TORONTO - Jose Bautista may be a leader in the Blue Jays clubhouse but don't expect pitcher Brett Cecil to rush out and get the new video game "MLB 13: The Show" 鈥� even if Bautista is the Canadian face of the PlayStation 3 and Vita title.
Cecil is a gamer, but settling down to play baseball on a video game console when you do it for a living doesn't float Cecil's boat.
"It's kind of cheesy to play a baseball game when you're a major league player," explained Cecil, a 26-year-old relief pitcher.
"I know some do. But I'm not very good at it when I have played it. I play a lot of hockey and 'Call of Duty.'"
For non-major leaguers, Bautista's baseball game and rival 2K Sports' "Major League Baseball 2K13" are popular gaming options. Even for the star Blue Jays slugger.
While Bautista grew up gaming, he says it's hard to find the time these days. But there's still a boy in the US$14-million man, it seems.
"I haven't been able to play as often as I would like to lately but I do play from time to time and obviously when you get put on the cover of a video game but you can help but want to play it," he said in an interview in the Jays' clubhouse.
"It's fun. Something I still enjoy and you can get away from the mental stress playing the game itself. Something you do when you're relaxing. At the same time it's pretty realistic. It's kind of cool to see how far the games have come along from when I was kid ... Now what they are, it's tremendous."
Bautista points to Cecil and Brett Lawrie as enthusiastic Jays gamers and says he himself usually has a TV and gaming console in the locker-room, although he has yet to set it up.
At 50, manager John Gibbons says he's too old to game although his 13-year-old son Kyle is a devotee.
"He'll get it," Gibbons said, referring to the Bautista "MLB 13: The Show" game. "He plays them all."
Cecil likes to play online, although he says he tried out the campaign version of the latest "Call of Duty" to get used to the new weaponry.
"You get some pretty comical people," he said of online gaming. "I usually mute everybody because people can be stupid and play loud music or whatever just to annoy people, so I just turn everything off.
"But sometimes I like to leave it on because somebody will be getting really, really irritated that they're getting killed so much that it's too funny to pass up, you've just got to listen to it."
Cecil, whose choice of console is Xbox, likes to play the role of sniper, "so it's all about positioning when you're doing that."
"If you get there quick and get set up, then you get them all ... but sometimes I get caught in bad places."
Bautista is the cover boy for the Canadian edition of the baseball game for the second year in a row. Pittsburgh's Andrew McCutchen is featured on the American edition.
Tampa Bay Rays pitcher David Price is the cover athlete for "MLB 2K13," which is available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
