Buffalo is no dream home for Jays, but it’ll have to do. DiManno,
Beggars can’t be choosers. And the Toronto Blue Jays are mendicants.
But, hoo boy, this is pinkcheeks embarrassing.
The club spun it six ways from Sunday on Friday, but bottom line: It’ll be bush league for Toronto’s major-league ballers as far as we can see on the stadium horizon.
Every player who talked to reporters in Zoom calls over the past week made it clear they did not want to play at Sahlen Field in Buffalo. And, corporately, the home to their Triple-A affiliate wasn’t preferred option A, B or C, maybe not even X, Y and Z.
But the federal government said nope, Pennsylvania’s health secretary said nope to Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, and discussions with Baltimore hit the deadline wall.
With nothing else to yank out of his backside mere hours before Toronto’s season launched against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field in Florida, Jays president Mark Shapiro virtually pulled the U-Haul into Buffalo. Which is no slag on the Queen City. But, geez Louise.
It didn’t have to be this way. Had Ottawa not strung the team along, had the pols given Shapiro even just a bit wider grace period instead of lowering the hammer last Saturday — denying the Jays (and visiting clubs) dispensation to cross back and forth across the border — there would likely have been a more satisfying outcome, particularly with Camden Yards a tantalizing shared park substitute.
“Yes, more time certainly would have been helpful in planning and having alternatives and conversation,” said Shapiro. “Usually that leads to better decisions. It leads to more opportunities.”
Shapiro has been careful not to point a finger of blame at Canadian authorities. His club has faced unprecedented difficulties trying to resolve the profound complications of playing baseball amid a pandemic, particularly as the only Canada-based team in the major leagues.
“The only caveat I would say is, man, so many things have changed at the last minute, not just in Canada but in the U.S. as well. The circumstances and the world we are living in has so much uncertainty. The parameters that guide all of our decisions just change so much.” One more week of manoeuvring could have changed the outcome. Baltimore and Maryland never got to the point of rejecting the Jays.
“Knowing that the season was about to start, examining all the variables and the risks of each situation but Baltimore in particular, we had to make a decision,” Shapiro said. “Continuing to explore and look at an option like Baltimore was not going to be a risk we could take.”
The Jays’ Dunedin complex was originally a fallback plan, but that quickly became untenable when COVID-19 spiked catastrophically in Florida.
In Buffalo, the Jays enjoyed a warm embrace from the city and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, even though New York state has absorbed the worst that the coronavirus could throw at it — the second most deaths (per 100,000 population) behind only New Jersey. But Cuomo has managed the disaster magnificently and New York is now a model for flattening the COVID-19 curve.
So, Buffalo it is, though not imminently. The Jays are on the road for their first five games. More significantly than the home park dilemma, some of the players took a knee at Tropicana Field during the anthems Friday night, while standing players placed hands on the kneelers’ shoulders.
“This is for us very individual,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. explained before the game, wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt. “Whoever wants to, whatever they want to do, is fine.
“I had a meeting with my family and we all agreed on this. It’s basically because we don’t like the way things are going with all the Black people, all what’s happening out there. We all got together and we decided it’s good for me to kneel tonight and wear the shirt that I’m wearing right now.”
Guerrero said he’d spoken with teammate Anthony Alford about the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. “He’s very hurt inside for what’s happening right now. It’s a reality … things happening for people of colour.”
After St. Pete’s, the Jays will shelter in place in Washington, D.C., for an away and “home” series with the defending champion Nationals. Their next home date would be Friday, hosting the Phillies or, if Sahlen Field upgrades aren’t ready by then, Aug. 11 against the Marlins.
The Jays had personnel sussing out the parameters for transforming Sahlen Field into an approximation of a majorleague yard for the past week while also observing baseballmandated safety protocols to limit the COVID-19 risks.
Job One was enhancing the lighting. “The lighting bulbs have been there for over a week,” Shapiro said. “It’s just that we’ve held off pushing the button for go. Beyond that, the clubhouse spaces as they’re currently configured would not allow for a full team because of the virus protocols.”
So much of optimum performance for players is sticking to a routine, having the ability to prepare and recover with all the amenities available in a big-league facility. This imitation game is a tremendous challenge within a minorleague footprint. Batting cages, elite training and weight rooms, bullpens, hot and cold tubs, showers — it’s a tall to-do list. And the field itself, of course.
“It’s not that the field isn’t a good field,” Shapiro said. “But it hasn’t been played on in a long time and we’re going to be playing major-league games on it.”
The disadvantages are extensive. Yet there are also advantages. Most of these Jays have come through Buffalo on their way to The Show. They’re familiar with it.
“For me, it’s pretty much the same,” said Guerrero, who played there for parts of two seasons. “There’s no fans anyway, so we’re just going to go play baseball. I think it will be the same for everyone.”
The slugging sophomore sees a benefit for the team’s pitchers because Sahlen Field’s dimensions make it less of a homerun paradise. “It’s a big field, I think bigger than the one in Toronto. That’s going to be a difference for our pitching.”
With so few grizzled veterans on the roster, these mostly young Jays aren’t so far from their minor-league days of carrying their own bags and long bus trips. Not that they’ll be lugging luggage to Buffalo. And Buffalo is less than a twohour drive from Toronto, should the border block ease up and Canadian officials revisit the state of affairs, possibly allowing teams to play at Rogers Centre later in the stage of a 60-game sprint season. Or a post-season.
“We said from Day One that’s something that was messaged to us by the Canadian government,” said Shapiro. “If situations and circumstances change, we would want to revisit … We are open to doing it.”
For now, however, Buffalo is their field of dreams.
Shapiro: “We’ve been through a lot, but we’re embracing where we are and the journey ahead. We’ll be excited to hoist a championship trophy wherever it is and it’s going to be part of our story.”