From The Vault
Aug. 22, 2024. Joey Votto Retires
I’m taking a few days away. Here’s an appreciation of Joseph Daniel Votto, upon his retirement. See youse soon.
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It’s interesting when people decide Joey Votto was, I dunno, different. They don’t mean it in a hitting sense, even as Votto’s approach was indeed different, historically so. They’re not talking about Votto’s ability to get on base, to choose on-base percentage over big swings and bigger flyballs, though Votto’s thinking was iconoclastic on that subject, too.
What they mean, I think, is that Votto didn’t conform to the ballplayer caricature. He didn’t speak in cliches. He was sensitive. He was honest. He could express his feelings openly, he had many, many interests outside the ballpark.
Simply, everything about Joseph Daniel Votto was interesting. He was baseball’s Renaissance Man.
In the minor leagues, he carried with him on the road a tattered copy of Ted Williams’ classic instructional book, The Science of Hitting. In his last few years in the big leagues, he learned to play chess.
If the Reds were in New York and Votto had some spare time, you might find him in a Broadway theatre. He was friends with Rick Steiner, a Cincinnatian and Broadway producer. He toured Europe in the offseason.
It was always a tossup for me, as to which Votto entertained me more. Joey the hitter or Joey the thinker.
You could spend a 40-year career in locker rooms and clubhouses and not experience a player quite like Joseph Daniel Votto. Decades of taking “one-day-at-times’’ can leave a heathen scribe dying of word thirst. When Votto was available and interested, it was like finding a Gatorade machine in the Mojave Desert.
He’s retired now, after 17 seasons, but the memories aren’t. I recall driving to Dayton in the summer of 2009, when Votto was trying to find his swing after a stint on the DL. His father had passed the previous year and Votto had fallen into despair. He took some time away from the game, but now he was back, working out at what was then Fifth Third Field.
His father died the previous August, at 52. Votto’s grief overwhelmed him. Twice he checked himself into hospitals. He described it this way, to a Toronto sportswriter:
“I was having panic attacks and they were overwhelming me. I went to the hospital in Cincinnati when the team was on the road. It was a very, very scary and crazy night where I had to call 911 at three or four in the morning. It was probably the scariest moment I had ever dealt with in my life.”
The last person he wanted to see that day in Dayton was a sportswriter playing amateur shrink, prying into his deepest thoughts. Votto did the interview, even as I’m sure he didn’t want to. He was gracious and enlightening and just very human. He remained thus: The most human jock I ever wrote about. That’s what I’ll recall most about him.
We didn’t always get along. He dressed me down in the clubhouse once, demanding I look at him as he ripped me a new one. We disagreed on occasion on his hitting beliefs. That sounds stupid on its face today.
A sports hack telling Joey Votto how to hit? What a conceit.
Back then, I felt Votto was sacrificing RBI for OBP. His job was to drive in runs, not get on base. If the team had him lead off or bat 2nd, I suggested, OK. When you hit 3rd, you’re by definition an RBI guy.
By some folks’ definition. Not Joey Votto’s.
ESPN.com:
From 2007 to 2017, only Barry Bonds outranked Votto (.428) in on-base percentage among qualified hitters. Only three players beat him in batting average (.313) and only eight in slugging percentage (.541).
It’s possible I was wr. . . wr. . . not entirely correct in my analysis.
Votto was not just a student of hitting, he was a savant. Even at bat — maybe especially at bat — he showed a free and curious mind. When Votto arrived in the majors in 2007, homeruns were the ultimate. Hitting gurus taught launch angle. Strikeouts were considered a reasonable cost of doing business and for homerun hitters, business was good.
Votto hit lots of homeruns — 356, exactly — but he could have hit 100 more if that had been his goal. Instead, he chose to be a fastidious hitter. Surgical. Votto made you throw him strikes. He fell in love with on-base percentage and the Bill James-ian notion that making outs was the worst thing a hitter could do.
So pure was Votto’s bat control and discipline, he didn’t pop out to an opposing first baseman for 13 years. Let me repeat that: On April 17, 2019, Votto popped out to the Dodgers Cody Bellinger. It only took Baseball 1,592 games, 6,829 plate appearances and 27,918 pitches to get Votto to pop out to 1st.
For 17 seasons, he was one of the very few guys whose at-bats I’d never miss. (Kevin Mitchell and Albert Pujols, and Mark McGwire in the summer of ‘98, were the others.)
The Reds will never have another Joey Votto, for every reason imaginable, the biggest one being they will not give another player a 10-year contract. That was an emotional decision, not a practical one.
Judging Votto’s HOF-worthiness will require voters to see the quality of his career, not the quantity of its numbers. It will ask voters — especially older voters — to view Hall-worthiness in a different light, one not illuminated by the old gold standards of homers, RBI and .300 batting average.
I think he’s on the fence, more In than Out, but I don’t vote anymore so it doesn’t matter what I think.
Regardless, Votto was compelling and fully formed. He knew who he was and what he was about; he was eloquent in expressing all of it. I feel privileged to have covered his whole career.
“This game is faster,” Votto said Wednesday. “I’m not fast. This game is about more dynamic defense. This game has changed over the course of the back quarter of my career. I’m slower. The one thing I could attempt to do is perform offensively, and I’ve been awful, especially for my position. At some point, the writing is on the wall.”
Leave it to Votto to offer a reasoned, mature and seemingly ego-free assessment of himself. Best of luck, Joey. For guys like you, the best is yet to come.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Votto’s walk-up music. Paint it Black. Of course.
Several years ago, I was listening to a Reds Spring Training game and, before the game Marty Brenneman was interviewing this young kid trying to make the roster. It was Joey Votto and I remember that he was very articulate in his every answer. Back then, I thought, “this is a really nice kid. I hope he makes it.”. Well, it wasn’t long before he was doing just that, MAKING IT. Later, when his dad passed away and he struggled mightily, I felt so bad for him. Here he was, this public figure coping with a pain and a fear so personal and yet, all some fans were worried about was that he was not playing. Then the news of his panic attack got out and I never thought he was treated fairly. At that point, it seemed the idea that Joey Votto was “different” took hold. Well, in truth, he was and is different. Since that time, he has shown himself to be a great player, strategic hitter but, most of all, a real human being, one with many thoughts, interests and opinions. I thoroughly enjoyed his career and believe he is a legitimate candidate for the HOF and, if and when he is inducted, my son and I have every intention of being at that induction. Thank you, Doc for that well written piece and thank you, Joey Votto for allowing people like my son and me to enjoy and root for you all these years. As a long suffering Reds fan, you have truly been a breath of fresh air.
I have 2 big memories of Joey Votto.
I was an Adam Dunn fan. Yeah, I know he was called the Big Donkey for a reason. But he could hit and I identified with him - a natural first baseman stuck in the outfield. Back in 2005? or so I was sure the Reds would finally move Dunn to first next year. I was at the last game of the season, Votto was playing first. I saw him hit that day, and I remember thinking Dunn will never play first for the Reds.
The other big memory was about a dozen years later. I would check ESPN.com to see where the Reds were in the order. When Votto came up, I would switch to the Reds game to watch his at bats. He never disappointed. After he was done I'd go back to what I was doing until the next at bat. He was that good.