John Jaso knew he desired to retire, so he began buying sailboats. It was the 2017 season, and Jaso, the primary baseman of the Pittsburgh Pirates, was at home browsing boating web sites. And when the Pirates visited the party near a body of water, he wandered across the marinas and imagined himself in open water.
One June morning in Baltimore, before the primary game against the Orioles at 7:10 p.m., Jaso rented a automotive and drove to Annapolis, Maryland. There he found the boat he was in search of: 2014 Jeanneau 44 DS. He had it viewed, purchased, and shipped to his off-season home in St. Petersburg, Florida. Got back to the stadium in time to pay 2 for 4 with RBI
Four months later, when the Pirates season ended with no playoff spot, a handful of reporters approached Jaso’s locker and asked him what his plans were. He had reached the top of his two-year, $8 million contract with the team and was set to turn out to be a free agent. He told them that his next destination can be somewhere within the Caribbean. He was retiring.
“I actually have a sailboat” he said“so I just need to float away.”
Five years later, as pitchers and catchers began pouring into spring training camps in Arizona and Florida on Monday, Jaso, the last catcher to catch an ideal game, has no regrets drifting off into the sunset. “Sometimes I’ll just be on a ship bobbing on the water, not sailing and even fishing, and I’m like, ‘There’s no place on the planet I’d reasonably be than right here,'” he said. “It was an ideal fit for who I’m.”
Jaso’s baseball adventure has never been so good. Tampa Bay drafted him within the twelfth round of the 2003 draft, and he made it to the majors at the top of the 2008 season. He was traded thrice in his nine-year profession and later moved to first base from catcher suffering multiple concussions. But he also had plenty of huge moments: he caught Félix Hernández’s perfect 2012 game for the Seattle Mariners – he’s been out of MLB since – and hit the primary cycle in PNC Park history when he was with Pittsburgh in 2016. dreadlocks towards the top of his profession made him almost immediately recognizable. Earned over $17 million in profession based on Spotrac.
But he found MLB life unsatisfying in an unexpected way. “Bezbol prepared me for all times,” he said. “I adore it and respect it. But it’s a part of this culture of consumerism and overconsumption that has begun to weigh heavily on me. Even after I retired, people were saying, “You can walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars!” But I’ve already made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why will we at all times must have more, more, more?”
Sailing filled the void in his life. He became acquainted with every foot of the ship. He took a category in diesel engine mechanics and installed solar panels and a wind generator. He devoured hours of YouTube videos about electronics and made sure he knew what each wire was doing. “If something goes incorrect within the open ocean,” he said, “I’m the one person to repair it.”
All that is left is to learn to sail.
He found an ad for a sunset trip on Craigslist and emailed the captain, offering a few hundred bucks for a fast boat command course. After just a few hours, he felt comfortable enough to walk alone. “It was like learning to hit a quick ball and release the slider,” he said. “You can hear coaches speak about all of it day, but you simply learn the best way to do it whenever you face it in a match.”
Jaso named his boat Roaming Rose and started making day trips to the Gulf of Mexico in early 2018. One spring day, as he was working on his boat, he had a sudden and strange feeling. “I believed something was really weird at once,” he said. “As if I forgot something. And then it hit me: I ought to be at spring training. I began laughing because I spotted: I didn’t miss it in any respect.”
He set off on his first great voyage just a few weeks later. He sailed south to Key West and stayed on the boat for 3 weeks before heading to the Abaco Islands within the northern Bahamas, anchoring in a sheltered bay for many of the month. He took off when he heard about an enormous storm over the Atlantic. He avoided most winds and rain on the five-day voyage home, but last night he encountered violent winds and lightning.
On deck, he kept one hand on the steering wheel and the opposite on the duffel bag. His life jacket was strapped on tight in case he was thrown overboard. He watched the lightning marbling the sky and felt its waves shake the boat. He alerted the Coast Guard to his position and called his brother for backup. After several hours of chasing his teeth, he was back on dry land.
“Right now you are terrified and wish to be as far-off from danger as possible,” he said. “But when it’s over, you appreciate where you might be more. You get euphoric because the storm clouds part. It’s like holding your breath underwater, then coming back to the surface and taking your first breath of air.”
When Jaso described the experience to Fernando Perez, a friend and former teammate, Perez wasn’t surprised within the slightest. “Playing skilled baseball is type of a drug,” said Perez, who’s now a video analyst for the San Francisco Giants. “When you retire, you might have to search out your next peak. The cure John found was being in the course of nowhere and staying alive. That first storm didn’t deter him. He liked being drawn into it.
For the primary two years after his retirement, Jaso spent about six months a yr on his boat. The rest he stayed in St. Petersburg. Although he said he now not follows baseball, he tries to catch a game or two every yr. In 2018, in the course of the Rays’ victory over the Boston Red Sox, he attempted to go all the way down to the dugout to say hello to former teammates. But the usher saw his dyed sleeveless shirt and no ticket waved him back to low cost places. Finally, one other janitor recognized him and failed.
He also made several trips to Europe, discovering a passion for exploring his father’s ancestral land within the Basque Country in northern Spain. He drove a motorhome around Australia and Indonesia. But the boat was his biggest pleasure. “I need my life to be easy, and it couldn’t be simpler than on a sailboat,” he said. “You treat the boat well and it treats you well. That’s all.”
Roaming Rose docked in Turks and Caicos before the pandemic. With travel restrictions, he was stuck there for nearly two years. When he received approval to return and pick up the boat in 2022, he took his girlfriend, Jayden Davila, with him on a three-month Caribbean cruise. They docked within the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.
“John is mostly quite a relaxed person,” said Davila. “But there’s a unique level of calm and happiness for him when he’s on the boat. Even when problems arose – and something at all times went incorrect – he liked to take care of it. When the situation is calm, sometimes he just randomly grabs his guitar and starts playing. It’s a very beautiful life for him.”
Jaso still lives mainly in St. Petersburg, where he manages some investment properties. But he isn’t in a single place for long. That winter he snowboarded in Colorado and Wyoming. He’ll be back on the boat by spring.
“When you sail, you return to something primitive,” he said. “You are removing yourself from the fabric world – this particular electronic world. And you return to that sense of wonder. The same feeling you get whenever you hold a newborn baby, look him in the attention and feel the world disappear around you.
“Sometimes it is easy to forget that all of us come from the identical place. When you are on the water, you remember.”
