Dr. Baseball

David Lawrence has his bases covered

Because they came from the UK, David Lawrence’s parents had never read the Canadian children’s classic “The Hockey Sweater”. So they had no idea they were re-creating a baseball version of that short story for their young son when they got him the gift of a baseball jersey. When other boys on his T-ball team were wearing the blue and white of the hometown Toronto Blue Jays, David wore the pinstripes of the hated New York Yankees.

Flash forward three decades and all is forgiven. Young David is now Dr. David Lawrence, team physician of the Blue Jays. Ever since the first day on the job, in February of 2017, when he walked into the Jays’ spring training facility in Dunedin, FL. and spied the Ferrari chassis of Bautista and Donaldson, Stroman and Pilar (“Okay, this is the real deal,” he thought to himself), Lawrence has established himself as a key piece of the Jays’ crack multidisciplinary health team. For their part, incoming Blue Jays players and their families find they have landed something even more coveted in this country than a long-term contract with a no-trade clause: a family doctor. A really great one, with specialized training in sports medicine. And gold-glove range. Lawrence handles the gamut, from treating the kids’ rashes to diagnosing dad’s torn ACL.

It’s that sports medicine specialty that landed him his current gig. Lawrence is now the medical director of the U of T’s David L. MacIntosh Sport Medicine Clinic – following in the footsteps of one of his mentors, Dr. Doug Richards. The job description is multifold: overseeing the running of the clinic, ensuring medical coverage and treatment for 900 varsity athletes across 42 teams, and keeping tight contact with KPE academics. “There aren’t many clinics like this in Canada, where we’re fully integrated with the faculty,” he says. “So, the expectation of the clinic is not only for service – providing good medical care – but also to be integrated into the research and teaching.”

Lawrence has worn multiple additional hats. He worked with Major League Baseball to help shape their Covid-19 protocol and figure out cross-border travel involving the league’s only Canadian team. He’s been on the front-lines of concussion research. And he has part-time appointments with Mount Sinai’s Dovigi Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Clinic and Temerty Medicine’s Department of Family and Community Medicine.

Of course, it’s the job with the Blue Jays that everyone thinks is coolest. There, in the fugitive moments of his chockablock days, Lawrence mulls the multi-million-dollar question: what makes these athletes the best of the best – and what is his role in keeping them that way?

“I think it’s twofold,” he says. “Partially, these players reach the level they do because of selection bias – the best players naturally rise to the top at every level. But I also think there’s opportunity to intervene and make great players even better. So our job as an organization is not only to identify who can have the biggest potential, but also what we can do to help them achieve that potential. I don’t think there’s only one pathway to become the best. That’s one of the beautiful things about sports: lots of athletes succeed in their own way.”

Mostly, Lawrence stays hidden behind the scenes, unknown to fans. But that all changed on October 8, 2022, when Jays outfielder George Springer collided with teammates while trying to snare a shallow pop-up in the deciding game of the Jays’ doomed wild card series against the Mariners. Millions of viewers wondered who was the bearded guy in civvies consoling the injured Jays slugger as he was carted off the field –a moment many will remember as the instant the season ended and “Wait till next year!” began.

“I got home and my phone was blowing up,” Lawrence says.

— Bruce Grierson