Bautista declines one of 3,000 vacant NB jobs, signs for $18M with Blue Jays instead

New Brunswick — Jays fans are rejoicing, but New Brunswick’s premier is left to pine over what might have been as Major League Baseball slugger José Bautista announced earlier this week that he has signed a one-year contract with the Toronto Blue Jays instead of taking a part-time position here in the Picture Province.

“We have so many great opportunities for José here,” expressed a saddened Brian Gallant. “Three thousand to be exact. Well, maybe not ‘exact,’ but we’ll say thereabouts. I guess he’s just more interested in making money than in having a fairly tolerable way of life here in good ol’ New Brunswick.”

Gallant went on to say that he was shocked to see the news come up on TSN yesterday morning. “I really thought we had a great chance to get him a job here. I think he would’ve been a great call-centre agent or cashier or something. He would have been great at whatever he did — he would’ve hit out of the park. See what I did there?”

Sources close to the premier said that Gallant was 100 percent sure he was going to be able to attract the MLB All Star to one of New Brunswick’s mostly part-time, seasonal, temporary or minimum-wage job vacancies.

“Brian was telling everyone how it was going to play out,” recalled Theresa Howdy, who works for the premier. “He said he was going to ‘lock him in and win the national softball tournament this year’ or something like that. And he kept pronouncing his name with a hard J — it was getting super annoying.”

Bautista’s agent claimed to have no idea what Gallant was referring to and said that his client had never considered not playing professional baseball — and that he in fact had “no sweet clue what a New Brunswick even is.”