TORONTO

One late night in Toronto, J.P. Arencibia came across a homeless man and instead of looking the other way uncomfortably — the way a lot of us do on a daily basis — he walked to the corner gas station and bought the man a sandwich.

He then sat down with him and had a conversation.

That’s the Arencibia that Toronto fell in love with. Big man. Big heart. Wanting so badly to the be face or the voice of the Blue Jays. The kind of athlete who cares as much about the people asking for an autograph as those who are signing them.

That Arencibia will be missed as midnight passed on Monday and he wasn’t tendered an offer by the Blue Jays. That Arencibia will be missed in the community, in the hospitals by the charities, as he is now free to sign on with any Major League team and now that the Jays have signed the veteran Dioner Navarro, there is no place for the confounding work-in-progress that was Arencibia the ballplayer.

Arencibia the man was easy to embrace, to like, to cheer for, to want to be part of your favourite baseball team. Arencibia the catcher, the big-swinger who missed too often, statistically the worst offensive and defensive catcher in the big leagues, that guy had to go. That was obvious after last season.

And that’s the difficulty of this day, saying goodbye to one of the good ones and one of the bad ones all at the very same time.

Last spring, Arencibia told me about stopping to talk to the homeless, about never turning down an autograph request, about how he was impacted as a young man when ballplayers he admired turned their backs on him and he never wanted to do that to any kid again. Never wanted a kid to feel the way he felt upon being turned down.

“It has to do with humanity,” he told me in spring training, talking about the homeless. “You see someone on the street, you can walk right by him or you can ask him ‘How are you doing?’ and give him some food. You don’t know what they’re going to do with the food. They either take it or use it for something else. But you pray they used it for good. And you know what, you never know when you can change someone’s life.”

Arencibia may have changed someone’s life along the way. That we don’t know. But it was his career as a ballplayer, his catching, his erratic hitting, that he needed to alter with the Blue Jays but was too stubborn, too outwardly sensitive, to unwilling to work with coaches, to make today possible.

He should have been a star here, and if not that, certainly a staple in Toronto. He had that first-round cache. He has natural power, the kind so few possess. He has charisma. He has something to say.

In the past three years he had 120 extra base hits — more than Brian McCann had, who just signed for $85 million with the New York Yankees — but this is as much about what Arencibia didn’t do rather than what he did.

He didn’t get better behind the plate. He couldn’t stop striking out. He rarely, if ever, walked. He became way too easy of an out. He frustrated fans, teammates, his coaches with his unwillness to accept advice, to view what was happening with him in a constructive manner.

In his final season with the Jays, Arencibia warred on Twitter, took on Jays broadcasters Dirk Hayhurst and Gregg Zaun on radio, went to president Paul Beeston and asked for a more positive media environment and drew more into himself, overly-sensitive to all that was going on around him and all that was being said about him.

He was defiant right to the end of the season, not coming to grips with the flaws other found in his game, shielding his inabilities behind his hospital visits and goodwill deeds.

“Big picture, it doesn’t always matter if you strike out or hit a home run,” he said. “What matters is the people you have impacted in your life. I really believe that.

“I have to be more than a ballplayer,” the 27-year-old Arencibia said.

But he had to be a ballplayer first. When he failed at that, he gave Alex Anthopoulos no choice, really. It was time to say goodbye. Difficult, but time.