Babe Ruth. Shohei Ohtani. Danny Jansen.
Daniel Robert Jansen has officially re-defined what it means to be a two-way player…
The once-Blue Jays, now-Red Sox catcher became the answer to the trivia question “Who was the first player to play for both teams in an MLB game?” when he subbed in behind the plate for Boston on Monday to catch the very at-bat he had been hitting in for Toronto when the now infamous June 26th rainout occurred.
History made.
— Gethin Coolbaugh (@GethinCoolbaugh) August 26, 2024
Danny Jansen, re-defining what it means to be a two-way player…#DirtyWater #TOTHECORE #MLB pic.twitter.com/dHaFnyvMHd
It was different. It was a bit weird. And it was fun for all involved.
“I took a moment before the game when I was out there. I’ve got my wife, kids, some family in town, as well. It was cool to experience that with them and have them there,” Jansen told me about his unique experience. “Once the game started, I just kind of locked it in for the game and didn’t really think about it much. But took a moment to enjoy it before the game.”
I’ve been thinking about what exactly to call it. Is it a feat? An achievement? An occurrence? Jansen presumably had little say in the trade that sent him from Toronto to Boston, and it wasn’t a physical feat like hitting for the cycle or tossing a no-hitter.
I still believe it should fall under the “achievement” category, though. While Jansen may not have done anything special with his bat, glove, or body, it, his ability to put himself in that position is an accomplishment in and of itself.
Being a baseball player isn’t easy, let alone at the college or even high school levels. To be a professional baseball player who is good enough to have a multi-year career in the majors? That takes talent and dedication.
Jansen is approaching 500 games played in the seventh year of his big league career. His stay is no mistake. He’s earned his keep.
Pinch-Hitting for Danny Jansen: Daulton Varsho
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) August 26, 2024
Now Catching: Danny Jansen
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/PXnVZvbpml
And credit goes to Alex Cora for playing into the moment of history. Connor Wong behind the plate and with the bat probably gives the team a better chance to win than Jansen does on most nights. But Cora didn’t put himself in the way of history.
“It was a very cool moment, just to be part of it,” Cora said. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen again. It has to be kind of like the perfect storm for that to happen — starting with the storm. And I’m glad that everybody enjoyed it.”
We all know if it were Bill Belichick managing the Red Sox, then Jansen probably wouldn’t have been unavailable for a maintenance day or something like that…
But Cora wasn’t the only manager in building who enjoyed what he saw. Jansen’s former skipper, Toronto manager John Schneider, was happy that his former catcher accomplished something so… “weird.”
“Me knowing Jano, I think it’s cool for him to kind of go down in the record books as the first player to do that,” Schneider told me. “But I think it’s something, you know, I’ve known Jano forever, and it’s something cool that he can always kind of say he was the first at, and he’s good at weird stuff. Pretty cool for him.”
In some ways, though, it’s a little sad that this will almost certainly go down as the highlight of Jansen’s big league career — save for being a part of a World Series run somewhere — as opposed to a more notable feat he accomplished on the field.
But hey, we don’t always get to choose how our 15 minutes of fame will play out…
Ultimately, this will go down as nothing more than a fun little footnote on the 2024 Red Sox season. Jansen’s quirky team swap alone didn't help them win a game. It certainly didn’t erase their 4 1/2-game deficit in the postseason race.
But baseball is supposed to be fun, too. Right? Sometimes you can forget that as a curmudgeonly 33-year-old Boston sports writer…
“I guess it hasn’t fully hit me yet,” Jansen said. “I’ll tell you what, I was surprised when I found out I was the first one to do it. It’s cool, you know, leaving a stamp like that on the game. It’s interesting, and it’s strange, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to have that. At the end of the day, yeah, it’s a cool thing.”
Digging a deeper hole
Once the game actually started and history had been made, it was back to baseball.
And that’s not a good thing for these Red Sox of late…
Boston continued its losing ways with a 4-1 loss — wasting a pretty solid 10-strikeout outing by Nick Pivetta in the process — to drop the team a full five games out of the final playoff spot prior to Monday night’s regularly scheduled game.
Pivetta’s response to being on the sinking ship is to just put up the blinders and whistle past the graveyard…
“I think just kind of erase what’s gone on in the past and just focus on the game at hand,” he said. after tossing six innings of three-run ball. "I don’t think any thoughts of what’s happened, it’s just more focus on this AB, focus on this pitch, focus on this game right here, stay in the moment and allow things to play out the way that they’re going to. I think if you get too far ahead or you think about the past, you’re not in the moment, you’re not present. And we have to win baseball (games) in the present moment right now.”
Nick’s mindset is the right one for a player, of course. Or is it? There’s truth to the fact that you can’t change the past. All you can control is the here and now. But would it really hurt for these guys to start pressing just a little?
According to Cora, they aren’t doing so. At all.
“It’s not happening right now, to be honest with you,” Cora said. “It’s just kind of like it’s been going on for a while here. Most of them, they haven’t been in that situation before, right? Every pitch matters, every at-bat matters, you know. We’ve just got to make sure we slow it down.”
Things didn’t exactly slow down for Cora’s team in the nightcap. Just like the day game, things went OK for the first couple of innings — Boston even led 1-0 after a Triston Casas RBI single in the third — before the bullpen game derailed in the fifth when Brad Keller served up a five-run fifth to Toronto in an eventual 7-3 defeat.
On the mound, the Sox’s bats were mostly stymied again, this time by Jose Berrios and his 7 2/3 innings of three-run ball. It was a scenario that Cora foretold in his comments in the immediate aftermath of his team’s first loss of the day to the Jays.
“I don’t know if it’s pressure or just good pitching. We’re better than this, we know that, and right now we’re not going through a good stretch. We’ll turn it around.”
Thirty one opportunities remain...
Gethin Coolbaugh is a columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.