Blue Jays president and CEO Paul Beeston is the closest you're going to get in this town to a sporting renaissance man.
A raconteur, a bon vivant, un philosophe on many subjects and a bunch of other charming things that are best expressed in French.
It has seemed for many years – even the ones during which he was gone – that he existed somewhere above the performance of the franchise. By virtue of his championships in the early 1990s, Beeston had been grandfathered in as a permanent winner. He grounded the Toronto Blue Jays, and gave them real heft. He is a man of consequence.
It sounds as if it's all coming apart now in depressingly tawdry fashion.
According to multiple reports on Sunday, the Jays are looking for someone to replace Beeston and in short order.
The most frequently mentioned possible successors are Baltimore Orioles vice-president (and former Montreal Expos GM) Dan Duquette and Chicago White Sox vice-president Ken Williams. As per the usual with this team, the news leaked from south of 49. Multiple reporters have confirmed interest in Baltimore and Chicago – suggesting Duquette and Williams are campaigning for the job.
Beeston, who is famously averse to advancements in communications technology, was not returning landline calls on Sunday.
This is obviously a hood-over-the-head job, timed to coincide with the beginning of the annual Winter Meetings in San Diego on Monday. It's not clear if Beeston is being pushed or jumping, but someone in power wants to hurry the process along.
In breaking the news, ESPN's Buster Olney included a throwaway line linking the move to Beeston's ties to Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner. Werner recently failed in a bid to become the next commissioner of baseball.
Werner was put forward by a clique of executives and owners headed by White Sox principal Jerry Reinsdorf. He was the only substantive rival to outgoing commissioner Bud Selig's choice, Rob Manfred.
Werner was seen as the candidate who would aggressively confront the MLB players union, which remains the strongest in the big-four sports.
Beeston, a long-time friend and confidant of Selig, was reportedly outspoken in his opposition to Manfred. Feelings were plainly hurt.
Manfred won the election, but it was a messy business. Baseball likes to do things by consensus. For the first time in half a century, the vote for a new commissioner required multiple ballots.
Selig and Manfred weren't about to go after the likes of Reinsdorf or Angels owner Arte Moreno. But maybe somebody had to pay. So it's possible that Beeston plays the role of Fredo here, with Selig as Michael Corleone.
If that's the case, shame on Rogers for abetting such a shabby little revenge.
If the new commissioner wants to carry on a vendetta against Toronto, let him. I'm not sure what power he has to affect anything that happens in this town. Maybe he can make sure we never get another All-Star Game? If so, he'd be doing us a favour.
This franchise and the city it represents have always thrived as an outsider. If that's Selig's and/or Manfred's game, I wish someone had dared them to try it.
Rogers is one of the few entities in baseball that has the resources and media infrastructure to not only survive such an assault, but to launch effective countermeasures. For a company that's so roundly disliked by its customers, it might've had some salutary PR spinoff.
It's also possible that Beeston just wants to leave now. He's 69 years old, though you wouldn't know it to look at him. He's often said that he can see his exit coming, and would go quietly if ownership asked. He's a great one for musing about retirement.
I'm not sure I believe it. I've never known a man who so enjoyed the daily to-and-fro of being an operator and insider. All sports executives must be politicians, but very few take to it naturally. Beeston was one of those.
Either one of Duquette or Williams would be fine successors, if the circumstances were less fraught.
In particular, Duquette is a long-time crush of Canadian fans. He was one of baseball's first headline-grabbing young geeks when he took over the Expos, aged 33. He built the cultish 1994 team that should have won a title. He was the uncredited exorcist who supplied Boston with a championship in 2004.
At 56, he was the Sporting News' executive of the year last season, after shepherding an undermanned Orioles team into the playoffs. He has the bonafides. He'd be a great addition to the Blue Jays.
But not this way.
This is not how Toronto sports says goodbye to one of its seminal executives. It's beneath this team to act as a proxy for a couple of suits grinding a millstone in midtown Manhattan.
He was always going to leave sooner rather than later, and Paul Beeston deserves the dignity of doing it on his own terms. He should be the guy planning the party.
This is partly selfish. Because, believe me – that's a professional wake you do not want to miss.
Cathal Kelly