How Votto became beloved throughout Reds' community

This story was excerpted from Mark Sheldon’s Reds Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CINCINNATI -- My second season of covering the Reds was 2007, which happened to be the year I met a rising prospect and first baseman at Spring Training in Sarasota, Fla.

It was a clubhouse that featured Ken Griffey Jr., Adam Dunn and other veterans. Across the room, wearing No. 60, was Joey Votto. Then 23, Votto spent the previous season in Double-A Chattanooga and was at his second big league camp.

I don't recall much of my first encounter with Votto. After an interview ended, I was making conversation and I do remember asking him a banal question of whether he liked hockey because he was from Canada. He replied that he didn't like it much, and that his favorite non-baseball sport was NBA basketball. Votto is a Toronto Raptors fan.

What I remembered from that day was that Votto was incredibly polite, thoughtful with his answers (even without the Major League polish at the time) and diligent. His answer to my hockey question was the first of numerous times I heard him go against the grain while speaking.

Over his 17 seasons in Cincinnati, Votto often zagged as others zigged. He often thought about issues and situations with a higher intellectual level and bigger picture in mind than others in the game. He rarely was flippant or spoke without giving careful consideration to his answers. While he certainly had his share of ejections from games and disappointments over the years, you never heard Votto rip or disrespect teammates, managers or coaches. I can't recall a time he publicly spoke negatively about an opposing team or a player in a different uniform. When there were clashes or conversations on the field, he kept them confidential.

After many games, good or bad, Votto would often stop me or other reporters and ask if we needed anything in terms of an interview. I don't know of many star players and former MVPs who have ever done that.

Before his social media emergence the past couple of years, Votto would offer occasional glimpses of his silly side. Once in St. Louis in 2014, dressed up as a Canadian Mountie for an MLB Network interview on the field, he talked in character about his horse, "Nibbles," as teammates laughed out loud inside the clubhouse. In 2017, Votto fulfilled a promise to teammate Zack Cozart and got him a donkey for making the All-Star Game -- and dressed as a donkey behind Cozart during another memorable MLB Network interview.

Away from the ballpark, Votto preferred to conduct his business quietly. He didn't seek attention for his community deeds like visiting kids at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, or working with players in RBI Baseball at the P&G MLB Academy.

In 2017, after he befriended a 6-year-old boy with terminal pediatric cancer who came to Reds games, Votto stood in line for hours at the child's visitation to pay his respects and declined to be moved ahead because of his celebrity. In September, following the sudden passing of my friend and fellow reporter John Fay, Votto came to the visitation that was held before a game.

Even amid Saturday's announcement that Votto's 2024 option wasn't being picked up, the now 40-year-old remained thoughtful with his answers and gracious about what had to be a very painful realization that his time with the Reds, the only organization he's ever known in professional baseball, was probably over.

There was some chatter in the wake of Saturday's announcement that Votto was slighted by the club about how the decision was made or the way the news was revealed. He wasn't having it.

"I mean, I just got through my 17th Major League season, I signed a three-year contract and a 12-year contract and at 40 years old, a team that's about to be a championship-caliber team didn't pick up the option of a guy who hit .200 in back-to-back seasons," Votto said on Saturday. "I have been given every last opportunity by everybody involved with the organization. I've been supported and respected steadily throughout my 20-plus years as a Red. I've been challenged healthfully. I've been supported by the fanbase, the community. I've been given nothing but love. Nothing but love from everybody. And I know there's been stretches in my career where I haven't been communicative or more has been desired, and at all those times, I've felt nothing but the healthiest of challenges from people.

"So as far as feeling slighted, everything ends. There's an end to every story. There's an end to every professional career, and if this is my time with the Cincinnati Reds organization, I have had the best time in my life."