So, the Toronto Blue Jays are returning to the World Series, first time since 1993. I spent time during the Jays final two games against the Seattle Mariners jotting down the wide array of memories I have about this team, beginning with the franchise’s opening day, April 7, 1977. In. The. Snow.
This post is going to test the limits of YouTube lol.
Buck Martinez is part of Toronto’s broadcasting team today, but in the early 1980s he was the Blue Jays catcher, and I remember one car trip along the 401 listening to the Jays on the radio when Buck a home run, his first and only hit for the month of May. Was it 1985? Did it even happen?
The next memory has some proof. Baltimore Orioles’s pitcher Tippy Martinez picked off three Toronto baserunners at first base in the same inning, August, 24, 1983. This was particularly galling for me because my buddy was an Orioles fan — and they went on to win the World Series that year.
For this next memory, I was in attendance at Exhibition Stadium, in the bleachers, as usual, where I went with friends because my mother bought undated 99 cent general admission tickets at Dominion, when she bought groceries. Jays third-baseman Kelly Gruber hit for the cycle (a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game), April 16, 1989.
I attended opening day of the 1986 season, after getting my father to write a note for my teachers saying I was going “bird watching.” The Jays played the Orioles.
I will never forget Doyle Alexander pitching to George Brett. This one is October 15, 1985. In the audio it says Brett hit three home runs of Alexander. The one I remember bounced off the top of the fence. This one doesn’t. TO was up 3-1 in the series, but KC came back and won, advancing to the World Series. The disappointment in that collapse still sort of lingers.
The 1992 and 1993 World Series years have lots of memories. Alomar doing the Atlanta chop. The 1992 BJ’s triple play. The 1993 Joe Carter walk off home run.
But all of those pale against the memory of Cecil Fielder getting thrown out attempting to steal a base. Now the Google AI says: “Cecil Fielder never attempted to steal a base in a World Series game in Toronto. His first and only two stolen bases were in 1996 while playing for the Detroit Tigers against the Minnesota Twins.” This is a hallucination. I clearly remember Fielder getting thrown out, then afterwards saying he was sure he’d been given the sign to steal (he hadn’t).
I did some more digging, and this steal attempt was actually in 1987:
Cecil Fielder was thrown out attempting to steal second base in a 1987 game against the Detroit Tigers, which was a notable moment in the Toronto Blue Jays season finale.
Agghhhhh! 1987 against Detroit! The season the Blue Jays should have gone to the World Series and didn’t even get out of their Division because they lost the final seven games of the season — and Cecil Fielder got thrown out attempting to steal a base. Okay, it wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t help.
Toronto had a 3-1/2 game lead over the Tigers with seven games to play.
I was at at least one of those games with Detroit, their competitor, whom they played in the final series of the year, losing every game. I had grandstand tickets, as usual, and my friend and I walked to the extreme end of the grandstand, then went to the uppermost row, then walked down the row to the final two empty seats, or so it seemed. These were the two seats in the stadium that were the absolute farthest from home plate. In fact, from our seats to the outfield fence was likely the same distance as from the fence to home plate.
But let’s not focus on the worst loss in the team’s history, as they return to the World Series!
There have been so many remarkable scenes and players who have come through town. Dave Winfield. Ricky Henderson. Paul Molitor. Jack Morris. Jimmy Key. Dave Stewart. Pat Borders. These are the World Series teams to be sure.
Of course, there was also Edwin and his parrot.
Josh Donaldson left his mark with his bat, but also with his simple 2015 statement: “This is not the try league.”
Springer’s dinger last night goes on the all time wall, sure, but I will end this with Vlad Jr.’s grand slam … and him and Ortiz. The world needs more fun. Bring it home, boys!
ADDEDNDUM:
Inevitably, new memories occurred to me.
A super early one is, my family went to a game at Exhibition Stadium. Could have been the late-1970s. We were sitting along the first base side on the aluminum benches. Attendance was sparse. Someone in the crowd was yelling at the opposing batter, as one might at a community softball game or minor league park. “This one’s your pitch! This one’s a strike! Swing at this one! This one is the one!” But it wasn’t. It was a ball. The batter stepped back from the plate and turned to the crowd, making some kind of gesture that he’d been listening — and the speaker had been wrong. Good-naturedly. The community spirit of the ballpark.
Also in those early years, we went to a double-header and sat through two whole ballgames. It was exhausting. Then one weekend we had tickets to a ball game and it was raining. We went to the game, then went home. Then it stopped raining. I remember being outside, playing street hockey (?), when my father said we were going back downtown. The ballgame was on again.
I used to collect newspapers as a teenager. Important events and things. I had left home when the Blue Jays won the World Series the first time. My father — how? — got a special edition blue-print front page of the Toronto Star with the headline about the Blue Jays winning the World Series — and gifted it to me. I should have framed it immediately, but I didn’t. And later in a purge of papers and things, it disappeared.
But not from memory.
My mother’s parents lived in England, and my grandfather and his second wife visited regularly. We took them to a Blue Jays game, early 1980s, and they concluded the point of the game was to try to hit the ball over the wall. They left the game early, bored.
The bat flip. I can’t believed I didn’t include Jose Bautista’s 2015 playoff bat flip above. That game against the Texas Rangers started in the afternoon. I was in the office and wouldn’t make it home to see the game, so I stopped in the food court below my office building and cozied up. Not a lot of folks were there at that time of day. Commuters streamed past, waving their way through Toronto’s underground PATH to Union Station and ports beyond. The food court had a series of large screen TVs showing the game. That’s where I saw the bat flip. Iconic moment.