s enjoying with the Oakland Athletics so far this season.
“It was another day for me, honestly, and that’s all that I wanted,” the third baseman from Langley, B.C., who declined media requests Tuesday, said in an interview Wednesday. “I didn’t want to blow it up like everybody else wanted to blow it up and that’s why I didn’t talk to (Oakland) media, I didn’t talk to Blue Jays media, I just wanted to come to the ballpark and I wanted to go about my business and I just wanted to play, I didn’t want to do anything other than that. So I did it. I think it was seen in a different light, I don’t think it was respected that I just wanted to come play baseball, and whatnot. I think they took that as, ‘Oh, he’s just being so-so,’ but that wasn’t the case at all. …
“It was a good day overall, I got to see some of the boys I haven’t seen in a while and it was good.”
The reunion is the first between the Blue Jays and Lawrie, projected to be the Canadian poster boy for Canada’s team, since the off-season trade that sent him along with pitchers Kendall Graveman and Sean Nolin and shortstop prospect Franklin Barreto to Oakland for Josh Donaldson.
Initially, Lawrie was shocked by the deal but eventually he came to embrace the change.
“As soon as I got in there it was a new school,” he said. “I already played against a bunch of these guys when we entered spring training, and now it’s just about getting the chemistry going a little bit, building some friendships and whatnot, and getting used to everybody, because everybody was not really used to one another because we were all new. That being said, everybody just chimed together and ran with it.”
Lawrie’s played in 90 of Oakland’s first 96 games, managing to stay off the disabled list so far, something he in part attributes to getting off the artificial turf in Toronto. He entered Wednesday’s action slashing .282/.317/.411 with eight homers and 37 RBIs, his mind at ease.
“Just keeping the mentality of positivity and working hard,” Lawrie said of what’s working for him in Oakland. “I’ve been working my butt off to stay on the field and it hasn’t been an easy process. I’ve been doing acupuncture a lot, I have an acupuncturist especially for me that I found, doing a lot of correctional (exercises), just putting that work in, and getting off that concrete has helped me. I do feel better, I’ve just got to stay the course and keep working every single day. But coming over here and getting a new sense of something, getting something new is a new opportunity for me in my career, and West Coast, it’s nice to be able to get on the West Coast now, my family can come see me now … and I’m a West Coast guy.”
Lawrie started off slowly with the Athletics, batting .214/.257/.286 over his first 18 games, including a four-strikeout game on 12 pitches April 7 against Texas. Since then he’s hit .301/.333/.445, turning around his season.
“I feel like I’m more relaxed (at the plate now than in Toronto),” said Lawrie, whose trademark bat waggle is less pronounced now. “I’m trying to get back to where I was when I first came up, just watching myself in the box, obviously you change on the fly up here in the big-leagues because everybody is always adjusting every day with video and all the stuff that they have, I think just the mentality of just wipe all that and get in the box and get ready to hit, don’t worry about counts, don’t worry about pitches, just get in the box, see it and hit it.
“Really keep it simple, and that’s where it took off for me, when I got it simple, didn’t really think too much, kept real loose in the box, and when that happened I took off.”
As for his time in Toronto, Lawrie says the thing he reflects back on is how the fans accepted him.
“Every time I got an opportunity to come back from the road, I’m always coming back home to Canada, not a lot of people get that opportunity, and I had that opportunity to do that a lot. When you come back you breathe that fresh air and when you get into the stadium, you have Canadians going nuts,” he said. “That was always big for me. I got to play on Canada Day a couple of times, got to wear the Canada jersey on a special day, it was great for me. They gave me a lot of praise and I respect that, I always wanted to go out there and give them my all and what they came to see, I wanted to play hard, I wanted to get my nose dirty, like they said, I was a hockey player trapped in a baseball player’s body, and that’s the mentality I had out there, and always will. It’s just refined a little bit, and when you can play day in and day out the longer you go in this game, you grow as a professional and as a person and learn about things.
“Everybody treated me so well,” Lawrie continued, “from the restaurants to the city in general, and all of Canada, not just Toronto, and the response to me coming up with the Blue Jays, being a Canadian guy on the Canadian team, they really welcomed me with open arms, that’s something I’ll never forget. I give them much props and they’ll always be in my heart.”