A couple days to remember
Jason Bay had been married for less than 48 hours when the phone call Monday morning stirred him from sleep with the news that he’d been selected as the National League’s rookie of the year.
Life-altering — or altaring — experiences both.
“Everyone has asked me, ‘What would mean more — the Rookie of the Year or getting married?’ ” Bay said. “I’ve been married long enough to know the answer to that question.”
Guess that would make him matrimony’s rookie of the year, too.
Quick study that he is, Bay was aware of all the precedents and virtually every significance attached to the honor he won Monday by outpolling San Diego shortstop — and former minor-league roommate — Khalil Greene in voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The hip-hip-hoorays came from Spokane, from Coeur d’Alene, from Trail, British Columbia, and across the breadth of Canada, all of which claim Bay as theirs in various ways. The what-the-hells came from Montreal, New York and San Diego, where the baseball teams once had him and traded him away. And the about-times came from Pittsburgh, where Bay became the first Pirate to win the award.
That’s right. Not Clemente, not Stargell, not Mazeroski, not even Barry Bonds. Only Jason Bay.
“To walk into that place and see all those jerseys hanging up there, it’s amazing it’s never happened,” Bay said on a conference call Monday. “For a guy like me to come in pretty much out of nowhere and do it means the world to me on a personal level. But it’s unbelievable to be able to share it with so many people.”
The Pirates’ left fielder received 25 first-place votes from the BBWA representatives to Greene’s 7, a margin wider than many figured given that Greene’s Padres were in the pennant picture until the season’s final week and the Pirates are now well into their second consecutive decade of being Not Even Remotely a Factor. A broken finger that sidelined Greene for the last month of the season may have helped Bay’s cause, but not nearly as much as he helped himself.
The former Gonzaga University and North Idaho College slugger hit .282, swatted 26 home runs and knocked in 82 runs in a season that didn’t start until mid-May because of off-season shoulder surgery and the ensuing rehabilitation. The 26 knocks were a Pirates rookie record — displacing Ralph Kiner, whose big rookie season came in 1946, the year before the award was inaugurated. For the seamheads out there, Bay was especially clutch – his .324 average with runners in scoring position was among the league’s top 10 for those with 100 or more at-bats in such circumstances.
Obviously, this was all a bit far-fetched for Bay back in April, when he was still in Florida trying to rush his shoulder back into working condition.
“To be honest, I didn’t think it was possible,” he said. “Mostly I was looking forward to getting up there and establishing myself — at least do enough to prove that I should be given every chance to play in 2005 as a starter.”
That didn’t happen right away, either. By the beginning of June, Bay had just two homers and eight RBIs, and a four-strikeout night against Anaheim on June 15 dropped his batting average to a less-than-special .259.
Pirates manager Lloyd McClendon offered some encouraging words — and a couple of days on the bench to think about them. Restored to the lineup against Seattle on the 18th, Bay hit two homers to start a streak of 17 straight games in which he reached base. The big moment in that run was a three-double, one-homer, eight-RBI effort against Milwaukee on July 2 — the second time in his brief major league career that he’d knocked in eight runs in a game (the other was as a late-season addition in 2003).
He would need another couple of strong months to make him the ROY front-runner — or even in the hunt as best athlete in his family. For 2004 was a big year for another Bay — sister Lauren, a former softball All-American at Oklahoma State who was 3-2 as Canada’s No. 1 starter in the Athens Olympics.
Begging the question: How would he fare batting against her?
“No chance,” he said. “They’re a lot closer (to the plate) in that game and it’s a totally different motion. People ask that all the time and to be fair I say if I faced her four times, I might hit her twice — and she kind of snickered and thought that might be generous.”
Bay noted a number of times on Monday that “it’s nice to have a whole country behind you,” but if the support is nationwide, the vortex is in Trail, our neighbors due north. It’s where Bay shrugged off the notion that you have to be a hockey player and helped the town’s team to the 1990 Little League World Series. That his high school — J.L. Crowe Secondary — didn’t play the sport meant he had to cross the border to play Legion ball, which helped him get noticed first at NIC, and eventually at GU (which is where he noticed Kristen Beaulaurier, who became his wife on Saturday).
But the Trail area has done a pretty good job of sending its sons – and daughters — on to athletic success lately. From down the road at Fruitvale, Barret Jackman was the National Hockey League’s 2003 Rookie of the Year.
“Organized sports there is something everyone gets into,” said Bay. “They gave us both the opportunity to excel at what we did and it’s something we can share with the whole town.”
Bay’s baseball gifts are as obvious as his tale is unlikely. It isn’t only his Canadian heritage – there are a number of Canadian stars in the big leagues, starting with Larry Walker and Eric Gagne — or his cold-weather collegiate experience at NIC (which no longer even fields a team) and GU. Mostly, it’s the fact that so many teams haven’t considered him a potential cornerstone player.
Drafted by the Expos out of Gonzaga, he was traded after two seasons to the Mets organization, which kept him for barely four months before shuttling him off to San Diego, which held on to him until the 2003 trading deadline. At that point, the Padres were looking for a power-hitting outfielder to build around — and got Brian Giles for a package of prospects.
In 2004, Giles hit .284 with 23 homers and 94 RBIs — while playing in 39 more games than Jason Bay.
“As a baseball player, your goal is to get to the big leagues — just getting there is my biggest accomplishment and probably always will be,” he said.
“When I was drafted, I might not have had a picture-perfect swing that stood out, but I think I’ve risen to whatever level I was playing at. The more you play, the more you can get comfortable and adjust. A lot of guys struggle at a bad time in the minor leagues or even the big leagues and don’t get the opportunity to stick through it and see what they can do. I’ve been lucky to perform when I needed to.”
Each time, it’s been a life-altering experience.