Joey Votto isn't retiring, he's re-routing

There was always a world beyond baseball for the 17-year Red, but his work product was better than most.

When Walt Jocketty told Joey Votto that the Reds were giving him a $225 million contract, Votto shook his head. “Really?” he said.

That wasn’t false modesty, because general manager Jocketty and first baseman Votto and everyone else in Cincinnati knew all the numbers. Votto knew what he was worth in the mirrored house of baseball compensation. He also knew just how much money that was, and was naturally startled whenever one person received it. It’s what happens when one foot is in the game and the other is on the ground.

That was in 2014. Flash to last Wednesday, when Votto was sitting in a Triple-A dugout in Buffalo, the Blue Jays’ Triple-A team, with his .143 average and his slow bat, amid young, ambitious players with their best years ahead. 

The Bison were losing to Omaha, 5-2, and someone, on behalf of manager Casey Candaele, asked Votto if he wanted to get a plate appearance. For the first time, something restrained the 40-year-old Votto from grabbing a bat, He said no.

Devon White, a Buffalo coach these days, sat next to Votto and started talking about adjustments, or if there was anything Votto was working on. Votto said no again. “I think I’m done,” he told White. That was it, the weirdest ending Votto could imagine, but that wasn’t all. He was struck by the fact that White, an elegant centerfielder, was his father Joseph’s favorite player when the family would sit and watch the Blue Jays in their Etobicoke, Ontario home. And now Joey was basically turning in his ID card and parking pass to the same guy.

It didn’t occur to Votto to endure all this for the rest of the season, to collect his $2 million and put it next to his empty gas tank. He told his teammates it was over because he was concerned that he’d be depriving at-bats from people who actually needed and wanted them. The next night, Riley Tirotta, a 26-year-old first baseman, was in the lineup and hit a grand slam. Votto had come to the ballpark that day and his Uber driver had asked him whether he was a ballplayer. Votto said no. Then he announced his retirement on social media. There was no thought of a farewell tour.

Thus ended one of the most interesting careers in recent baseball history, some of it achieved on the field. 

Votto hit .294 with an OPS of .920 over 17 years. Seven times he led the National League in on-base percentage and in 2010 he had a league-leading .600 slugging percentage. That was his MVP season. Eleven years later he hit 36 home runs as a 37-year-old, which was one off his career high. He was knocked for failing to prioritize RBIs but he exceeded 100 three different times, and he scored 100 runs five times. Votto was always being asked about his numbers and he kept pointing to the clock that he always punched. Seven times he played 150 or more games, and twice he played 162. If he got inside the lines enough times, he reasoned, everything else would fall in line.

His .4094 career on-base percentage was third among active players when he retired. It’s superior to that of Rickey Henderson, Joe DiMaggio and Rod Carew. But Votto didn’t ride great ability. He was a grinder, wedded to routines. Every day as he grew up, he found a wall and threw baseballs against it and picked them. He did that after he grew up, too, and after the real world sneaked inside all his barriers and ambushed him.

Joseph Votto died at 52, in August of 2008. He and his son spent nearly every sunny day in Manchester Park, Joey on the mound, Joseph crouching to catch. They did it so often that Votto began suffering arm discomfort when he was 13, which meant he had to hit his way to the majors. Joseph was a chef and his wife Wendy was a sommelier, and they beamed when Cincinnati took Votto in the second round of the draft and persuaded him not to attend Coastal Carolina.

Now Joseph was gone and Joey was, literally, defenseless. Twice, the panic attacks sent Votto to emergency rooms in the middle of the night. At Arizona, Reds’ manager Dusty Baker had to physically help Votto off the field. The Reds didn’t divulge much about all this, which allowed everyone to build outlandish scenarios. Finally Votto called a press conference and talked about it. That would be fairly routine in the confessional 20s, but not in 2009. Fortunately, players understood. Many had dealt with their own midnight ogres. Votto formed a foundation to help PTSD victims.

Once Votto got his grief under control, he became more inquisitive about life beyond the fences. He took Spanish courses so he could talk to more of his teammates. He enrolled in an improv course in Toronto one off-season and never told anyone who he was, and no one caught on.

When baseball came up with the Players Weekend concept, Votto chose “Flanders Fields” on the back of his jersey, where his surname would normally be. That meant little in Cincinnati but resonated loudly in Canada, which sent 620,000 soldiers to Europe in World War I and lost 67,000 of them. A doctor named John MacRae witnessed the devastation in Belgium, where a Flanders Fields museum now stands, and wrote a poem that Votto and all other Canadian kids memorized:

“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row/That mark our place; and in the sky/The larks, still bravely singing, fly/Scarce heard amid the guns below/We are the Dead. Short days ago/We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow/Loved and were loved and now we lie/In Flanders Fields.”

Later in the poem McRae wrote, “To you from failing hands we throw/The torch; be yours to hold it high,” a passage that still emblazons the wall of the Montreal Canadiens’ locker room.

In his own clubhouse, Votto switched easily from role model to one-of-the-guys and back again. He promised he’d buy shortstop Zack Cozart a donkey for making the All-Star team. After every game he would ask Reds public relations director Rob Butcher, “You need me?”, in case a media member wanted to ask him something. Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News was the veteran of the beat, and Votto asked him to “let me know if I ever get out of line.” But on the off days Votto rarely hung about the hotel lobby or watched soap operas like his mates. He’d more likely be found at an art museum. In later years he took up competitive chess and even met Garry Kasparov.

The life of a pro athlete features an immeasurably large window, equipped with chutes and ladders that can take players nearly everywhere. Too many of them choose to live in tunnels instead. Joey Votto’s professional world was so varied and real that, despite his yearning for solitude, he couldn’t help but invite you in. As soon as he retired, the inevitable debate about his Hall of Fame worthiness began. Five years remain for that. But as massive an honor as that is, the halls of Cooperstown might need Votto more than he needs them.