TORONTO – In another life, just inches away from this one, Monday night could have been the final ring ceremony.
Bo Bichette, back in town for the first time with his Mets, could have stood and waved through an ovation so long that it delayed the first pitch. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., his friend and teammate since they were boys, could have handed him that ring before the two broke back to their separate dugouts, both back to chasing their own pennants.
That’s the challenge in all of this, seeing through the haze of what it could have been to see what it still is.
There’s still a reason Bichette will be welcomed back with an ovation Monday night at Rogers Centre. Hundreds of reasons, really. He’s one of the reasons the Rogers Centre dome is packed every night.
“I don’t know what to expect,” Bichette said Monday, sitting in the visitors' dugout, and then his voice trailed off. There were tears in his eyes. “I think I … I gave it everything I had. I just hope that’s appreciated.”
This wasn’t the only time Bichette had to take a long pause, looking out to the field again, fighting back more tears. Even the mention of Guerrero brought them out.
Bichette’s three-run home run off Shohei Ohtani in Game 7 of the World Series could have been the second-biggest moment in Blue Jays history, behind only Joe Carter’s walk-off in 1993. Bichette wouldn’t have worn the fame as comfortably as Carter, who still stands in the glow of that moment with a smile on his face, but Bichette wouldn’t have had a choice.
“I’ll always remember him and Vlad … Vlad was waiting for him for a little hug at home plate” said manager John Schneider. “You go, ‘Oh, [crap].’ If this is ever going to be what it should be, with those guys in Game 7 of the World Series, you feel pretty good. I still remember it. It was a little less loud than George Springer’s home run against Seattle, maybe the same. I remember taking a little snapshot in my head, him and Vlad at the plate.”
What a story it could have been. The silent star, hobbling around on one good knee, had just taken down Goliath, the generational talent who the Blue Jays came so close to signing. Bichette and Guerrero’s baby-faced photos from Single-A would hang alongside those of them celebrating a World Series together, but the storybook ending was never written. Go too far down this hole of asking ‘What if?’, though, and you’ll drive yourself mad.
Baseball’s cruel realities have weighed on all of these characters from the moment the Blue Jays lost Game 7 to the Dodgers. Guerrero and Bichette both playing for below-.500 teams, both carrying an OPS below .700. This doesn’t look like them, but the good days haven’t gone away, either.
Bichette, right alongside Guerrero, represented hope in Toronto at first, a new generation of baseball built around two second-generation stars. Schneider managed the gifted young duo going back to the Minor Leagues, joking over the years that it felt like managing a boy band. There were crowds waiting outside their hotels in Double-A, two teenagers captivating the baseball world.
Bichette and Guerrero worked so well together as a duo, too. All good pairs need the showman and the serious one, playing the straight-man role to the prankster.
None of these realities can taint the good days, though. Game 7 will sting for years, but as those years pass, we’ll come to remember that Bichette’s home run off Ohtani is still one of the biggest moments in this organization’s history. Those two All-Star Games and two seasons leading the AL in hits don’t disappear, either, for such a wonderfully stubborn hitter who ground pitchers to dust.
There were still so many handshakes and hugs waiting for Bichette in the two hours before first pitch. They’d all matter, but he was looking for Vladdy. The inseparable pair, now separated, could finally come together again.
“We went through it all together. The one goal we had together, we didn’t accomplish it,” Bichette said, pausing again. “I’ve seen him at his lowest, he’s seen me at mine. Vice versa, too, at our highest. From teammates as kids, to…”
Bichette couldn’t finish his final sentence. Perhaps he didn’t want to.
Bichette mattered to this city, this country, this ballclub. Tears in his eyes, looking at his old dugout from across the field, it was clear it all mattered to Bichette, too, more than he could say.