Troy Tulowitzki enjoyed a bunch of new experiences during his remarkable debut on Wednesday.
First game as a Blue Jay. First home run as a Blue Jay. First talk-therapy session as a Blue Jay.
The famously intense new arrival was asked to describe his mental make-up.
"People want me to smile more, but that's just not me," Tulowitzki said. "As soon as the game is over is not time to celebrate. It's time to look forward to the next game."
It sounded more like a warning than a self-assessment.
Tulowitzki comes advertised as a bit of a baseball-playing cyborg, in all that implies about both his abilities and his personality.
He was upset about the way he'd been jettisoned from the Colorado Rockies.
"I was blindsided" – those were the first words out of his mouth.
He didn't dwell on it. He said he was looking forward to playing in a new country – "It's crazy to think about."
(Parenthetical: It's Canada. It's not as if you're moving somewhere really weird. Such as France.)
You got the strong sense this openhearted share session was both a first and a last.
How could you tell? Tulowitzki smiled a lot. It looked like it hurt.
Someone guessed at the spelling of his infant son, Taz's, name.
"Tee-eh-zed," they said.
"Tee-eh-ZEE," Tulowitzki corrected.
"Zed," – the correction to the correction.
Everyone laughed. Everyone but Tulowitzki. He also didn't punch anyone. We'll call it a draw.
Once the cameras were turned off, he returned to his usual expression – the flat aspect of some great predatory animal.
We don't yet know how Tulowitzki is going to change the Blue Jays in performance terms. In his first at-bat, he received a slow-developing, standing ovation. He waved back at the crowd.
It wasn't a "Thank you for your kindness" sort of wave. It was more of a "Please stop that, you're messing up my routine" wave. Then he struck out.
The next time up, he hit a two-run homer. To that point, Tulowitzki had hit three home runs in 13 career at-bats at Rogers Centre. After all those years playing in the Himalayan air pressure of Denver, this – ahem – may bode well for the future.
The crowd tried to call him from the dugout by chanting his name. He didn't even consider it. He hit two doubles in his next two at-bats.
Going forward, try to remember that benevolent thoughts are preferred to outward displays of emotion.
What we can already say is that Tulowitzki definitively tilts this clubhouse in favour of seriousness. Jose Reyes was the last veteran you could describe as "loose." Without him, this locker room is now about as wild and zany as the bench of the Supreme Court.
There are a lot of different types, but all the men left in charge have that Dad aura to them. You wouldn't want to disappoint these guys.
Mark Buehrle is Toughen Up Dad.
R.A. Dickey is Distracted Bookish Dad.
Edwin Encarnacion is Never Talks Dad.
Russell Martin is "Can't you see I'm working?" Dad.
Jose Bautista is Detail-oriented Dad.
Bautista's the particular case. He wants things just so, and is affronted when they are not. All things.
On Tuesday, he'd offered up this pull quote about the Tulowitzki-for-Reyes trade: "If you want to look at it as a pure baseball move, there's upgrades in certain areas. Maybe not necessarily what we need, but it is an upgrade."
Many in the media, including in this corner of it, took it as a small rebuke of the organization. Bautista noticed they'd noticed. He tweeted his irritation with "the ones playing psychologist" after the game.
He went further on Wednesday. He was asked if he thought his comments were misconstrued.
"I don't think. I'm 100 per cent sure," Bautista said. "It was manipulated in order to send a different message than the one I wanted to convey. Why? I don't know."
Oh, he knows. And he knows we know he knows. Rather than freaking out, this is exactly how cunning dads make you pay.
It works on his teammates as well. Bautista has a natural ability to still a room when he enters. He is the place shenanigans go to die.
Roy Halladay had that same thing. Everyone straightened up when he walked in. Literally. Younger guys who slouched in their chairs would sit up abruptly once they spotted him.
Halladay was a workout-obsessed Felix Ungar, though often undone by the surrounding Oscar Madisons (e.g. A.J. Burnett, B.J. Ryan et al).
It's all Felixes in there now – dour, clear-eyed, driven men. If Brett Lawrie were to return suddenly, bursting into the room shrieking at the top of his lungs – as was his wont – he'd be stared to death.
There are no rules about what sort of locker rooms work best. All kinds of teams win – goofy ones, careless ones, deeply divided ones.
But if you've been in the room of a regular winner, they tend to have a "No Slouching" aspect to them. The New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals are famous for it. It's a clubhouse of adults. You can laugh in there, but you would not giggle. Someone would notice, and they would not be happy about it.
In recent years, the Blue Jays' room has been a friendly and occasionally buoyant place, but it has never felt like a winner. There's a pretty simple explanation for that – they don't win.
But who's to say the chicken doesn't precede the egg, at least in baseball? Maybe if you act as if you expect to succeed – and do it all the time, not just while on the field – you can homegrow that Yankees/Cardinals swagger.
That's what Jays' management wants. It's why they talk about character as if it's a tangible commodity.
They've tried it every other way, in all sorts of combinations of personnel and skills. There's no harm in seeing if what this team needs to push it past mediocrity is a plurality of backroom buzz-kills.
Cathal Kelly