The Grit and Hustle of Joe Baptist

Photo: New York Daily News

The career of one of the greatest baseball players in Blue Jays history appears to be drawing to a quiet close this month, which is strange because things are rarely quiet where Jose Bautista is involved.

A lightning rod for controversy in the baseball press both national and local, baseball fans have rarely passed up the opportunity to weigh in on Bautista – decrying his supposed lack of respect for the game while lamenting his tremendous success playing it. But as Jose and the team he has led for the past many years struggle towards the end of a disappointing season, people are perhaps realizing that enough is enough, that the man they have loved to kick around for so long may finally be down for good.

I won’t go into a full account of all the bullshit Jose has put up with from baseball fans and media over the years. If you’d like to get up to speed, I recommend reading this recent piece from Andrew Stoeten at Blue Jays Nation. Suffice it to say that Bautista, despite being by far the greatest sports hero Toronto has seen in the past decade, has seen his popularity amongst the locals regularly surpassed by players with lesser talent and lighter skin. And if you think the lighter skin thing doesn’t matter, you don’t know baseball. And you certainly don’t understand the culture surrounding the game, its self-aggrandizing mythology, and the punishment it metes out to the people who don’t accept their prescribed roles or fit its rigid archetypes.

JP Arencibia, Brett Lawrie, and Ryan Goins have all enjoyed the praise of Toronto baseball fans and press over the past decade despite being quite demonstrably bad at baseball. Arencibia had local women swooning, little girls wept when Lawrie was traded for one of the best players in the game, and fans and pundits have lobbied for Goins to take the jobs of all-stars Jose Reyes and Troy Tulowitzki despite Goins’ career OPS+ of 62 (which means he is 62 percent as good as a league-average hitter). But what these underwhelming players have all lacked in baseball skill, they have more than made up for in grit, hustle, and play-the-game-the-right-way-ness.

Jose Bautista on the other hand possesses none of these intangibles. He plays the game the wrong way – leading the league in homeruns two straight years, making all-star teams, hitting series-winning homeruns in the playoffs. Being one of the greatest players in franchise history. Sometimes he stares at people. He stares at umpires, he stares at opposing pitchers. He celebrates when he succeeds.

This is where the archetypes come in*. When Arencibia or Lawrie yelled at umpires or teammates, or when (the thoroughly awesome at baseball) Josh Donaldson screams a stream of expletives at the opposing dugout, that’s okay because as DanDuquette might say, they are “working-class type baseball players” – and we all know by now what that is code for. When Bautista stares at an opposing pitcher who just threw at him, or at an umpire who just blew a call, people don’t see a man with his lunch pail. They see a Latino man who can’t control his emotions.

That is Bautista’s archetype. He is the hot-headed Latino. And that in itself wouldn’t upset the baseball world so much – baseball does love its archetypes after all. It is how Bautista has responded to this label that has really got baseball traditionalists up in arms. Rather than being cowed by the label and quietly keeping his head down (perhaps in the manner his former teammate Edwin Encarnacion has done – no disrespect to Edwin or his parrot), Jose has eloquently called out his critics – and in fluent English no less. He has no time for your criticism. He will continue to take the field with his head held high, he will not alter his approach to the game, and until father time took away his bat speed, he would not hesitate to kick your ass one more time.

Bautista’s most famous transgression came in the 7^th inning of game 5 of the 2015 ALDS. With 2 out in a 3-3 tie near the end of one of the craziest innings in baseball history (seriously, go watch the whole thing – you won’t regret it), in front of the loudest crowd he had ever seen in his life, Bautista hit the biggest home run of his life. He celebrated. The Rangers, their pitcher, and their manager were angry. He hadn’t played the game the right way. (Apparently the right way to play the game is to get the lead in a huge game, give up the lead by booting the ball around the infield like a bunch of little leaguers, throw a meatball to one of the best hitters in the game and watch him launch it into the stratosphere, then go home and complain about your opponent on the radio. You know, sportsmanship.) The following year, the Blue Jays and Rangers played 7 regular season games. Continuing their lesson in how to play the game the right way, in Bautista’s final at-bat of the last game, their pitcher (a charming convicted felon with a violent history name Matt Bush) beaned Bautista with a fastball. Bautista took his base, and on the ensuing double-play ball Bautista slid hard into second base. Rougned Odor responded with the classic and correct baseball play of punching Bautista in the face.

A lot has been made of this punch, and not being much of a pugilist myself I’m probably not the best commentator on it. My take on it is this though. You don’t generally see a lot of punches thrown in baseball “brawls”, so I’m not sure Jose could really have expected Odor’s punch. But Odor got him clean and good, square in the jaw. Bautista did not go down. He came right back at Rougned (did you know he has an uncle name Rouglas? That is just spectacular.) And I’d venture to say that Odor was somewhat fortunate that Adrian Beltre was there to bear hug Bautista from behind.

Regardless of what would have theoretically happened if the two had re-engaged, I think that punch was a fitting metaphor for Jose’s career. People can take their shots at him, but he won’t go down. He’ll stand tall and come right back at you, even – or especially – when the narrative portrays him as the villain. It’s fitting to note that the Blue Jays and Rangers would indeed play again in 2016. The Jays would of course sweep the Rangers in three games in an ALDS rematch. A fan at game 3 in Toronto held up a sign saying something like “I’d rather get punched in May than knocked out in October.” It was perfect. 

*For more insight on baseball and its love of archetypes, look no further than Bautista’s one-time teammate Munenori Kawasaki, who was basically the Tanaka character from Major League 2, and was beloved by fans and teammates alike for being the wacky and weird Japanese guy who sounded hilarious reading random passages from his English phrase book. Oh, and Kawasaki was also pretty bad at baseball, which didn’t stop the fans from buying his jerseys by the case.