It pays to keep your wits about you in conversation with Cito Gaston. The two time Blue Jays world series winning manager is a relaxing presence, even- tempered and genial. But that soothing voice belies sharply independent opinions, formed over a long career of hard-won experience.

He will ease you along, sharing memories of his years as Hank Aaron’s roommate and friend, and that will slide into talk about Hank’s record, and then to Aaron Judge, and then Barry Bonds, and then suddenly, the former manager is making a case for us all having a more open mind about Steroid use in baseball.

He’s a likeable man, but he is not in it to make friends. Cito is all about winning. It’s remarkable how often ‘winning’ enters his conversation. For Cito- that might be the ultimate complement. A player who wants to win? That’s all he needs to hear. In fact when Gaston says Joe Carter would not let his own children beat him at checkers, he is not saying it as criticism.

It’s impossible not to revisit the Blue Jays glory years with Cito, and he’s happy to share recent brushes with George Bell and Dave Winfield and Tom Henke, but even then, his gentle recall does include the ugly truth that he never won manager of the year. People who should know better said he had so many stars on his roster, it was easy to win…but that ignored the fact that he took over a team with a badly losing record, 12-24 and charged them straight to world series victory in 1992.

And then 1993- the back to back world series win was no gimme. People forget that the Jays lost 14 men from the 25 player roster between 1992 and 1993. So why no manager of the year when he does it a second time, with more than half a team of new players?

Gaston does not say- there was racism in the voting, which explains everything. Instead he runs through some reasoned proposals for getting more diversity in the game, more black players on the field, and more black managers and coaches and executives in the front and back offices.

He helped give Toronto its greatest baseball years…and that was thirty years ago, but he’s still got an eye on the future of the game.