Unlike some of his predecessors in the role, Toronto Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro has failed to capture the hearts and minds of the team’s fans.Cole Burston
If nothing else, Mark Shapiro is proof that if you hang around long enough, you’ll eventually have your day.
It’s almost 10 years exactly since the Toronto Blue Jays debuted Shapiro. That first meeting didn’t go well. Shapiro didn’t talk, so much as lecture.
He skipped over explaining why he wasn’t keeping the hero of the day, general manager Alex Anthopoulos, and then scolded people when they kept asking about it.
“We’ve talked about moving forward,” Shapiro said.
‘We’ hadn’t talked about anything.
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You knew then that Shapiro wasn’t going to have an easy ride in Toronto. Too stiff. No sense of humour about himself. Tragically American.
The Jays dipped a bit the next year, went briefly into freefall, and then entered a standings paint shaker. The team was so up and down that you were never sure if they were about to be really good, or just sneaky bad.
All of this was Shapiro’s fault. People were fired, and his designated survivor, Ross Atkins, took most of the in-person bullets, but everyone knew who was in charge. An organizational inability to manage criticism made things worse.
Early on, I asked Shapiro what it was like to be the designated goat. He demurred: “My experience in general is that people are always great to your face.”
For the first time since 2015 – the season Mark Shapiro arrived in Toronto – the Blue Jays won their division.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
It was a slick answer. ‘This guy gets it,’ I thought. But soon after that, the retreat began.
Over the years, the Captain Positivity act has been shelved. In order to run a professional sports team and not lose your mind, you need a rare human quality – compartmentalized apathy. You can’t care what strangers think of you. Like most people, Shapiro cares.
He avoids unfriendly faces these days. On the rare occasion when he does speak freely, he’s as brittle as chalk, and prone to snapping in a way that’s unusual for top sports business people.
He lives in a little house with a thatched roof leaning against the walls of Ed Rogers’s castle, and keeps his eyes pointed up. This – and a deep understanding of construction budgets – is how he’s survived.
But you have to give it to the guy – he’s made it work.
Aside from the money and the clout, it can’t have been fun. Stuck in a city where everyone is great to your face. Knowing there are times of the year you know you can’t turn on the radio. Trying to corral an outfit that’s become more paranoid with each passing year.
Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins, left, has often been the team executive in the line of fire from the media, in many cases having to answer for decisions made by team president Mark Shapiro, right.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Think of how this calendar year must have gone for the guy in charge. As it begins, his contract is nearly up. He’s spent ages turning the Rogers Centre from the grimmest pile in sports into a 21st-century cash register, but that won’t matter unless the players he oversees do their jobs.
It starts brutally. He asks every free agent on the market to the dance, but they’re all busy washing their hair. The only thing anyone wants to talk about is the homegrown star who refuses to take his money, but won’t stop telling people how much he’s offering.
He knows he is one bad August from being the president of a string of car dealerships. Then, out of nowhere, his battleship does a 180 in a puddle.
Right now, these misfit toys he’s put together are statistically better than the Los Angeles Dodgers. They got into a slapping contest with the New York Yankees, and slapped longer and harder. For one week, the idle Jays are perfect. Is anybody trying to break down the door of Shapiro’s office and carry him around downtown on their shoulders? Are you kidding me?
Everybody raked the guy when it was going wrong, so it’s right to praise him when it’s headed in the other direction. Guerrero, Bichette, Gausman, et al may do the playing, but it’s Shapiro’s team. He deserves at least as much credit as anyone else. Probably more.
Two ways this can go now – the Jays lose three in a row to the Yankees or Red Sox, and Shapiro is lower in public estimation than a snake’s belly once again. Or they win a series or two, and some is forgiven. A World Series win might return the city’s relationship with Jays management to factory settings.
Shapiro must know that, regardless of what happens, he will never be Pat Gillick. Some sports execs are meant to be loved, some to be admired distantly, and some to be blamed. Guess which one he is?
Former Toronto Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick built the team that won back-to-back World Series in 1992 and 1993, helping pave the way for his induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame this past July.Seth Wenig/The Associated Press
Winning isn’t the determining factor. Punch Imlach won plenty, and even his paper boy hated him by the end. Pinball Clemons could have lost every game in charge of the Argos, and people would still love the guy. A winning style will always trump a winning record.
Obviously, Shapiro should be re-signed to a new contract. The only measure of success is success. He has provided it. That sets up a world in which he could preside over the ball club for 15 years or more. That puts him in Pat Riley territory.
It’s hard to think of someone who’s had that sort of job for that long and not become synonymous with the city’s culture, but Shapiro’s managed it so far. When he does pop up in the non-sports news cycle, he’s complaining about traffic on summer weekends. That he’s right doesn’t make it the right approach.
Maybe there is a world in which the Jays do really well here and it creates the conditions for a rapprochement between the team president and the town. But that would require a vulnerability that Shapiro has never shown, since he’s never been wrong. I presume that hot streak will continue forever.
It’s a shame. Athletes come and go, but a great sports boss can frame the eras in your life. I still think of things in terms of ‘When Pat Burns ran the Leafs,’ ‘When John Gibbons was here the first time,’ or ‘When Dwane Casey arrived.’
There’s time yet for Shapiro to become that guy in Toronto, but he has all the work to do.