If there was ever a case of bad timing, it was my beginnings as a sports fan. I started to become aware of the sports world around age seven or eight. By the time I figured out who my favourite teams were (mainly through family influence), it was 1995.
Yes, it was two years after the Blue Jays' incredible eight-year run that ended when Joe Carter touched 'em all. It was two years after the Leafs got screwed by a man with plastic hair.
My first year as a Jays fan? Yeah, that would be the year they were the worst team in baseball. Right down there at the bottom with the Minnesota Twins, with a 56-88 record.
I was barely aware of the fact they'd just won back-to-back World Series titles. Over the next 19 years, the Holy Grail for me, and those of about my age, was to win the wild card spot. That was all I could ever hope for. To do that, they had to finish second of five teams in the best, richest division in baseball. In 19 years, they did that once. That year, they still didn't win the wild card because that was the one year another division was stronger than the East.
There were some great memories. A lot of players who were fun to watch. I invested thousands of hours into those teams, all the while knowing they would never get past the Yankees and Red Sox.
After a generation of ups and downs, mostly downs, the Jays hired Alex Anthopoulos as their GM in late 2009. I was pretty shocked - he looked like a 20-year-old. However, it was a breath of fresh air after the reign of JP Ricciardi, who might be one of the worst executives in Blue Jays history.
Over the next five years, Anthopoulos showed that he was anything but conventional. For the first three years, he rebuilt a prospect pool that had been decimated by Ricciardi. He drafted extremely well, and made smart trades jettisoning underachieving vets for highly thought of prospects. Some of the kids he acquired through trades, the draft and international signings include Marcus Stroman, Noah Syndergaard, Aaron Sanchez, Travis D'Arnaud, Brett Lawrie, Kevin Pillar, Roberto Osuna, Devon Travis, Vladdy Guerrero Jr., Adeiny Hechavarria, Miguel Castro, Dalton Pompey, Daniel Norris, Jeff Hoffman, Sam Dyson, Anthony Alford, and the list goes on and on.
Anthopoulos took the Jays' prospect pipeline from terrible to one of the best in the world in three years.
In late 2012, he used a lot of that prospect capital to make two ground-shaking trades that nobody saw coming. They didn't work out in the short term, but they would play a major role two years down the road. The point is, he realized that in baseball, you can't build for the future forever. At some point you have to go for it, and show your fans that you actually want to win. Baseball does not have a salary cap. Trying to survive on a shoestring payroll with young players and Moneyball pick-ups is highly unlikely to get you anywhere. Billy Beane's Oakland A's were the million-to-one exception, not the rule.
What's important is that unlike Ricciardi before him, he spent that added money from Rogers wisely. He didn't shell out huge contracts to old free agents who had one good season and would never match it again. He traded for players who could make a difference. Instead of throwing darts at a free agent list to fill holes, he did hundreds of hours of research into players using sabermetrics and his gut instincts. He wanted guys who would not only help his team, but be good citizens.
He traded for the reigning Cy Young winner. It's true that RA Dickey never quite matched that form again, but without his second half of 2015, the Bluebirds likely don't play into October. Dickey has embraced life in Toronto. He truly gets it.
Anthopoulos also acquired Jose Reyes, whose enthusiasm was infectious, and Mark Buehrle, a veteran starter with character who could eat up innings and show the kids how to be pros.
Anthopoulos understands that in baseball, you can deal prospect currency and replenish it in the same calendar year. There are 40 rounds in a baseball draft. Some people think this is hockey and you only draft seven players a year. In baseball, you draft two dozen arms every single June. Some of them pan out, most don't, but all of them can be used as trade chips, because it's like tickets for the lottery.
Some of the prospects AA traded away haven't worked out. Two very notable ones did - Syndergaard and D'Arnaud. They're in the World Series as we speak, playing huge roles on a contender. That hurts a little bit, but you know what? AA went for it. He put his balls on the table and honest to God went for it. No one in the Jays' GM chair has done that in 20 years, unless you count Ricciardi's ill-advised signings at the 2005 winter meetings, or the 1997 signing of Roger "He Misremembered" Clemens, juicer extraordinaire.
In 20 years of watching sports, I don't know if I've ever seen an executive work his ass off to improve his team the way Anthopoulos has - except perhaps Paul DePodesta, otherwise known as Jonah Hill in Moneyball, who could be viewed as an early AA prototype. Alex Anthopoulos works 16-20 hour days. He's improved not only the on-field product but every aspect of the organization, most notably his overhaul of the scouting system. During the week leading up to the trade deadline that transformed the Blue Jays from pretender to World Series favourite, he pulled a 168-hour shift without sleeping. He cares. He put his heart, soul, mind and sanity into this baseball team. Because he's Canadian, he knows exactly what it's like to cheer for a team that consistently tears out your heart and stomps on it - after all, he watched his hometown Expos piss away one of the best farm systems in the history of baseball, because of payroll slashing. He knows what Jays fans have been through since 1995, because unlike an observer from south of the border, he's seen it. He's lived it. He knows our pain.
One year ago, Anthopoulos took another stab at "going for it" - and this time it resulted in one of the greatest trades in franchise history. He traded Brett Lawrie - an insanely talented but injury-prone and attitude-challenged third baseman - along with some of that prospect currency, for Josh Donaldson.
No one knew the Jays were in on Josh Donaldson. Everyone was blown away when the deal happened. Because Alex Anthopoulos operates in secret. He burns the candle at both ends. He approaches other GMs about untouchable players and works around the clock to convince his counterparts to let him touch those players. He is nothing short of a ninja, a maverick who orchestrates clandestine trade talks that manage to evade the attention of insiders like Ken Rosenthal and Buster Olney.
And remember, Brett Lawrie is Canadian. He was one of the most overhyped, hotly anticipated Jays prospects in the last 20 years (and let's not forget Anthopoulos got him for Shaun Marcum, who has appeared in seven major-league games in the last two years).
To trade Brett Lawrie was almost unthinkable. It took balls of steel to make that trade. The thing is, AA doesn't care what people think of his moves. He's even disregarded advice from his own staff when he believes in a player enough to pick him up. Now? Every person in baseball thinks Oakland was destroyed in that trade, with the possible exception of Billy Beane. Josh Donaldson is about to be named American League MVP after a season so remarkable it's hard to comprehend. Brett Lawrie is a distant memory.
Last fall, Anthopoulos also convinced Canadian all-star catcher Russell Martin to come home. Martin is about to win a Gold Glove after throwing out base stealers with extreme prejudice this season. He traded overpaid underachiever Adam Lind for pitcher Marco Estrada. The consensus from fans was that Estrada, who gave up the most home runs in baseball in 2014, would be utterly demolished in the hitter-friendly Rogers Centre. But AA does his homework. All Estrada did this year was post a top-five ERA in the American League, keep the Jays in the hunt until two half-decent starters arrived late in the season, and save his team's bacon twice in October. Anthopoulos also claimed the first base platoon of Chris Colabello and Justin Smoak off waivers, and acquired 2015 rookie standout Devon Travis for Anthony Gose, who has less power at the plate than a fat man on a diet.
Even with all that, the Jays were a middling team in the first half this year. Many fans called for the young hotshot GM's dismissal. However, Donaldson, Martin, Estrada, Travis, Colabello and Smoak were all showing they could be difference-makers in Toronto. The team's lack of success was almost entirely at the feet of its pitching staff. Dickey was having a historically bad first half. Drew Hutchison, while spinning an incredible win-loss record, was doing so on the strength of more run support than Adidas shoes. When that run support wasn't there, he was demonstrating the pitching ability of George Costanza at an NBC meeting.
Then, in a week that forever changed Toronto sports fans and their well-tested views that their teams could screw up a one-car funeral, Anthopoulos implemented Part 2 of his fall 2014 makeover.
He traded for Troy Tulowitzki.
HE TRADED FOR TROY TULOWITZKI.
The best shortstop in the world, who had spent his entire career out of the spotlight with the Colorado Rockies, was suddenly somewhere else. And that somewhere was Toronto. Troy Tulowitzki was a Blue Jay.
There were rumours that Tulo could be on the move. The Rockies told him he'd be the first to know if they had a deal on the table for him. But no one, no one outside Alex Anthopoulos and his brain trust, had an inkling the Jays were in on him. Because the Toronto Blue Jays simply don't do that. They trade away stars for prospects, not prospects for stars. They're in Canada. Who wants to play in a frozen tundra, right? Who wants to play for a team that hasn't been relevant since Kim Campbell did her best impersonation of a train wreck?
All of the above was true from 1995 to 2012. Then Alex Anthopoulos decided to change tack, and try something else.
The culmination of that was the acquisition of Tulowitzki and some lefty fireballer named David Price.
In four days, Anthopoulos turned the baseball world, Canadian sports fans and conventional wisdom on their collective ear.
He showed us that he wants to win as badly as any of us. After years of tightwad ownership from the richest owner in pro sports, and a general manager who never demonstrated any knowledge of how to win, it was refreshing. More than refreshing. It made us believe that finally the Jays might have a chance to do something that matters. That they might play meaningful September baseball. After 20 years of futility, meaningful September baseball is all anyone wanted. Just the chance to try to squeak into a wild card spot. Expectations were that low.
What did Alex Anthopoulos do? He created a baseball renaissance in this country. He revitalized Jays fans coast to coast, and helped create new ones. This nation rose up and roared like a lion awoken from a long, torturous slumber. The Jays were back, baby, and so were we.
Alex Anthopoulos engineered one of the most astonishing hot streaks in the recent history of professional sports. That tidal wave of winning and hysteria and pride and, cold reality be damned, righteous destiny, swept the Toronto Mother Fornicating Blue Jays past the Evil Empire at Yankee Stadium, the KC Bullies at Kauffman Stadium, into the most coveted pipe dream Jays fans have ever dared to think about: the AL East pennant.
On a triumphant Wednesday afternoon in Baltimore, Alex Anthopoulos sat in the stands and watched his team finally, after 22 years, do the one thing that would have sent a nine-year-old, 12-year-old, 18-year-old, 25-year-old, almost 29-year-old me into a state of unbridled euphoria:
Win the AL East.
Slay the dragon.
There were Blue Jays fans in those stands. As their team closed in on that impossible dream, they serenaded the man who made it all possible.
Thank you Alex.
Thank you for making us believe again.
Thank you for working your tail off to return playoff baseball to Toronto.
Thank you for not giving a crap what other people think, and doing what you believe in your heart to be right.
The Jays went on to pull off an improbable comeback against the Texas Rangers in the ALDS, giving my generation our Joe Carter moment in the process when Jose Bautista - a veteran heart-on-his-sleeve leader who's been here longer than Anthopoulos, and had never had a sniff of the playoffs until now - crushed a 1-1 fastball right down the throat of all those narratives of the past 22 years.
The Jays then lost in six games to the Kansas City Royals in heartbreaking fashion. It's the kind of blow that makes us wonder why we invest years of our lives into our teams. Why do we punish ourselves? Why do we set ourselves up for the inevitable agony of defeat?
Jose touched 'em all. That's why. He flipped his bat in a screw-you act of defiance to the Texas Rangers, the incompetent umpires, Harold Reynolds, Rob Manfred, Rougned Odor, Sam Dyson and life itself. He became an instant legend. None of us who saw it will ever forget it as long as we live.
That moment is why we invest so much of ourselves in sports. There will always be winning, and there will always be losing. In this case there was two decades of losing. But that home run will be explained, dissected and shown on repeat to grandkids across Canada for the next 50 years. If the Blue Jays never win a game for the rest of my life, that home run will make my fanhood worth it.
We live for adrenaline, us sports fans. Alex Anthopoulos gets that.
And now he is gone, disrespected and insulted by a soulless conglomerate that doesn't give a flying badonkadonk what fans live for, as long as their ratings and merchandise sales are through the roof.
Gone, never to return, alienated by the ultimate Moneyball wannabe who appears to be completely oblivious to what has just transpired in Canada over the last three months.
He left millions on the table. It was never about that. Alex Anthopoulos earned the right to call the shots however he damn well sees fit. Rogers, who took away his mentor and boss in the most sleazy way imaginable, tried to make Anthopoulos a stooge. Their shiny new toy, Mark Shapiro of the Cleveland Indians, didn't like the trade deadline moves. He'd been promised full control over the team months ago. Anthopoulos, who was named MLB's executive of the year moments after today's news broke, was being forced out.
Yes, he was offered a new contract. Yes, he was asked to stay. After doing the unthinkable and returning the Toronto Blue Jays to greatness, Alex Anthopoulos was asked to take a for-all-intents-and-purposes demotion. Mark Shapiro was going to call the shots now, and AA would carry out his wishes.
The 38-year-old Canadian baseball demigod said no.
Why wouldn't he?
Every team in baseball wants this phenom in their front office. Except the teams he annihilated in trades, that is.
He's the executive of the year. I'm quite confident in thinking half of baseball has already called him to offer a job.
Anyone with any self-respect would have done exactly what AA did.
He wanted to stay. He thought he'd be at the helm of the Blue Jays for the rest of his career. He loved Toronto, his kids loved Toronto, he had his dream job. Rogers had a show-runner in place who was universally loved by Canadians. A fairy tale too good to be true, except it was.
And he left.
Because after pulling off the crowning achievement of his career - anyone's career - his tone deaf multi-billion-dollar employer put the squeeze on him. They presented him with a vote of confidence disguised as a going away present. It was a slap across the face.
Alex Anthopoulos has shown his integrity time and time again. In leaving money on the table, and bowing out of a situation he knew would not end well, he quit his dream job. He plunged himself into uncertainty. No other team has an open GM position.
Right to the bitter end, he did what he felt was right. And no one who understands exactly what he has done for Toronto can fault him for that.
To Edward Rogers: please feel free to fornicate yourself with a pair of scissors. I'll even provide them for you.
To Alex Anthopoulos: thank you and goodnight. Fare thee well. We'll never forget what you did.
