RealGM

Saturday morning, Cito Gaston will hop in his car, drive 20 minutes from his home in Eastlake Woodlands to the Bobby Mattick Complex in Dunedin, and the countdown will begin.

Just another first day of Blue Jays spring training in Florida? Not quite. For Gaston, it is his last first day of spring training.

Gaston has known, ever since he answered that “come on back” phone call from J.P. Ricciardi two years ago in June, that the game, his game, was already in extra innings. At the age of 65, and with 10 years between managerial gigs, he had long since resigned himself to retirement.

He came back to the Blue Jays dugout on his own terms and that’s how he will leave the field when this season is over.

At the chaotic end of last season that wasn’t entirely clear, after a story broke from an online news service prior to the team’s final series in Baltimore that a major player insurrection against Gaston was in the works.

By the end of that weekend, a couple of things were clear. First, while there were some legitimate mild concerns voiced by players such as Vernon Wells, Aaron Hill and Rod Barajas, the sum total fell far short of a revolt and were representative of a need for better communication.

Second, Gaston felt that the flames had been fanned from outside the locker room, perhaps by someone no longer with the organization.