The timing was terrible, first of all. It was July 2013 and the Blue Jays were in the middle of their disastrous, season-long flop after an unprecedented off-season of raised expectations. They were last in the division and already out of the race with nearly half the season left to play. Fan angst was high.

Yet this is when the team’s owner, Rogers Communications, opted to unveil a 12-foot, bronze statue of its founder and former president, Ted Rogers, outside the stadium which also bears his name.

For the company, which acquired the Jays in 2000, the statue is a fitting tribute to an entrepreneurial patriarch, who they claim rescued the team from relocation. For many fans, who would have preferred a statue honouring a former player at the team’s home ballpark, it stands as another sign of a tone-deaf and out-of-touch owner in love with itself.

“It just seems like they’re really not respecting the level of tradition that other teams tend to respect,” says Mike Wilkomirsky, who has been a Jays fan for nearly 30 years. “It’s one of those little things that kind of eats away at you as a Jays fan when you look at other historic franchises that would never dare to do something like that.”

The Jays aren’t the only team in Major League Baseball yet to erect any statues of former players. They are among a group of nine, which ironically includes the L.A. Dodgers, one of the game’s most iconic franchises. But the Jays are one of just two teams who have bronzed a former owner before any players. The other is the L.A. Angels, who in 2009 unveiled a statue of Gene Autry, the franchise’s founding owner who remained at the helm until his death in 1998, a span of 38 years. Baseball’s other owners who have been similarly enshrined — George Steinbrenner, Connie Mack, Bud Selig and Autry — held their positions for decades and are regarded as giants of the game. Critics argue that Ted Rogers is none of those things. He isn’t the father of baseball in Toronto and his eight years as team owner pale in comparison to the contributions of others, both on and off the field.

Wilkomirsky said he wouldn’t be as offended by the statue if there were statues of players as well. He suggested Roberto Alomer raising his arms after homering off of Dennis Eckersley in the 1992 ALCS or Joe Carter’s walk-off home run to win the 1993 World Series as two iconic moments worth commemorating. “The fact that it’s still the only statue there and it’s in such a prominent place and it’s somebody who’s only actively involved with the team for a few years and basically just writing cheques, I just find it very disrespectful to the fans and the organization, even the front office. All the managers and coaches and scouts, they’re not recognized, yet somebody who basically just bought the team as a hobby is the one who’s recognized.”

For now, Rogers has no plans to erect any other statues, company spokeswoman Andrea Goldstein wrote in an email response to questions from The Star. “The statue was created to celebrate Ted’s spirit and legacy. Ted believed the Blue Jays played a central role in the civic pride of Canada and loved being amongst the fans at the game.” Goldstein said the decision to erect the statue was made by the Rogers family. She did not directly answer a question about whether any other locations were considered, such as at the company’s corporate headquarters at Bloor and Jarvis streets. “Rogers Centre is the perfect home for this special tribute,” she wrote.

Last year the Toronto Maple Leafs unveiled Legends Row, an evolving monument to the franchise’s former greats, to which the team plans to regularly add new statues. Ted Kennedy, Johnny Bower and Darryl Sittler were part of the first enshrined class, with Borje Salming, George Armstrong and Syl Apps set to be added next. While the Jays, who next year will celebrate their 40th season, can’t claim a 100-year history like the Leafs or the New York Yankees, they have won as many or more World Series as 16 other MLB teams and boast their share of iconic moments and players. Beyond the early-90s glory years there’s George Bell dropping to his knees after catching the pennant-clinching final out in 1985, Dave Stieb’s no-hitter and Carlos Delgado’s four-homer game. Even off-field figures like longtime general manager Pat Gillick, late broadcaster Tom Cheek or pioneering scout Epy Guerrero are arguably worthy of distinction.

Wilkomirsky concedes that Rogers’ purchase of the Jays from Interbrew — the Belgian brewing giant, now known as InBev, who inherited the team when it bought Labatt’s in 1995 — was an important turning point for the franchise. “Fans recognize that,” he said. “But it just seems so self-serving for Rogers to only recognize somebody from Rogers rather than somebody from the Blue Jays.”