If you ever doubted the universe had a bleak sense of humour, Alex Anthopoulos was told he had been named Major League Baseball’s executive of the year just before a telecommunications-challenged conference call to discuss his departure from the Toronto Blue Jays, less than one week after the end of the franchise’s best season in over 20 years. Almost perfect, really. You couldn’t write it any better.

Never underestimate this city’s ability to turn sports into farce. Anthopoulos had authored a fabulous season, something unbelievable. He loved it here. His kids were born here. It’s his dream job, at eye-popping money. He wanted to stay.

But he decided he couldn’t, and now he’s gone. This was the end of a very long, blind, careless fuse lit last year by Rogers Communications, whose stewardship of this franchise finally blundered into success this season. It was, as endings go, ridiculous.

“I just didn’t feel like this was the right fit for me going forward,” said Anthopoulos on the conference call Thursday, over and over. He took the high road, where there’s less traffic. He said it wasn’t about money. He said it wasn’t about how he was treated. He said it wasn’t that Rogers and incoming president Mark Shapiro didn’t want to keep him, and that they had treated him brilliantly. Ed Rogers, the scion of this family business, said in a statement the club had offered Anthopoulos a five-year contract.

Ed didn’t mention the terms, though. Anthopoulos wasn’t going to accept being anything less than the general manager of this team. Would you? He built a top-four team in baseball, so of course that’s how he felt. That’s why he left.

Shapiro, meanwhile, wanted control. Wouldn’t you? The consensus in baseball was that Shapiro had been pushed upstairs from the GM job in Cleveland after 65- and 69-win seasons. Running the business operations of the Cleveland Indians — 29th, 29th, 28th, 29th, 24th and 30th in attendance the past six years — doesn’t seem like the job of a lifetime. Shortly after he was hired by the Jays, word began filtering through baseball that Shapiro was telling people he couldn’t wait to get back into player personnel. You can be sure Rogers gave him that power.

And that’s where it broke. In a face-to-face meeting with the senior members of the Jays’ front office, Shapiro said he strongly disagreed with some of the deadline choices that sent prospects out. The initial contract offer to Anthopoulos, according to an official who was briefed on the talks, was a two-year deal, with the second year an option.

It was an insult. By the time Rogers tried to give Anthopoulos a five-year contract, it was already too late.

Alex Anthopoulos' Baseball Career

Funny story: When Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment made its first list of candidates for its president’s job, it included all kinds of businessmen, sports executives and notably, former Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo. At one point of the very long, veering process, it sounded like Colangelo’s candidacy was more than a name on a page.

On Thursday, as the Jays forest fire raged, MLSE hired airline executive Michael Friisdahl, who has no visible sports background, and could not conceivably threaten Brendan Shanahan, or Masai Ujiri, or Tim Bezbatchenko. Somehow, in that way at least, they got it right.

Rogers, meanwhile, hired a baseball man, and the moment that happened they severed their relationship with the franchise’s most successful GM since Pat Gillick. Anthopoulos was young, Canadian, universally respected, and someone who generated tremendous loyalty from his staff. He was never perfect, but he was everything you want in a GM, mistakes and all.

And Rogers, in the end, either didn’t know, or didn’t care. Don’t believe the venal spin that Anthopoulos rejected the contract unless you include the fact that he rejected a job as an assistant GM, at best. Don’t believe it if someone says he tried to pitch Rogers on reporting directly to the head of the company. Anthopoulos, more than anything, is a loyal soldier. Probably too loyal, in the end.

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Consider this: In November, Ed Rogers tried to replace Paul Beeston without Beeston’s knowledge by calling up Beeston’s best friend in baseball, Jerry Reinsdorf. In January, ownership asked Yankees president Randy Levine to help them name a successor.

The day Rogers interviewed ex-Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski, the Jays won their 15th game out of 18. The day Shapiro was hired, the Jays had won 24 of 29. The day before Russell Martin had said, “If this isn’t the feel of a championship team, I don’t know what is.”

Ownership never appreciated what they had. They didn’t know what they were doing. They failed. Major League Baseball steered them to Shapiro, and they never changed course, even after the storm took them by surprise. The problem is not just that Alex Anthopoulos is gone, precisely: the graveyards, as they say, are full of indispensable men. It’s that the owners of this team took the incredible joy and frenzy this team generated, and turned it into this. They gave their new president a furious fan base, and employees who spent time Thursday crying at their desks. The pressure on Mark Shapiro is now immense, and any parachute he had is gone.

Alex Anthopoulos put his whole heart into this team and into this city, right to the end. But this is a heartless business, sports. Sometimes, they make it hard to cheer.