SAN FRANCISCO — Cody Atkinson stopped at a toy store on his way to work Tuesday on some very important business for the Toronto Blue Jays. Along with fellow assistant Lou Iannotti and head hitting coach David Popkins, he sought to change the vibes around their struggling players and decided to bring something in that represented fearlessness. They looked at some antique stores before settling on Just For Fun, where Atkinson sent his counterparts pics of various items — a sword, a wolf pack — before locking in on a dragon.
Atkinson then picked out a stuffed dragon, a dragon hand puppet and a dragon trinket and brought them to the register, where the cashier asked, “This is for your kids?”
“I said, ‘Actually, no. This is actually for the Toronto Blue Jays,’” Atkinson relayed. “He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I was like, ‘Well, I’m a hitting coach. It’s for our hitters.’ And I was, like, ‘Honestly, if we hit a home run tonight, you might see it.’ He’s like, ‘Really? I go to games a lot. I’m going to watch the game.’”
If he did end up watching, the cashier would indeed have seen the stuffed dragon he sold hours earlier held up by Jonatan Clase, after his three-run shot in the second inning eased some pressure on the Blue Jays and sent them to a 9-3 win over the San Francisco Giants.
Whatever effect, real or imagined, the dragons had, the Blue Jays tripled their output of three runs and matched their hits total of 13 from the previous four games of a difficult road trip. They blasted starter Trevor McDonald for eight runs on 11 hits in 2.1 innings and, most importantly, hunted better pitches over the heart of the plate rather than chasing borderline offerings.
The stuffed dragon was in the batting cage before the game — manager John Schneider said he saw Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Brandon Valenzuela petting it at one point, with George Springer carrying it around the cage at another — and then became part of the club’s home-run celebration, raised after the Home Run Jacket-clad Clase ran through the dugout.
“I think it was like 40 bucks for that one, and then the other two things were like 15 bucks each — well worth it for eight runs in the first three innings to get a starter out of the game,” said Atkinson. “I mean, I would have spent thousands of dollars if you told me we were going to get the starter out that quick and score eight off of him.”
That wasn’t necessary, not with the dragon offering a fitting symbol for the demands of the moment.
Popkins, during a lengthy chat with media in the dugout Tuesday afternoon, mentioned on multiple occasions the need to be fearless, and to shift back to the attack from their “protective states, stressed states.”
As he and his fellow coaches kicked around ideas following Monday’s 8-3 drubbing, they liked the idea of a predator with no fear, but wanted it in a way that would add some levity.
Popkins recalled how when he was with the Minnesota Twins, they escaped from a slump by smacking a sausage on their way to the plate, a good-luck charm that helped free their minds before their at-bat started. The dragons offered a far more sanitary and non-perishable items to reflect they key themes of “being the hunter, not the hunted.”
“It’s like, hey, what’s a predator that’s fearless? A dragon,” explained Atkinson. “It’s just such a long season, that you need something to lean on, or a mascot, or something that you start doing. We were doing (the banging knuckles together after hits) for a while and it just kind of comes and goes, and things get tired, and they kind of wear themselves out. Our biggest thing was like, how do we instill some fearlessness back into us? How do we instill a hunter type of mentality versus hunted? And that’s really just what we wanted.”
Guerrero first discovered the dragon in the cage and said, “sometimes we have to bring in something to have fun,” which is exactly what they did against the Giants.
“The thing I heard was dragons breathe fire,” Guerrero added, “so the first time we took him out, we got on fire.”
Atkinson credited Springer for taking the idea and running with it, “carrying it around the cages, parading it around. You press the ear and it growls, lights turned red and it looks like it’s breathing fire. … The puppet stayed in the cage. The little toy one ended up kind of traveling around. But then the stick one with the breathing fire was in the dugout by the time Clase hit the homer.”
The dragons are far from the most unusual good-luck charm Atkinson has ever seen, as in 2023 with the Texas Rangers, “we had an ostrich egg that guys were petting before they would hit.”
“I think so,” Atkinson continued. “Austin Hedges got it, and he had a whole nest for it and everything. (Kazuma) Okamoto told us that in Japan, they put salt mounds by the cages when they’re struggling. Baseball is a superstitious sport. So I think the ostrich egg is the weirdest one I’ve seen. And it worked for a while. But yeah, dragon. Pretty cool. Just cool that it worked out. It would have been thrown in the trash if it didn’t.”
Instead, the dragons remain another day and the Blue Jays are seeking a name for their primary new charm, open to suggestions.
“The main one, it’s been called a bunch of different things,” said Atkinson. “George tried to name it, a couple other people had ideas. We’ve got to wait for a name. It’ll probably be a good thing to just put out there. Let other people name it.”
What it’s eventually called is secondary to what it’s meant to help accomplish.
“Every team goes through this and I think for our guys it was just getting back to the fearlessness that they had,” said Atkinson. “Specifically last year when you watched this team, I was with a different organization, but it was like, they made the pitcher afraid of them and I think lately the way they’ve been pitched, you watch that guy on the mound, he’s not afraid. And so we wanted to take that back a little bit.”
For one game, with their new mascots, they did just that.
