Big 50: Toronto Blue Jays: The Men and Moments that Made the Toronto Blue Jays

wanted.

Contents

Foreword by Dan Shulman

Introduction

1. The 1992 World Series

2. The 1993 World Series

3. 2015 American League East Champions

4. 1985 American League East Champions

5. Franchise Icon: Pat Gillick

6. The Bat Flip and Holy Trinity of Blue Jays Home Runs

7. Carlos Delgado’s Four-Homer Game

8. Dave Stieb’s No-Hitter

9. Jose Bautista’s 54–Home Run Season

10. Franchise Icon: Roberto Alomar

11. An MVP Emerges, As Does a New Blue Jays Way

12. Roy Halladay Wins 22 and the Cy Young

13. The Inaugural Game

14. The Executives

15. Franchise Icon: Cito Gaston

16. The Reign of Alex Anthopoulos

17. Dome Sweet Home

18. The 10-Homer Game

19. Top Three Hitters in 1993

20. Franchise Icon: George Bell

21. The 10-Run Comeback

22. Alfredo Griffin Shares Rookie of the Year

23. The Marlins and Mets Blockbusters

24. Buck Martinez’s Broken-Leg Double Play

25. Franchise Icon: Roy Halladay

26. The Cycles

27. The Arrivals of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion

28. The 2015 Trade Deadline

29. Devo’s Catch and The Triple Play That Wasn’t

30. Franchise Icon: Dave Stieb

31. The 1987 Collapse

32. The Blue Jays’ Wildest Playoff Games

33. Seven Blue Jays at the 1993 All-Star Game

34. The Best Outfield in Baseball

35. Franchise Icon: Carlos Delgado

36. The Trades for David Cone and Rickey Henderson

37. Jack Morris and Pat Hentgen Win 20

38. Two Years With Roger

39. The Canadians

40. Franchise Icon: Joe Carter

41. Vernon Wells’ 215 Hits

42. Superscouts

43. Frank Thomas Hits No. 500

44. John McDonald’s Father’s Day Homer

45. Franchise Icon: Tony Fernandez

46. Roy Howell and Edwin Encarnacion Drive in Nine

47. The Win Streaks

48. The Owners

49. The Defenders

50. Franchise Icon: Tom Cheek

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Dan Shulman

I was there. Honestly. I know hundreds of thousands of people say they attended the inaugural Blue Jays game, but I really did—although I’m told I asked to leave after five innings because of the cold. (At least I can say I made it to official game status.) The day before that game, I’m not sure I could have told you anything meaningful about baseball. But April 7, 1977, was a day that, although I certainly didn’t realize it then, would come to play a major role in my life.

I loved baseball from the moment I was introduced to it as a 10-year-old. I loved the stats, the strategy, the endless conversations you could have during and after a game about what had gone on and what was likely to happen the next day. And I could scarcely believe my good fortune: a major league team had come to my hometown. Sure, we already had the Maple Leafs—a team I worshipped as a child—and sure, I was aware there was already a Major League Baseball team in Montreal, but I never once thought Toronto would get a team to call its own.

As soon as the Blue Jays arrived, I took full advantage. I would go to a game with my parents or family friends whenever they would take me, and as soon as I was old enough to go with my own friends—well, then the horse was really out of the barn. The route from my home in Willowdale was the 53 bus to Finch Station, the subway down to King, the streetcar across to the CNE, and then a walk to get to Exhibition Stadium. Back then, shocking as this may seem, there were scheduled doubleheaders. Not day-night. And not because of rain. Try to find a better way for a bunch of kids to spend their Saturday or Sunday. It can’t be done.

I can recall various periods of my life by the connection I had to baseball at that time. In 1986, we had a surprise 50th birthday party for my dad at a Blue Jays game, and Tony Fernandez hit a foul ball that hit me right in the hands. Error Shulman. When I was working as a lifeguard in the late ’80s, I’d take control of the radio on my shifts. Bye-bye music, and hello ballgame. Just out of university, I went on a baseball road trip with some buddies, and by sheer luck we wound up at Dave Stieb’s no-hitter in Cleveland. And then, just two years later, somehow I found myself sitting in the broadcast booth with Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth as I waited to do Jays Talk after the game.

Little did I know then that in 1995 I would start calling Jays games on TSN. I vividly remember the first at-bat of my first spring training game, between the Jays and the Orioles. I was so nervous, I willed Brady Anderson to do something easy, like hit a ground ball to second, so I could get the first batter out of the way. But it wasn’t meant to be. Anderson hit a moon shot to right centre, I lost it in the sun, and I blew the first home run call of my career. Fortunately, my bosses stuck with me and let me work through some rookie jitters. Now 20 years later, I guess I’ve come full circle, as I have the opportunity to come back home and call some Jays games for Sportsnet while still doing baseball and college basketball for ESPN.

Kid or adult, fan or broadcaster, baseball is as enjoyable to me now as it has ever been. I’ve gone to dozens of games with my parents, and dozens more with my sons. There have been good Toronto teams and bad, overachievers and underachievers, open roofs, closed roofs, and (way back when) no roof at all. But as much as anything in my life, for almost 40 years now, baseball—and the Blue Jays in particular—have been there. And I’m sure, like I have, that many of you have sat around and reminisced about the memorable moments in Blue Jays history that are detailed so well by Shi Davidi in this book.

Enjoy The Big 50: Toronto Blue Jays, and relive the good times all over again.

—Dan Shulman

Introduction

Major League Baseball very nearly came to Toronto in the form of the Giants, the history-rich National League franchise struggling to make a go of it in California in the mid-1970s. An agreement was in place. Horace Stoneham, the franchise owner out west, had a deal to sell the Giants to Labatt Breweries along with R. Howard Webster and CIBC, the group seeking to bring a second club north of the border. An announcement of the $8 million sale, plus $5.5 million more to buy out the 19 years remaining on the lease at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, was made January 9, 1976, and a rivalry with the Montreal Expos loomed on the horizon. Imagine for a moment how different the Canadian baseball landscape over the past 40 years might have been had that deal reached fruition.

The sale of the Giants fell through when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone obtained a temporary court order preventing the National League owners from voting on the deal. Hours before the order’s March 1 expiry date Bob Lurie, who’d been seeking a partner to keep the team in the Bay Area, joined with Bud Herseth and bought the club for $8 million. For Labatt, which had previously made runs at buying the Baltimore Orioles and Cleveland Indians, and Webster, who had tried to buy the San Diego Padres, their collaboration with CIBC on the Giants deal marked yet another near miss.

It was probably the most depressing time for me in all my public life, said Paul Godfrey, the former Blue Jays president and CEO, who at the time was chairman of the Metropolitan Toronto council and had aggressively pursued a team for years. I had the Giants in the palm of my hands. There was great excitement in the city, and then victory was snatched from us.

But Godfrey wasn’t deterred, nor were Labatt president Don McDougall and Herb Solway, a partner at the law firm Goodman and Goodman, which represented the brewery. Soon after the Giants deal fell through, Godfrey got a call from Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman saying he wanted Toronto in the American League. Years earlier, Kauffman’s Toronto-born wife, Muriel, had overheard the trio chatting at a bar after a baseball meeting and offered to use her influence with her husband to help their cause.

Meanwhile, the junior circuit in February 1976 awarded a new franchise to a group from Seattle, seeking to ward off a $14 million lawsuit from the city. A week before the 1970 season started, the Seattle Pilots had been abruptly sold to a group led by Bud Selig (who would later become baseball commissioner), and moved to Milwaukee, where they became the Brewers, prompting Seattle’s legal action. The birth of the Mariners in 1976 resolved that, but left the American League with 13 teams. As such, another club was needed to balance out the schedule. So, during a joint meeting of baseball’s 24 owners on March 20, 1976, the American League voted 11–1 in favour of expanding north to Toronto. The National League didn’t take kindly to that, and at the same meeting announced that it would actively consider a franchise in Toronto for the 1977 season in spite of what had just happened.

Bowie Kuhn, baseball’s commissioner at the time, continued to press the matter. As he tried to find a way to get Toronto into the senior circuit, the American League went about choosing between the Labatt ownership group and another headed by Toronto businessmen Phil and Irv Granovsky. A secret session was scheduled for March 26 in Tampa to settle the matter, where both applicants made presentations before the 12 established American League owners. Eventually they settled on the Labatt group due to what Detroit Tigers owner John Fetzer, chairman of the loop’s planning committee, described as solid, sound economics. You can’t run baseball on a shoestring. The Labatt people gave this part of the equation, and that makes it viable.

The purchase price was $7 million. The official announcement came later that day, seemingly marking an end to a trying two-year process for Labatt, and setting off celebrations in Tampa and Toronto. Having done his part to land the team during the presentations, Gord Kirke, the prominent Toronto sports lawyer who at the time worked with Solway at Goodman and Goodman, left the festivities early to get back home and tend to other duties, but not without some shenanigans at the Toronto airport first.

I went to go through customs and was in a very celebratory, overserved state of mind, he recalled, "and the customs officer said the usual, ‘Did you buy or receive anything of value while you were in the United States?’ To which I responded, ‘Yes, very much so,’ and he said, ‘What is the approximate value of what you got while you were in the States?’ I said, ‘Seven million dollars.’ And he said, ‘Please, sir, it’s been a long day and I don’t want to make this day any longer than it needs to be for either of us. What did you buy while you were in the States for seven million dollars?’ And you know, [he was] being very doubtful that I had really spent seven million dollars. I said, ‘The baseball team,’ to which he again scoffed at the answer and said, ‘Sir, I don’t want to have you to go the separate room and have them deal with you. You seem like a nice guy. Why can’t you tell me the truth?’

I said I was, and dug in my briefcase and came up with some pins that Labatt had made up about Toronto baseball as part of a campaign to get a franchise, and I gave those pins to the customs officer. I’ve heard that those pins on the collectible market are worth quite something today, so the customs officer turned a bad day into a pretty good day.

As good as it was, more headaches remained. Commissioner Kuhn remained unhappy with the American League’s expansion to Toronto because he was under pressure from the U.S. Congress to put a team back in Washington, and wanted to put both new franchises in the National League. Godfrey said Kuhn’s plan was for New Orleans to join Seattle in the American League. On March 29, the National League voted 10–2 in favour of expanding into Toronto and Washington, but the nays cast by Philadelphia and Cincinnati killed the motion because it required a unanimous decision. Despite that, some of the owners urged Kuhn to use his powers to protect the best interests of baseball, urging him to rule the vote a legal majority. Instead, another vote was scheduled for April 26, and this time the tally was 7–5 in favour, effectively settling the matter. What happened is once some of the owners saw there were votes against it in the first vote, they decided to let Cincinnati and Philadelphia be the bad guys, said Godfrey. They didn’t want to alienate the commissioner. But when the commissioner kept pressing, three more decided, ‘Screw the commissioner.’ And that’s how the team ended up in the American League.

An accountant named Paul Beeston became the Toronto franchise’s first employee on May 10. After Peter Bavasi was named executive vice president and general manager June 18, he lured over Pat Gillick from the New York Yankees to run player personnel. And on August 12, Blue Jays was selected by the board of directors from more than 4,000 suggestions and 30,000 entries into a name-the-team contest.

Another popular suggestion was Blues, although potential names were all over the map, from Exhibitionists to Island Ferries. During a board meeting on potential names, some members began to favour Beavers, given that the animal is known for its hard work, is on the Canadian nickel, and is symbolic of the country’s wildlife. The younger participants in the room, however, cringed, since shooting beaver was a vulgar euphemism commonly used by athletes at the time to describe the pursuit of women. They could only imagine the headlines. Only after some delicate explanations of the slang from a team-management member (some board members initially took the euphemism at face value and thought it was silly to think players would actually hunt beavers), the group decided against the name and John Robarts put forth Blue Jays. Just that morning the former premier of Ontario had seen a blue jay in the trees through his bathroom window, and he became enamoured with the chatty, aggressive, and very Canadian bird. Dr. William Mills of Toronto had officially submitted the name and ended up winning the contest.

From those convoluted, backroom beginnings to consecutive World Series championships to a 21-year postseason drought and then to 2015’s captivating return to the playoffs, the Blue Jays have certainly been, as Godfrey described the expansion process, the most extreme roller-coaster ride.

1. The 1992 World Series

At the pinnacle, after Otis Nixon bunted, and Mike Timlin pounced on it, and the Toronto Blue Jays and their fans held their collective breath as the relay went to Joe Carter at first base, and Jerry Crawford signalled out, and the World Series he’d spent 16 years trying to win was at long last agonizingly won, the thing Pat Gillick felt most was relief. Certainly there was joy, elation…all the stuff you’d expect. But after all the work put in to building an expansion franchise from the ground up, after all the losses during those years of development and all the heartbreak during the winning seasons, the Blue Jays had reached the summit. I’ve never climbed Mount Everest or anything, said Gillick, but it’s sort of like climbing a mountain, and when you get to the top, you take a deep breath and say you finally made it.

That’s precisely how it felt on the night of Saturday, October 24, 1992, as Carter took Timlin’s toss to end Game 6 of the World Series and CBS broadcaster Sean McDonough declared that, For the first time in history, the world championship banner will fly north of the border. The Toronto Blue Jays are baseball’s best in 1992. Winning the season’s last game—4–3 in 11 innings over the Atlanta Braves—triggered the kind of never-been-done-before high that players, coaches, the front office, and fans can experience only once. Improving from expansion doormat in 1977 to American League East champion in 1985 was fun; waiting another seven years to make the jump from division winner to World Series champion was excruciating. Along the way cruel labels like Blow Jays were attached, and the battle scars accumulated. For many, the euphoric dog pile on the Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium infield was cathartic.

Even though I wasn’t here in ’85, ’87, and ’89, we all knew that baggage was there, said Carter. "The year before, when we got beat by Minnesota in the ALCS, we took it upon ourselves, [me] and Pat Tabler. We said, ‘You know what? We’re coming to spring training and next season we have one goal, and that’s to win the World Series. Not get there. Heck, I don’t want to get to the World Series, I want to win the World Series.’ So all the history, we put it behind us, and we said we’re going to focus on now. And when you win that first one, it’s a big relief."

The five-game loss to the Twins in the previous October stung deeply, and in many ways it shaped some of the key moves that pushed the Blue Jays over the top in 1992. Gillick felt the ’91 team had been superior to Minnesota, which needed seven games to beat the Braves in the World Series, yet his group wilted at the moment of truth. The free-agent signings of workhorse starter Jack Morris away from the Twins, as well as designated hitter Dave Winfield, were designed in part to address that lack of killer instinct. Veteran infielder Alfredo Griffin, another free-agent addition, added a cool and savvy presence in the clubhouse to complement Morris’ toughness and Winfield’s determination. Morris’ pre-signing conversation with Gillick was succinct: The only words out of [Gillick’s] mouth were, ‘I got tired of having you beat us,’ Morris said.

Morris joined a rotation that also included Juan Guzman, Jimmy Key, Todd Stottlemyre, and, at different points, Dave Stieb, David Wells, and Pat Hentgen. Eventually the staff would be bolstered by the acquisition of David Cone. Wells and Hentgen pitched mostly out of a bullpen that also featured the dynamic duo of Tom Henke and Duane Ward. Together the pitchers posted a 3.91 ERA, just below league average but ninth in the American League. The loop’s second best offence with 780 runs (11 fewer than the Detroit Tigers) helped cover the gap. The lineup featured seven players with at least 11 home runs, led by Carter with 34. Carter drove in 119 and Winfield 108, while the dynamic Roberto Alomar did a little bit of everything with a team-best .405 on-base percentage, 177 hits, 105 runs scored, 76 RBIs, and 49 stolen bases to go with his Gold Glove defence. You better be able to win with all that, said Tabler.

Win they did, from Opening Day onward, spending only six days all season out of first place in the American League East, and none after May 24. At no point did the Blue Jays trail by more than a half game. Even though they finished only four games ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers, they were in control from start to finish, a sense of purpose carrying them through the grind.

I had been on two world championship teams and I looked around and said, ‘This is another one,’ said Morris, who became the franchise’s first 20-game winner. I just sensed it, and everybody in the locker room was committed early to winning. They had tasted the postseason, the guys that were here. Of course Winfield and I were new, and Dave wanted it as bad as I wanted it. In general, there was an atmosphere of, ‘We’re going to win this thing,’ and that was predetermined from way early in the season, not just late in the year.

Still, the regular season was not without its challenges. Stieb, coming off a neck injury that cost him nearly the entire 1991 season, struggled with elbow and shoulder issues and finished the year on the disabled list. Kelly Gruber’s offence disappeared and was never to be found again. And the Brewers and Baltimore Orioles simply wouldn’t go away.

Despite being in command, the Blue Jays never led the division by more than five games. They were just 2½ games up on the Orioles when they acquired David Cone from the New York Mets in a stunning waiver deal on August 27. The price was steep: infielder Jeff Kent, who ended up having a Hall of Fame–calibre career, and outfield prospect Ryan Thompson, who flamed out despite being the piece Gillick was most reluctant to part with. We thought about it and we said, ‘You know, David Cone is a guy that we think can put us over the hump,’ said Gillick. And at the same time, it kind of deflates your competition if you can do something like that. Psychologically, I think it has that effect on the people that are pursuing you.

Joe Carter is mobbed by his teammates after catching the final out of the 1992 World Series. (Rusty Kennedy)

Cone went 4–3 with a 2.55 ERA in eight games, including one relief appearance, down the stretch while stabilizing the rotation. The Blue Jays clinched the American League East on the penultimate day of the season with a 3–1 victory over the Detroit Tigers, and the focus shifted to exorcising postseason demons. Their opponent was the Oakland Athletics, a team that bested them in five games in the 1989 American League Championship Series.

Among ourselves, when we put us up man-to-man, we were better than most teams, said centre fielder Devon White. As a team and the chemistry we had with each other, it was without a doubt the best during that period.

The definitive turning point against Oakland, and in some ways one for the franchise as a whole, came in Game 4. Up 2–1 in the series but down 6–1 through seven innings, the Blue Jays rallied for a three-spot in the eighth and had men on second and third with two outs. Ed Sprague hit for Manny Lee, and Hall of Fame closer Dennis Eckersley struck him out, but on his way off the mound he pumped his fist and then pointed and stared aggressively at the players in the Blue Jays’ dugout. While Eckersley’s theatrics were commonplace for him, this crossed the line. The Toronto players were furious. The next inning, White led off with a single before Alomar turned on a 2–2 fastball and ripped it over the wall in right to knot things up. Immediately after finishing his swing, he dropped his bat and thrust both arms in the air, fingers pointed to the sky. It was a big hit for us, said Alomar. It turned around the series, and from that point on we were a different ballclub.

The Blue Jays completed the comeback in the 11th, when Derek Bell led off with a walk against Kelly Downs, went to third on Candy Maldonado’s single, and scored on a Pat Borders sacrifice fly. Henke closed out the bottom half for a 3–1 series lead, and they booked the first World Series trip in franchise history at home three days later with a 9–2 win before 51,355 in Toronto. Alomar, in no small measure because of his Game 4 home run, was named the ALCS MVP.

Just a great, clutch at-bat against the game’s best at the time, said Morris. Eck had done a lot of showboating on the mound, and talking to him years later [he said] that was never his intent, it’s just the way he was…but it rubbed all of us the wrong way. So, when Robbie hit it, it was like the ultimate revenge. It’s like the baseball gods wanted to remind everybody that nobody is too good. Added manager Cito Gaston, Without Robbie hitting that home run we don’t make it.

The World Series, which opened in Atlanta, was uncharted territory for the franchise and its jubilant fan base, and more heroics were needed early on to keep things from going sideways. Damon Berryhill’s three-run homer off Morris in the sixth inning of Game 1 put the Blue Jays down 1–0 in the Series, and they trailed 4–3 with one out in the ninth of Game 2 when Bell came to the plate for Lee against closer Jeff Reardon. Bell, an energetic, 23-year-old fourth outfielder, worked an eight-pitch walk and Ed Sprague, a catching/corner infield prospect called up midsummer, batted for Ward. Gaston had told Sprague in the previous inning to be ready to pinch-hit, so he’d had plenty of time to prepare. During the gap he asked Rance Mulliniks what he looked for against Reardon, and the utility infielder told him to be ready for a high fastball. On the first pitch, that’s what he got—and he belted it over the wall in left-centre field to put the Blue Jays up 5–4. After Henke survived a nervous ninth, the trajectory of the entire Series changed. It was like, oh my God, we could be down 0–2 to Atlanta, and this might be our last chance, said Tabler. And then for him to homer, we were so excited.

There was more excitement to come. Game 3 on October 20 was the first World Series contest ever played outside the United States. It started with a Marines unit from New York