A lot of time has passed since Joey Votto last chased anything. It happened during a time when a man who’s become ultra-methodical about setting boundaries was consistently coming unmoored. At that point, as a prospect with the triple-A Louisville Bats, Votto was having so much trouble setting his own limits that the club’s manager, Rick Sweet, was finally forced to carve them out on his behalf. “We had to draw a line between first base and second base and say, ‘You can’t go any further than this,’” Sweet recalls, “because he would want to go for every ground ball that was hit.”
If the discipline wasn’t quite there, the desire certainly was. That Votto’s only transgression was trying to do too much speaks to his deeply determined—and sometimes misunderstood—nature. And that, combined with heaps of natural ability and the fact that he’s grown more meticulous than a forensic accountant, is why Votto is among the very best in baseball, and why no Canadian athlete has ever signed a richer deal than the 10-year, $225-million extension Votto inked with the Cincinnati Reds last April (adding to the $25 million he’ll earn this year and next).
And the kid from Etobicoke, Ont., is worth every last penny. “He’s just a machine,” says New York Yankees catcher Russell Martin, who played with Votto on Team Canada at the 2009 World Baseball Classic. “He works his ass off. The reason why he’s good is because he puts the time in, and it pays off.”
Those results fuel Votto, like the raisins, apple and banana he’s holding an hour before batting practice for a divisional tilt in Pittsburgh. It’s hard to know if the fruit is consumed in the same order every day, but it seems a fair bet. Votto isn’t superstitious, but the slugging first baseman’s faith in repetition is so pronounced it would surely make Outliers author and fellow Canuck Malcolm Gladwell grin. “I have a very good idea of what works,” says Votto between bites of his apple. “I try to repeat that each day.”
Reds manager Dusty Baker has seen that approach on display for five seasons now. “This guy studies tirelessly; he comes out every day to beat you,” Baker says. “He’s a perfectionist almost to a fault.” Meaning he’s perhaps a bit too hard on himself? “Yeah,” Baker says, “but that’s how the great ones are.”
That’s how Votto, working with Sweet and the rest of the Bats staff in Louisville, turned himself from an average defensive player in triple-A into a Major League Gold Glover in 2011. And if he’s not the best hitter in baseball yet, he sure doesn’t have far to go. Votto didn’t tear out of the gates in 2012, but as the Reds approach the season’s halfway point, they’re being propelled by a performance that—if maintained—will almost certainly net the 28-year-old his second National League MVP award in three years. Any number of metrics—his MLB-leading batting average and OPS through late June—could be used to illustrate Votto’s tremendous impact. But his ever-rising status in the game can best be summarized by the fact that if, in life, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, baseball’s highest compliment is avoidance—and pitchers want less to do with Votto than anyone else presently on a diamond. Votto stands a very good chance to continue leading the Majors in walks, but it’s the fact nobody in the game is given more intentional passes that should really get people’s attention. Look back at the players who’ve topped that category in recent times and you’ll see the absolute cream of the crop; names like Prince Fielder, Albert Pujols and one brought up by Baker when asked if his No. 3 hitter—who was intentionally walked four times in a five-game stretch in June—reminds him of any other players he’s seen during a lifetime in the game. “He’s a little bit like Barry,” says Baker, who managed Barry Bonds for 10 seasons with the San Francisco Giants, “but he’s ahead of Barry, because Barry struggled for a couple years.”
A few things—like Bonds’s prodigious home run numbers in the steroid era and the fact that he was three years younger than Votto when he became a full-time big-leaguer—put a little strain on the comparison. But aside from the ability to hit for average and power to all fields, what really links the pair of left-handed batters is their discerning eye; their ability to squeeze pitchers like a sponge, relieving them of every drop of sanity until they relent and offer up a free pass or make a mistake that results in much more than a man on first. That’s what happened May 13 against the Washington Nationals, a game Votto used to send a clear signal—three of them, in fact—that he would once again be the leading cause of sleep loss among MLB pitchers this summer. In the bottom of the fourth with his team trailing 2–1, Votto stepped to the plate against Edwin Jackson and took the first pitch for a strike, then looked at a ball. After fouling off the next pitch, Votto—who’d homered in the first—was down 1-2. But he never lost focus, patiently working his way back to a full count. When Jackson fired a pitch around the knees, Votto—who has seen more pitches per plate appearance than all but seven Major Leaguers this year—belted it to straightaway centre for his second dinger of the game. His third round-tripper came in the bottom of the ninth in the form of a grand slam that gave the Reds a 9–6 win. Votto’s average before the contest was .296; a little more than a month later, he was hitting .369 thanks to his uncanny ability to capitalize on hitter’s counts and never wilt when hurlers get ahead.
“The quality of his at-bats is so consistently amazing,” says Pirates outfielder Nate McLouth. “That’s huge, to be able to concentrate and be locked in all the time like that, and he’s unbelievable at it.”
Talk to his teammates and they’ll tell you they marvel at how flat Votto keeps his bat through the strike zone. Talk to Votto and you’ll find his expression can be just as unwavering. With the apple now discarded like a low-and-away curveball, Votto is digging into the raisins while discussing everything from the Reds’ potential to what initially drew him to baseball. What makes Votto so good as a ballplayer is his ability to evaluate in black-and-white terms—ball or strike, either something works or it doesn’t. But what’s intriguing about Votto as a man is that there’s room for interpretation. Long-time teammate Bronson Arroyo allows that, because of Votto’s stern demeanour, because he’s not outwardly the type of “aw shucks” Canadian athlete this country has traditionally embraced, some are slow to warm to him. “I could see now, if you came into the game as a rookie—especially with the big contract he’s got and the MVP and the Gold Glove—it’s definitely going to be hard to understand him and not, in some ways, take him as a cocky superstar,” he says.
Accentuating that dynamic is the fact that Votto tends to treat people like pitches, meaning he’s far more apt to let them come to him than vice versa. For Votto, a handshake isn’t an assumed action at the beginning of a conversation so much as an earned validation at the end of one. “He’s a very private person,” says Sweet. “He’s not unfriendly, but he’s not going to go out of his way to meet new people. And there is nothing wrong with that.”
Votto’s private life got some extremely public play in 2009 when he missed time while battling depression and anxiety following the death of his father. Though he has spoken candidly about that difficult stretch, all Votto offered on the day he was getting ready to face the Pirates was that he views it as a positive any time people gain a greater awareness that athletes are vulnerable to the same issues everyone else faces.
Cincinnati right fielder Jay Bruce is quick to point out that he can’t imagine what his good buddy went through in losing his dad, but does believe Votto has managed to move on in a healthy fashion. “I don’t think anything is buried deep down,” says Bruce, noting that Votto has learned to unwind away from the park.
It’s not hard to imagine Votto as a person who doesn’t have a flock of friends, but instead maintains deep relationships with a small inner circle. He is still in regular contact with his old high-school coach, Bob Smyth, and their ongoing bond is strengthened by far more than the convenience of email. “When we talk on the phone, it’s not a two-minute conversation,” Smyth says, “it goes on for a couple of hours at times.”
But even those closest to Votto have to understand, for a large portion of the year, his rigid lines are drawn, and anything that falls outside the realm of helping him perfect his craft typically garners low-priority status. “He’s just not going to overextend himself for friends, or even family, during baseball season,” Arroyo says. “He’s not going to go after the game and meet his uncle at a restaurant and sit and chew the fat for a couple of hours. Most of us would bend for that, but Joey knows his body is exhausted. He’s drained at the end of a game because he gives his all for every pitch, every out.”
The raisins have been raided and Votto is now peeling the banana. Batting practice is getting closer as he discusses the decision to commit the next decade-plus (his extension takes hold in 2014) of his life to the southern Ohio city. Votto says he likes the laid-back attitude and atmosphere in Cincinnati. He’s comfortable there, but this is not a guy who’s prone to gushing. “The bottom line is, this is my job,” Votto says. “I don’t have to like my job. Luckily, I do.”
And for all the space devoted to baseball in Votto’s brain, there’s plenty of room for other things to take root. He’s widely regarded as an intelligent guy, one who, as Sweet points out, might not start a ton of conversations, but will engage any and all good ones—even some that aren’t in his mother tongue. Votto has been trying to pick up Spanish because he “kind of got tired of not being able to speak to half my teammates.” He and fireballing closer Aroldis Chapman go back and forth to see who can speak the other guy’s language better, a bonding activity that punctuates Votto’s desire to make quality contact. “It opens up a lot of different avenues,” he says of being able to speak with people in their own language.
As for those who may still miss the point of his words and body language, don’t expect Votto to go out of his way to solicit their approval. Keeping people off balance offers him a little more space and a chance to have some fun in what can otherwise be a pretty serious existence. “I think he enjoys the fact that he’s misunderstood,” Martin says. “He’s a hilarious dude. But only when you know that he’s not being serious do you think he’s funny.”
The fruit is gone now and Votto is looking to the future. A World Series, naturally, is one of his main goals, though not the obsessive objective one might expect. It’s almost as if Votto is too practical for that, too aware that setting his sights on a target with so many elements beyond his control is tantamount to swinging at a ball that’s dropping outside the strike zone. Instead, Votto chooses to go after something completely within his control. “It sounds like a ridiculous thing to want, but to be pencilled into the lineup every day is an achievement in itself,” he says. “I’d love to be able to play as many games as I can over the course of my career. If I have the opportunity to do that, I consider myself lucky and I consider myself a high achiever.”
With the parameters set, Votto puts on his uniform and goes to work.
This article originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine.