Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame honours Jose Bautista for greatness with Blue Jays
Jose Bautista admits it was bittersweet when he was traded to the Blue Jays in 2008. Little did he know it was the start of a journey to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
TORONTO – In the summer of 2008, when Jose Bautista first heard he had been traded to the Blue Jays, he wasn’t thrilled. He knew he probably didn’t have a future with the Pirates, but it was still the organization he knew best and he wasn’t quite sure what to expect in Toronto.
“It was a mixed bag,” he said. “I’m not going to lie. Every player that got drafted and signed with a team and stayed there for a while kind of feels like that’s never going to end, right? So that was bittersweet in a way. But I definitely was open to an opportunity and I was ready to go to another team where maybe my situation would change.”
Over the course of the decade that followed, Bautista would establish himself as one of the greatest players in Blue Jays franchise history, hitting 288 home runs on his way to two home-run titles and one of the most iconic home runs in recent baseball history. On Wednesday, those accomplishments were recognized by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, as Bautista and five others were selected for induction this summer.
Also chosen were left-handed pitcher Erik Bedard, Greg Hamilton, the longtime director of national teams for Baseball Canada, and Amanda Asay, the longtime women’s national team star who will be inducted posthumously. Joining them will be two veterans committee selections, Arleene Noga, who once starred in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and Gerry Snyder a Montreal politician who helped bring the Expos to Canada.
An intense competitor who paired impressive pull power with a disciplined plate approach and a cannon of an arm in right field, Bautista was a driving force on the 2015 Blue Jays team that won the AL East and ended a 22-year playoff drought in Toronto. Facing the Rangers in the ALDS that year, he hit a go-ahead home run in Game 5 before flipping his bat in celebration.
At the time, many old-school baseball people considered it disrespectful, but a decade later bat flips are now commonplace. Watch Junior Caminero celebrate in 2025 and Bautista’s once-controversial celebration now looks tame in comparison.
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“I’m definitely surprised (at the shift), but in a good way,” he said on a conference call with other inductees Wednesday afternoon. “Everything should have its moment and its limits, right? It shouldn’t be, like, mass chaos when you’re out there. But the underlying premise of the discussion was about celebrating big moments within the game that you can share with the fans, right? That’s how I always looked at it.”
While Bautista’s contributions are known to millions of Canadian baseball fans, others have made their mark behind the scenes. Hamilton has been Baseball Canada’s head coach and director of men’s national teams since 1998, helping generations of Canadians push toward the big-leagues.
“That’s why you coach,” Hamilton said. “You just want to see people realize their potential and succeed. Personally for me, it’s the only time where you feel a little bit of gratitude and a great sense of accomplishment and happiness when you see people kind of figure it out, as we would say on the coaching side of things. Figure it out a little bit and mature and grow and get to where their potential’s meant to take them. It’s tremendously rewarding.”
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Also inducted will be Asay, who tragically passed away in 2022 after a skiing accident. A talented pitcher and hitter, she represented Canada in seven Women’s Baseball World Cups and helped her country win silver at the 2015 Pan American Games.
“It’s almost unbelievable that she’s going to be inducted with so many baseball legends. It’s overwhelming,” said her father, George Asay. “She would be terribly honoured. She didn’t do it for accolades, she did it for the love of baseball, but of course she would have thought this was a wonderful thing to be honoured for her contributions. She would have been over the moon.”
As for Bedard, the left-hander posted a 3.99 ERA over the course of 11 big-league seasons spanning 2002-14. His best year came with the Orioles in 2007, when he posted a 3.16 ERA on his way to a 13-5 record, 221 strikeouts and a fifth-place finish in Cy Young voting.
Asked about his contributions to baseball in Canada, Bautista said he hopes he and his Blue Jays teammates inspired a new generation of young fans and players.
“We kind of elevated the interest in the game within the country, which has a trickle-down effect,” he said. “I’d like to think that that reactivates the grassroots level and gets the kids excited back into playing. So maybe that’s one way we had an impact. We’re fortunate to do this for a living and I don’t think a lot of us take it for granted. But sometimes we don’t realize that our impact goes beyond the ticket booth.”
