Toronto Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo with his wife, Samantha, and their sons Alex and Tyson, at the Rogers Centre on June 16.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
When the stadium is still, long before the ball players start to stretch arms or swing bats on game day, that’s when Alex and Charlie Montoyo take a moment.
In the hours before the music starts to blast, and the field swells with activity, Rogers Centre is serene. The Blue Jays manager and his 14-year-old son often stroll out to the left-field baseline to play catch. Some days they tote along the junior bat Montoyo keeps in his office for the boy, and hit a few. Sometimes the youngster feeds baseballs into the ball machine, and his dad scoops up some grounders.
It’s not something the two get to share every day of a long, travel-heavy baseball season that starts with spring training in February and can stretch deep into the fall for the best teams – and his Jays hope to be one of those. Montoyo’s wife and two teenaged sons join him in Toronto from late May until late July, while school is out in Tucson, Ariz., where they live.
Montoyo has managed at various levels of pro baseball for more than two decades. The 56-year-old, in his fourth season as Jays skipper, knows that family time is limited, so he savours it.
Several hours before every home game during their months together in Toronto, Alex walks to Rogers Centre with his dad from their downtown condo. The kid chills in the clubhouse, fist-bumps players and staff, watches batting practice from the dugout with a bag of Cheez-Its, or plays table tennis against the Blue Jays chef. Alex quietly observes, he’s respectful, and everyone seems to know him. He’s at ease around star players who might have other kids star-struck.
“I like seeing all the preparation parts – how to get ready for game day,” says the boy, who prefers watching the game to playing it. He might like to work in baseball some day; he’s not sure. He points to the Rogers Centre’s huge high-tech video scoreboard that shows advanced in-game information and statistics.
“It might be fun to work that giant thing,” Alex says.
Montoyo and his son Alex take in some batting practice before a game.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
When mom Samantha and older brother Tyson get to the game later, Alex watches with them from a suite. It’s better there for a manager’s family. Fans in the stands often mutter nasty stuff if a game isn’t going well, and it stinks to overhear it. After the game, they meet Montoyo outside the clubhouse. On the days when the Jays aren’t leaving on a road trip, they all walk home together, sometimes with the youngest boy analyzing his dad’s game decisions.
“It’s precious to me,” says the Jays manager of the months his family joins him. “Whatever happens in the game, I go to my family after, and it’s always good. It’s tough when you go home to an empty apartment.”
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The Blue Jays aren’t the only sporting focus for the Montoyos this year. Older son Tyson will compete at the U-21 world lacrosse championship in Limerick, Ireland, in August. He’s a 19-year-old goalie representing Puerto Rico – where his father was raised and began his baseball career.
Tyson used to hang out around the ballpark when he was younger, back when his dad managed the Triple-A Durham Bulls, or was bench coach for the Tampa Rays. Tyson dabbled in Little League before getting serious about lacrosse. This year he moved away from home to attend Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. He arrives later to Jays games at Rogers Centre now. He’s met top Canadian lacrosse players from the NCAA and the Toronto Rock, who have mentored and trained the teen. Occasionally, he has worked out in the Rogers Centre outfield with his pop-up lacrosse net.
“I’ve definitely inherited his competitive nature,” Tyson said of his father. “And we both love music.”
Montoyo heaps the credit on Samantha for the boys being well-raised.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Montoyo has a big poster of his lacrosse-playing son on the wall of his office inside the Jays’ clubhouse. It’s filled with family photos, his large collection of salsa records, and some conga and bongo drums. The manager is self-taught on many percussion instruments. He’s a welcome visitor at Toronto’s salsa club Lula Lounge, where he has joined the band on stage. He drums along to music in his office, too, and has even played his drums in the Jays dugout.
“When I was little, he would give me maracas, and I’d try to play along with him,” said Tyson, who talks about the room full of instruments Montoyo has back home in Tucson, where the manager lives with his family in baseball’s short off-season.
Montoyo admits he doesn’t know much about lacrosse. Their unique brand of father-son catch has sometimes included Tyson with his lacrosse stick and dad with a baseball glove. Montoyo often wears a Puerto Rico Lacrosse T-shirt as he prepares for Jays games.
Montoyo flew to Puerto Rico with his son for the boy’s tryout. The team has lots of players like Tyson – born in the continental United States and playing their lacrosse there, but with Puerto Rican heritage.
“I would have been fine with him playing for whoever, but it’s pretty cool that he’s getting a chance to play for Puerto Rico, where I was born,” Montoyo said.
With the Jays thick into the season, the manager won’t be able go to Ireland. He’ll have to watch on TV or online. His wife is always at the games and sends him videos.
“They grow fast and time flies,” the manager says. “You have to have a special wife, and a special family to make this stuff work.”
Montoyo and his sons hop in an elevator while leaving the Rogers Centre on June 16.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Montoyo heaps the credit on Samantha for the boys being well-raised. It’s clear they are teenagers who can carry an engaging conversation with an adult, who carry a heavy backpack for their mom, and who call their dad an accomplished percussionist.
The couple married in 2001 after meeting in 1999 in Charleston, S.C., when he was manager of the RiverDogs, a Class A affiliate of the Rays, and she was the director of promotions and special events. After that, Montoyo worked at various levels in the Rays’ system, including Bakersfield, Calif., Montgomery, Ala., and Durham. Some difficult times came after Alex arrived in 2008. He was born with a rare heart condition called Ebstein anomaly.
In Alex’s first few years he was in and out of hospitals, enduring open-heart surgeries and other procedures. An ESPN story said the family feared for Alex’s life and struggled to cover expensive hospital bills on a minor-league salary, and received help from the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) an MLB-affiliated organization that provides financial assistance to deserving applicants, including retirees and those in the minors. The lasting impacts on Alex from those years include a minor form of cerebral palsy.
The family – including their vibrant 14-year-old – takes nothing for granted after those years. They’ve adapted their yearly routine through moves to various teams, then a pandemic, when they went to Buffalo while the Jays made a home there.
“Charlie leaves home around Valentine’s Day, and then he’s gone,” said his wife, who has roots in Arizona and attended university there. “It’s just what we do, and we’ve been making it work for over 20 years. Although we are very much a family, we live in two places.”
The family banters while they wait for him after Thursday’s game. They joke about Montoyo’s illegible handwriting on bits of paper and how those somehow transform into a Jays lineup.
When the manager meets his family after the 10-2 afternoon loss to the Baltimore Orioles, it’s early enough to head out to a restaurant. He pauses for a moment, debating if the hungry family has chosen the best stadium exit. Bremner Boulevard is still busy with fans. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, Montoyo bets they won’t recognize him, and he’s right. The family walks through a crowd of jersey-wearing Jays fans, and no one notices him.
The manager can take his daily runs outside in relative anonymity, too. His is a job that rarely pauses – games every day, road trips, a constant stream of meetings about positions, or players coming up or going down. So one has to carve out time. This is a time reserved for family.