Emotional Bautista takes rightful place alongside Blue Jays' greats in fitting tribute

TORONTO – Jose Bautista tried to hide the tears, wearing sunglasses beneath the closed Rogers Centre roof, clandestinely dabbing at his eyes with a tissue until the emotions made it all futile. The iconic right-fielder, among the most fierce, intense and relentless competitors in franchise history, was overcome by the moment, by the swell of nostalgia, appreciation and gratitude kindled by the Toronto Blue Jays’ well-executed ceremony adding him to the Level of Excellence.

Repeatedly over the course of a 45-minute presentation featuring career highlights, praise from former teammates and managers and messages from family, the fearsome exterior that became his trademark on the field was peeled back. “Well, this is not easy,” Bautista said before a sellout crowd of 42,585 as he stepped to the dais, welling up again later after telling fans that “it was an honour to play for you.”

The feeling was returned by an adoring crowd, the enduring passion for those beloved 2015 and ’16 playoff teams and Bautista’s role on them reflected by the loud ovations for John Gibbons, Edwin Encarnacion, Russell Martin, Justin Smoak, Devon Travis and Ryan Goins, among others.

Those were good times. Bautista was the heartbeat of those clubs. The celebration was fitting. The tears unexpected.

“We talked about it afterwards, it's kind of hard to display your emotions. I feel like men in general have a hard time with that and to do it in front of a crowd, it makes it even tougher – but it's just a magical moment,” said Martin, who played with Bautista at Chipola Junior College before they eventually reunited on the Blue Jays. “You could see that it meant a lot to him and to have family, friends, old teammates, coaches, pretty much his whole life in baseball there to support him, you could tell that it was a special moment for him and to see him be there, in that moment, it was just awesome.”

Travis, who credited Bautista for transcending the sport and making bat flips acceptable, admitted to shedding a few tears, himself, too.

“Like I never thought there ever would be a day that I see Jose Bautista cry, and he definitely was crying a lot,” he said. “I just think that a player of that calibre, the career that he has, when he's in the moment and playing every day, I don't think that players like that really ever look at themselves and say, ‘Man, you're pretty damn good.’ But seeing all the support he had in the fans and how loud it was, and all his buddies and coaches and managers and family, they're behind him, I think today he had the ability to soak that in. And I think probably for the first time in his life, he got to say, 'I'm proud of the guy I see in the mirror.' Special stuff.”

Special stuff, indeed.

Also in attendance were Cito Gaston and Dwayne Murphy, who were instrumental in helping Bautista adjust his timing and trigger mechanism at the plate to unlock his power, former third base coach Brian Butterfield, teammates Melky Cabrera, Marco Scutaro, Adam Lind, Ricky Romero and Travis Snider, his coach at Chipola Jeff Johnson, the Pittsburgh Pirates scout who signed him Jack Powell, and his family.

As his highlights played on the videoboard – electric swings, big throws, tantrums and celebrations, covering his decade with the Blue Jays, from clean-shaven to fully bearded – the trip down memory lane became all the more resonant.

“Coming in, I'll be honest with you, I didn't like him, because I played against him and playing against him, you don't like him,” said Smoak. “When you get here and you finally meet him and get to be around him day in and day out, you realize, oh, he's a great guy, he's awesome. What he's done, the numbers he put up, of course, he's going up on the Level of Excellence.”

Smoak said he learned how to have a routine from watching the way Bautista worked daily to prepare himself and his impact on others is a quiet part of his legacy.

“He took a liking to me. The second I got up I feel like we just clicked, me being a younger guy, him and him being a veteran, that's not necessarily always the case,” said Marcus Stroman, the former Blue Jays starter who watched the ceremony across the field with the Chicago Cubs. “He told me that in order to be good on the field, you really have to take care of your body and I saw it. He understands the body very well, which I feel like is very rare. Not a lot of guys focus on their bodies in this game. They just kind of just come and go play and then one day they're out of this game and wonder why they didn't maximize. To see his process was pretty eye-opening. And it shaped how I am now.”

Bautista’s commitment to every element necessary for winning was one of the first things Mark Shapiro noticed when he took over as Blue Jays president and CEO in November 2015.

As an opponent, he thought of Bautista as “a Gary Sheffield type. In my younger years, I thought about Sheffield as imposing, tough and fearsome, when he came up, you felt like something bad was going to happen and you knew the guy was doing everything he humanly could to impact the game,” said Shapiro. “Coming here, it was more just a window into how he viewed the game as a craft, not just a game, and that he was relentlessly committed to getting the most out of his ability every single way he possibly could. He was ahead of the industry in thinking about all the different opportunities that existed out there to gain a competitive advantage.”

Part of that was a cauldron of emotion he drew from and harnessed in a way few others can.

Smoak pointed out that Bautista “knew what he was doing” on the field, finding ways to throttle his emotions up and down as needed in given situations. His memorable back-and-forths with Darren O’Day beginning in the 2013 season, responding to getting knocked down with homers afterwards, are a prime example.

“I have never in my life had a ball thrown at my head and wanted to step back in the box,” said Travis. “Darren O'Day would throw the ball up and in non-stop to Jose Batista, and yet somehow, he would have the ability to give the pitcher the stare. Some players, when they give you a look, you know something crazy is about to happen. I think baseball is the hardest sport to give a look and say, 'Hey, I'm about to do something scary.' Bautista could do that every day. I don't know how he did it. I don't know if he knows how he did it, but that's what made him great.”

All of this played into his signature moment, the bat-flip home run in Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS against the Texas Rangers.

Third base coach Luis Rivera, who was on the field that day, said “I still get goosebumps,” at the mere mention of the unforgettable swing.

“I remember that when the ball was hit, I thought, that ball is going to be out of here. And the ground started shaking,” said Rivera. “I know he was running the bases and I was like, is that me or the ground? It might be my greatest moment as a coach, to be part of that.”

Bautista’s run with the Blue Jays similarly shook the entire organization, too, helping to pull it from a moribund period to its greatest heights since the World Series years of 1992-93. In the end, it even shook the armour over his feelings as he took his rightful place alongside the franchise’s all-time greats.