On his 57th birthday, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe didn’t expect to find himself at Truist Park, the home stadium of the Atlanta Braves.
But that was where Sutcliffe found himself on Monday night, next to his 16-year-old son Jack, watching the Major League Baseball Home Run Derby from left-centre field seats.
Previously, the duo had only ever witnessed the event on TV from the comfort of their Ottawa home.
“It was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Sutcliffe said Friday. “It happened to fall on my birthday and we figured it was a nice father-son thing to do.”
But, as the pair watched baseballs whistle towards other seats and sections throughout the home run derby, there was what Sutcliffe called an “all of a sudden” moment.
Pittsburgh Pirates centrefielder Oneil Cruz hit a ball that found its way into Jack’s light-brown baseball glove.
“All of a sudden this one came our way and he kind of reached across and leaned forward, then had this really nice catch,” Sutcliffe recalled.
Online
videos
showed Ottawa’s mayor remaining seated while Jack jumped up and cheered, baseball in hand, as other spectators around them applauded. Sutcliffe reached over with a smile, a hug and a pat on his son’s back. “It was a very, very special moment.”
About 10 minutes later, Jack caught another ball hit by the Minnesota Twins’ Byron Buxton. This time, Jack handed the baseball to a boy sitting next to him, who Sutcliffe estimated was no more than 10 years of age.
“As a dad, I was very proud of him for sharing that.”
When asked about why he didn’t jump up and reach for the ball himself, Sutcliffe chuckled.
“First of all, (my son) is an athlete and I’m, you know, an old man. So he’s got a greater chance of catching it than I did,” he said. “I didn’t think anything was going to come in our direction.”
It was also very hot in Atlanta that night, Sutcliffe said. “I was just resting a bit.”
A self-described life-long baseball fan — he was also the first play-by-play TV announcer of the
Ottawa Lynx
, the city’s triple-A baseball team in the 1990s — Sutcliffe said he was “very happy” for his son in the moment.
After all, it was Jack’s very own baseball tournament this week in Nashville (a 4 1/2-hour drive from Atlanta) that took the pair to the United States in the first place.
“That’s the main reason I’m here,” Sutcliffe said, “to be at the tournament and support my son, and have this shared experience with him.”
For Sutcliffe, supporting his son defeated any reason to avoid travelling to the United States because of political considerations: “There’s no way I was going to miss that.”
He doubts that he and his son would’ve made the trip for the Home Run Derby alone.
“The tournament happened to coincide,” he said. “It seemed like our best opportunity to do it.”
Sutcliffe said he understood the “strong feelings”
Ottawans
may have about the United States and the countries’
ongoing trade dispute
, but he said it was also important to focus on “building relationships,” “defending our country’s interests” and “sending the right message.”
“I know there are a lot of businesses in Ottawa that do business with the United States, and so we’re going to resolve all of these issues with a combination of negotiation and relationship building,” he said. “I think it’s important for us to do both … There’s value in continuing to foster relationships.”
Sutcliffe didn’t engage in any “formal” relationship-building during his trip, but he said he chatted with other parents at the baseball tournament.
“This isn’t in my jurisdiction as mayor because it’s not a local issue,” he said. “We’ve got to take a tough line in the negotiations; that’s the federal government’s responsibility.
“But the bottom line is that I was coming to this area for my son.”
As of late afternoon on July 18, Jack’s team has won one tournament game and lost two.
However, the side trip to Truist Park remained something the mayor said they would “remember the rest of (their) lives.”
“My son’s getting older and I don’t know how many more chances I’ll have to spend this kind of time with him,” Sutcliffe said. “This is something he’s probably going to tell his kids about someday.”
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