At some point Toronto started thinking of Jose Bautista in the context of moments, and which one would be the last one.

The Bat Flip was one thing; the Contract Negotiation was something else entirely. In the 2016 playoffs he did smash the one home run against Baltimore, and one against the Texas Rangers, and the Jays beat the two teams in baseball that hated him most. He ended the season stranded at second base against Cleveland; it was one last hit in a mostly miserable playoffs. The crowd had chanted his name, and he had delivered, one more time. And everyone figured that was the end.

“That was nice to see,” Bautista said that day, as the clubhouse was silently starting to be packed up. “It’s great. I used to see specks of it here and there on opening days and Canada Days, and you knew the potential was there, but nobody wants to root for a loser.”

Now, unexpectedly, Jose Bautista appears to be back. It has been reported as a one-year deal plus a mutual option that could total approximately $40 million U.S. It has the feeling of the last call at a lonely bar, sure: Bautista’s dreams of an earned payday have been deferred, at the least, and the Jays couldn’t figure out how to attain their stated goals: get younger, get more athletic, get more left-handed bats. And so after wandering around — watching Edwin Encarnacion sign in Cleveland, watching a market neither side seemed to fully grasp until it fully formed — the relationship isn’t over.

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Will it work? Well, Bautista is 36, and since Kendrys Morales gets put in the field about as often as your car gets put in the swimming pool — both are bad ideas — Bautista is going to have to play a lot of right field. His numbers dropped last year: His strikeout rate neared 20 per cent, his isolated power number dropped, his batting average was the lowest of his full-time career. In right field, he was suddenly an adventure, and his once-fearsome arm wasn’t the same.

He suffered from turf toe and a sprained knee. His bat speed was questioned, especially as he struck out 12 times in 33 post-season at-bats. At times, he looked like he got old. Happens to the best of ’em.

Maybe he can be healthy, and be himself, and if he is close to what he was, then this lineup makes a lot more sense than it did a week ago. He has incentives. He has pride.

But then, he had pride and incentives when he showed up last year and said he would not negotiate, and was demanding more than $150 million. Back when he retooled his swing after being discarded by the Pirates, it was all about the hands coming through the zone faster, which forced his lead leg to come down sooner, which quieted all the loose ends of what had been a constantly changing swing. Maybe those hands aren’t as fast as they used to be. He can still see the strike zone, but maybe he can’t get there as fast. Add the declining defence, add another year, and it could be a problem.

Meanwhile, the Jays are trying to win with this ad hoc-feeling lineup that has been cobbled together with Edwin gone. Morales still seems like he was a panicky grab at designated hitter, Steve Pearce and Justin Smoak will share first unless Pearce wins out, and there are still a lot of older, right-handed bats. It’s funny; Mark Shapiro was hired to rebuild this franchise, because this was an older team whose window wasn’t unlimited. Now it still is, and it seems like the franchise is trying to run as far as it can over the canyon before it has to look down and fall.

So, here they are. It seems like ownership wants the revenues to keep rolling in, and absent the kind of truly big-time payroll push that is clearly not coming, Jose Bautista is a perfectly acceptable bet. Neither side set out to find this particular arrangement. Life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to.

So, may as well make the most of it. Jose Bautista has been one of Toronto’s defining athletes for nearly a decade, and this franchise is still capable of something before this era ends. Bautista shouldn’t be humbled. He shouldn’t come in meek. He should come in and try to shove it up everybody’s keister again because it’s who he has always been, inside and out.

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And these sides need each other, for now. If you wanted to be cynical, you would say this is a half-desperate sop to the fans who have remained restless and emotional since the transfer of power, and that Bautista stands a chance to make lousy new last memories: Not quite Willie Mays stumbling in centre field, but a lesser ending.

Or, you could say that they brought back an icon, and he could be great again. This franchise is caught between instant nostalgia and an uncertain future and fans who demand glory right now, and this is the best example yet. This Jays era could crumble this season, or a season from now, or even a year after that. At some point, they’re probably going to have to take a step back. But nobody wants to root for a loser. Not again. Not yet.

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