‘Are you joking right now?’ Blue Jay Josh Palacios is still over the moon after his MLB debut

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This article was published 10/04/2021 (1676 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DUNEDIN, FLA.—When the stars come out to twinkle at night and the fans have all vacated the premises and the ballpark is hushed, there is suddenly a terrifying clamour.

Squawks and screeches and piercing caw-caw-caws. Angry birds. And … was that a chattering gibbon?

“Me and J.D. have looked at each other a couple of times saying, man, what’s going on?” Josh Palacios admits, wide-eyed, referring to himself and Blue Jays buddy Jonathan Davis. “A flock of birds screaming for no reason. I might have to go out there and investigate what’s going on.”

Mystery solved: The sound effects are an audio tape, pumped through the sound system at TD Ballpark overnight, to scare off real birds so they don’t excrete guano all over the seats.

Funny thing though on Friday evening, as Palacios was leaving the park. Didn’t hear a thing. “I was so locked in.”

Hours after making his Major League Baseball debut — and shame that it had to be in a tatty spring training park — Palacios was still walking on air. Next afternoon, still couldn’t wrench the grin off his face. He actually took courage from the familiar environs. “It felt like home. I’ve been here for a whole season. I’ve played spring training games in it. I already knew the field, the atmosphere, the lights, how everything plays. So I was able to be nice and comfortable.”

The 25-year-old, who’d made a good spring training impression on Charlie Montoyo, was over at the alternate training site when Bisons manager Casey Candaele gruffly called him into the office. Candaele and position coach Devon White played mental hacky sack with the outfielder for a while as he sat fretting over what he might have done to make them so mad. Finally Candaele dropped the pretense. Just kidding. “You’re going to the big leagues.”

“I was like, oh shoot, are you serious? Are you joking right now? They were dead serious. I was in a state of shock.”

And more than a little confused. Because it was two o’clock and the Jays were set to play the Angels at 7 p.m., and “what do I do, where do I go?”

“I was trying to figure out, how do I get to the field? I was able to pack up my locker, throw all my stuff in the car and then was zooming through traffic, calling my dad, calling my brother, calling my mom, calling my uncle, just trying to get those quick phone calls in, before I got here.”

Dad Richard, by the way, played in the Detroit Tigers system in the ’80s. Uncle Rey was with the Kansas City Royals for three years. The latter greeted his nephew’s news thusly: “It’s about time, but you still got a long way before you can catch me.”

The Brooklyn-born and raised Palacios — he still lives there in the off-season — doesn’t rattle easily. But he was frankly agog, looking across the field at the superstar likes of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. “Seeing Mike Trout kind of makes it a little more obvious that you’re in a major-league game,” Palacios told reporters during a downright sweet and infectiously bubbly Zoom session. “I’ve watched him plenty of times on TV. It was cool, but it kind of changed everything. I had to look at him different ’cause he’s trying to take the W from our team. Couldn’t admire him as much as I used to.”

Although he did sneak somewhat revenant peeks at Dexter Fowler, upon whom he’s modelled his own game. “Fast guy, good arm, plays defence, can swing, puts the ball in play.”

Fowler was injured in Friday’s 7-1 Halos win, was golf-carted off the field. Not that Palacios had any chance to interact with him anyway. “Nah, I was a little nervous. He was on the other team. I didn’t want to be the guy that, hey, what’s up Fowler? What’s up Trout? Once I got onto the field it’s: hey, it’s business. If they’re around after the game and I run into them, maybe I’ll say hi.”

The stars — those in the sky — had aligned for Palacios because Teoscar Hernandez was placed on the injured list due to exposure to a positive case with a close contact outside of the team. Palacios started in right field, but was switched to left after the third inning because Lourdes Gurriel Jr. was tossing his cookies, having a bad reaction to the COVID vaccination. (Ryan Borucki was also sent home with fever and aches after getting jabbed.)

Palacios went 0-for-3 at the plate and was hit by a pitch, but had to contend with a pair of uncatchable doubles in the field, from Trout and Ohtani.

Now in his sixth year with the organization, a bit age-creaky at 25 for a debut, No. 29 on the MLB Pipeline prospect list for the Jays, Palacios sounded like an over-the-moon kid, talking about his launch as a Blue Jay.

“It felt amazing.”

Jitters eased a tad because he’s played in the minors with many of these youthful Jays: Cavan Biggio and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Jordan Romano, even roomed for a while with Bo Bichette in Lansing. “Just to see them on a major-league baseball field with us, in the game, and having everybody, like, ‘Congratulations!’ ‘Welcome up here!’ — that was such a humbling experience. Just the experience that, hey, we went through the gutter together, we’ve been through the minor leagues together, and now we’re here in The Show, at the epitome of baseball together.”

He’s benefitted immensely from outfield tutorials at the alternate site by White.

“We clicked from the beginning because he was a New York City guy as well. He grew up in Manhattan. But just the Gold Glove knowledge he has. He has so much up there that is almost leaks out of him. He has a really, really good way about delivering the little things that make you a better outfielder, a lot of little nuances that I didn’t know existed.”

Even while trying to turn heads, Palacios appreciated the pedagogic ambience at the alternate site, last year and in the past few weeks, allowing him to focus on development, work on stuff such as improving his two-strike approach, and enhance his game afield with many more reps on defence. “Getting those reps would be really hard to get in the season.”

Wherever that season might unfold.

Observed Montoyo: “When you think about it, he probably never thought he would be here this early, but that’s baseball. When you have a good spring training, you show people what you can do. People have no problem calling you up. What he did in spring training, it was easy for us to call him up during this time.”

Palacios hit .353 through spring training, but the likelihood that he would be summoned by the mother ship was dim, given how crowded the outfield is already. Then a double-injury to George Springer crossed with COVID complications in the lineup flung open the door. (Palacios had his vaccine shot on Wednesday, with no issues.)

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Then he had to wait for hours on Saturday for game two of his major-league career, as a torrential thunderstorm smacked Dunedin, turned day into night. It was worth the wait. Palacios got his first career big-league hit in the second inning on a rolling bunt to third base, beat it out at first.

However that one played out in the wee hours, Palacios had left the ballpark the previous night with the lineup card of his first game as a memento, signed by teammates.

“Yesterday, I woke up thinking I was going to be in the minor leagues and I went to sleep being a right-fielder for the Toronto Blue Jays.”

Caw-caw-caw.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno