New York Yankees centre fielder Aaron Judge, second left, meets with Toronto Maple Leafs players, Michael Bunting, left, Auston Matthews, second right, and Mitch Marner before playing against the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto on Sept. 27.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Growing up in Arizona, Auston Matthews played a bit of baseball before he settled on hockey as his favourite sport.
“I had a pretty wild arm, so I usually was a catcher,” the Toronto Maple Leafs star centre said Tuesday afternoon. “I pitched a little bit but I was not very good.”
A few hours later, the 60-goal scorer would throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Aaron Judge attempted to hit his 61st homer of the season when the New York Yankees took on the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.
Judge is only the third player in American League history to hit 60 or more home runs in a season. Babe Ruth had 60 in 1927, while Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961.
Each was a Yankee, but Judge may be the best power hitter in the franchise’s fabled history.
“Growing up, my dad always told me the hardest thing in sports was to hit a little white baseball coming at you at 100 miles per hour, so it is pretty cool to see what [Judge] has been able to do,” Matthews said following practice.
One note here: In April of 2017, Matthews took batting practice at Rogers Centre and jerked a pitch over the right-field fence. He wears No. 34 because he was a big fan of David Ortiz. His teammates even call him Little Papi.
Matthews’s father, Brian, was a pitcher at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Auston chose hockey and clearly that was the right choice. During the 2021-22 season he became the first player in Maple Leafs history to score 60 goals in one season.
But his appearance on the mound at the Rogers Centre was the talk of the clubhouse Tuesday at the Ford Performance Centre.
“It is going to be pretty packed because of what Judge is chasing,” Morgan Rielly, the defenceman and a fellow baseball player in his youth, said. “There might be a little extra pressure on him and maybe he puts one in the dirt.
“That would be good.”
Alexander Kerfoot was a baseball teammate of Rielly’s as a kid in British Columbia before he joined him in a royal-blue-and-white hockey sweater in Toronto.
“I was pretty small and couldn’t hit the ball very far,” Kerfoot said. “They mostly made me bunt.”
Kerfoot noted that Matthews is an excellent tennis player so he expected him to throw a strike. Not that he necessarily wanted that.
“I’m sure if he throws a bad pitch he is going to hear it for the rest of the season,” Kerfoot said.
He sounded somewhat hopeful.
Mitch Marner looped a soft one into the glove of former Toronto pitcher Marcus Stroman before a Blue Jays game in 2017. He missed the corner but didn’t embarrass himself.
“I was nervous as hell,” Marner said. He described standing on the pitcher’s mound and looking down at home plate and feeling “all alone.”
Last year, Mark Giordano was invited along with five of his former Kraken teammates to throw out a pitch before a Mariners game in Seattle.
It didn’t go well. It was one of those balls that famed Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker would have described as “just a bit outside.” It eluded the catcher and skittered toward the backstop.
“I am going to pray for him,” Giordano said of Matthews.
Matthews wouldn’t disclose if he was going to throw a fastball or perhaps something off-speed as a surprise.
He threw from in front of the pitching rubber and his mid-speed pitch was nabbed by Blue Jays pitcher Alek Manoah. He did okay but will not be added to Toronto’s rotation anytime soon.
“The boys were telling me bring some heat,” he said. “I think they hoped that maybe I would embarrass myself.”