Toronto Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr. breaks his bat over his knee after flying out against the Boston Red Sox in the tenth inning in Toronto on Sept. 24.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
If you are very brave or very foolish, you may at some point in your life decide to do a gut renovation.
The first year is full of hope. Hope that this will turn out just like the architect drew it up. Then hope that the workers will show up this week. Eventually, hope that it will end.
Year 2 is when you start to give up. Redo the insulation for the second time or fill your walls with golf balls? Sure. Whatever.
By Year 3, you’re making discreet inquires about arsonists. By Year 4, not so discreet.
For the initiated, it is a special sort of hell.
This weekend, the Toronto Blue Jays will put the wraps on Year 7 of their renovation. How’s it going? They rebuilt the stadium in less time than it’s taking to rebuild the team.
The Jays will end the year at the bottom of the American League East. It’s been a while since it’s looked that grim.
The last time it happened (2013), the Jays had a nearly identical record, but they were still a ways from being the worst team in the league. That dishonour belonged to the Houston Astros (51-111).
Houston has since appeared in four World Series. Meanwhile, the Jays can vaguely remember the last time they won a playoff game. Fair to say that however renovations should be done, the Jays are not doing it that way.
The team is to blame. It picked the wrong philosophy, hired the wrong crew and laid a cracked foundation. But its failures have been abetted by their customers. The Jays stay bad because Toronto baseball fans like them that way.
Back when Houston was losing 100 games a year, it also had a brand new stadium with cool amenities. In a city that swelters all summer, it’s even air conditioned. In fact, Minute Maid Park may be the only nice thing in downtown Houston. But nobody came.
Houston’s attendance during those tank years hung below 20,000 a game, though the average ticket price was a rock-bottom $30.
I remember covering a late-in-the-season series there around that time. Tampa Bay aside, it was the most depressing stadium environment I’d ever been in. ‘Torpor’ does not describe it. ‘Comatose’ is closer.
The only thing people seemed to enjoy was watching the mascot sneak up behind opponents in the on-deck circle and make profane gestures. This is what bear baiting must’ve looked like back in the day.
One can only imagine what it must have been like to work in that environment – playing in front of people who, at best, tolerate you. A crowd so small that you can hear individual hecklers. Travelling to New York or Boston on business every few weeks, taunting yourself with what the real big leagues look and feel and sound like.
Of course Houston got better. To continue the way it had been going was intolerable.
Do you think the Jays play under intolerable conditions?
This year, Toronto will once again be in the top 10 in attendance for Major League Baseball. It is just below Houston (35,000 a game), which will win its division again.
On average this year, the Jays have attracted just a few hundred fewer people each night than they pulled during their last great season (2015).
What message does that send? Whatever it is, it isn’t ‘Change or else.’
Teams and players talk a bunch of nonsense about their constant commitment to winning, but nobody actually works that way. What most people are trying to do on the job is enough. Enough to keep the boss off their back, enough that they can feel good about themselves, enough to get by. High-performing outfits don’t get that way because people are running at max RPMs all the time. They get there because their average is high.
We are motivated to make radical change only when the intolerable looms. For a baseball team, that means the stadium hollowing out, people getting fired and an atmosphere of rage and frustration settling around the team. The Jays have never experienced that in anything more than short, ineffectual bursts.
No team is always great, but some maintain a level of competence regardless of where they’re at in the boom-bust performance cycle. Those teams tend to be in cities with a lot of choice and a highly reactive fan base. The New York Yankees, for instance.
Toronto has the variety of options, but it also has what may be the least reactive fan base in North America. Team’s good? People show up. Team’s bad? People show up.
In New York, they also show up, but if the Yankees are bad, they show up to yell at them.
When New York fans are angry, management is also reactive. Between 1982 and 1991 – the worst stretch in Yankees history – the club had 11 managers. It wasn’t good, but it was at least interesting.
Toronto plays it differently. Nobody gets fired, and when they do, it’s a big deal.
Instead of taking those rare eruptions of pragmatism as a sign that things must change immediately, it is instead a signal to start over. Then the fans forgive all and the merry-go-round of mediocrity starts up again.
This is neither good nor bad. There is no rule that says you can’t pay to watch bad baseball. It beats sitting home. But it has a consequence.
The Jays are not good and nothing changes because the fans are good and nothing changes. Money’s still rolling in. Record aside, one season looks very much like another. Why change if there is zero pressure to do so?
At some point, change becomes the risk. What if they do try very hard and are bad at it and people don’t like it? Better to do the thing you know they like – say you’re getting better, and don’t.
After years of this, the Toronto Blue Jays Inc. is any company staffed by people who are only working for the weekend. Nice enough guys, but you wouldn’t want to hire them to fix your house.