DUNEDIN, Fla. – The smile on Devon Travis’s face went from ear to ear.
“This is the best day of my life,” he said shortly after becoming one of six rookies named to the Toronto Blue Jays’ season-opening roster, and one of three never to have played in the major leagues before.
For Travis and his new major-league teammates Miguel Castro, Daniel Norris, Roberto Osuna, Dalton Pompey and Aaron Sanchez, phenomenal springs have paid off. And while Sanchez and Pompey were the only ones who could have reasonably expected to go north with the big club as recently as a month ago, they’ve all made it.
And though Travis’s smile might have beamed the brightest, they were all thrilled.
After proclaiming it the best day of his 24 years on the planet, Travis had a hard time putting his feelings into words. “It’s something I’ve dreamed of forever so when you get that news, it’s hard to all grasp at one time,” the starting second baseman said. “It was the greatest news I could ever hear. It’s crazy, man, I don’t know if words can describe it. It’s pretty incredible. I don’t know if I could have written it up any different. I’m just so happy.”
His good friend and roommate, Mississauga native Dalton Pompey, was also sporting a mile-wide smile after having been told he’d be the Blue Jays’ everyday centre-fielder this season. When Pompey was told the news, “it was a great feeling,” he said.
“All the stress and pressure of coming to spring training not knowing what was going to happen is all over now. I’m definitely excited and I’m especially excited that Devon’s going to be with me.”
The two have been friends since they met at the Midwest (low-A) league all-star game just two years ago.
Toronto has adopted many of its baseball stars of the past, with many of them proclaiming it their second home. But it’s Pompey’s real home, and he has a chance to be the Blue Jays’ first-ever true homegrown star. With that status, though, comes a lot of demands on his time. They were there last September, when Pompey was a late-season call-up, and he thinks it’s going to get worse this year.
“I had to learn to say no last year,” said Pompey. “It’s hard for me, because I feel like I’m a really nice guy, but you have to learn to say no in certain situations. Old friends that come out, I’m not going to ignore them, but at the same time you have to understand that this is my job and I have to excel at this.”
And Pompey believes the Blue Jays are committed to giving him the tools to excel. “They went over some stuff with me,” Pompey explained. “Like there’s going to be ups and downs, stay mentally strong, try to stay on the field the best way I can, take care of my body. It was all good stuff. They really see me having a long career, hopefully in Toronto, and they want the best for me so they’re going to put me in the best possible position to succeed.”
And now that he’s made the team, he said, he can finally exhale: “It’s kind of like a deep breath, I can kind of relax a little bit, move forward and get ready for the season knowing that I’m going to be there.”
Norris, who at 21 is a year older than his teammate rookies Castro and Osuna, drew high praise from general manager Alex Anthopoulos, who told reporters that he thinks Norris “is going to have an unbelievable year and I think he’s going to be one of the better starters in our league as soon as now.”
The lefty smiled when he heard that, and thanked Anthopoulos for his support. “Alex has always believed in me ever since he drafted me,” Norris said. “I appreciate him thinking that and I think he believes that, so I’m looking forward to proving him right.”
And that sort of sums up the lefty, whose van often draws more attention than his stuff. He’s grateful, but he’s determined. Asked how it felt to have made the team, Norris wasn’t resting on his laurels: “It’s nice, but (there’s) still a lot of work to be done.”
Which is not to say he isn’t excited about making the jump from A-ball at the beginning of last season to the opening day roster at the beginning of this one. When he was told after his Monday night start in Kissimmee that he’d made the team, he said he “couldn’t help but smile and I said thank you. I thanked Alex and Gibby and (pitching coach) Pete (Walker) and everybody in the room. I thanked them for the opportunity and I said it’s going to be a fun year, we’ll win a lot of ballgames and I’m excited to compete every fifth day.”
Sanchez, who was roughed up (by his own hand – his six walks were more than any other Blue Jay had issued over the entire spring) in Tuesday’s win over the Phillies, hadn’t been told that he’d made the team when he met with reporters after his outing. “Today was more focus on your start and after we’ll talk to you,” he said. “I haven’t really heard anything but that’s OK.” It’s even more OK now that he knows he’s on the team.
Likewise, neither Castro nor Osuna were told that they’d earned major-league jobs until long after Tuesday’s game. Osuna let the world know with a joyous tweet.
The six rookie Blue Jays will take part in a Yankee Stadium opening day – the Jays open the season in the Bronx on Monday, April 6 – and that’s something Travis, at least, has yet to wrap his head around. Asked if he had thought about what it would be like to step onto the field for his first big-league game, he said: “Shucks. I don’t know, my brain’s been spinning ever since I was told. I don’t know if I’ve completely grasped the fact that I have the opportunity to play in New York City on opening day. What a dream come true, I don’t know that I could have scripted it any better.”
The Blue Jays certainly didn’t script it this way, but they’re just as thrilled as the six kids are that they took Dunedin by storm and forced their way onto the big-league squad.