Votto took the call on his mother’s cellphone during drama class at Etobicoke’s Richview Collegiate. He was relieved it was the Reds—he had gone to school to get away from the pestering Yankees scout who was camped out at the house with his mom and dad. “It was hard for people to understand, especially my parents. But it wasn’t fun, it was stressful.” When the deal was finally worked out around the dining room table at 2 a.m., Joey was asleep on the couch. Castleberry, who in 20 years of scouting has seen just seven of his prospects make it to “The Show,” remembers having to wake him up to sign the papers.
Others in that draft class—including fellow Canadians Adam Lowen and Jeff Francis, the fourth and ninth picks respectively—made it to the majors far before he did. Votto had to climb every rung of the ladder, starting in the Gulf Coast League, then to the Billings Mustangs in the Pioneer. In Dayton, Ohio, with the Single-A Dragons, he used to cut the lawn for the family that billeted him. In Double-A Chattanooga he distinguished himself as the kid who would show up in a sport coat for a six-hour bus ride. The coaches at every level raved about his work ethic. “That’s because they can’t talk about how good a natural athlete I was,” Votto says wryly. He never made one of those “Top 100 Prospects” lists until 2007, the season he was finally called up. In his first game with the Reds, just a couple of days before his 24th birthday that September, he went 3-for-3 with a homer against the NY Mets.
In 2008, Votto batted .297, hit 24 homers, and was the runner-up for the NL Rookie of the Year. But any sense of accomplishment was dulled by his father’s sudden death that August, at age 52, of undisclosed causes. Votto took a week’s bereavement leave, and then returned to finish the season. All that winter, he struggled with not only the loss, but the responsibility he felt toward his family—especially his twin brothers, Ryan and Paul, just eight at the time.
He started off 2009 at a torrid pace, batting .357 and collecting 33 RBIs over the first 38 games. But there were unexplained dizzy spells that caused him to miss a dozen games. On three occasions that spring, Votto became so overwhelmed during play that he had to be walked off the field by Reds manager Dusty Baker. Twice he ended up at the emergency room in the throes of full-blown panic attacks. “It got to the point where I thought I was going to die,” Votto later told reporters. Doctors diagnosed him as suffering from anxiety and depression. He left the team for three weeks to seek treatment.
Votto’s only ever really talked about it once, when he rejoined the team just in time for a series against the Blue Jays that June. Sitting in a dugout at the Rogers Centre, he opened up about his grief, sadness and fears. “We’re supposed to be known as being mentally tough and be able to withstand any type of adversity. But this is, pardon my French, real-life s–t. I just couldn’t take it,” he said.
As Joey Votto’s fame grows, the euphemisms are piling up, references to his “business-like demeanour,” or as Sports Illustrated artfully put it in a cover story last August, his “indifference to image.” The process of obtaining an interview with the Reds slugger involves multiple warnings about the many things he will not talk about. Maybe it’s a persona designed to make his questioners as uneasy as the pitchers he lines up against. But when you finally sit down in front of his locker, he’s thoughtful, unfailingly polite, and more than willing to poke fun at himself. Those who work with Votto speak admiringly of his habit of sending cards and gifts to team staff and those who supported him on his way up. It’s something he says he learned from his parents. “I always remember how they treated the people in the restaurant—the dishwashers, the people who took out the trash.”
Sitting in his office, belt undone and using a trash can as a spittoon, Dusty Baker—as touchy and feely a manager as exists in baseball—acknowledges Votto’s intense nature. Is he maybe a little too serious? “What do I do, tell him a joke every day?” asks Baker. “Sometimes you just leave people alone.” Truth be told, baseball is filled with far more difficult personalities. “Joey’s just Joey,” says Baker. “He still likes to have a good time. You just gotta read it before you laugh at him.”
Chippy about the way he was underestimated as a player, Votto has become warier still of those who would pigeonhole him as a person. “I don’t like it when people put limits on me.”
The coolest thing that happened after the MVP award was receiving a text message from Wayne Gretzky, which eventually resulted in a couple of nice conversations. Votto wasn’t aware that another Richview Collegiate alumnus—Stephen Harper—tweeted his congrats until a reporter brings it up. The 27-year-old likes to spend his downtime reading, and barbecuing. He named his dog Maris, after Roger, the Yankees outfielder who was the first to break Babe Ruth’s hallowed single-season home run record in 1961. “I thought it was kind of unfair that Roger got treated like s–t, while everyone wanted Mickey Mantle to do it,” he says. But ask him if he personally identifies with the guy who excelled playing in the shadows, and the window slams down. “No.”
There’s a girlfriend, but it’s one of his representatives that mentions her in passing, not him. He’d rather you didn’t talk to his mother, now the head sommelier at a fancy Italian eatery in Toronto. (To her despair, Votto says he doesn’t “get” wine.) During the season, he keeps up with his young brothers by joining them in online video games. He’s happy that they don’t seem that impressed with his awards. “I think they’re just kind of meh about it, which is cool.”
He’s been taking correspondence courses, studying education for the past three years, although he’s initially reluctant to even put that on the record. Someday he’d like to return to school and get a degree. After all he’s been through, it’s natural to wonder if Joey Votto intends to somehow put it to use aiding others suffering from grief and depression. The answer is yes, someday. But even then it will all be on his undisclosed terms. “There are so many different ways to help,” he says. “A lot of people take pride in doing things privately.”
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