Watching a baseball great retire at all is enough. Watching him do it during a season is more of an eye-opener and a mood killer. Hearing him say honestly that he doesn't have it anymore could very well be baseball's red badge of courage.
When Joey Votto realized he simply couldn't will himself to another self-resurrection after a slow start, the way he'd done on more than one occasion during his 17-season major league career, he did the only thing that could be done by a man who said often enough that he'd leave money on the table rather than play poorly.
Realizing his comeback attempt to make it to the Blue Jays wasn't going to happen, Votto simply retired last week. Just like that. No grand gesture, no grand and often foolish farewell tour. The greatest first baseman in the history of the Reds, bought out by his longtime home after last year, unlikely to turn a minor league contract with the Jays into seeing Jays action unless he was seated in the ballpark, decided enough was more than enough.
The day after Votto made his Instagram announcement, the Reds met the Jays at Rogers Centre and buried the Jays 11-7. Votto was delayed by car trouble and didn't get to see the game, but he did get to the visitors clubhouse in order to say hello and goodbye to old teammates. Then, as The Athletic's Kaitlyn McGrath wrote, he talked to the press.
"I was not waxing and waning," Votto began, "but I had moments where I was like, 'Is this the right thing to do? And do I want the organization to tell me that I'm done?' And I just decided, you've played long enough, you can interpret what's going on. And I was awful. I was awful down there. And the trend was not fast enough, and I didn't feel at any point in time like I was anywhere near major-league ready. I can say to the very last pitch I was giving my very all. But there's an end for all athletes. Time is undefeated, as they say."
Because he never got to suit up for the Jays in major league play (a longtime dream, since he grew up rooting for the Jays in his native Canada), Votto gets to retire as a single-team player. He also gets to retire as one of the game's über-mensches, a guy who throve on fan interaction, liked to hang at chess clubs, and spoke out about a battle with protracted anxiety and depression in the wake of his father's death.
Votto even made time to make it up to a young girl who adored him and the Reds but wept when he was tossed from a game in San Diego in the first inning over arguing balls and strikes. Told that little Abigail Courtney was heartbroken at not being able to see her hero play, Votto sent her a ball signed, "I am sorry I didn't play the entire game. Joey Votto," then blew her family to tickets for the next day's game and made a point of meeting and spending time with the girl, not to mention signing anything she handed him.
Last November, after the Reds declined his option and handed him the buyout, Abigail's mother, Kristin, Xtweeted her immediate response: "The Reds are a bunch of PUTZES!!!" Mom assured one and all that Abigail (now 9 and playing softball in southern California) used that word only when she's furious.
You can imagine about three-quarters of Reds Nation reacting comparably. Even if they knew in their hearts of hearts that Father Time caught up to their longtime first base fixture who was an on-base machine to what some critics thought was a fault: they blamed him for refusing to swing at unhittable pitches even with chances for "productive" outs. Please. Your most precious commodity at the plate for an inning is outs to work with; your second most precious is baserunners.
Let's flip that coin and see what the other side says. Oh, yes — Votto swung at only 19 percent of the pitches he saw that didn't hit the strike zone between 2012-2020; you can presume that, around that period, Votto's selectivity rarely wavered otherwise. A guy retiring with a .409 lifetime OBP, who led his league in that stat seven times and the entire Show three, doesn't get there by swinging at practically anything. Nor does he create runs, which Votto did quite splendidly, retiring thus with a +145 wRC.
That and far more are why Votto will end up with a plaque in Cooperstown in due course. But he also joins a small roll of players who saw the end before it showed itself to them. Dearly though he wanted one final major league turn, in and for the city where he grew up, Votto didn't want a free ride or a legacy call-up. If he didn't earn his way, he didn't want to be there. Out of respect for the Jays and the fans.
"This isn't my organization, so how can I show up and make it my day, my moment?" he said. "Here's an at-bat, here's a game, here's a stretch of time. To me, it's disrespectful to the game. I also think it's disrespectful to paying fans that want to see a high-end performance, and I would have given them an awful performance. So truly, I can say that I tried my very best and I just came up short. And I've had 22 years of not coming up short, so I guess I'm due."
If that resembles an echo of another city's baseball past, it should. Votto faced Father Time slightly over 35 years after the arguable greatest player in Phillies history called it a career — in a season's second month, no less. "I could ask the Phillies to keep me on to add to my statistics," said Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt through tears at a press conference, "but my love for the game won't let me do that." He did, Thomas Boswell wrote, "what so many great athletes have failed to do; he left us wanting more."
So has Joey Votto.
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