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It was an unusual scene at the Toronto Blue Jays’ minor-league complex, a place where springtime is normally reserved for fresh prospects carrying hopes both high and faint.
Behind the home-plate screen at one of the diamonds where a group of perhaps-future Jays were taking on an A-ball squad from the Pittsburgh Pirates’ organization, most of the team’s front office hierarchy gathered, foremost among them GM Alex Anthopoulos.
They were joined by nearly every member of the press covering the team, here rather than at a Jays Grapefruit League road game in distant Port Charlotte in order to cover what had been the only real story so far in an otherwise uneventful camp.
Behind the plate squatted the Blue Jays’ No. 1 catcher, J.P. Arencibia.
On the mound stood last year’s opening-day starter, Ricky Romero, scheduled to throw five innings against the kids while tinkering with his delivery and hoping to restore his shattered confidence.
It did not go well. Warm-up pitches sailed high or bounced in the dirt three or four feet short. When a live hitter stood in the box, Romero was briefly effective, keeping his pitches down in the zone and devilishly active. But that was followed by longer stretches when it was clear he didn’t have a clue where the ball was going.
Walks. A no-doubt home run. A final, long chat with Arencibia and pitching coach Pete Walker.
And throughout the short, torturous outing, the uncomfortable spectacle of an elite athlete battling not some physical impediment but one between his ears, all in front of a live audience analyzing every flinch.
Hard to remember a spring training when so much of the talk has centred on the psychology of sport and its maintenance—not the sophisticated, professional stuff (though no doubt there’s plenty of that taking place behind closed doors as players seek their happy, confident place) but rather the time-honoured amateur version as practised by coaches and GMs since the beginning of baseball time. It’s about deciding when to coddle, when to apply tough love, when to tell the truth, when to tell little white lies.
Romero’s struggles and the Jays’ reaction to them have naturally attracted the lion’s share of attention, but it’s more than that.
Why, a few weeks earlier, the out-of-the-blue pronouncement from manager John Gibbons that the forever-injured Dustin McGowan had a chance to earn a spot with the team? Perhaps because it had quietly been decided that it was time to fish or cut bait, that McGowan had grown a bit too comfortable being the always-hurt guy and needed both a carrot and a stick.
Why the reluctance to criticize enigmatic centre-fielder Colby Rasmus, struggling even to make contact for most of spring training? Maybe because Rasmus, on the rare occasions when he opens up in interviews, sounds like one of those teen tennis players forced into the game by an overbearing parent who eventually snaps and walks away. So better not push too hard, lest he wake up and realize he actually hates baseball.
With Romero, who has been remarkably open about his emotional vulnerability, the Jays began by trying to create a cocoon of support. Despite the fact that halfway through last season he lost the command that made him special and never got it back, despite off-season elbow surgery that may have been playing on his mind and knee tendinitis that was well on its way to becoming chronic, despite J.A. Happ’s far superior performance during this spring training, a spot in the 2013 rotation was his, unequivocally. His teammates, too, rose to defend Romero against any criticism, circling the wagons as they should.
But late in camp, the narrative subtly changed. Now Romero was working to correct a newly uncovered flaw in his mechanics (truth is, he is one of those pitchers whose delivery has always been a bit of a mess). Something specific, something “wrong,” something to be dealt with and fixed. Something that might provide an alternate focus, a distraction, an explanation, rather than a vague imperative to pitch better, somehow.
And though the guaranteed job was still there, it was couched just a little bit with talk about the constant process of re-evaluation, with reminders that there were still a couple more starts to be assessed before the team headed north, with the repetition of that great truth: Things can change.
Implied was the bottom line, which Romero understood as well as anyone else: This season, the Blue Jays’ ownership and management have gone all in, so the therapeutic window closes on opening day.
Stephen Brunt is a Sportsnet magazine columnist