Kennedy: Three memorable moments connect Kennedys and Guerreros

Vladdy Guerrero Jr. and Joe Kennedy. Supplied photo.

September 23, 2025

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

Although Toronto Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doesn’t know it, the Kennedy clan of Kingston, Canada, and the Guerrero clan from Don Gregorio, Dominican Republic, are entwined by three memorable moments.

That these ‘moments’ are memorable for only one family — mine — is irrelevant. A bond is a bond.

I was reminded of the Kennedys’ tenuous connection to the baseball-bashing Guerreros by daughter Annie, who recently received a texted on-field photo of her beaming brother Joe standing next to the younger Guerrero before a recent Blue Jays game.

“Now you have two kids with Guerrero stories to tell,” Annie pointed out. “You could write a column about it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I replied hesitantly. I wasn’t convinced that just two Kennedy-Guerrero tales was enough material for a column.

Then I discovered that a third family member, my brother Danny’s son, Kevin, had his own Guerrero tale to tell. For good measure I could always toss in my 2011 interview with young Vladdy’s daddy, a then-36-year-old Baltimore Oriole who was in the twilight of a hall-of-fame career. But that work-related experience didn’t have the same “thrill-of-the-moment” touch.

The Guerreros and the Kennedys first crossed paths at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in 1996, Vlad Sr.’s second season with the local Expos. Nephew Kevin, then a McGill University student, worked part-time as a vendor at Expo games.

“I was so far down on the seniority list, I only worked a few games,” remembers school teacher Kevin. “But I used my Stadium ID card to get into about 60 games that summer.”

During one such “night off” from pushing peanuts and popcorn, Kevin, knowing the outlay of the stadium, jumped a railing after a game and entered the bowels of the Big O via a tunnel that led to underground parking. There he spotted Vladimir Sr.’s mother handing out homemade Dominican treats to some Guerrero relatives — and then to the new tunnel arrivee.

“She shared strips of beef jerky with us until Vlad showed up and they all piled into a big SUV and drove off,” Kevin recalls.

Guererro tale No. 1 deposited in the memory bank.

A few years before her ride around Olympic Stadium, daughter Annie demonstrated the ‘hands-free’ riding technique while sister Grace went for the ears of her dad’s Whig-Standard colleague Gary Lupton. Photo by Ann Lupton/Supplied photo

Next came a sunny September afternoon in 2003 during the waning stages of the National League season, Guerrero’s eighth and final campaign in Montreal. Daughter Annie and I joined her uncle Danny, his eldest son Kelly, and 21,413 others at Olympic Stadium to watch the Expos play the New York Mets, a meaningless game between two teams playing out the string in a lost season.

The game had all the makings of a pleasant but uneventful family outing at the ballpark, that is until Guererro Sr. made it eventful. “Vlad the Impaler” pulled off a baseball rarity by hitting for the cycle. He collected a single, a double, a triple and a home run, a single-game feat that occurs in less than one per cent of all big-league ballgames. Only 350 players in the history of major league baseball have hit for the cycle, including five who somehow managed to turn the trick three times. In terms of rarity, a cycle is on par with a no-hitter.

In the top of the seventh inning, my young daughter was growing restless. So I hoisted antsy Annie onto my shoulders and took her for a stroll. She was a lightweight five-year-old and an experienced “rider” aboard her bi-ped pop. Up there, I had full control of her and she could take in the scenery, and unlike her sister Grace, Anne never latched on to my ears like a jockey on the reins heading down the home stretch.

We walked from our left-field seats around to a spot near the right-field foul pole, by which time the Mets were back in the field and Guerrero was stepping to the plate against New York reliever Dan Wheeler. The stage was set for some baseball magic. With a double, single and triple, respectively, already in the books off Mets starter Tom Glavine, the muscular Guerrero waved his wooden wand and clubbed an 0-1 pitch right over our heads and into the right-field bleachers, a fair ball by a few feet. Instantly the scoreboard flashed “Le Carrousel!” The Expo fans went bonkers, as did I. Caught up in the moment, I leaped up and down and threw my arms — and Annie — skyward. Fortunately I still had a firm hold on the little one’s ankles, otherwise, as Ricky Ricardo often told Lucy, I would’ve had some “splaining” to do when we got home.

Asked today about her unscheduled lift-off, Anne vividly remembers “bouncing up and down.

“Whatever happened,” she added, “I knew it must’ve been something special.”

Indeed it was, especially for this lifelong baseball fan. Guerrero’s cycle remains a one-off memory, the only one I’ve ever witnessed. Truth be told, I had to research his first three at-bats and other details from that game, but it’ll be some time before dad and daughter forget the great Guererro’s finishing touch on Le Carrousel.

Incidentally, during the aforementioned 2011 interview, Vlad Sr. recounted his cycle like it happened the previous day and not eight years earlier.

The best K-G moment we’ve saved for last.

A few weeks ago, I was at a Blue Jays/Mariners game to work on a piece on Seattle pitcher and Kingston native Matt Brash. As was the case two years earlier when Brash and the M’s played in Toronto, my son, Joe, bought an upper-deck bleachers ticket and tagged along. His bonus? Early entry — 10 a.m. for a 3 o’clock game — into the Rogers Centre along with his dad and other assembled media. Two years earlier, I got to show him around the ballpark and the press box. I even finagled him a brief glimpse of Mariners star Julio Rodriguez taking some cuts in the underground batting cage before Joe made his way to his seat.

When we arrived this time around, my press pass wasn’t ready. We waited a few minutes while a Blue Jays employee checked on the missing credentials. When he returned he had not one but two press passes, one for me, one for Joe, whose eyes suddenly grew to grapefruit size. I thought about pointing out the mistake, but instead decided to give the lad the chance of a lifetime, albeit with strict instructions from Pop: “Stay near me, don’t talk to anyone, and above all DON’T TAKE ANY PHOTOS!”

He did as told. Whenever I stole a glance at him, I saw a wide-eyed kid trying hard to contain his joy and amazement as the Jays went about their on-field pre-game routines. Among them was the club’s budding and handsomely paid superstar Vladdy Guererro Jr. who was 30 feet away crushing BP tosses in the batting cage.

I left Joe momentarily unattended while I chatted with former MLB catcher Caleb Joseph, who these days does colour on Blue Jay telecasts . When I’d finished, Joe showed me his cellphone and said, “Look at this, Dad.” It was the cellphone photo of him and Guerrero Jr.

I was aghast, fearing that he had forgotten about the ‘no-photo’ rule. Turns out he’d merely been the recipient of a returned favour. Some Spanish-speaking friends of Vladdy’s had summoned the first baseman to where they were standing in a roped-off area behind home plate. My son was standing nearby. “They asked me to take a photo of them and Vladdy,” Joe explained, putting the record straight.

“Then they asked me if I’d like a photo with Vladdy,” he added.

They didn’t have to ask twice.

By the time we left the field, the photo of the Jays’ $500 million man and the first-year Brock University student had become the latter’s screen-saver on his phone. Today, it’s a large poster that adorns his bedroom door.

“Vladdy shook my hand and said, ‘Nice to meet you.’”

Another Kennedy-Guerrero moment etched in time, and the clincher in my decision to write about it.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com