Long before the playoffs, the Jays laid the groundwork for a second championship

The Toronto Blue Jays had done the impossible in 1992, bringing a World Series championship north of the border for the first time in the history of big-league baseball. The win had been the culmination of 10 seasons of plus-.500 play, a decade of effort that had seen the Jays reach the ALCS three times only to be turned away. It was a relief, a release and the ultimate validation for the franchise and its fans. But the Jays weren’t done making history. They had their sights set on an even loftier goal, one that had last been accomplished by the 1978 New York Yankees. The Blue Jays wanted to repeat.

Joe Carter RF
People tend to relax a little bit when they win a World Series. That was not the case with us. We immediately said, “Hey, let’s look at repeating.”

Todd Stottlemyre SP
When we came back for spring training, we were proud of the title and we weren’t willing to give it up.

Buck Martinez TV
I think everyone kind of expected them to do it again. But we all realized how challenging that could be. You never anticipate being able to do that because everyone is out for you.

In addition to the target painted on their backs, the Jays had to overcome an off-season that had seen them lose 10 members of the ’92 World Series roster. Included in that group were starting pitchers Jimmy Key and David Cone, designated hitter Dave Winfield and closer Tom Henke, all of whom had been crucial to the World Series win.

Paul Beeston President
Jimmy Key was a player we wanted to keep, but we were going to have problems because he was after a long-term contract. We knew Dave Winfield wanted a long-term contract—he had been the leader of the team in many ways in 1992.

Pat Gillick gm
Payroll-wise we couldn’t afford to keep them. That’s one of the reasons we let them walk. Not just payroll but length. Cone and Key and Winfield and Henke, they were looking for longer-term contracts that we weren’t interested in giving. The difficult thing wasn’t letting them go. It was deciding who to keep. You kept who you thought were the nucleus and the right people.

At the top of Toronto’s list of keepers was Joe Carter, who’d led the ’92 team in home runs and RBI.

paul Beeston
We were one of the large-revenue teams, so it wasn’t an issue of money—it was about sensibilities as to who we were going to sign. Joe was a guy who could steal a base, hit a home run and every year he seemed to drive in 100 runs. And he was a fun guy to be around.

joe Carter
I was a free agent and I had told any teams interested: “It’s only going to be between the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays.” It was a very difficult situation. I’ve lived in Leewood, Kansas, since 1986, so a lot of my roots are here.

Bob Elliott journalist
[Carter] was all set to go to Kansas City. I mean, it was home and the money was basically the same.

pat Gillick
To be frank, we were very confident about our proposal. I was a little bit surprised to hear that he was that close to leaving.

joe Carter
My agent and I had a talk with the late Ewing Kauffman, the owner of the Royals, and he told me to sit down because the Royals had made a tremendous offer. But it wasn’t because of the money. If it was the money, I would have taken the offer in Kansas City. The terms were a little bit better.

pat Gillick
It was kind of touch-and-go until the night before he signed. But then [Carter] had a dream and that kind of turned his mind for sure and he came back with us.

joe Carter
The night [after I met with Kauffman] I had a dream. I was walking to the ballpark with Devon White. It was kind of dark and we came up on the stadium. When I looked up, the lights lit up and it said, “Welcome to the SkyDome.” The next day I signed with the Blue Jays. I can remember the day before there were blue jays all around the house, everywhere in my backyard—actual blue jays, the bird. That’s how I came back.

bob Elliott
About two days later, I get a phone call from Devon White and he says, “Hey, tell Gillick and [assistant GM Gord] Ash that I should get an extension.” I say, “Why?” He says, “Well, I showed up in Joe’s dream.” So, the first guy I saw was Ash and I told him—I thought it was funny—and Ash said, “I think I’ve had enough talk about agents and extensions for that to be funny right now, Robert.”

With Carter locked down, the Jays turned their attention to plugging the remaining spots in the roster.

pat Gillick
We had tremendous scouting and player development so, consequently, a lot of the holes that we had we filled internally.

paul Beeston
The key was, who could we get? We had some preliminary discussions with Paul Molitor, we’d had some preliminary discussions with Dave Stewart, who was going to leave Oakland, and so we felt if we lost the other guys, we could replace them with players of equal calibre.

Dave Stewart SP
As soon as we were available to speak with other teams, we got a call from Pat Gillick and he explained the situation. David Cone was possibly leaving, Jimmy Key was possibly leaving and he said that if either one of those two players left that I was the top name on their list. Paul Molitor was the final decision for me. When he signed to play here that sealed the deal for me.

Paul Molitor DH
I was hoping to be one of those guys who played in one uniform his whole career. So after 15 years, it was a difficult decision to make.

pat Gillick
Molitor had been in Milwaukee his whole career. They had a good team and won but they never got close to the World Series. We just had to present to him exactly what our plan was and where we were going and let him make a decision.

paul Molitor
When Paul and Pat came to Milwaukee and laid out their plans for me, that really did it. I understood that while they were ecstatic about what they had done in ’92, I remember them talking about how they wanted to be the first team since the ’70s to win back-to-back titles. It was very convincing and they were very likeable men with a lot of passion for winning and it became clear to me that if I was going to make a change, it was now and this was the place that I wanted to go.

Mike Timlin RP
We were losing Winfield’s big bat, but having him replaced with a guy who could drive in a lot of runs like Molitor was exciting.

Jack Morris SP
[Molitor and I] literally played against each other since we were about 12 years old. The first time we were ever teammates, the only time, was ’93. He pretty much filled in for what Dave did the year before.

paul Molitor
The irony of replacing Dave was that our careers ended up having so many parallels. We were born in Minnesota, played for the university, spent a long time playing for one team and ended up having to go to Toronto to win our only world championship. And then to continue, we both ended up going back to Minnesota. We both got our 3,000th hit on the exact same date. It was just a lot of strange things.

joe Carter
We acquired Paul, and it was like, “OK, let’s win one for Molitor.” We had two things going for us: The back-to-back and also trying to win a championship for Paul Molitor.

paul Molitor
I don’t remember them telling me that directly. I do remember reading that a couple of times in articles. I was never really comfortable with the idea of that being in the forefront as motivation. I think things were a lot bigger than that, but if your teammates and the organization and your fans were behind you and wanted to see that happen, it was a good feeling.

buck Martinez
Molitor was a very intense, very focused, hard-driven player. He came to Toronto when he was 36 years old, but still played every single game. He had a remarkable presence that just kind of calmed everything down for the Blue Jays and validated again that they were doing whatever they could to win a World Series.

paul Molitor
I was never overly verbal. I always did feel the freedom to speak up if I thought we were losing focus or losing sight of our goals. But I always thought that how you carried yourself and how you prepared for games—the respect that you gave the game and your teammates and your performance—was something that you could set a tone with. Simple things like running balls out and being early and just showing the right way to be professional. A lot of guys knew all this, but I think they kind of wanted to have someone around to instill the idea that that was the right way to do things.

jack Morris
Paul was a lot quieter guy than Dave. But the quiet influence was still an influence. A lot of young players migrated toward Paul because he carried himself well and he had the knowledge of the game.

todd Stottlemyre
All of the guys in that locker room, from playing against [Molitor and Stewart], already had this massive amount of respect for them.

The warm welcome from teammates helped the new arrivals ease into the clubhouse.

paul Molitor
[I had] always played spring training in Arizona and now I was in Florida. I remember my flight heading down there couldn’t even land. There was fog, so we landed in Tallahasee and I had to rent a car and drive down. It gave me that much more time to think about what it was going to be like to step into a new clubhouse.

Darren Kritzer Bat Boy
When a new guy would come on, everyone just gelled and it had a lot to do with the way the clubhouse was situated.

paul Molitor
I didn’t really have any specific message to the team when I met them because I still wasn’t sure how Cito was going to use me. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to use me as top-of-the-lineup guy or as a three hitter. I wasn’t sure even how much I was going to DH or play first base. I remember some of the guys like Eddie Sprague saying they were looking for more leadership from within the clubhouse and they said that they respected veteran players who could step up and help keep things cohesive. It gave me an opportunity to feel comfortable as the new guy taking on a leadership role in the team.

mike Timlin
Dave Stewart came in as an established force in the rotation. It was amazing what he could do on a constant basis. Very seldom did you see him go out and really get beat up. And he just stayed steady all year long.

todd Stottlemyre
I remember Dave, first day of pitchers’ camp, puts his arm around me and says, “What kind of year are ya gonna have?” And I was like, “Wow. Haven’t even thought about it.” He goes, “I’m gonna have a great year. You’re gonna have a big year, right?” This is the first day of spring training and I’m thinking, who am I playing golf with that afternoon? He’s talking about what kind of year he’s going to have. And then that day after the workout he says, “Hey, you wanna run with me?”

dave Stewart
I fought my battles in between starts and so when I’m running, I have a visual of the hitters that I’m going to be facing and what the guys have done to me in the past and what I want to accomplish if certain situations happen. I use my running as preparation.

todd Stottlemyre
I’m like, “I get to go run with Dave Stewart? Great!” So, we take off running, right? And we’re in our shorts and T-shirts and we leave the stadium and I’m thinking, “Hey we’re getting a long ways from the stadium.” And Dave’s not saying a word. All I can think about is, “I hope he’s gonna turn around sometime soon.”

dave Stewart
He wasn’t saying much but he was thinking, “Stew-dog, when we getting back?” I asked him, “What were you thinking about when we were doing our run?” And he said, “I wasn’t thinking anything. I was just thinking about running.”

todd Stottlemyre
We get back from the run and Dave looks at me and sweat’s just pouring out. And he says, “I threw a lot of shutouts on that run. You see, when I run I’m not just getting my legs and heart in shape, I’m getting my mind in shape.” I started to gravitate toward that. And of course the next day, after camp Dave says to me, “Wanna go for a run?” And what am I gonna say, “No”? And all I can think about is, “Hope it’s shorter than yesterday’s.” He took me on. There was a mentorship there.

dave Stewart
When I had the opportunity to speak to Stott about the mental approach to the game, I used those opportunities because I wanted him to be better than I was. I wanted him to be one of the best in the game.

todd Stottlemyre
He began talking to me about responsibility and about, as a starting pitcher, you’re not just responsible for your day. You’re responsible for everybody in that uniform, the general manager, everybody who works at that stadium and everybody who bought a ticket to come and root for that team. And it’s really a lot bigger than I ever thought about. At that moment I started falling in love with being a starting pitcher.

The defending champs had lost some of the pitching and defence that had carried them during the ’92 season, but they’d made up for it by doubling down on offence. The Jays lineup that started the season—and was quickly nicknamed “WAMCO” for White, Alomar, Molitor, Carter and Olerud—was the most feared in baseball. But despite the hype, the season didn’t get off to the most auspicious start.

Jerry Howarth radio
The Blue Jays opened in Seattle, Jack Morris on the mound, and they got beat 8–1. And this is a team that in spring training they thought, “Whoa, this is a great team.”

paul Molitor
We were sort of struggling at the beginning to establish our identity because we had some interchangeable parts, even though they had the core from ’92. Even when you’ve got a lot of returning players, each year takes on its own identity. It took us a while to figure out who we were going to be.

With Stewart sidelined with an injury to his throwing arm at the start of the season, it took Gaston a little while to sort out the starting rotation.

Al Leiter rP
I started about half the games that year, then Cito went with Stottlemyre and I got pushed to the pen. I never really got the warming-up thing in the pen. [Bullpen coach] John Sullivan used to get so pissed off at me because I was a starter and I would throw a shitload of pitches to get ready. And Sully, man, he’s a great old-time coach, and he was like, “Stop it! You’re done, you’re done!” And he’d have the catcher, Randy Knorr or whoever, hold the ball, ’cause I’d just keep on throwing.

The Blue Jays finished the month of April fourth in the AL Eastern Division with a 13-10 record. A May 12 loss at home against Detroit saw them fall below .500. It also cost them starting shortstop Dick Schofield, who broke his left arm in an eighth-inning collision at second base.

jerry Howarth
[Tigers centre-fielder] Milt Cuyler tried to steal second, which he did, and on the throw down, Dick Schofield came over from short, took the throw and Cuyler accidentally slid in and broke his forearm. Cito went through Alfredo Griffin, Domingo Cedeno, Luis Sojo and finally by the middle of June when the team was in Detroit, who shows up for the second time of what turned out to be four? Tony Fernandez. Tony’s at shortstop and now the team starts to gel around him. He hit very well. He was hitting, like, seventh in the lineup, so he headed up the bottom third of the order—switch hitter. He had a great finish to the season, from mid-June on.

pat Gillick
We had heard that Tony was dissatisfied playing in New York and that he would be open to coming back to Toronto. So we started scouting more intensely and finally we were able to make a deal with the Mets.

paul Beeston
We’d known Tony since we signed him in 1979. He’d been with us and might well have led us to the World Series in 1987 had he not gotten hurt, so bringing him back, you had a veteran you could count on who worked hard, who could still play defence.

jack Morris
We got Tony Fernandez back and I think that was a welcome sight for a lot of guys because they had known him from his early days—he was a calming influence. He had something left. He had something left to prove, too, and he really stepped it up.

The loss of Schofield and eventual addition of Fernandez sparked something in the Jays. Between May 13 and June 30 the team went on a tear, going 32-14, climbing to the top of the division. But things started to unravel again in July. The club began the month by dropping 10 of 11 games but miraculously maintained a half-game lead on the Detroit Tigers heading into the All-Star break.

Nick Leyva 3b coach
Cito, because he won the World Series, was the manager of the All-Star team that year. The All-Star Game was in Baltimore and Cito didn’t use one of [the Orioles’] starting pitchers, Mike Mussina. Supposedly, they had an understanding before the game—Mike knew it, Cito knew it, the Orioles knew it—that he wasn’t going to pitch. Starting pitchers have a routine between starts, they do a certain thing, so [Mussina] went down and did his routine in the bullpen. And here all these people in Baltimore think Cito’s going to put him in the game and that was never the intention. So every time we went in to play the Orioles, boy, Cito got some kind of booed. The players really stuck behind him, they actually got mad because he was getting something he truly didn’t deserve, and I remember Paul Molitor bringing the team together and saying, “Look at the way they’re treating our manager,” and from that day it was like we were on a mission to do it again.

Whatever the cause, the Jays did come out of the break revitalized. In the 16 days from the All-Star break to the July 31 trade deadline, the team went 11-5. Still, despite the turnaround, Gillick and the rest of the Jays front office felt the team needed one last piece to make it a real back-to-back threat. Would it be the Seattle Mariners’ 29-year-old strikeout machine Randy Johnson in an echo of the ’92 trade for David Cone, or the Athletics’ Rickey Henderson, the greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history?

bob Elliott
The night of the trade deadline, [the Jays] strike an agreement with Oakland about 8:00 p.m. for Rickey. But it’s conditional upon [Henderson] approving the trade. So the deal was that Oakland would get him to waive [his no trade clause]. So they talked to Rickey and Rickey wanted $2 million to waive it. While they’re going back and forth, Seattle calls [the Jays] back and says they’ll do the other deal, the deal for Randy Johnson.

pat Gillick
Yeah, we were talking to Seattle at that time. And right at the deadline we thought we were really close. And when it comes down to it, we preferred to have Randy Johnson over Rickey Henderson if it had to be one or the other.

bob Elliot
Gillick has to say, “Well, we can’t do that because we’ve already committed to something else. We’re just waiting on something.” So, [the Jays] phone back Oakland and say, “Look, the deadline for this deal is not midnight. Now, it’s 11:30, ’cause we’ve got another deal in play and we need half an hour.” So, Mickey Morabito, he’s the Oakland travelling secretary, he goes up to Rickey’s mum’s house. It’s a really dark night and Mickey says, “Rickey, you’ve got to sign this thing.” He signs it on the hood of the Lexus or Bentley or whatever he’s driving, and Mickey grabs it, sticks it in his pocket and drives back to the stadium. [A’s GM Sandy] Alderson phones Gillick and says, “Well, we got it done, Rickey signed it. But we got a problem.” Gillick says, “What’s the problem?” [Alderson] says, “Well, Rickey wrote on it: ‘Rickey gets suite on the road.’” They’ve only got two months to go [in the season], right? So that’s basically one month on the road. Alderson says, “What are we going to do? Do we have time to go back?” And Gillick says, “Ah, we’ll give him a suite. We’ll just take it off his pay. He won’t even notice it.”

pat Gillick
We felt we needed to infuse something into the club, be it Johnson or be it Henderson, and it ended up being Henderson. If he got a suite on the road he paid for it.

paul Beeston
Rickey Henderson was a no-brainer for me. I’ve always felt he was the most exciting player in baseball. When he was on first base, everybody knew he was going to second base and it made no difference. The catcher knew, the shortstop knew, the umpire knew, the pitcher knew. I always found it intriguing the way he’d dance around first base. The opportunity to get him from Oakland was one where we felt he’d be the final piece.

todd Stottlemyre
You always felt that when Pat was at the helm, something good was gonna happen. It was never, “Will he deliver at the right time?” We didn’t even have to worry about that because he was so far ahead of us.

jack Morris
It was like it wasn’t good enough that we won the World Series in ’92, now they just wanted to pound it into people.

buck Martinez
Rickey had a press conference when he first got [to Toronto] and just said he wanted to make some history at the SkyDome.

Pat Hentgen sp
The confidence that just comes flying out of Rickey’s whole character definitely helped our team—just the confidence that he brought to our clubhouse.

jack Morris
He talks about himself in the third person. “Rickey did this” and “Rickey did that.” It’s like, aren’t you right here?

al Leiter
He was always laughing, always having a good time, but yeah, definitely he’s in Rickey’s world.

jack Morris
Rickey was one of those guys who, as a pitcher, you just can’t stand him because he creates chaos. I mean, for all those years, he was one of my least favourite guys. And then he becomes your teammate and all of a sudden you understand all his antics, and you understand that Rickey being Rickey is not offensive in any way. He’s just being himself.

paul Molitor
When Henderson came over, [Gaston] had a decision to make about how he was going to juggle the lineup to make it work. He went through the five of us [White, Alomar, Molitor, Carter and Olerud] and asked us to write up a batting lineup. What would we do knowing that Rickey was coming over? I don’t know how much he used players’ input but it was kind of a sign that he was aware that this was going to change our offence. From the time that Rickey came over through the World Series, when we were up against a left-handed pitcher, I would bat third and I think it went Rickey, Robbie, me. And when it was a right-handed pitcher I ended up dropping down to sixth. So, I hit sixth a lot in September and the post-season against right-handed pitchers.

The Jays may have acquired Henderson in hopes of unleashing a little chaos on the basepaths, but he brought a measure of it into the locker room as well. Henderson had been a Blue Jay for less than two weeks when he suffered an injury during a game at Fenway Park in Boston on Aug. 13.

bob Elliott
We were in Boston and Rickey fouled a ball off his foot. [Trainer] Tommy Craig had this new thing he’d never tried, this ice that came in a packet. It was this state-of-the-art prototype sample he’d been sent. Rickey wakes up at three or four in the morning, and he’s got second-degree burns on his foot. They take him to the hospital. I don’t know if Tommy told him the wrong amount of time to leave it on or Rickey screwed up and fell asleep. But here the Jays make this trade, they get this leadoff guy and now he can’t play. It’s one thing if a guy gets hurt, but the training staff made it worse.

Henderson returned to the lineup in fairly short order but was something of a bust to close out the season. He hit .215/.356/.319 in 44 regular season games, down from the .327/.469/.553 he’d notched in 90 games with the A’s. Fortunately for Toronto, the rest of the lineup was putting bat to ball at a record-breaking clip. John Olerud flirted with .400 as late as Aug. 2 before slipping to an AL-leading .363. Hot on his heels was Molitor, who had ably filled Winfield’s shoes en route to a .332 average. Entering the last game of the season, Alomar was locked in a dead heat with Cleveland’s Kenny Lofton for third place in the AL batting race with a .323 average. With Olerud and Molitor sitting first and second, Alomar was swinging for history. The last team to boast the top three hitters in a league batting race was the 1893 Philadelphia Phillies.

Roberto Alomar 2B
Cito came to me and said, “Do you want to play?” And I said, “Yeah, I want to play.” If I’m going to finish third, I want to earn it. I don’t just want to sit on the bench and earn it that way. So, I went out there and I kept getting hit after hit. Lofton got one hit. I think somebody was listening on the radio or something and they were telling me when he got a hit. So, it was even more pressure. But I just went out there and played the game. I thought, “If it happens, it happens.” And I got three hits. It was great.

paul Molitor
You know, I asked Olerud in spring training that year if he ever thought of winning a batting title and he said something like, “Really? You really think I can? I can’t run, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” And I said, “Yeah, I really do think you can.” And sure enough, he goes out and wins a batting title. And I thought, “Man, if I knew I was going to finish second I would have waited another year to tell him.”

roberto Alomar
I believe that I came to this world to play the game of baseball. This is all I know. I just felt like I needed a big game to finish third. I went out there and lucky enough, I did it. To finish one, two, three in the batting title, we’ll always be remembered for that. It hadn’t happened in 100 years.

Heading into September, the Jays had been a healthy 20 games above .500. But they’d held just a game and a half lead over the Yankees. But late in the month the determination and experience of the club shone. Beginning with a 10–4 pasting of the California Angels on Sept. 10, the Jays strung together a nine-game winning streak and took 17 of their final 21 games to finish 95-67. They won the division by seven games and for the third straight season were headed to the American League Championship Series.

PART ONE: “Going for Two”
Long before the playoffs, the Jays laid the groundwork for a second championship

PART TWO: “Down and Dirty”
With the prelude out of the way, the Jays were ready for their real season to start

PART THREE: “Never Say Die”
Against a tough-as-nails Phillies team, the Jays showed the hearts of champions

PART FOUR: “Touch ’em All, Joe”
Game six, bottom of the ninth, two on. Up steps Joe Carter. History ensues.

This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine.