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Making baseball fun again fuelled Ernie Clement’s rise to Blue Jays: ‘I plan on doing that the rest of my career’
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Photo credit: Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images
Thomas Hall
Mar 27, 2026, 18:30 EDTUpdated: Mar 27, 2026, 18:23 EDT
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Sometimes, you have to get back to basics. For Ernie Clement, it was remembering that baseball is a kid’s game, often played by professionals. But it’s important not to lose sight of the enjoyment of the game, which, while grinding through the minors in 2023, he did.
On Thursday, the Players’ Tribune released a heartfelt letter to Toronto Blue Jays fans from Clement, who, upon being contacted by the publication, agreed to share his story as a kid from Rochester, New York, about to make his second Opening Day start with the Blue Jays on Friday.
None of this, however, likely would’ve been possible if Clement hadn’t reached a breaking point in his career during the ’23 season. He had recently joined the organization after being released by the Athletics, who he’ll face to open this season, and started the year at Triple-A with the Buffalo Bisons.
It was Clement’s first opportunity to play regularly again, something that, as he outlined in Thursday’s letter, steered him towards Toronto’s franchise as a free agent. But he didn’t get off to the greatest of starts, going 4-for-18 with only one extra-base hit leading into the Bisons’ road trip to Rochester, which was a homecoming for the now 30-year-old infielder.
Playing in front of several friends and family, though, he turned in a 0-for-4 showing. This is when he reached his breaking point. After visiting his grandmother’s house, during which he broke down to his mom, she reminded him to start having fun again. Nothing is guaranteed in this world, especially when it comes to professional sports.
“Having someone like my mom to lean on in that moment is the most important thing in the world,” Clement recalled prior to first pitch versus the A’s. “Sometimes you just have to put it out there in the universe and get those feelings out there. I came back with a little different perspective the next day, and I ended up having a couple of hits.
“I just really enjoyed myself the rest of the year.”
Clement took her words to heart. Instead of stressing about the day-to-day, he thought about just playing catch in the backyard as a kid. That was as good as any place to start. And just like that, he recorded a multi-hit performance against the Red Wings the next day, capping off the rest of the four-game series with three more hits — including a home run during the series finale.
From there, everything else became a whole lot clearer.
“I just started treating it like I was in the backyard again,” Clement said. “It was always my favourite thing in the world. Once I started having that perspective and playing the game like that, it’s been awesome.”
That mindset helped carry Clement, a fourth-round selection out of Virginia by the Cleveland Guardians in 2017, to the majors during that same year. He enjoyed a remarkable 30-game sample size with the Blue Jays back then, hitting .380/.385/.500 with a 143 wRC+ (100 league average) across 52 plate appearances.
It opened the organization’s eyes to him, and he hasn’t looked back since then.
Fast-forward to the present, and Clement is slated to serve as Toronto’s everyday second baseman in 2026. He’ll likely be in the lineup for pretty much all of 162 after playing a career-high 157 games a season ago. This is what he’s always wanted from this sport, and it’s even better that he still gets to treat it like he’s that little kid playing ball in the backyard.
Getting back to that mindset, which he plans to carry with him for the “rest of his baseball career,” was essential in reaching this destination. He’s a core piece on a team with World Series aspirations, just months removed from nearly reaching the top of the mountain last fall.
The number of people who’ve played an influential role along the way is too high to count. But, at the heart of that list has been Clement’s parents. His mom is the rock that he can always turn to, while his dad got him interested in baseball in the first place. Both are his biggest “role models,” and without them, Ernie wouldn’t be the fan favourite whom Blue Jays fans often cheer the loudest for.

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