Votto still waiting for new baseball home
• Give this man a (baseball) home.
Toronto’s homegrown Major League Baseball star — and now unemployed — Joey Votto has lit up social media again with a comical post on X expressing his dismay at not being able to land a freeagent contract this off-season.
The post, which shows a forlorn-looking Votto sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich under the caption “missing ball,” is a spoof of an infamous Keanu Reeves viral offering from 2010. The notable addition in the Votto version is a baseball bat leaning against the bench as the bearded, not ready to retire player munches on a sandwich.
As you might imagine, the latest wisdom shared by Votto has drawn considerable response from baseball fans, including a post from a Montreal Expos account urging the Canadian baseball icon to “call us.”
Votto’s response? “Vous n’existez pas!”
With time on his hands and at home in Toronto last month, Votto posted a series of pictures from the NHL all- star weekend taking selfies with mascots from every team in the league.
The Toronto native has been a free agent since the end of the 2023 season when the Cincinnati Reds declined a US$20 million option for the upcoming season.
Votto spent 17 years with the Reds, for whom he was a six-time all star, but with baseball’s opening day now less than three weeks away, the 40-year-old remains unemployed.
Votto recently told U.S. sports talk radio host Dan Patrick that he’s fielded more inquiries for work as an analyst than a baseball player and that any offers from MLB teams have been “just chatter ... with no firm offer yet.”
He is not alone, of course, as one of the slowest moving free agent seasons in recent memory continues to drag on for MLB players without a contract.