Blue Jay centre fielder Colby Rasmus says he's having more fun in Toronto after troubled times with the Cardinals: "I used to be more outgoing, but I got beat up a lot."
CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR
Brendan Kennedy
Sports Reporter
For Colby Rasmus, baseball is a simple game.
“I just see the ball and run and try to catch it. I’ve been running and catching baseballs since I could walk. The more I think about it, the more it messes me up.”
He’s not playing ball tonight, though, and his ballpark is dressed up like a nightclub.
Blue lights hang above the Rogers Centre infield, waiters are serving champagne outside the clubhouse, while guests snap photos of themselves in the dugout.
The Blue Jays are hosting their annual charity gala, a $600-a-plate fundraiser for the Jays Care Foundation, with drinks and dinner on the diamond. The event is mandatory for all players, who are expected to “mix and mingle” with the deep-pocketed guests.
It is the kind of scene that normally makes Rasmus uncomfortable: crowds, chit-chat, cocktails.
A 25-year-old introvert from small-town Alabama, Rasmus doesn’t have the easy confidence of J.P. Arencibia or Brett Lawrie, nor the self-assured air of Jose Bautista or Ricky Romero.
“I used to be more outgoing,” he said this week in his deep, southern drawl, about his time in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, “but I got beat up a lot.”
Rasmus’s home will always be in Phenix City, Ala., but he’s trying to find himself in Toronto.
Fans have yet to warm to him completely. Of all the players on this 2012 Jays team, he is the one for whom they have shown the least patience. But his performance in Monday’s home opener, when he ignited the sold-out crowd with the most exciting sequence of plays in his Blue Jays career — a sensational diving catch followed by a triple down the line, before scoring the game’s first run by sneaking home under a high tag — is an indication of how Rasmus can play when he’s comfortable. Jays fans should be hoping the good vibes last.
Rasmus is hoping they do, too. Of that wonderful day, he said: “I just felt it almost like 50,000 people having my back.”
It’s not a feeling he is used to. Rasmus has acquired what some would call an unredeemable defect: bad makeup. That’s the phrase used by baseball scouts to describe a player’s intangibles, such as character, attitude and work ethic.
Rasmus admits his heart wasn’t in it last season. Once the third-ranked prospect in baseball, public opinion soured on the centre fielder following public spats with the Cardinals and manager Tony La Russa.
In response, Rasmus turned inward. “I didn’t know who to trust and who I could say stuff to, who I would be able to talk to without making me look bad. So I just kind of shut down and didn’t want to say anything because it always seemed like I was saying the wrong things.”
When his trade demands were answered midway through last season and Rasmus was shipped to Toronto, his .173 batting average in 35 games with the Jays didn’t help. Neither did his sullen attitude.
But this season, he says he’s relaxing. At the swanky Rogers Centre gala, he’s smiling and laughing with teammates, at ease in a pink-plaid shirt under a navy blazer and khakis. His shaggy hair is cropped and styled close to his head.
The player he was last year was the product of a poisoned environment and not who he really is, Rasmus says.
He’s learning how to better deal with homesickness, to manage the pressures of professional baseball and to ignore other people’s expectations even if his ongoing struggles at the plate haven’t helped his cause. He launched a solo home run Friday night, but has just three hits this season.
“I’m still working on it. I still have times where it messes me up a little, but I’m just trying to have fun, just enjoy the baseball game and just relax and have confidence in myself and just play the game — not think that I’ve got to go out there and hit three home runs just so people like me.”
Rasmus lives in the off-season in Phenix City, a town of about 30,000 a few minutes’ drive from the Georgia border.
He’s lived there all his life, and it’s the only place he says he feels truly comfortable. His parents, both schoolteachers, live next door. His grandparents are down the street.
As a 13-year-old, Rasmus led tiny Phenix City all the way to the Little League World Series, falling in the final game to Osaka, Japan. He went to high school nearby, where scouts salivated over his potential to be that rarefied five-tool player — one who can run, throw, field, hit for power and for average, all at an elite level.
Rasmus’s attachment to home is central to his character. Since turning pro, he has struggled with being away.
“Like last year, when I first came (to Toronto), it was a good bit stressful. I’m better when everything’s slower. . . . Out here, people are just always constantly go, go, go,” he says, snapping his fingers three times.
He has nothing against Toronto in particular. He just doesn’t “really like big cities.”
The house Rasmus shares with wife Megan — the long-time couple were married in December — their 2-year-old daughter Rylee and a pair of rottweilers is at the end of a secluded dead-end street in Phenix City, surrounded by bush. “Nobody comes down my road, ever.”
Home is where Rasmus retreated to clear his head after the tumultuous 2011 season.
“A lot of huntin’, fishin’, mud ridin’, things like that,” is how he explains his off-season.
Aside from a few sessions with Jays hitting coach Dwayne Murphy, he tried to forget about baseball. Murphy visited this off-season to work with him on his swing, and the pair built a rapport.
“I didn’t know how to handle him (at first) because you heard a lot of things about him,” Murphy says. “But I tell you what: He’s nothing like you heard. He’s a great guy and he’s been fun to be with.”
Rasmus didn’t watch his former Cardinals teammates win a thrilling World Series without him, but it wasn’t for spite. Rasmus never watches the World Series, or any baseball for that matter. He says he was “pullin’ for them the whole way to win it,” but he needed to get away from the game, which hasn’t always been fun for him.
“I started playing at a young age, pretty much since I could walk, and my dad was pretty hard on me,” Rasmus says. “That’s had some kind of effect.”
Tony Rasmus, a high school baseball coach, would lead his four sons through daily practices, often four hours long, every day, year-round.
“As I got older I just kept on playing, so it almost felt like there wasn’t ever really a break.”
Rasmus’s father was a central figure in the Cardinals controversy. He publicly criticized La Russa when his son was demoted to the minors, and travelled to St. Louis to try to help his son improve his swing. Rasmus says the conflict with his father was “blown way out of proportion” and he is loath to discuss details today.
He says gullibility got him into trouble with the St. Louis media.
“They would just try to throw little things in there and get me talking” — here Rasmus makes his hand like a snake’s head, coiled and ready to strike, as he describes being questioned by reporters — “and I would say things I shouldn’t say.”
This year he has told his father to back off, but downplayed the significance of that gesture. Rasmus says he’s always had a “tough relationship” with his father: “He’s not much for sympathy. Stayed on me hard — crack-the-whip-tight mentality.”
But now that he’s in the major leagues, Rasmus says he appreciates what his father did.
“As I sit here today and I look at it, hell yeah, I’m happy that he did it. I’ve learned a lot. I definitely wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t been that way. He just did it to help me, even though it was rough.”
Colby is the oldest, but not the only Rasmus in professional baseball. His brother Cory was drafted by the Atlanta Braves and Jordan is in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. Cyle is playing college baseball.
Despite a gruff exterior, Rasmus is clearly a sensitive person whose confidence withered under La Russa’s tough-love tutelage. He says it’s the “little things” that have made things easier with the Blue Jays.
“Everybody just being nice, just trying to say, like, ‘We’re in this together.’ Not like, ‘If you have a bad game, I’m not going to talk to you.’ That type of vibe is tough for me, because even though I might have went 0-4, I’m still tryin’. Just like with Sergio (Santos) getting booed, it’s not like he wasn’t tryin’. If he could have got the save in three pitches, he would have done it.”
Murphy said Rasmus’s attitude compared to last season is like night and day.
“You can see he wants to try to lead this club. He’s taking charge in the outfield and he’s really communicating well.”
Rasmus will never feel at home in a city like Toronto. But he’s starting to feel more comfortable with these Blue Jays.
“It’s not that I don’t like playing baseball,” Rasmus explains, “but it’s just the other things can sometimes get in the way. It’s just not comfortable for me, you know, living in the big city.”
He’s gone from the youngest player in the Cardinals clubhouse to roughly the same age as the Jays’ core group.
“I feel like I fit in,” he says.