When Jose Bautista indignantly walked out to a throng of cameras and curious reporters gathered outside the team’s spring training facility to begin the year and proudly proclaimed that he’d never consider a hometown discount ever again, the city nodded quietly and begrudgingly agreed with him. After all, this was their all-star right fielder who twice led the league in home runs and was considered to be a remarkable specimen of mental and physical fortitude capable of producing an iconic baseball feat which captured and held a city’s imagination throughout the off-season.
But there’s no possible way he could have foreseen this outcome.