Steve Pearce’s big moment in Toronto came in two beats in a single week. During an ugly July in the midst of the even-uglier 2017 campaign, he hit a couple of walk-off grand slams. Only two other players have ever matched the feat in a season.
Pearce was pleased with himself, but since he is a swaggerless, workaday type of guy, he couldn’t push his emotional thermometer past room temperature.
“It feels good to get the win and move on to the next series,” Pearce said after Big Hit No. 2. His Florida monotone and affectless presentation stymied all incipient celebrations. He is not a celebrating sort.
Pearce, 35, was often injured in Toronto and didn’t make much of an impact. When the Blue Jays moved him at this year’s trade deadline to Boston, it didn’t register. The Jays picked up most of his salary, and in return got a prospect who is unlikely to hit a bloop single in the major leagues, never mind a grand slam.
But in this World Series, won 4-1 on Sunday evening by the Boston Red Sox over the L.A. Dodgers, Pearce reminded us why baseball remains our most poetic sport. It can take a regular shmoe and, over the course of a few good at-bats, turn him into a legend.
Pearce hit two home runs in Sunday’s winner. For the series, he was 4-for-12 with three home runs, registering eight RBIs while slugging 1.167. He’s had complete years with less output.
Afterward, they made Pearce the World Series MVP. Three months ago, you’d have said it was about as likely that you would be World Series MVP.
Pearce’s reward for winning was getting to hoist the Willie Mays Trophy – a brass behemoth about the size of four cinder blocks riveted together – on live television. He barely got it over his head and realized too late that even trying had been a serious mistake.
“I wish you’d have warned me first,” Pearce said to the Fox interviewer.
It was perfect Pearce, just as you remembered him from his brief stint in Toronto. Never too high, never too low. He has survived more than 12 major-league seasons, almost every one of them as a fill-in, by refusing to take a single thing for granted.
“Baseball’s a funny game,” Pearce said. “While you stay in the game, funny things can happen.”
You wanted him to say something profound, but that’s not the way Pearce is cut. Great players have the luxury of being creatures of the moment. They can stop and revel in things. People like Pearce live in the very near future – they have to constantly be thinking about how they plan to reprove their value.
In the middle of his speech, Pearce made a short, oblique plea to stay in Boston – “… I can’t wait to see what the future has to come.”
Now that the World Series is over, he is out of contract. Tomorrow is never promised, and especially not for a journeyman like Pearce.
But however that turns out, he has earned his place in history, and with something beyond a stunt statistic in the midst of a forgettable year on a losing team.
Pearce didn’t win a World Series for Boston by himself, but he did more than any of his teammates. When it mattered, he was the best player on the best Red Sox team in history. It’s a boast Babe Ruth couldn’t make.
Pearce’s performance over two key nights will make him a hero in New England forever. Since Boston has a deep, quasi-Canadian fixation on grinders, his outsider status will only amplify the admiration.
Some people know when they are the midst of peaking. Pearce didn’t seem to have that sense. Maybe his life will get better than it was around 11:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018. But probably not.
If this is it, then good for him. He is the best thing you can say about any major-league player – a professional. He did the work, and deserves the spoils.
Some will say today that Toronto got robbed in the Pearce trade. On Sunday night, Yahoo Sports’s Jeff Passan called it “perhaps the single best trade of the 2018 season.” The inference being that, from the Jays’ perspective, it was the single worst.
But any bitterness would miss the point. Had Pearce stayed in Toronto, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. He’d have gone down with the ship, and would still be looking for a job elsewhere.
At its best, baseball isn’t about winning – games, series, trades – or, at least, not just about that. It’s about creating moments we can all share and remember.
Pearce just allowed Toronto Blue Jays fans to own a very small piece of the 2018 World Series. He gave us an angle into something that had nothing to do with us.
You may not have paid much attention to Pearce when he was in Toronto. There wasn’t much reason to. But watching him this past couple of weeks, and especially this past couple of days, I’m pretty sure you were thrilled on his behalf. I certainly was.
It’s a nice reminder that rooting for a team doesn’t always have to be about us. Sometimes it’s about them – which, if you come to it open-heartedly, is an even richer way for it to be about us.
Cathal Kelly