Newest Jay has a bit of blue in his blood
Even if you were a diehard Blue Jays fan in 1979, you’d be hard-pressed to recall Steve Grilli pitching for Toronto that season. His time here lasted 21⁄ innings, a 3 one-hit, one-strikeout performance in a game against Boston.
Back in 1988, Grilli even made the Star’s Dave Perkins’ all-time A to Z roster of obscure Jays, (under the letter G, of course.) But Grilli is back in the limelight now that his son, Jason, joined the Jays after a deal with the Atlanta Braves earlier this week.
“My son is actually making me a little bit famous again . . . I’ve done newspapers and some radio shows since the trade,” the elder Grilli, now 67, said from his bar — called the Change of Pace — in Syracuse, N.Y.
The Grillis are the second father-andson tandem to don the Blue Jays uniform, joining the Mayberrys — John Sr., the popular first baseman who played in Toronto between1978 and1982, and his son, John Jr., who was with the team in 2014. Steve Grilli, right, had a one-game stint with the Jays in 1979. His son Jason joined the team this week in a deal with Atlanta.
The elder Grilli barely got his uniform dirty during his time with the Jays, but it marked the end of his nearly four years in major-league baseball. He played 70 games in total, 69 of them with Detroit between 1975 and 1977.
Jason Grilli, who grew up in Syracuse, where the Jays’ former farm club used to be located, met his teammates for the first time Wednesday.
“Growing up, this was a short jaunt to watch a big-league baseball game, and I spent many a day in these seats,” he said, “idolizing the guys I got to see in Syracuse when they came up here.”
It was Sept. 17, 1979, when the elder Grilli made his lone appearance with the Jays.
The outing saw him retire Tom Poquette to end the third inning. In the fourth, Butch Hobson singled, and Dwight Evans moved him up with a sacrifice bunt. Grilli then struck out Mike O’Berry and coaxed Stan Papi into a pop-up to end the fourth. He got both Jack Brohamer and Fred Lynn on fly balls before ending the fifth with a Jim Rice infield pop-up.
Grilli went on to spend three more years with the Jays franchise, pitching for the Triple-A Syracuse Chiefs. He opened his bar there 35 years ago. And he maintained his ties to the team, something that opened the door for his son to help out with the clubhouse duties and, best of all, hang around ball players.
“They’d let him stay in the clubhouse so he grew up a Jays fan, that was his team,” Steve Grilli said, noting that connection has endured. “He’s with the Braves and they just did a poll, and one of the questions was which team is your favourite team . . . Jason said it was the Blue Jays, and a couple of days later, here he is, a member of the Blue Jays.”
Jason Grilli has other Toronto connections: Jays catcher Russell Martin caught him in 2013 when both were with Pittsburgh, and bullpen catcher Alex Andreopoulos also worked with him when they were teammates at Seton Hall University.
The elder Grilli became one of 872 retired major-leaguers who played
“That’s the one thing they can’t take from you . . . all those great memories.” STEVE GRILLI FORMER JAYS PITCHER
between 1947 and 1980 who did not qualify for a pension because their careers did not extend four full seasons.
In1980, a year after his major league career ended, baseball changed its guidelines, allowing players with one day of service to qualify for health benefits, and 43 days of service to qualify for a retirement allowance.
So Grilli, even with his 18 years in baseball, wound up without a pen- sion, and his case was documented in a classic baseball book by Douglas Gladstone on those 872 retirees called A Bitter Cup of Coffee.
Back in those minor-league days in the ’80s, making $500 a month, Grilli remembered being so poor that he siphoned gas from cars to have enough fuel to get to the park. But it gave him the chance to play with and against such future major-league greats as Cal Ripken Jr and Wade Boggs.
“That’s the one thing they can’t take from you . . . all those great memories,” Grilli said. “My wife always had a line that we live our lives making memories, and I guess I have my fair share of them.” With files from Brendan Kennedy