The team comes first for Pillar
And Gibbons had every right to rant, Jays outfielder says
More than 48 hours had elapsed since Kevin Pillar’s mad dash for third base — the one that resulted in a caught stealing and the final out of Sunday’s sixth inning — but the public debate raged on, the result of John Gibbons’ public disdain caught by TV cameras. The Jays had trailed the Yankees by four runs, and Gibbons’ centre-fielder had run into an inning-ending out.
But the moment passed, the men agreed to disagree on some aspects of the incident, and they moved on.
“They’re trying to make me out to be a goat because I tried to steal third base, tried to help my team win,” Pillar said before Tuesday’s game against Baltimore. “Selfishly or not, I was out there trying to help my team win a game, so to call me a goat is crazy. I wouldn’t call myself a hero (Monday with a pair of doubles) either. I had a pretty good game, but I think we’ve got to figure out something else we’ve got to talk about.”
The dressing down of Pillar took on a life of its own because the cameras carried everything except an audio that wasn’t ready for prime time. Pillar came off the field, picked up his gear, listened to the rant without reacting to his skipper, then headed to his position. If the cameras had not captured the moment, it may have gone unnoticed.
“We’ve had our other moments,” Pillar said. “There’s been some (past) stuff in the dugouts, but, I mean, the camera doesn’t catch everything. Was I surprised? A little bit. But I didn’t put my tail between my legs. I just picked up my stuff. I didn’t say anything back. I listened to what he had to say.
“I knew that we would have a chance to talk after the game. Part of my job as one of the older guys is just to show that there’s a hierarchy. There’s a leader, there’s a manager, then there’s players. Ultimately he has the right to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it and as a player you just have to wear it sometimes.”
Pillar understands that, as the Jays’ most senior member in years of service and with more and more young players being called up in the team’s rebuild, Gibbons may have had more in play than just lingering frustration. But there is no doubt the fatigue of the road trip, with its rain delays and bad baseball — eight Jays runners were thrown out at all four bases during the week — had shortened Gibbons’ fuse.
“I think you have to understand Gibby too,” Pillar said. “He didn’t have to do what he had to do, but he’s trying to make a point. He’s trying to make me a better baseball player. He’s trying to make our team a better baseball team.
“He hasn’t given up coaching despite the rumours around his future. He’s still going to go out there and do what he needs to do as a professional, as a coach to, I don’t want to say punish me, but teach me a lesson, teach these younger guys that are around a lesson.
“And at the same time, it didn’t warrant punishment (being removed from the game or benched).”
Pillar understands why Gibbons did it, but doesn’t necessarily regret anything he did in being aggressive and looking for any spark to bring his Jays back from a four-run deficit with 10 outs to go.
“I think this story got blown out of proportion,” Pillar said. “There’s always going to be a moment that we’re going to highlight as a reason for us getting swept in New York and I kind of got … I was kind of the scapegoat for that. I’ve been around long enough. I’m a professional. I’m a man. I owned up to my mistake. I heard what he had to say. We had our opportunity to talk after the game.”
The dugout dust-up, as onesided as it was with Gibbons doing all the talking, reminded some of Pillar’s rookie season in 2014 when he was pinch-hit for by Anthony Gose and stormed down the dugout steps angrily brushing by Gibbons.
Pillar downplayed any comparison between the two moments with the man who has been his only major-league manager since his big-league debut in 2013.
“We’ve been through a lot worse,” Pillar said. “We’ve been through some really good times together. The best thing about him is his door’s always open. We sit down. We talk about it. We hash it out. I didn’t get on that plane and go home and worry about being punished for it because he knows me as a man. He knows me as a baseball player.
“I owned up to it. I manned up to it. He gets me trying to be aggressive. He knows where our season’s at. It was an honest mistake.
“I’m out there trying to … you call it selfish, I call it trying to help our team win. He sees it as a little bit of both, but ultimately my intentions were pure, to help this team and he knows it. That stuff gets blown out of proportion as selfish, as being an individual, but I lay my body on the line every day for this team.”
There’s a very fine line between being hero and goat in baseball. The wonderful thing for players is that there’s always a new game around the corner, a quick chance for Bob Marley’s Redemption Song to become your new walk-up tune no matter what happened the game before and how it may have looked to fans.