Here is what I love about Tony Fernandez, aside from, like, the existential fact of Tony Fernandez

Such a stance.

Tony Fernandez is known to you, and indeed quite possibly loved by you, if you are a fan of, OK, let's see: the Toronto Blue Jays, San Diego Padres, New York Mets, Cincinnati Reds, New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians (though that one's complicated), Seibu Lions, or Milwaukee Brewers.  In the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, which is the one you bought in 2001 after you read about it in Rob Neyer's column, Fernandez is ranked as the twenty-fourth best shortstop in baseball history according to James' then-novel, now-who-cares Win Shares formula (each Win Share is equal to exactly one third of a win! and there's no such thing as a negative Win Share so anything negative just gets zeroed out and diminishes the Win Share totals of everyone else on the team and the whole thing doesn't really make sense! OK cool!). Here is the complete text of the Fernandez entry in that weighty, weighty tome: "Hit .300, as a regular, in 1986, 1987, 1998, and 1999 -- but had an eleven-year stretch in mid-career in which he never hit higher than .287.  He is currently (year 2000) playing with the Seibu Lions in Japan. This cuts the number of teams that he has never played for to three."  This is pretty comprehensive.  I might have added something about how the way he would sidearm the ball to first was the coolest thing ever, but aside from that, all of the essentials are there.  Tony Fernandez hit for a nice average, and he played for pretty much everybody.  But what is neatest about Tony Fernandez, I think, is that he had four separate stints with the Blue Jays.  Four!    

Such a feed.

And the thing about that is this: Tony Fernandez is like a thread woven through the history of the Toronto Blue Jays, or at least the first twenty-five years of it.  If that last sentence is clumsy, you can take it up with the late great Tom Cheek for it, because he said it on the radio in 2003 and I wrote it down in my scorekeeping book and now eight years later, there it is, and if you don't like it, then yeah, take it up with a man who is dead, better than you, and also obviously correct, so you will lose badly for at least those three reasons.

There's nothing especially profound about it; it's just true, and neat.  Fernandez was signed in the Dominican Republic in 1979 by Epy Guerrero, the name most closely associated with how the Blue Jays, from the early days up to and and including the signing of Carlos Delgado years later, were totally on top of things in the Dominican.  Fernandez was called up in 1983, the first winning season in Toronto, and by the time they were among the best teams in baseball two years later, he had taken over for Alfredo Griffin as the everyday shortstop (Alfredo Griffin: another strong source of baseball feelings). And, yeah, maybe they blew it in 1985.  OK, they obviously, totally blew it in 1985, and went from a 99-win team to an 86-win team the next year, but the Blue Jays had arrived.  And so had Tony Fernandez: in the next four years he picked up four Gold Gloves, made three All-Star teams, and finished in the top ten in MVP voting for his pretty rad 1987 season (.322/.379/.426/many awesome sidearm throws to first).  The Blue Jays were winners, if not champions.  Tony Fernandez was an All-Star, if not an MVP.  Everything was cool.

Such a turn.

Then, in a move that shocked every twelve-year-old in Canada, Fernandez and Fred McGriff (who Joe Torre says in The Yankee Years "scared the shit" out of him, and rightly so) were traded for Joe Carter, who we kind of remembered as an Indian, and Roberto Alomar, who we'd never heard of, because he played in the National League, which, what the hell?  Anyway, as history has shown, that totally worked out.

And it was really, really cool that Tony Fernandez managed to make it back in time to get in on the championship years.  He'd been totally solid in San Diego before playing just awfully for the Mets, which meant a mid-season trade back to Toronto, where he utterly tore shit up for the remainder of the year and drove in nine runs -- Tony Fernandez drove in nine runs -- in the 1993 World Series.  That was awesome.  

Such a World Series.

To be completely honest, before sitting down to write this I couldn't have told you that Fernandez had spent any time at all with the Reds, but apparently he did the very next season.  I remember him much more clearly as a Yankee, though, I guess because we saw a lot of the Yankees, and then there was the whole Cleveland thing, in which Tony Fernandez was like "here you go, long-suffering Cleveland Indians fans, enjoy this game-winning home run to win the pennant and oh hey sorry about this error in the bottom of the 11th in game seven of the World Series because frankly that is totally my bad."  I don't know any real life Indians fans, or even any internet Cleveland fans, so I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing they think that sucked.   

Then back to Toronto for the aimless Roger Clemons years!  And sort of year-zero in the Roger Clemons Path to Ruin story that is kind of my favourite thing going in the off-field world of baseball right now.  I actually think of the post-World Series, post-Pat Gillick years as kind of the "I found a baby squirrel, now what do I do" era, because Gord Ash, god love him, he really had no idea what was going on.  The Blue Jays went from back-to-back World Champions to just being a bad, expensive ball club in pretty much no time, and there really wasn't much accounting for it.  I have no interest in hating on Gord Ash, and you've got to love the way he worked himself up from the ticket office to the General Manager's office, but I don't know, it was like he was playing Strat-o-Matic up there or something (on a related note, let's all play Strat-o later).  Just a depressing time.  Aimless.  Aimless years.   

Things were really no less aimless two years later when Tony Fernandez came back to wrap things up in late 2001.  There was a real sense of exhaustion at that point.  House was about to be cleaned.  J.P. Ricciardi was about to come in and moneyball us into the future, which is to say he was going to lowball Carlos Delgado, the best player in franchise history (Alomar was better but didn't stick around very long), sign the lovable Vernon Wells and the utterly contemptable Alex(is) Rios to atrocious contracts, and generally make things so hopeless that Roy Halladay would politely ask to leave.  But before that lost decade could take shape and really get good and lost: the 2001 Tony Fernandez victory lap, the highlight of which, other than a surprisingly moving pre-game speech he made late in the season, came on September 4, when he hit a pinch-hit grand slam against the Yankees.  It wasn't crucial or anything: the game was a laugher. But I do not need to explain to you why this was an awesome thing to have happened.  And it was also awesome that Tony Fernandez was retiring at the end of the Blue Jays 25th anniversary season, because, yeah, like Tom Cheek said: a thread woven through the history of the Blue Jays.  There you go.  

Such a swing.

KS