“Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.”
The conversation about why Travis Snider is my favourite baseball player pops up every time I engage with a new baseball-appreciating acquaintance. Why carry the candle for a slightly below replacement level outfielder that has never hit more than 14 home runs or started even half of the games for his team in a single season?
Generally I keep my guard up with my answer. I flip through a short list of traits about his likeability, potential, and seemingly rosy demeanour. Nothing I say is untrue but I hold back the full answer because it reveals far more about how I see myself than it does with the relentless measurability of baseball.
The full, mainly embarrassing statement is that Snider has served as the professional baseball equivalent to where I stand in my own life. In an era where the general consensus of sports fandom is the Jerry Seinfeld joke about cheering for laundry, Snider stuck as a point of pride that I chose to cheer for the human being underneath the layers of his properly coloured costume.
The History
In 2006 I entered my final year of college while Snider was drafted 14th overall by my lifelong heroes the Toronto Blue Jays. Both of us full of nothing more than potential and exuberance, both standing on the cusp of beginning our professional careers. While he had a half-season stint in the Appalachian League, I entered an internship at a television network. Mainly invisible, we went about our business of showing promise in quiet spaces.
Next year he opened the season in Class-A while I was brought on as a full-time employee, making TV highlight packs for individual games. Still very low on our totem poles, we were both moving forward on the track. With his exceptional numbers on-field and my burgeoning ability to effectively put together packages, our futures looked bright.
By 2008, the fast-track we’d both been lined up for kicked into action. I was promoted at rapid speed, finding my footing in a senior position. Tasked with extended responsibility and allowed a seat at the decision-making table, I was now a rookie on an underachieving big league show. On August 29th, a 20-year-old Snider made his debut for the 68-66 Blue Jays. He went 1-for-3 with a double.
For a short while, everything was gravy. He was giving interviews about nachos, creating hashtags (in 2009!) and being the living embodiment of a hope-filled 21-year-old major leaguer and future of the franchise. I was enjoying living in the heart of a major city, working in prime time television and finding myself as a single young man.
Over the next two years, the excitement of our new situations began to wear off. Travis bounced back-and-forth between AAA and the major leagues, bringing a new, almost unrecognizable swing and batting stance with him every time he reappeared. I had moved on from making highlights, and was now producing headline packages and hockey panel hits. Creativity and storytelling had been removed my list of duties. Our patience was being tested and our strengths pushed to the fringes.
It all came unglued in 2011. After too many nights sent home unfulfilled, I quit my job and went back to school. Everything completely changed for me at school; the kid who was once the young fast-tracker was now the oldest man in the room, surrounded by unencumbered youth with talent. Snider was demoted once again by the end of April, and returned for a month in July before being pushed out by the younger and more exciting Brett Lawrie.
I graduated in summer 2012, once again thrown into the world without any real idea of where to go or what to do. I picked up another unpaid internship at my former employer’s competitor. It wasn’t a glorious position, but I was getting paid to have fun. A month later, in the middle of the night, Snider was pulled off the field in Seattle and traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates. I was writing comedy and doing podcasts, and he was going to the playoffs. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the way either of us drew it up, but it was happening.
As it happens, as it always happens, things weren’t what they seemed. Despite a whole new scenario, Snider still didn’t have a spot in the everyday lineup. His playoff opportunity fizzled into pinch-hitting duty, and what had started off as a dream job had once again dashed my dreams held highest into the dirt. I was writing about college football; Snider was being used as a novelty mop-up pitcher in a blowout. We still had our moments of brilliance (some good pieces from me, a post-season clinching home run for him), but it was clear neither situation would last forever.
When the 2014 season ended, I quit my job and was offered a return to my first employer in a role that promised to better fit my ability. Snider was traded to the Baltimore Orioles, where a hole in the lineup and a chance to once again earn a starting job waited. We have both found degrees of success in our new situations. He’s hitting .325 through 12 games, and I’ve been a part of my new department’s most successful six months in history.
Nine years after it started, Snider is in position to be an everyday starter. Peers from his first-round draft class have combined for 14 All-Star Game appearances. I’m feeling a tentative comfort in my life, while my peers appear at comedy festivals or begin making decisions about which school to send their children to.
On Tuesday, he made his return to Toronto as a member of the Orioles. It was a foregone conclusion that I would attend. It would be the first time I’d been at a Snider start live since July 27, 2012, when he hit his final home run as a member of the Blue Jays.
GAMEDAY
I began the day by doing something I had not done since elementary school: a craft project involving watercolours. I purchased cheap paint and art supplies, quickly whipping up a sign that read ‘WELCOME BACK TRAVIS’ with a blue 45 and an orange 23 in the corners. I thought long and hard about being a nearly 30-year-old man bringing a fan sign to a baseball game. I put myself in his shoes and figured at the very least he would have a split second of raised spirits to know he was welcomed back to the place he made his first major league appearances. For good measure, I added a “MEATS DON’T CLASH” sign, a small reminder of the inside joke he’d shared with fans of this city and adopted as a de facto catchphrase.
The first sign that things may not go as planned began in the afternoon. It rained and thundered throughout, with slivers of sunlight few and far between. My first awakening about how long it had been since the whole story started occurred when I attempted to slip into my size medium(!) “SNIDER 45” shirt, which now required the addition of a sweater to be wearable in public.
After waiting for my roommate to finish work, we arrived at the end of the top of the 1st. Grabbing first-row seats in the 200 level in right field, I joined a small group of people yelling “Travis!” He gave a quick wave to the entire right field section and turned his focus to the game.
In case you thought I’d do something smart like sit far away pic.twitter.com/jNY8JSGVti
— Phallics Rios (@the_Zubes) April 21, 2015
He was due up 3rd in the top of the 2nd, facing a tough lefty-lefty matchup against the veteran Mark Buerhle. Being a fan of a non-superstar player is an exercise in managing expectation. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of both pitcher and hitter, I did not expect a two-home run game, I just hoped he could at least work some good at bats. His stance looked better than it had in a while. More upright, calmer. More like it used to. He battled, but struck out on six pitches and made his way back out to right field for the bottom of the 2nd inning.
If I had known what was about to unfold, I might have made a point to yell some positive reinforcement while he was warming up for that half inning. I might have changed sections or pulled the fire alarm. Instead, I sat and watched as my favourite player slowly became the laughing stock of everyone around me.
It started with Dioner Navarro. He hit a line shot into right field and Snider appeared to have a beat on it. As it sailed past his head, I let out an audible gasp. The ball clipped the top of his glove as he leapt for it, sending him crashing into the wall. He scrambled to return the ball to the infield, dropping it in the process. When the dust settled, Navarro – who has 4 career triples in 12 seasons – stood safely at 3rd.
“He got too excited there,” I said to my roommate, who was growing amused by my misery. “He’ll bounce back.”
Four batters later, with the bases loaded and Navarro still on third, Ryan Goins singled into right. Snider charged, and despite the slow-moving turf, attempted to gun down a runner at the plate. The throw sailed over the head of the leaping catcher, allowing the run to score easily. 3-0 Blue Jays, and a growing murmur in our section about the performance of the right fielder.
“Still too amped up,” I explained out loud, mainly to myself. “Trying to do too much.”
Two batters later, with a runner on and the O’s having shot themselves in the foot for another pair of runs, red-hot fancy new Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson stepped in. He launched a shot deep to right field.
“This is it,” I thought to myself. “If he brings back a home run, the error against Navarro is erased.”
While I can’t prove it, I have to suspect Snider thought the same thing, because he looked up, scaled the fence, and…
This is a nightmare
— Phallics Rios (@the_Zubes) April 21, 2015
Knowing the history of the fans of this city and its teams as I do, I spent the early part of the week worried that Snider might get booed in his return. The weather, combined with the fact that a Raptors playoff game was happening next door, left the Rogers Centre fairly empty and his first at-bat was met mainly with indifference. After the trio of misplays, Snider was showered with something so much worse than booing: he was being laughed at. Loudly.
The Blue Jays, the team whose colours I was wearing head to toe, were up 6-0 in the beginning stage of a blowout win and I was heartbroken.
It was among the most confusing experiences of my life. I wanted the Jays to win, I did. But not at the expense of my favourite player. Fair or not, the blame for the six-run deficit fell on his shoulders according to fans in our section and – judging by his body language – inside Snider’s mind itself. I wanted to pull him out of the game. I wanted to help. I wanted to leave. I wanted to yell something positive, and then i thought about every time I’d fucked up in my life only to have someone who barely knew me tell me to “Relax”. It’s an infuriating feeling, so I chose to sit silently, hold my sign, and hold my breath.
The nightmare of a 2nd inning – one in which my favourite team scored six runs – finally ended, and an inning later he ended the 3rd by making a nice leaping catch before smashing into the right field fence directly underneath me. I stood and applauded and he trotted back to the dugout.
He managed an infield single in the 4th inning, and when he took the field for the bottom half, I held the signs out one more time. As the inning started my roommate and I got up and left. The official purpose was to find food, but at least half of my reasoning stemmed from the great deal of discomfort I was feeling in the stands. I’d never enjoyed nine runs from the home team less, and I didn’t like it. We sat and ate at a picnic table, then moved to the 100 level along the third base line for the remainder of the game.
A funny thing happened when we sat down in our new seats in the 6th inning. The first batter we saw, Edwin Encarnacion, launched the hardest hit baseball I’d ever seen into the fifth deck in left. The next inning, Kevin Pillar made a remarkable diving catch in left to start an inning-ending double play.
The events of the bottom of the 7th inning would steal the show. The Orioles threw behind Jose Bautista, continuing some bad blood between the two teams. With Snider a whole baseball field away, I was no longer viewing the game through his filter. Tempers flared after Bautista hit a massive retaliatory home run and the tough talking antics became the top story.
After the game, all of the discussion focused on Bautista, Orioles outfielder Adam Jones, and the war between two heated AL East rivals. I don’t know if I can ever thank Bautista enough for this. Watching it unfold from left field, it all come flooding back to me: I hate the Baltimore Orioles; I love watching Bautista angry; and despite everything that happened, absolutely nobody was thinking about Travis Snider. Except me.
Just the way I like it.
Andrew Zuber 