{"id":910025,"date":"2026-09-26T06:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T06:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910025\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T06:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T06:16:09","slug":"guerrero-jr-s-apology-reflects-standards-that-come-with-stardom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910025\/","title":{"rendered":"Guerrero Jr.’s apology reflects standards that come with stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 Three-and-a-half hours before game time Friday, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.<\/a> stood before the media backdrop outside the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> clubhouse and tried to make amends. For roughly 12 minutes, as teammates glanced over on their way to or from the adjacent gym, he sounded a different note than he did Wednesday<\/a>, when the tone-deaf comments he made to Veronica Batista of Noticias Telemicro<\/a>\u00a0about receiving his $500-million deal for what he\u2019d already done first went viral, apologizing before a throng of media, explaining that it wasn\u2019t what he\u2019d meant to say, even if he didn\u2019t clarify what he meant to get across, and vowing \u201cto make my contract a great one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a season gone horribly sour for him and his team, the whole scene was one more swig of vinegar, sitting uneasily amid all the accumulated bile. How this all gets digested depends on how Guerrero performs in the years to come, but during Friday\u2019s 6-5 win over the Cincinnati Reds, a crowd of 42,535 gave him a lukewarm welcome each time he stepped up to the plate: mostly cheers, some boos. Fans jeered in the first inning when he beat a ball into the ground two feet from the plate and was tagged by catcher Jose Trevino, and again in the fifth when Nick Lodolo caught him looking, but they chanted his name in the seventh before he chopped a ball through the right side for an RBI single.<\/p>\n

When you get the bag and make a sloppy unforced error, especially amid a dreadful offensive season as the Blue Jays were eliminated from post-season contention, all of it is part of the package.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was surprised (at the reaction to his interview comments), but that’s the reason that I’m here, because I probably didn’t understand what I was trying to say, or maybe I didn’t explain what I wanted to say,\u201d Guerrero said through interpreter Hector Lebron. \u201cI\u2019m here to apologize to everyone and letting them know that I am going to go into the off-season, I’m going to work very hard, I am going to be ready, I will be focused to make that contract a great one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the scale of the club\u2019s financial investment in him and the commitment to building around him for the next 13 years, Guerrero\u2019s attempt to pay penance is significant, well beyond trying to quell an especially tumultuous turn through the content-creation cycle.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays\u2019 leadership group is in transition \u2014 Chris Bassitt left last off-season, Kevin Gausman, Daulton Varsho and Jeff Hoffman were all dealt at the trade deadline, and this is likely the last weekend of George Springer\u2019s time with the club<\/a>, if not his career \u2014 and Guerrero is the most obvious candidate to help fill the void.<\/p>\n

In posting the way he has, playing through a back issue that first popped up in mid-June, not pouting his way through or making excuses for personal struggles at the plate and continuing to pour into his teammates, the 27-year-old has helped set important internal standards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, he needs to resume delivering the level of performance expected of and needed from him, and there simply can\u2019t be the type of public discourse around his commitment created by his sloppy comments.<\/p>\n

Guerrero seemed to recognize that, driving the decision to address media with the apology, since the Blue Jays hadn\u2019t planned on holding a formal availability with him. During Thursday\u2019s off-day, he discussed the entire situation with people close to him, including his Hall of Fame father, and \u201che basically told me that what I did was wrong and to make sure to do what I’m doing right now, to give all my fans an apology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manager John Schneider also said that he and the first baseman \u201chad proactive conversations \u2026 and I know he has with his teammates, too.\u201d Guerrero also called his teammates together to apologize, an internal accountability that really matters in the moment, but even more so moving forward, given the wider circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat matters most to all of us are the people in the building,\u201d said Schneider, adding later that \u201che’s one of the best teammates that I’ve ever seen and he definitely puts in the work to post every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who\u2019s seen Guerrero behind the scenes grinding in the batting cage hours before first pitch or well after the lights are turned out won\u2019t doubt that. But because of who he is, what he means, how much is invested in him and all that\u2019s riding on his success, every single thing he says will be scrutinized and everything he does matters in a way it doesn\u2019t for anyone else.<\/p>\n

So Guerrero, at the tail end of a terrible year, said something dumb and created noise his team didn\u2019t need in the final week of a season that can\u2019t end soon enough. Showing contrition for that was the right thing to do, and everything else rests on Guerrero once again performing like the superstar he should be.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 Three-and-a-half hours before game time Friday, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. stood before the media backdrop outside the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-910025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}