Jays pitcher relaxes in Manitoba lake country

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This article was published 16/08/2023 (811 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s no question that being a professional baseball pitcher can be stressful, especially when you are a late-inning, high-leverage reliever like Erik Swanson.

So where the does the talented Toronto Blue Jays hurler go to clear his mind, unwind and relax?

Manitoba!

Turns out Swanson is an adopted son of sorts, and the closest thing this province has had to local flavour on “Canada’s team” since Anola’s Corey Koskie suited up for the club for one season in 2005.

Talk about a wicked curveball.

“My wife’s family has a cottage in Buffalo Point which is right on Lake of the Woods, like the furthest southeastern point of Manitoba,” Swanson, 29, told the Free Press on Wednesday in a telephone interview, a few hours before his team hosted the Philadelphia Phillies at Rogers Centre.

Swanson, his wife, Madison, and their two young children spent last month’s MLB All-Star break at the cabin, which created a bit of a local buzz once word spread.

“We went golfing there one day and I guess that was the talk of the clubhouse with some of the kids that were there,” he said with a laugh.

“Most of the time, we just kind of fly under the radar. Usually I don’t get the opportunity to go there a whole bunch because of our schedule, and we don’t use it a whole bunch in the winter. In the off-season it can get a little chilly. But we took advantage of it this year and loved it.”

Swanson knows of what he speaks, having been born just a few hours south of here in Fargo. His grandfather, Dwaine Hoberg, even served a stint as the mayor of neighbouring Moorhead while his father Mark, played college football for North Dakota State.

The family moved to Ohio when Erik was five, but he moved back to North Dakota when he was 21. It was there he met his wife, who is from Roseau, Minnesota.

“Most people (in baseball) call me crazy for moving even further north. But we love it.”–Erik Swanson

“It’s only about 12 miles away from the border. We’re actually in the process of moving there. We’re building a home and should hopefully be there in the spring,” said Swanson.

“You know, most people (in baseball) call me crazy for moving even further north. But we love it.”

Indeed, Swanson has fully embraced everything about our neck of the woods, including fishing, hunting, golfing, snowmobiling and hockey.

“Getting to a Jets game one day is definitely on my bucket list,” he said.

His three-year-old son has recently started skating, something Swanson did for a bit before baseball took him in another direction.

“I was on skates and having fun with some buddies and whatnot. But I moved away at such a young age to the Midwest, where hockey at the time really wasn’t very prevalent,” he said. “But ever since I’ve been back, it’s something I follow a lot closer now.”

That includes a family friend who plays in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.

Pursuing baseball full-time turned out to be a terrific career move. After being selected by the Texas Rangers in the eighth round of the 2014 MLB draft, Swanson spent five years in the minors made his big-league debut in April 2019 with the Seattle Mariners, who had traded for his rights. There’s been no looking back since then.

After four years with Seattle, Swanson was traded to Toronto last winter in exchange for Teoscar Hernandez. He’s become an integral part of MLB’s best pitching staff, with a 3-2 record and 3.31 earned-run-average in 55 relief appearances this season prior to Wednesday.

Swanson is one of several pivotal bullpen pieces which also includes closer Jordan Romano, the newly acquired Jordan Hicks, Tim Mayza, Yimi Garcia and the currently injured but about-to-return Trevor Richards and Chad Green.

“We’re at a very exciting time of the season. We’re right where you want to be middle of August, beginning of September, in a playoff spot, playing some very meaningful games,” said Swanson, who is also called upon by manager John Schneider to get key outs in the seventh and eighth innings when the game is still very much up for grabs.

“It’s putting us in a position right now to have a really fun stretch here down the road. A lot of guys, you can feel the excitement. And you can kind of feel it in the stadium as well.”

And Swanson can feel it from across the country, including here in Manitoba where Blue Jays fans are aplenty.

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“Even flying out of Winnipeg to come back to Toronto after the All-Star break, you see like the entire airport full of people with Blue Jays gear, which is pretty neat,” he said.

“You don’t get that when you play on a team in the States. And, being in northern Minnesota, and North Dakota and Manitoba, you see and hear from a lot of people who are fans. It’s a little bit more special to me, now that I’m part of the Blue Jays organization.”

Swanson hopes the next time he visits Manitoba — likely in the winter to do some ice fishing — he’s sporting a World Series ring around his frozen fingers.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg

Mike McIntyre
Reporter

Mike McIntyre is a sports reporter whose primary role is covering the Winnipeg Jets. After graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College in 1995, he spent two years gaining experience at the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 1997, where he served on the crime and justice beat until 2016. Read more about Mike.

Every piece of reporting Mike produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.