Given that I have never met John Gibbons, anything I know about him is based entirely on what I have read and heard or witnessed on my flatscreen.
By most accounts, the Toronto Blue Jays manager is a “man’s man,” which I believe is guy-talk meaning he likes his beer cold, his woman warm and, lord knows, he’s the last fella you’d ever catch wearing a dress.
Born on the northern Great Plains and under the big sky of Montana, but mostly raised in the shadow of the Alamo in the Texas Triangle, Gibbons has the swagger of a trail boss when he ambles out to the mound to remove his starting hurler or a beleaguered member of his bullpen. His body language is saying, “Why can’t this horse’s ass throw strikes?” even if that isn’t exactly what he’s saying when retrieving the baseball from the poor wretch’s failing right or left pitching hand.
Jock journalistis in the Republic of Tranna seem to impart favor on the square-jawed Gibbons, no doubt because he’s up-front, a straight-shooter who isn’t afraid to call a steer a longhorn, and, I suspect, in part because he’s old-school.
Some sports scribes, it should be pointed out, delight in the ways of the old-school operatives, if for no reason other than the reality that they themselves are old-school. Trouble is, there’s old-school in the ways of Major League Baseball and there’s horse-and-buggy thinking in the ways of the 21st century.
Gibbons, it would seem, has earned his degree in both schools.
If you missed it, the Blue Jays lost a game they believed they were positioned to win the other night against the Rays in Tampa, the nub of the matter being a ninth-inning development by which Jose Bautista’s slide into second base was ruled illegal. The Jays rightfielder slid across the bag, but reached out with his left arm and made contact with the right leg of Rays second sacker Logan Forsythe, whose errant throw to first allowed the go-ahead run to cross home plate. It was a harmless play. You’ll see more meaningful contact in a kindergarten class. In today’s baseball, however, to touch is taboo. Thus, after video review of the play, Tampa was awarded a game-ending doubleplay.
While much of Jays Nation rose up in a “We wuz robbed!” rallying bleat, Gibbons took the dialogue in another direction, going all Ty Cobb during his post-match chin-wag with news scavengers. He talked about baseball being a “hard-nosed game” and barreling into second base “is good baseball. That’s been baseball forever.” And he’s right. The Georgia Peach would slide into second with freshly sharpened spikes flashing knee high. And, hey, Charlie Hustle didn’t get that nickname by arriving at second base or home plate like Fred Astaire in a tux.
“It turned the game into a joke,” Gibbons muttered. “That’s embarrassing. It’s a joke.”
If only his gums had stopped flapping there.
“Maybe,” Gibbons added, “we’ll come out wearing dresses tomorrow. Maybe that’s what everybody’s looking for.”
For the record, nary a member of the Blue Jays Nine was adorned in a spring frock when they lost another game on Wednesday, but here’s what I found astonishing in the fallout of the manager’s comments, deemed sexist by the many who delivered him a stern tsk-tsking on social and in mainstream media: Gibbons was surprised to learn the politically correct police had been mobilized.
“My mom, my wife, my daughter found it kind of funny,” he said. “They know me. I do think the world needs to lighten up a bit. I cannot understand how that would offend anybody, to be honest with you, if it doesn’t offend my mother, my daughter and my wife, who have a great understanding of life. Honestly, I didn’t expect that. I understand there’s an uproar, I don’t get that.”
So there’s something else about Gibbons that I now know: Apparently, he’s prone to flashes of naivete.
I’m not prepared to hop on a high horse and throw down on our man from Montana/Texas for his misguided attempt at sexist humor, but I am shocked that he’s shocked his comments ruffled some female feathers, not to ignore the plumage of some male members of the media who either were genuinely affronted or merely put 700 words together in an effort to earn some valuable brownie points with the missus on the home front. Whatever the case, I would ask this of Gibbons: “What the frock were you thinking, man?
I mean, thirty-one years ago this wouldn’t have caused a ripple of controversy. It would have been nothing more than a baseball guy talking about baseball. We know this because we can draw a parallel to something similar the great Arnold Palmer uttered at the MONY Tournament of Champions in May 1985, when 36 professional golfers, including nine seniors, teed it up.
As a concession to the older players, the policy board on the seniors tour voted to allow them to hit from the front tees on certain holes.
“I’ll tell you what, it’s embarrassing,” a bitter Arnie barked. “You walk past the regular tees up to those blue tees. I’ll wear my dress tomorrow.”
So there. The King had spoken. And no one said boo, because social media didn’t exist and the politically correct police had yet to marshall all of their forces.
But now, 31 years after the fact, old-school Gibby surely ought to recognize that, his mother, wife and daughter notwithstanding, his choice of words is quite offensive to numerous women who don’t know him and harbor a “great understanding of life.”
I’m all for old-school baseball (get rid of the designated hitter and let’s have more day games), but horse-and-buggy banter I can do without.
Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.
The River City Renegade 
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