When he first arrived in Toronto, J.A. Happ was not happy to be here.
It was late July of 2012. For some reason, I remember the look on his face the first time I saw him in the clubhouse. Happ, I would learn, was not inclined to wear his emotions on his sleeve (or his face), but that day, he looked deeply troubled.
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And for good reason. Not only had he been traded from Houston in a 10-player transaction, but he had been shipped from stability to insecurity.
At 29, Happ was a career starter. His ERA was just north of 4.00. He had allowed fewer hits than innings pitched, although he also had an uncomfortable tendency toward walks.
Upon his arrival, the Blue Jays exiled him to the bullpen. He was clearly unhappy about that, although in typical fashion, he kept his mouth shut.
A couple of weeks later, they moved him to the rotation. Six starts in, he landed on the disabled list with a broken bone in his foot and was done for the season.
The following spring, he was the best starter in camp. Still, the Jays kept him on tenterhooks about his role. When asked, officials seemed to nudge him toward the bullpen.
In March, he allowed that limbo did not appeal to him. He said he planned to talk to Jays’ brass about that.
“I’m a major-league starting pitcher,” he said. “I guess I’ll leave it at that for right now.”
Soon, he left little doubt about that. And when the Blue Jays sent him to the Yankees last week, he was arguably the best starting pitcher available on the trade-deadline market.
Over his two terms with the Jays, it has been fascinating to watch his evolution as a pitcher. And I have also enjoyed getting to know him better and to appreciate the impressive man behind the impassive exterior.
I should stress that those of us in this business seldom truly know the athletes we write about. Maintaining a professional distance is important for a journalist, lest we become co-opted by a source. Often, the athlete prefers a respectful distance too. That’s natural. Their club is closed to outsiders.
But over time, we occasionally develop a connection with a player that is rooted in mutual trust and genuine interest, beyond the typical reporter-source interplay. I felt that I enjoyed that short of connection with Jay Happ.
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He is as intense and competitive as they come. Catcher Russ Martin once told me that he has seldom seen a player so driven and devoted to physical conditioning and between-starts preparation.
Earlier in Happ’s career, that intensity sometimes ate him up inside. A bad start would leave him lying awake nights, fuming at himself, trying to figure out how to fix what went wrong.
During spring training of 2016, as his second Toronto tour began, we talked about that. It began as a casual chat about his off-season, which had been eventful. He and his wife, Morgan, had become parents for the first time. We talked about how babies change everything and the ineffable wonders that new parenthood brings. He said it had certainly changed him, softened him a little, helped him to sheath those daggers of self-doubt that often left him wounded after a bad outing.
J.A. Happ and his wife, Morgan, and their kids at the MLB All-Star Game. Photo by Alex Trautwig/MLB Photos via Getty Images
Shortly after that, I was called home for a family emergency. When I returned to Dunedin, I was still in a fog. I also had a job to do; I needed a story. I had been thinking about that conversation with Happ and parenthood, so I asked if he was willing to talk on the record about that. He was.
At the end of the interview, he paused for a moment. He’d heard that my wife had died unexpectedly. He reached out and lightly touched my shoulder. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said.
I thanked him and hurried outside. There is no crying in baseball, and certainly not in the clubhouse.
I did not expect players to know why I’d been away, and preferred to keep the reason private. But somehow Happ knew, and showed me, in a few simple words, that he cared. I won’t forget that.
The most frightening moment of my baseball experience came on May 7, 2013 at Tropicana Field. Happ was pitching against Tampa Bay in the second inning when a line drive struck him in the head. Here’s how I described the scene in a story I wrote then for the National Post.
The liner off the bat of Desmond Jennings hit Happ and caromed all the way into the Tampa Bay Rays’ bullpen in foul territory on the right-field side. Blue Jays training staff immediately darted from their third-base dugout but had to stand and wait in foul ground until the ball was retrieved as Jennings pulled up at third base.
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The crack of the bat and sickly thud that followed brought a collective gasp from the scattered crowd of 10,273. The stunned fans watched in silence as Happ recoiled, clasped his head with his bare hand and glove and dropped face-down in the dirt.
As he lay on the mound, Happ held the side of his head with his left hand, which was blood-stained when he removed it for a moment.
A trainer quickly applied a towel to stanch the blood. It was unclear whether the blood came from flesh wound or from inside his ear.
Players in both dugouts sat with their hands covering their faces as trainers from both teams and stadium medical staff examined the pitcher.
Happ’s only visible movements were in his legs and feet. Finally, medics gently turned him onto his back, placed him on an immobilization board and lifted him onto a mobile stretcher. He was taken immediately to a hospital.
The crowd applauded as Happ was wheeled off and he responded with a weak wave of his hand.
J.A. Happ taken off the field after he was hit by a line drive. Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images
The next day, Happ limped into a news conference. He had suffered a small fracture in a bone behind his ear. He had eight stitches in his ear. He did not have a concussion.
And he had his wits about him.
“I thought I made a decent pitch,” he said.
His biggest concern was the condition of his right knee, which he’d twisted as he fell to the dirt. His anxiety was well-founded. He missed the next three months while recovering from sprained ligaments.
Toward the end of his first go-round with the Jays, Happ and pitching coach Pete Walker did a lot of experimenting with his arm slot. Near the end of the 2014 season, that work began to pay off with greater consistency. Over his final seven starts, his ERA was 3.77, half a run lower than his career average.
Then the Jays traded him to Seattle. At the deadline in 2015, Seattle traded him to Pittsburgh, where he posted a 1.85 ERA.
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Walker was one of the big reasons Happ chose to sign a three-year deal with the Blue Jays after the 2015 season. The tall lefty and the patient pitching coach had clicked the first time around, and would again.
Now, after nearly three good seasons, the lefty is gone to a talent-rich team with a shot at a playoff berth. A couple of weeks ago, we chatted briefly about his conflicting emotions as trade rumours swirled around him.
Leaving Toronto would mean uprooting his family from a place they’d grown to love. He wanted to stay.
But he also yearned to pitch again in the post-season, as he had with the Phillies in 2008 and 2009 and with the Jays in 2016. In that context, he wanted to go.
At 35, he knew it might be his last chance.
Happ spent six years in Toronto. At the beginning, it was tempting for some of us in the media to conclude that his solemn mien represented aloofness, perhaps even a distaste for dealing with us. In his obligatory scrums after a start, he seldom had much to say.
But as time passed, I — and others too — learned that he is both personable and keenly analytical about his job and, while disinclined to give away trade secrets, would willingly answer questions about specific elements of his work.
Remarkably, nearly 75 per cent of his pitches are fastballs, according to BaseballSavant.mlb.com. That’s 15 per cent higher than the league average. Many of his pitches are spotted in the upper region of the strike zone. But he has also worked hard to polish his secondary pitches — a two-seamer and a changeup — thereby forcing batters to adjust their eye level from one pitch to the next, a skill that was far from refined when he first put on a Toronto uniform.
Looking back over his career last spring, Happ said his quest for success became exasperating at times because he believed he was falling short of the pitcher that he could be.
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“I watched a lot of other players, a lot of other left-handers, and I just felt like I was not far from being on that level – I’m talking about quality-to-elite starting pitchers in the game, and their stuff, and how they pitched,” he said. “I just felt like (with) a few adjustments, I felt like I could be there. I felt like the repertoire was there.”
He was correct, of course. But as he rose to that level, he had to remind himself constantly to maintain an aggressive approach on the mound, to attack with his fastball, to trust that his heater, spotted well, makes him one of the game’s most effective left-handers.
Others reminded him too. Walker did so, and often. After a mediocre start early this season, he mentioned that his wife was among those who noticed that he seemed to have dialed back his aggressiveness. When he pitched well in his next start, Morgan good-naturedly reminded him that she knew what she was talking about. He gave her due credit in his post-game scrum.
Last September, Happ told me again about how parenthood had changed him. At that time, his son was about to turn two. Their daughter would arrive in November.
He smiled as he talked about observing his son’s transition from infant to toddler.
“He’s non-stop now,” Happ said. “My wife and I say all the time we just want to freeze him right here at this age. It’s so much fun.”
And that experience helped to make his job more fun too.
“I had never excelled in leaving (workplace issues) at the field,” he said. “When I didn’t do well, I took it to heart, and it affected me.”
But suddenly, with the arrival of his son, his work-life ratio altered for good.
“You get into a situation with a family and that all changes, because no matter whether you do good or bad, you go home and you have no time to feel mad or bad for yourself,” he said. “You’ve got more important things. So I feel like it’s a better balance for me.”
Happ has always been a class act. He also eschewed the spotlight. In 2016, his low-key personality made him one of the least conspicuous 20-game winners in the annals of baseball.
Happ and Garcia get acquainted in spring training. Photo by John Lott
In 2015 and 2016, Happ and R.A. Dickey lockered next to each other. Dickey’s knuckleball, erudition and unusual background — he wrote an autobiography that revealed his childhood sexual abuse and battle with mental health issues — set him apart from his teammates. But he and Happ got on well. This year, before Happ was traded, Jaime Garcia sat at the next stall. To say Garcia is an austere sort is an understatement. Yet in conversation with Happ, he was often seen smiling and relaxed.
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Last month, Happ took rookie left-hander Ryan Borucki under his wing, making the youngster feel at home and generously offering pitching tips. Shortly before he was traded, TV cameras showed Happ sitting with Borucki in the dugout, in continual conversation that included the veteran demonstrating grips to the 24-year-old.
That scene was especially poignant, considering the path Happ has travelled since that day in 2012 when a new country, a new team and a seat in the bullpen made him feel less than welcome. It was a slow process, but eventually he morphed into the Blue Jays’ staff ace, a respected teammate and a keen mentor.
And a happier man.
Journalists are supposed to maintain professional detachment. But once in a while, we come across a player we can’t help but root for. For me, Jay Happ was one of those players. I will miss his grit, his dignity and his kindness.
A special message from J.A. Happ. pic.twitter.com/rB56wwD1Z3
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) July 28, 2018
(Top photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)