It’s easy to appreciate the artistry with which Troy Tulowitzki fields his position.

Always throwing on the run — twisting, turning and contorting his body to make improbable plays look effortless — he exhibits a combination of grace and power that wouldn’t look out of place onstage.

It’s more difficult to imagine the Blue Jays’ six-foot-three, 205-pound shortstop doing a plie in a leotard, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t parallels between Tulowitzki’s unique style and ballet.

“He has his own technique, but there are similarities for sure,” says Heather Ogden, a principal dancer at the National Ballet of Canada. “He definitely looks graceful.”

Tulowitzki is struggling at the plate to start the season, but the five-time all-star — who holds baseball’s highest all-time fielding percentage for a shortstop — is still sublime in the middle of the diamond. Ogden, a longtime Jays fan and one of the country’s most accomplished ballerinas, spoke to the Star about the aspects of Tulowitzki’s movements in which she sees her own.

“A lot of his moves remind me a bit of a pirouette,” she said, referring specifically to Tulowitzki’s spinning throws, which he has already displayed a few times this season. “He’s using the movement of his body to gain momentum, taking the force of going towards the ball and using it to turn the same way. I think that’s probably why he can get the ball released so much faster.”

The extent to which Tulowitzki throws on the run is a product of his overall aggressive style. He prefers to attack ground balls rather than let them come to him.

“There’s guys who can throw on the run, but nobody does it as much as he does,” says Luis Rivera, the Jays’ infield coach and a former middle infielder himself. “When guys have to do it, they do it. But with him it’s almost every throw.”

Rivera said he’d never thought of Tulowitzki’s style as balletic, but agreed that it’s definitely graceful. “You know what’s amazing? A guy his size being able to do that — turn and control his body — and still make an accurate throw.”

Tulowitzki’s midair throws also caught Ogden’s eye, particularly how he coordinates his upper and lower body, which she said is also akin to ballet.

“When he’s fielding the ball and turning he’s got incredible power and torque in his lower body, but then in midair he’s making a throw to first and it’s a straight throw. So he has to be able to separate the function of his lower body and his upper body, which is what we aim to do in ballet.”

In ballet, Ogden says, dancers must perform physically demanding moves while making them look light and elegant. So they generate power and momentum with their legs without reflecting that stress in their upper bodies. Ogden may do eight jumps in succession, for instance, but her arms will make one fluid motion. The result is the appearance of effortless grace.

Tulowitzki does the same thing, but for a different reason. He may not need to look elegant, but while his legs do the heavy work of getting to the ball and generating momentum, his arms need to move with grace and precision in order to make an accurate throw.

“He has the same kind of body split, mechanically,” said Ogden, who has been with the national ballet for 18 years now.

The 35-year-old comes by her baseball fandom honestly. Growing up in Richmond, B.C., she played competitive softball while also dancing ballet. She actually had to choose between the stage and the diamond when she was about 13, and the time commitments made pursuing both impossible.

“It’s funny now to think how difficult a choice it was,” she says. “I think I made the right one.”

Tulowitzki could only laugh incredulously when it was suggested to him that his defensive play elicited comparisons to classical dance. He said his throwing style is not calculated or contrived; it’s just how he’s always done it. “People are going to look at it as unique,” he said. “But for me, it’s normal.”

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He isn’t the only professional athlete who has drawn comparisons to the ballet — which is exacting, highly technical and very physically demanding. Last November, The New York Times asked members of the Oakland Ballet Company about the aesthetic of Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry, whom they described as a “magician” who “dribbles the ball the way we handle a woman on stage.”

The effortless look comes from countless hours playing around as a kid in his backyard, where he made “a million throws.”

Tulowitzki said he and his friends would play HORSE — the basketball game where you have to replicate your opponent’s shot — but with baseball throws. “Always trying to hit things, trying to have a target. That came to what it is today: being able to throw from different arm angles.”

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