A film buff’s happy ending
John Axford has sold phones at Best Buy, tended bar at East Side Mario’s, interned for a summer at WNDU radio, got an executive producer’s credit on a documentary about a rock band from Hamilton and, oh yeah, led the National League in saves with 46 as Milwaukee’s closer in 2011.
Did we mention the bachelor of arts degree in film and television from Notre Dame and the master’s degree in science and sports administration from Canisius College in Buffalo?
If this whole baseball thing doesn’t work out for the fireballer from Port Dover, Ont., he’s certainly got career options.
Renaissance Man, scholastically and from the school of hard knocks.
Axford signed a minor-league contract with the Jays on Feb. 8 — and tweeted out a Christmas photo of the 11-year-old John in his BJs PJs — and was invited to spring training, where he has certainly made an impression on John Gibbons. “I’ve seen, to this point, everything I need to see,” the skipper was saying the other day. “He should be pitching in the big leagues, no doubt.”
That’s a thumping vote of confidence for the six-foot-six right-hander, who appears to have auditioned himself into one of the few jobs open in the bullpen.
A little Canadian content for the Blue Jays never hurt either. The 34-year-old has wound his way around pro ball — seven big-league teams in nine seasons, including Oakland, where he was released last year after an abysmal campaign. He had a 6.43 ERA in 22 games and never quite rebounded from a strained shoulder.
But let’s go back to the beginning, when a teenage Axford was weighing all the cha-ching overtures that baseball could throw at a wide-eyed Canadian, long before he earned his “Ax Man” handle with a blazing fastball and wicked slider.
“I had been drafted in the seventh round out of high school. I remember we had our back-and-forths at the house, trying to find out what the signing bonus would be. Eighteen years old and you’re getting six figures thrown in your bank account for the first time. I got to a point where I just realized my own immaturity level. Where I needed to go was college. Growing up in Canada, you don’t hear a lot about U.S. schools. But Notre Dame, oh cool.
“I just wanted to grow, I think, as a person, and do that in an environment where there’s maybe more stability than minor-league baseball.’’
And, come on, there’s stature to attending Notre Dame, in his case on a sports scholarship. But there’s charactershaping too, which Axford absorbed.
In his freshman year, Axford helped the Fighting Irish get to their first College World Series in 45 years. The next year, in the annual Blue-Gold intrasquad game, he threw a curveball for a strikeout and came off the mound holding his right elbow. Torn UCL. Tommy John surgery. Nearly two years on the shelf, but time he spent studiously at Notre Dame. “I got to take courses that I probably wouldn’t have been able to take if I was playing. Some filmmaking courses that require a lot of time outside class. Baseball takes a lot of time away.”
And that summer interning at NBC’s radio affiliate, which opened up different prospects. “Baseball wasn’t going well for me then. I figured maybe the best way to play off the other stuff that I did, the broadcasting journalism, was to continue on doing the sports administration side. So If I wasn’t going to play, maybe I could work my way into a front office and continue with baseball that way.”
As the years ground on, he got that master’s degree at Canisius, played ball with the Melville Millionaires in Saskatchewan, and was endlessly trying to find a decent job while keeping his dream alive. “Here I was, with a bachelor and a masters, and no one was hiring me.” Bartending, turns out, wasn’t half-bad. “You make a lot more money doing that than playing minorleague baseball.”
It was getting farther and farther away, baseball as a profession. “I contemplated giving it up.”
Axford was actually a ripe 24, and already released by the Yankees organization, when the Brewers gave him a chance in 2008, though he struggled until his breakout 2011, during which he also became a fixture at the Milwaukee Film Festival as a sponsor and programmer. “I get a John Axford Presents every year, I get to present a film.
“Film is still my passion.”
Fast-forward and, golly, he’s on the verge of breaking camp as a Blue Jay, the team he idolized as a kid. (See PJs, above.)
“I’m just trying to pitch the best I can and let the cards fall as they may.”
But Toronto, wow, that’s the lodestar right now. For many reasons. “It would be great to maybe be a part of TIFF at some point since I’m never around for that.” The Toronto International Film Festival. That passion, working in film, hasn’t dimmed either.
So, what are your favourite movies, Mr. Axman?
“2001: A Space Odyssey. A French film called Le Samou
rai. A Korean film called Old Boy. There Will Be Blood. And Children of Men.” Uh, eclectic. He laughs. “None of them are feel-good films in any sense. Other than 2001, where you’re really unsure of what’s happening, they all pretty much end up sad.”
Unlike, it would seem, The John Axford Story.