He did a ton of charity work in both communities and left a lasting memory with all of his teammates. A truly incredible human being whose life was taken too quickly doing something he loved. However, he was one of my personal favourites growing up. I still remember the first time I ever saw Roy Halladay live.
We sat second row above the Blue Jays bullpen and I remember being in awe when he walked out of the bullpen and took the mound. That game was the first of many when I got to see Halladay live, but the first time was not a typical Halladay start. He only threw 5. Luckily for me, there were plenty of other chances to see him live. I was fortunate to be at his final home start as a Blue Jay when he threw a complete game against the New York Yankees.
Even after he went to the Philadelphia Phillies, I legitimately cheered for the Phillies every time Halladay took the mound. Myself and two of my friends went down to Pittsburgh in to see the Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates wearing our Halladay Phillies jerseys. Goodbye, Mr. We'll never forget you. Since , no one has more complete games than Roy Halladay. In , he won a second Cy Young, threw a perfect game, and pitched the second playoff no-no in MLB history; in , he ended up second in Cy Young voting.
And, amazingly, he did all this outside of a few momentary lapses while displaying all the emotional range of a Buick. Those who assumed, however, that the coldness he exuded on the mound defined him off of it were sorely mistaken. Halladay was an inexhaustible philanthropist, regularly inviting and hosting little patients at the Hospital for Sick Children and their families in "Doc's Box" at Rogers Centre. On numerous occasions, Halladay was the Blue Jays' nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award, given every year to the player who, for all intents and purposes, invests the most time into community service.
Not long ago, Halladay made a donation to his local sheriff's office, in Pasco County, so it could get a new service dog which, of course, was named Doc. And if Tuesday is any indication, there are roughly a million former teammates who would jump at the opportunity to extol the virtues of Roy Halladay, the human being.
Halladay was also a devoted family man. Reporters often marvelled at how Halladay's ferocious intensity at work would dissipate the second one of his sons popped into the clubhouse.
After retiring, Halladay, still relatively young, rejected overtures from the Blue Jays and Phillies about possible coaching opportunities to focus instead on Brandy and the boys.
Why coach in the big leagues, after all, when you can coach your son? Most recently, he served as pitching coach for Braden's high-school team, which, Halladay proudly noted , ranked fourth-best in the country in May. All of this is to say that Roy Halladay was, beneath that icy veneer of competition, positively wonderful - a marvelously gifted athlete who used his fame and fortune to help people, committed fiercely to his craft without neglecting his most important relationships, and somehow, through all of it, never gave off so much as a whiff of self-satisfaction.
Publicly, he never gave off much of anything until he retired, when he softened, as so many do, and his frosty on-field demeanor gave way to a surprisingly goofy, fun-loving dad brand. But, tragically, that suddenly goofy, selfie-snapping, joke-cracking, charity-giving, cigar-smoking, airplane-loving dad is gone. He won't get to wave at his boys from a Cooperstown podium, or enjoy the thunderous ovation the Rogers Centre crowd will conjure up when his name is added to the Level of Excellence someday in the near future.
Now, that famously elusive smile - which he'd been whipping out more generously in recent years after concealing it for so long - is part of a legacy of baseball excellence and humanitarianism and just general good-guy-ness that will endure for a very long time, and not only in Toronto and Philadelphia.
Still, the richness of that legacy can't yet be separated from the agonizing irony that Halladay - a lock for seven, maybe eight quality innings each time out - is gone way too soon. Sacrificing an unknown future for a sure-fire one seems to be in many ways the safer bet. Prospects come and go and the success rate on them is not exactly a favorable one.
Dealing Kyle Drabek could prove to be the wrong move, a stellar success, or a push. However, when a substantial talent like Roy Halladay can be added to help a club right now, the questioning of whether or not a prospect is worth sacrificing should not be such an agonizing contemplation.
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