He’d like to work at Home Depot, just to learn about the tools. He’d love to spend a day or two a week helping out at a diner. The allure of gardening in his greenhouse is calling him. He’s even kicking around whether he’d like to be a baseball writer. (Seriously.)
Trust me. There isn’t another retired future Hall of Fame baseball player who has thought about any of this stuff. But that’s understandable — because there has never been anyone like Joey Votto.
He’s celebrating his first birthday (No. 41 if you’re counting) as a former baseball player this week, a little more than two weeks after announcing his retirement. And he’s still kicking around what’s next. But while he’s still a little hazy on what’s going to happen, he’s all too clear on what did happen — and on why he pulled the plug on his comeback last month.
“I’m dated. I’m done,” he told me and Doug Glanville on the new Starkville episode of The Athletic’s Windup podcast. “I’m expired.”
But unlike the expiration date on that package of cheese you just forgot to eat, Votto didn’t embark on his minor-league contract with the Toronto Blue Jays this year knowing his time was nearly up. No, it was baseball that stamped that expiration date on his wrapper, the way it has for a million other players since the beginning of time.
“The games,” he said, “are the litmus test.”
And Votto is the first to acknowledge he failed that test, day after painful day. He accumulated 140 minor-league plate appearances this season — for the Blue Jays’ Complex League, Florida State League and International League affiliates. His .165/.298/.271 slash line tells the story of how that went. But what the numbers don’t tell you is how excruciating it was to live with all that failure.
So how did he know it was time? How did he know that after 23 professional seasons, this was one Rubik’s Cube he was not going to be able to solve? He described it on Starkville in such painstaking detail, you may never hear a more vivid description of how it feels to be a world-class athlete who finally understands he has no paths left to travel back to glory.
To compete requires relentless energy — and “I was just not at a level that I thought was repeatable,” Votto said. “And, finally, my skills weren’t quite (there). It’s like that feeling of tightening up a toy. And you let it go. And it just activates right away. And I never felt tight.
“I always felt like I was just always running out of power … and my swing wasn’t fast enough, and my arm wasn’t strong enough, and my range wasn’t rangy enough, and my first step wasn’t quick enough.”
Then, to illustrate what he meant, he walked us through the last baseball game he would ever play, on Aug. 20 against the Triple-A Omaha Storm Chasers. How much has the frustration of that game stayed with him? He talked about it for nearly 10 minutes!
How Omaha starter Alec Marsh outsmarted him and overmatched him in his first two at-bats. … How left-handed reliever Anthony Veneziano teased him with a hittable fastball, then “snapped everything off” on the way to a seventh-inning whiff with two men on. … And how he got so “desperate” for an edge, he even used the robot-ump challenge system to try to get a called strike reversed, then realized almost immediately he was dead wrong.
“I promised myself while I was in Triple A, I wasn’t going to challenge pitches,” Votto said. “I was trying to prepare for the major leagues, because there’s going to be some missed calls at the major-league level. But I was so desperate to get something going that I needed that strike.
“And I’m standing in the box waiting for the call, and I say out loud: ‘Oh, no. That was a strike. Whoa, that was a strike.’ (It was a challenge out of) desperation. And then my real side was like: No, no, that’s a strike.’”
Then Votto gave this poignant account of how that at-bat, that game and his life as a baseball player ended:
“I checked-swung on a middle fastball, like literally right down the middle (and struck out). And that was the at-bat. And that was my career….
“During the prime of my career … if I didn’t put in a 10-out-of-10 effort, I would be very, very angry. Very angry. Fuming. And during this past calendar year, I didn’t get upset at all. … And I’m sitting on the bench, and this was a night game, and I’m not angry. I’m just confused. And I’m kind of in shock.
“The game gets done. Nobody says anything to me, teammates and manager. And, you know, what are they going to say to me? I’ve got more major-league home runs in a weekend than the whole team combined, (that) sort of thing. And I’m sitting in my locker, thinking: What are we doing here?
“And then I go to the gym to do my postgame work, and I do a stretch, and my back lights up. And I wasn’t angry. Normally, I would be panicked over that.
“And then I go back to my Airbnb. And I’m just sitting there, like playing chess (on the computer), not angry about another awful performance. I go to bed. I’m laying there, staring at the ceiling, thinking: Like, what are we doing here?”
On The Windup podcast, recently retired MLB star Joey Votto opens up about his shift from frustration to problem-solving during his final years in the game.
Listen 🎧: https://t.co/bhgHU982Sd pic.twitter.com/IqV2BdzlAz
— The Athletic MLB (@TheAthleticMLB) September 9, 2024
That lack of emotion was telling him something meaningful, he said. And he knew that because he’d played with an I’ll show you edge all his life — but never more than after what happened to him last fall, when the Cincinnati Reds told him they were moving on without him:
“The last thing I’ll say is, when the Reds let me go, I was in a frame of mind, like: I’m going to prove that I can do this. … Maybe I’m completely disconnected with reality. But my take was, like: You don’t let me go. I’ve been hurt the last couple of years. I put up 36 home runs in 120-something games (in 2021). Give me a break. If I wanted to put up 40, I very easily could, as long as I’m healthy, (that) sort of thing, you know?
“And then this year, I came into camp (with Toronto) with that laser focus. And my health was great. Homered (in his first at-bat of the spring) off of Zack Wheeler. (Then sprained his) ankle. Not season over, but gosh, you age quickly when you’re about to turn 41 and you’re not 100 percent healthy. So, you know, time came for me, and that was it. I felt great when I was competing down in Buffalo. I just wasn’t good.”
As with every Joey Votto interview, there was so much more during our hourlong conversation to listen to, to chuckle over, to swirl around your brain. Among the other topics he covered:
What did he not accomplish in his career that he always wanted to? Let’s just say that the name Cal Ripken Jr. came up.
What about playing baseball brought him the most joy? His answer was as Votto-esque as it gets. Can there really be joy in the process — and having the patience to see the process through? When you hear him describe it, you’ll understand what makes his engine hum.
“I fell in love with the patience process,” he said. “Of wanting to try something, and knowing that it may take six months or a year, and for that moment of it clicking and becoming habit and staying with you, I was addicted to that. I absolutely love that.”
Were those seven on-base titles his ticket to the Hall of Fame? I gave him a side-by-side comparison of his peak years versus Tony Gwynn’s peak. Told him how many more times a year he got on base. Laid out how much higher his OPS+ was. Asked if he thinks the Hall of Fame voters will see the value of his elite on-base skills when his name arrives on the ballot in five years. Naturally, that launched an impassioned defense … of Tony Gwynn.
“Hitting is hard, and it’s also aesthetically pleasing,” Votto said. “You know, we serve the fans. A walk doesn’t provide finality to an at-bat. Mathematically, it does. But to the average fan, the casual fan that’s putting around on Instagram and then watching an at-bat, it’s: ‘What did you do? Walk? OK.’
“But the moment where someone gets a hit, there’s applause. Booing. There’s a reaction to it. Whereas a walk, it’s a little bit subdued. And so Tony entertained us, because he would come out and get three hits, and there was no walking involved in that.”
How does he see the state of modern baseball? If you thought you’d hear a 41-year-old guy reminiscing about those Good Old Days when he played, you don’t know much about Votto. Instead, he went down this road:
“I love the current version,” he said. “I love that Bobby Witt Jr. is arguably the best player in the game. I love that a center fielder from New York is one of the greatest hitters of all time and one of the greatest players of all time, named Aaron Judge. And I love that you have a player like Bobby Witt, with the speed and the defense and the position he plays, and the striking the ball all over the field, and we get to see him show off his athleticism, duking it out with a traditional slugger (for an MVP award). …
“Watching Aaron Judge right now, watching Shohei (Ohtani) right now, it’s like anything’s possible. That’s our sport. And that’s why it’s so captivating.”
But that’s just skimming the surface. Want the inside story on Votto’s ejection from the last big-league game of his career? Want to hear which musical genius he’d like to play guitar behind (as soon as he actually learns to play the guitar, that is)? Want to hear all the creative ideas for his next gig we brainstormed with him?
Then you should definitely check out the whole podcast. Here’s our advice: When Joey Votto talks, we should all listen!
(Top photo of Joey Votto in spring training: Steve Nesius / The Canadian Press via Associated Press)
