Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins was out twice last week trying to put out social-media fires reliever Anthony Bass started on the team’s front lawn.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
When the general manager of your sports team comes out to address reporters two days in a row, you better hope the second time is to announce he’s surprising everyone with cake. Otherwise, you have a problem.
Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins was out twice last week trying to put out social-media fires reliever Anthony Bass started on the team’s front lawn.
The first time, it was to tell everyone this was all headed in the direction of wisdom and forgiveness.
“I felt his apology and his accountability to be authentic or we would be talking about a different outcome, quite frankly,” Atkins said.
The next day, it was to avoid explaining why he’d 180′d and decided on that different outcome after all. It was not frank. It was close to frankless.
“Like anything, there are times when things get momentum and become a distraction in our clubhouse and that was a variable,” Atkins said.
So, you clipped Bass because he decided to go Jerry Falwell just before you held Pride weekend at the ballpark?
“There’s a myriad of variables.”
That’s exactly what I say when I’m trying to talk my way out of a parking ticket.
The Jays also managed to turn the Toronto baseball beat feral by appearing to give a couple of reporters special access to Bass’s (extremely short) journey of redemption.
Perhaps the thinking was fewer pieces in fewer outlets equalled less outrage. If so, they ought to do a case study of this effort at preventing a media frenzy and teach it at journalism school in a unit called How to Start a Media Frenzy.
By the time Atkins was out there explaining why he’d just cut a guy he said he wasn’t cutting, the people he was explaining that to were no longer willing to see the Jays’ position in a favourable light.
There is some – very little, but some – sympathy in this corner for the situation the Jays found themselves in. Every office everywhere has that one guy. The one with zero sense and his radio set permanently on transmit.
Unlike other places, everyone who works the sports office has a direct line to millions of people. Have a few too many pops one night, scroll a little too hard, hit send and ka-BOOM.
You’ve got a union to deal with. You’ve got multiple layers of your own bureaucracy. You’ve got all the other players, many of whom may not share the progressive politics of your customers. It’s complicated stuff.
But one thought ought to uncomplicate it – “If I don’t fire this guy, is someone going to fire me?”
Based on the manner in which they handled the Bass situation, the Jays’ executive believe they are immune to scandal. They are certainly testing the tolerances.
Listen, if it were my team, I’d get everyone in a room before the season started, tell them to put their phones in a bag, put the bag in a trash can and burn it in front of them. Just to set the tone.
Then, I’d go one by one through every guy in the room and say, “You. You got MVP votes last year. You are allowed one free fist fight in a bar or one caught-on-video meltdown in the back of a police cruiser. One or the other, but not both.”
And then, “You. You were a sub-replacement reliever. If we hear you tipped less than 20 per cent at any restaurant anywhere in the country, including doughnut shops, you’re fired.”
Just because you can’t do that doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan in place.
This is a billion-dollar enterprise. Why don’t they have emergency envelopes in a safe, like the president? When the phone call comes, they can reach in there and pull out a DUI or a Hasn’t Paid Child Support in a Year. Each envelope contains a series of instructions. Some of the instruction letters read: “Pretend you never met him.”
Public-relations calamities created by players are routine. So, why is confusion the response to these little disasters? Why are the Jays in particular so prone to this?
Why is the GM trying to smooth over the media problems of a much-less-than-average player who doesn’t want to do himself the favour of just saying sorry?
Bass couldn’t manage it in two tries. It would have been better if he’d said nothing. At least then, you could have given some credit for being obstinate. Instead, he wanted it both ways – to be forgiven, while continuing to grind home his initial point. Here was a guy hearing the word No for the first time in his life and not dealing with it very well. Why spend any of your professional capital on that guy?
But that’s what the Jays did. Despite all the brain power on the operations end of things, the Jays couldn’t figure out what to do once Bass began “… but on the other hand.”
The team kept coming out to explain things. The more they talked, the less explained those things became.
If Bass were cut for baseball reasons – Atkins’s assertion on Day 2 of his Long Talk – why did that require a media availability? If you’re not going to be forthright about the process, why say anything? What were the steps here and why were they taken in this order, because none of them appear to make much sense?
On Sunday, Toronto came from behind to beat Minnesota 7-6. Up next – a nine-game obstacle course through Baltimore, Arlington and Miami.
This should be a good moment for the team. The Jays aren’t exactly tearing up the American League standing, but they are hanging with the lead peloton. It’s June. Plenty of time for this pretty good team to become something more.
So, why does it feel as if this is a team in perpetual tumult? Introduce any complication into the system and the result is chaos. The impression created is of an outfit that’s white-knuckling it from day to day.
That can still can work if the team is winning. Baseball has plenty of calamitous franchises that still manage to bob near the top. The Yankees leap to mind.
But teams are like players. The good ones can afford lapses in judgment, losers don’t get mulligans and, as we’ve just seen, explaining after the fact doesn’t help.
Cathal Kelly