GOING OUT IN STYLE
We salute a true baseball original as John Gibbons says goodbye to Jays fans in final home game
The walls of the office were barren. The pictures and the kids’ drawings that used to surround John Gibbons’ desk have been taken down. On this, the final home day of the longest season, the manager’s office is filled only with his stuff, suitcases and memories.
He’s trying not to be sentimental about the 11 seasons he managed the Blue Jays — the same number of seasons the great Punch Imlach coached the Maple Leafs — but there is so much to think about, so much to look back upon, and one giant opportunity lost that he still has great trouble letting go.
“I have regrets,” said Gibbons in a 45-minute interview on the day it was announced he would not return as Blue Jays manager. “I regret we didn’t get to the World Series. I thought we had the team (in 2015). That was a really good team. We exploded in the second half of the season.”
Then he looks back at Game 6 in Kansas City, the American League Championship Series, and the events of that crushing night still haunt him.
“We had men on second and third, no outs. (Dalton) Pompey stole second and then he stole third. We’re down a run and we had our best contact guys coming up. We had Ben Revere, one of the best contact hitters in the game, and we had (Dioner) Navarro pinch-hitting after him, and he was one of the best at putting the ball in play, and they had the infield in. I think they both struck out. And then the MVP (Josh Donaldson) was coming up. It was all going our way.”
Donaldson’s groundout ended the dream in 2015. The playoff team a year later wasn’t as dominant, wasn’t as deep.
“I like the way that team pushed their way into the playoffs. We were no sure thing,” said Gibbons. “We went in Boston on that final weekend. So I was proud of that. But I really thought, in 2015, we had the team to get there. We had the team to win.”
It was as close as the Blue Jays have come to the World Series since winning it in 1993. Who knows when they get that close again?
“It was what, 23 years where we weren’t really relevant,” said Gibbons. “Then the whole country got involved.”
It seems like yesterday and it seems like a long time ago. Those were the two seasons that changed baseball in Canada and turned Gibbons from little-known, somewhat lightly regarded manager across the city and the country to a man who flew out of Toronto last night to a standing ovation and a hero’s goodbye.
A hero’s goodbye after one of the most confusing, confounding seasons in Blue Jays history. He leaves not as a tragic figure, but as one surprisingly beloved: A friend and colleague and comfort zone for baseball media.
He leaves regarded and respected, not just by his game and the sport, but by those who once considered him a Southern stooge of sorts. Someone who gets fired and has a news conference sitting beside the general manager and is praised by Ross Atkins for the man he is and all he learned from him.
There isn’t enough room on these pages to say all there is to say about Gibbons, to pay him proper tribute — a man unlike any I’ve ever covered before — a coach, a manager, a friend, a comedian, someone to listen to, someone to learn from, someone who makes today better than yesterday.
At the beginning in Toronto, when he was appointed interim manager after the forgotten Carlos Tosca was fired, he was an acquired taste. Seemingly, an odd selection. Over time, he grew into the job, we grew to appreciate who he was and what he was about. He still marvels, in a way, at how it all happened for him with the Blue Jays twice.
Gibbons had managed three seasons of triple-A for the New York Mets and general manager Steve Phillips. Each season, the Mets hired a new coach. Each of those three years, they passed on Gibbons.
“Used to be, the triple-A manager got those jobs. I decided it was time to look elsewhere,” said Gibbons.
Elsewhere happened to be the Oakland A’s, where his friend and former teammate Billy Beane was running the show, assisted by his former
roommate J.P. Ricciardi. He talked to Beane. He talked to Ricciardi. He was hoping for something about the time his contract was running out with the Mets. He had three kids at home and a brand new house to pay for.
“I was nervous,” said Gibbons. “Billy didn’t have anything for me. They didn’t have a lot of money. One day, I called Billy and he said, ‘I’ll call you back, J.P.’s doing a press conference in Toronto.’ I had no idea that was happening. It kind of came out of the blue for him.
“So J.P. gets the Toronto GM job and I’m hoping he’s going to have something for me. He told me we have a third-base coaching job and a bullpen-catching job open. He brought me and Carlos Tosca up for interviews.”
Tosca wound up as the third base coach and Gibbons as bullpen catcher for manager Buck Martinez.
Even that had problems. “I had bad knees and I hadn’t squat in 10 years,” said Gibbons of the bullpen job. “But I needed the job, so I took it. I blew out my knee the first day catching in spring training. I figured, ‘I don’t know how long I can do this.’ But then Buck got fired, Carlos got the manager’s job and I wound up coaching first base.”
A few years later, Tosca was fired and Gibbons became interim manager, replacing him.
How his second stint as Jays manager came to be still astounds Gibbons.
“I was definitely unpopular (after his first time managing very average teams). I don’t blame (fans) for not liking the decision. I wasn’t sold on it, either.
“They crowned us champions that winter (2013) after (then-GM Alex Anthopoulos) made those big trades. Everybody was expecting big things, but it never happened. I even said to Alex a couple of times, ‘Bringing me back, are you sure this was the right thing to do?’ I felt like I was letting him down. He took a chance on me and it wasn’t working out.
“I told him, ‘If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.’ ”
Two seasons later, the Blue Jays came within two wins of the World Series, Anthopoulos was the toast of Canada and Gibbons had suddenly morphed from unpopular to accepted.
In this moribund season, there was no real talk of playoffs — only disappointment and a strange disconnect between the baseball club and its avid fan base. There are those in scouting positions around baseball who actually believe this train wreck of a season was Gibbons’ finest as a bigleague manager. His two star starting pitchers, Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, contributed next to nothing. The closer, Roberto Osuna, whom Gibbons had appointed as a 20-year-old, had to be moved. Troy Tulowitzki never played a game. Donaldson barely played and, when he did, he wasn’t healthy. And the team’s defence, with a makeshift lineup almost every night, was downright offensive.
Yet they kept on playing. “I’m proud of that,” said Gibbons. “We hung in there. I’m happy for the job our coaches did. We held it together. I think the No. 1 job of a manager is holding everything together.”
Said one National League personnel man: “Gibby should be manager of the year for the job he did with the team they gave him.”
A managing career that began with a championship in 1995. He was 33 years old back then.
He went on to manage part of 11 seasons in Toronto, three years in triple-A, one season in double-A at home in San Antonio and the year he’ll never forget, managing the Mets’ rookie-league team in Kingsport, Tenn. It was his first job and it remains his favourite story to tell.
“We had a staff of two, me and the pitching coach,” said Gibbons. “And the pitching coach broke his hand, losing it on a refrigerator as the season began. So I’m the only one who can throw batting practice. The guy who owned the team was a big-time defence lawyer, so our grounds crew guy was a guy on parole.
“A week into the season, the grounds grew guy stopped showing up. Turns out, he violated his parole and went back to jail. So now, I get to the park, get on the tractor, drag the field, set up the field, and throw batting practice. And because a lot of our kids had no cars, we had a lot of Latin players who didn’t know where they were, I had a van and before the game I would drive around and pick up eight of them, bringing them to the park every day.
“And you know what? We won the championship that year. Best job I ever had.”
A league championship he desperately wanted to win with the Blue Jays in Toronto.