Toronto Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro speaks during an end-of-season media availability in Toronto, on Thursday.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
The Toronto Blue Jays lost the World Series, but at least one team employee gets to take a victory lap – club president Mark Shapiro.
Back in April, most of the team looked shot, but no one was more likely to be gone at season’s end than Shapiro. He embodied the soulless corporatism of the Rogers sports empire.
October fixed that, at least temporarily. Shapiro is now the guy that put together the Disney version of a pro baseball team, one where caring matters more than wins (as long as they are winning).
On Thursday, at his season-ending news conference, Shapiro wasn’t just embracing his big national moment. He was getting down on one knee in front of it.
He led with a story about walking the dog in his neighbourhood during the Jays’ run and all the things he saw. He saw grown-ups playing catch, and a mom pitching to her son, and Jays signs on lawns, and Jays flags flying from porches.
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At points, he seemed to be near tears as he told this story.
At the end of his prepared remarks, he looped back to his trip through Pleasantville, “That’s how I wanted to start today. That’s a very genuine set of feelings.”
Nothing says genuine like when you tell me it is.
Then the questions about what happens next began and the firewall came back up. “That’s a question for [Jays GM] Ross [Atkins],” was Shapiro’s go-to response.
I guess we know how Shapiro would like to be seen going forward – as the guy who taught Canada how to love again, and not the guy who thought hiring Anthony Santander was a good idea.
Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins held season-ending availabilities on the heels of a Game 7 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.
The Canadian Press
If Shapiro always seems to be trying either too hard or not hard enough, you sort of get it. When he took the Toronto job more than a decade ago, he must have thought he was slumming. Canada and baseball – it’s not exactly Hollywood and the movies, is it?
But once he got here, he was put in the shade by all of his sporting colleagues. The basketball team had Masai Ujiri. The hockey team had Brendan Shanahan and Lou Lamoriello. He was already being haunted by the soon-to-be ghost of Alex Anthopoulos.
Everybody was a bigger deal than Shapiro, with a greater history of winning, and a more polished personal brand. But they are all gone, and Shapiro remains.
The Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doubles during the 11th inning of Game 7 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Rogers Centre on Nov. 1.Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
He never bent. He never changed. He never promised. He kept his attention pointed upward, and he survived. Now he’s Cyrano de Bergerac. He couldn’t woo the town, but he’d learned enough so that he could show 26 other guys how to do it.
I am reminded of something someone once said to me about artists who paint the same thing over and over again. You do that for 20 years and you’re a hack. You do it for 40 and you’re a visionary. Shapiro has been working in baseball for 35 years.
There’s no question he’s coming back. He didn’t drop that, so much as place it on the table: “I think we’ll work out something soon.”
This is the same guy who claims he hasn’t even thought about whether or not the Jays should re-sign Bo Bichette. So I guess he’s pretty sure.
If you care about the future performance of the Toronto Blue Jays, things are headed in the right direction.
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When a popular executive succeeds, the pressure isn’t just lifted. It often disappears. Ujiri’s a good example. He won an NBA championship that no one thought it was possible for Toronto to win. And then nothing.
The team and the people in charge coasted on the fumes of that victory for two, three seasons. It wasn’t until about four years later that people began to notice how normal operating service was not resuming. By then, it was too late.
The Raptors had frittered away whatever reputational advantage the title had gained them, and were already transforming back into a basketball backwater. It took the Jays 32 years to get back to the World Series. It might take the Raptors longer.
Shapiro wants and deserves his credit for getting the baseball club two outs from a championship. He got it on Thursday, mainly because he reached out and took it.
When it ended on Saturday, I heard a lot about Trey Yesavage and Chris Bassitt and Vlad Guerrero Jr. I even heard some nice things about the guy who blew it, Jeff Hoffman, for putting his hand up. Outside the Rogers cheerleading apparatus, I didn’t hear anything about Shapiro. He’ll be rehired, get some security and make more money. This is all as it should be.
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But no one’s talking about Shapiro as an executive for life, à la Ujiri. In part, that will be because of how poorly it ended in the basketball instance.
If the Jays let Bichette go, and can’t patch up the rotation, and fall back in the AL East next year, and get bounced in the wild card series, that kid taking curves from his mother in the park isn’t going to say, “Mom, remember how we felt at 10 p.m. on the greatest Saturday night of our lives?” No, he’ll be wondering if it’s time to become a Buffalo Bills fan.
If that happens, people will want Atkins’s professional head on a stick and they’ll be cursing Shapiro for getting it wrong again.
If you care about your team’s performance as well as your team, this is the optimal executive arrangement. Comfortable, but comfortable in that first-10-minutes-in-a-plastic-booth-at-McDonald’s sort of way. Understanding that you are only as good as whatever the team you run has just done. The players get to be popular. You’re just the guy in team-branded zip-ups who takes the blame when things go wrong.
Toronto always gets this part wrong. Maybe, like the postseason just past, the baseball team will shock us by getting it right.