John Jaso knew he wanted to retire and set out to buy a yacht. It was the 2017 season, and Jaso, a first baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates, was spending his free time at home browsing boat websites. And when the Pirates visited teams near bodies of water, he would wander around the marina and imagine himself out on the open sea.
One morning in June, before Baltimore’s first pitch against the Orioles, at 7:10 p.m., Jaso rented a car and drove to Annapolis, Maryland. There he found the boat he was looking for, a 2014 Jeanneau 44 DS. He researched it, purchased it, and had it shipped to his off-season home in St. Petersburg, Florida. He returned to the field in time to go 2-for-4 with four RBIs.
Four months later, when the Pirates’ season ended without a playoff berth, a handful of reporters came to Jaso’s locker and asked what his plans were. He was at the end of his two-year, $8 million contract with the team and was set to become a free agent. He said his next destination would be somewhere in the Caribbean. He was retiring.
“I have a sailboat. So I just want to sail,” he said.
Five years later, as pitchers and catchers began flocking to spring training camps in Arizona and Florida on Monday, Jaso, the last catcher to record a perfect game, has no regrets about sailing off into the sunset. “Sometimes I’m out on the water in a boat, not sailing or fishing, and I just think to myself, ‘There’s no place on earth I’d rather be than right here,'” he said. “It was the perfect fit for me.”
Jaso’s baseball journey was never quite the right fit. Tampa Bay selected him in the 12th round of the 2003 draft, and he advanced to the major leagues at the end of the 2008 season. During his nine-year career, he was traded three times and transitioned from catcher to first base after suffering multiple concussions. But he had plenty of highlights too. He caught Felix Hernández’s perfect game with the Seattle Mariners in 2012 (none has had one in MLB since) and recorded the first cycle hit in PNC Park history while with Pittsburgh in 2016. His dreadlocks towards the end of his career made him almost instantly recognizable. He earned more than $17 million in his career, according to Spotrac.
But he found MLB life unsatisfying in unexpected ways. “Baseball became the foundation of my life,” he said. “I like it and respect it. But it was part of the culture of consumerism and overconsumption that really started to take a toll on me. Even when I retired, people said, ‘You could lose millions!’ But I’ve already made millions. Why do we always have to have more, more, more?”
Boating filled a void in his life. He became familiar with every part of the ship. He took diesel auto mechanic classes and installed solar panels and wind generators. He had devoured hours of YouTube videos about electronics and clearly knew what every wire did. “If something happens at sea, I’m the only one who can fix it,” he said.
Now all that’s left to do is learn how to sail.
He found an ad for sunset tours on Craigslist and emailed the captain, offering a few hundred dollars for a short course in boat steering. After a few hours, he felt comfortable enough to go on his own. “It was like learning how to hit a fastball and release a slider,” he said. “You can hear coaches talk about it all day, but he can only learn how to do it by facing it in the game.”
Jaso named his boat Roaming Rose and began taking day trips to the Gulf of Mexico in early 2018. One day that spring, while working on his boat, he felt a sudden and strange sensation. “I thought something felt really strange right now,” he said. “I felt like I had forgotten something. Then it suddenly occurred to me. He felt like he should have been in spring training. I started laughing because I realized I hadn’t missed it at all.”
He set off on his first big voyage a few weeks later. He sailed south to Key West, remained on board the ship for three weeks, then departed for the Abaco Islands in the northern Bahamas, anchored in a sheltered bay for the better part of a month. He left when he heard that a major storm was approaching across the Atlantic. He is said to have avoided wind and rain for most of the five-day voyage, but was met with strong winds and lightning on the final night.
On deck, he had one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding his bag. His life jacket was strapped tightly in case he was thrown overboard. He saw lightning rock the sky and felt the waves rock the boat. He notified the Coast Guard of his location and called his brother for backup. After struggling for hours, he returned to dry land.
“At that moment you are scared and want to be as far away from danger as possible,” he said. “But once it’s over, you appreciate where you are more. There is a feeling of happiness that comes to you when the storm clouds clear. It’s like holding your breath underwater, then coming back to the surface and taking your first gulp of air.”
When Jaso described the experience to his friend and former teammate Fernando Perez, Perez wasn’t the least bit surprised. “Playing professional baseball is kind of like a drug,” said Perez, who currently works as a video analyst for the San Francisco Giants. “When you retire, you have to find another high point,” he said. The medicine John discovered existed in nowhere and saved his life. That first storm didn’t scare him. “He loved getting into it.”
For the first two years of his retirement, Jaso spent about six months of the year on his boat. For the rest of his life he resided in St. Petersburg. Although he said he no longer follows baseball, he tries to catch a game or two every year. In 2018, during the Rays’ victory over the Boston Red Sox, he tried to go down to the dugout to say hello to his former teammates. But the attendant noticed his tie-dye sleeveless t-shirt and no tickets. waved at him again With cheap seats. Eventually, another guide recognized him and let him down.
He also made several trips to Europe, discovering a passion for exploring his father’s ancestral lands in the Basque Country in northern Spain. And he drove a camper van in Australia and Indonesia. But boats were his greatest pleasure. “I want my life to be simple, and it couldn’t be simpler than being on a sailboat,” he said. “You treat the boat right and the boat treats you right. “That’s it.”
Before the pandemic, he docked Roaming Rose in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Due to his travel restrictions, he was stuck there for almost two years. He returned in 2022 and when he received permission to retrieve his boat, he took his girlfriend Jayden Davila with him for a three-month cruise around the Caribbean. They docked in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.
“John is generally a very peaceful person,” Davila said. “But when he’s on the boat, there’s another level of peace and happiness for him. Even when there was a problem and something always went wrong, he loved dealing with it. When things are quiet, he sometimes randomly grabs his guitar and starts playing. He’s such a beautiful thing to him.”
Jaso still lives primarily in St. Petersburg and manages some investment properties. However, he rarely stays in one place for long. This winter he snowboarded in Colorado and Wyoming. In the spring he will return by boat.
“Sailing takes you back to something primal,” he said. “You are removing yourself from the material world, the concrete and electronic world. And you’re going back to this wonder. It’s the same feeling you get when you hold your newborn baby, look into their eyes, and feel the world around you disappear.
“Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we all come from the same place. “I remember it when I’m on the water.”
