Bieber unleashes his 90^th pitch, and the 88.6 mph changeup drops in for a strike to register his fourth and final K and end the top of the inning. As he walks off the field for the last time tonight, Ace and Buster jump and wave their arms (forelegs?) to encourage the 8,068 fans in attendance to stand up for the stretch. Many rise, and before they limber up, some clap for the guy who just pitched seven shutout innings, including a fan wearing a Cleveland Guardians t-shirt with Bieber’s name and No. 57 on the back. That’s the team Bieber was drafted to in 2018 and where he earned the 2020 AL Cy Young Award and a pair of all-star appearances.

The Bisons will go on to complete a 2-0 victory and Bieber will be credited as the winning pitcher. A celery mascot will win a race around the field against a burger, carrot and chicken wing. A fan dressed as the late Hulk Hogan, winner of the night’s celebrity look-a-like contest, will stick around with thousands of others for a post-game fireworks show. And, in its own way, all of this will mark Bieber’s Bisons finale. Days later, the Blue Jays announce he’ll start for the big club in the opener of a three-game set against Miami, less than a month after Toronto brokered the deal that brought Bieber to town. Bieber’s debut in Toronto will come 478 days after his last MLB start. That’s a long time between outings, and when it comes to returning from his injury, Bieber agrees with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers that “the waiting is the hardest part.” But this isn’t the first time he’s exercised patience in his baseball career, and Bieber knows well the payoff it can bring.

With 34 games to go in the regular season, the California-born Bieber joins the American League East-leading Blue Jays, who are poised to return to the playoffs and gearing up for a run few saw coming in April. Some considered it a risk to trade for a 30-year-old pitcher working his way back from surgery, and others wondered where he’d fit among a solid crew of regular starters, but certainly the Blue Jays understand the potential reward Bieber brings.

Minutes after his final start in Buffalo, Bieber leans against a white wall in the bowels of the Bisons ballpark wearing a sleeveless Blue Jays shirt with the word “Good” on the back, the Os swapped for maple leaves. Bieber smiles easily, his grin taking up nearly half his face, and he often sways back and forth during interviews, but there is no sway or smile as the two-time all-star addresses whether he’ll return to the big leagues and be the pitcher he was before his injury. “Yeah,” he says without hesitation. “I’ll be better.”

As a sophomore on scholarship with the Gauchos, Bieber went 8-4 to tie for the most wins in the Big West, with a 2.24 ERA, 95 strikeouts (fifth-most in his conference) and 13 walks. It was right around that time, when he was 20, that Bieber realized he might have a career in baseball.  “I had a bit of, not a long road, but I felt like I was a bit overlooked in high school,” he explains now. “As a sophomore [in college], we had a great year as a team and I also did individually, and that’s kind of when I realized, ‘Okay, this is getting serious, and I’m probably going to get drafted.’”

As the Gauchos’ Friday night ace in his junior year in 2016, Bieber recorded 12 wins (the fifth-most in college baseball), pitched five complete games and posted a 2.74 ERA with 109 strikeouts and just 16 walks. That June he was drafted in the fourth round, 122^nd overall, by Cleveland.

The walk-on’s patience had paid off, and Bieber took that lesson in the virtues of waiting to heart. It’s something he still leans on today, especially since coming back from his injury required patience in spades.

Bieber’s last full MLB season was 2023, when he posted a 6-6 record with a 3.80 ERA and 107 strikeouts against 34 walks. He pitched for the last time in the big leagues on April 2 of last year, just his second start of the season, earning a win against Seattle after striking out nine over six scoreless innings. Ten days after that he had surgery to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament, and he and his wife Kara relocated to Goodyear, Ariz., home to Cleveland’s player development complex, where Bieber stayed as he rehabilitated.

It was in Goodyear that Bieber discovered the silver lining of his long layoff, which he considers gold, when he and Kara found out they were expecting their first child. “I was able to be there for her like she’s always been there for me throughout my career,” Bieber says. “Roles kind of switched, and obviously I was taking care of what I had to take care of rehab-wise, but I wasn’t missing any of those appointments, and sharing all those experiences with her was extremely special. It’s something I’ll be forever grateful for.”

On March 14, Kara gave birth to their son, Kav, with Bieber by her side. He was back to throwing by then, doing multiple bullpen sessions a week. On May 31, he made his first rehab appearance, striking out five in 2.1 innings with the single-A Guardians.

The seventh inning with the Bisons on Aug. 15 was Bieber’s 7^th and final game of his rehab stint. Kav is now five months old and sleep “is a coin flip,” as Bieber puts it, with that easy smile firmly in place. “We’re working on it — and he’s a fantastic baby,” he adds. “It’s all joy, no matter what.”

It’s Kav, Kara, his parents Chris and Kristine, his older brother Travis and his in-laws that Bieber says helped him get through the lengthy period away from baseball. “I’ve always had patience, but I think the biggest part is throughout this process, you tend to want to push, push, push, and I was able to rely on my support system: my family,” he says. “They’ve always been able to keep me centered and I think that goes a long way.”

Bieber is the first to point out that his road back from surgery is ongoing, with work still to do. But he has thought ahead to what he knows will be a very emotional debut for Toronto, his return to MLB. He’s even thought about whether his emotion will spill out during the game, right after, or at some later time.

“Maybe I’ll compartmentalize and deal with it in a few weeks or at the end of the season,” Bieber says. “Because there’s a lot of work to be had — and a lot of success to be had as well.”

But the fancy food and drink, together with his on-field skill, are the only ways Bisons players say they could see Bieber’s pedigree. “He doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh, it’s a big leaguer,’” Valenzuela says. “We know he’s a big leaguer, but he doesn’t project that.” A day after one of his starts, Bieber was on the field during batting practice, collecting baseballs in a bucket to later put back into the pitching machine. “For a guy of his stature on Major League rehab to come out on the field and just be one of the guys, that’s a testament to his character,” says Candaele, the Bisons manager. “He’s respectful of his teammates. It may seem like a trivial thing, but it means a lot to the players that are here.”

It didn’t go unnoticed, in part because many Bisons had eyes on Bieber to learn as much as they could from him. Count left-hander Adam Macko in that camp. “I watched him pitch for the Guardians when he was absolutely dicing everybody up, and that was really cool to see. I never thought I’d be in the same vicinity as him this soon,” says Macko, a graduate of Edmonton’s Vauxhall High School who was drafted in the seventh round by Seattle in 2019 and traded to the Blue Jays in 2022. Macko, 24, says he tries “really hard not to fanboy” around players he admires, and he’s thankful for the practice he’s had this year, with so many elite Blue Jays coming through on rehab.

“That guy would have every right to be out here and do his own thing and get out and not talk to anybody,” Macko says of Bieber. “But it wasn’t long before I realized, ‘Okay, you’re a really cool guy and I can just be myself around you and be comfortable and talk baseball.’ He’s an open book, so I’m very appreciative to have a guy like that around.”

Macko picked Bieber’s brain on everything from confidence and off-day routines to how to remain consistent. “He helped me out, he said, ‘You really want to hone in on being the same guy coming into the field every day, no matter what’s going on, being consistent with executing your pitches. There are times to work on mechanics in the off-season, but right now is the time to really just focus on where the ball’s going and be confident up there,’” Macko says.

Since witnessing Bieber’s routine up-close and talking to him about being “hyper focused,” Macko has been working on that himself. “He’s very methodical, he has a purpose behind everything that he does, and when it’s his day to pitch, he is locked in from the time he gets to the field,” Macko says. “When he’s going through his throwing and bullpens, you can gradually see it building up and building up, his level of focus on everything. Whenever he’s out here it’s a pleasure to watch him. You know what he’s here to do and he’s not wavering from it one bit. Since he first talked to me about that, it’s been something I’ve been working on for sure.”

Bieber used to be incredibly superstitious, especially back in his college days, but he says once he got drafted and was pitching more regularly, he couldn’t keep up with all the repetitive actions he had in place. “It was too mentally exhausting to be counting every rep of trunk twists in warmups and all that stuff,” Bieber says, mimicking the motion while he explains the superstitious approach he brought to simple exercises. “But ultimately I think that was from, without dissecting it too much, I think superstition sometimes come from, dare I say, lack of confidence.”

Not long after he was drafted, Bieber chose to go in a different direction with his preparation. “I dove into my routine and the importance of it,” he says. “Although I’m very routine-oriented, if it doesn’t go perfectly, I can still go out there and perform.”

Valenzuela watched that preparation a few times in Buffalo. “You can see the mentality after everything he does is so on-point,” he says.

While the catcher was expecting Bieber’s best pitch to be his slider, Valenzuela says his favourite in No. 57s arsenal is the changeup that Bieber has literally been changing up of late. “I think that pitch has a bright future,” Valenzuela says. “The first time he threw it to me, it was amazing. I couldn’t tell you what he’s done to change it, but I’m telling you whatever it is, it’s been working really well.

“It’s a firm pitch. I’m thinking the hitters, they’re not reading the seams and the velo is coming in, they’re probably thinking it’s a fastball, and then it has a sinker movement with some extra drop. It’s incredible.”

Bieber says he stopped trying to throw “a normal change up” because it wasn’t working. “A lot of guys are able to throw it slow, but I was just never able to, so I decided to change that,” he explains. “I had a firmer change up, so I had to figure out the right grip and throw it hard and let it dive for me.”

It sure dives, too. “That thing surprises,” Macko says. “He’s throwing a change up and you can say, okay, you know what it’s going to do, and it’s moving and it just dives down even farther than you would expect. It’s really impressive to see, and the hitters react how I imagine they would react.”

Candaele, who recently became the Bisons modern day leader in managerial wins after picking up his 313^th, says he was impressed with Bieber’s level of play right out of the gate. “He’s come back strong,” says Candaele. “A lot of people have come back from that injury and have pitched many years into the future, so I think it looks like it’s totally healed and everything looks fine. He’s throwing well, his velocity is good, and I think that’s the indicator, that he’s maintaining velocity. His pitches are sharp.”

The next time those pitches are on display, Bieber will be wearing a Blue Jays uniform and living full-time in Toronto, which he calls “the homeland.” And though Bieber has been a member of the Toronto Blue Jays for less than a month, he’s already well-versed on his family’s new home.

“The traffic’s worse than I expected — and I expected it to be bad,” he says. “But the food scene is fantastic. My wife and I are excited to, when we are able, to get to enjoy a bunch of different spots.”

Bieber knows what a Canadian tuxedo is, how to use loonies and toonies, and he’s working on mastering the words to “O Canada”.

“I can’t rip it off for you right now, but I could sing along with it,” he says. “I feel like I’m getting more comfortable.”

He’s about to hear that anthem on a near nightly basis as he gets set for his long-awaited return to MLB with the league’s lone Canadian team. He points out there’s plenty to be fueled by as he comes back.

“Not unlike a lot of other athletes, I pride myself on handling adversity well and sometimes when you’re thrust into a new situation, it can kind of be rejuvenating. Not that I needed it, but it can give you a little bit more edge, and so I definitely feel that,” Bieber says. “I’m excited to continue to work towards being my best self and put that product out there for a new team.”

A team making a playoff push, one he’s expected to help to that end while he works toward being not just the pitcher he once was, but an even better version. That’s something Bieber expects of himself for simple reasons.

“I’m confident in the work that I put in, I’m confident in who I am as a competitor, and I think I have shown how I can be and how I can help the Blue Jays at the big-league level,” Bieber says.

He pauses briefly, then adds: “So, yeah, we’ll see.”