On Thurs., Sept. 12, 1985, the Toronto Blue Jays walked into Yankee Stadium for batting practice and found a hostile crowd, 54,000 strong, waiting for them. The Jays led the AL East by 2.5 games heading into the series, but the Yankees were favoured to win it. Hordes of New York fans had shown up early to make sure the Jays knew just how badly they were going to lose.
“They were screaming at us and doing everything they could to intimidate us,” recalls former Blue Jays closer Tom Henke. “We just wanted to show them.”
Thirty years later, almost to the day, the 2015 Blue Jays are walking into a very similar scenario. They’re leading the AL East by a game and a half, the Yankees are in hot pursuit, and they’re about to embark on a four-game series in the Bronx (complicated further by an expected doubleheader on Saturday). For the ’85 Jays, who won the first division championship in franchise history, this weekend’s series feels like a walk down memory lane.
Despite being a self-proclaimed small-town country boy, Henke wasn’t fazed by the jeering crowd. “I was intimidated by New York City, but that never affected me on the field. Once I was at the ballpark, I was in my element,” he explains. The right-handed pitcher had always fancied himself an outfielder, so when batting practice began, he moved back into the gaps and prepared to chase down whatever came his way.
Rance Mulliniks remembers that practice well: “Somebody hits a deep fly ball into the outfield, and I’m watching this ball going into centre field. Henke is tracking it and I mean he is focused. Tom, the ball, and the centre field wall all arrive at the same spot at the same time. He was moving pretty good. I’ll tell you, he hit it so hard that he came off the wall and he landed on his back with his arms and feet up in the air. As Buck Martinez said, he looked like a dying cockroach.”
Henke laughs as he tells the story: “I ran into the wall full blast and ended up in the dirt. It didn’t hurt me or nothing. That was just fun. Bobby Cox came running out from behind the batting cage and said a few choice words to me. He didn’t want his closer getting hurt shagging fly balls.”
Henke’s display did little to strike fear into the hearts of the Yankee fans; they booed during the Canadian national anthem. Although the Jays took an early lead, things quickly fell apart. In the bottom of the seventh, Tony Fernandez nabbed a ground ball. He tried to flip it to Damaso Garcia, but Garcia was turned, expecting the throw to go to first, and took the ball square in the back. “A double play that would have otherwise been turned didn’t happen, and Ron Hassey, a catcher for the Yankees, hit a three-run home run,” recalls Mulliniks, who was playing third base.
“We had that game in hand, but we gave it away. The Yankees didn’t beat us that day. Basically we beat ourselves,” says Henke.
It was the kind of loss that could have spelled disaster for the visiting team. Confidence was in no short supply for the ’85 Jays, but they certainly weren’t unshakable. “Because we hadn’t won before as a team, we still had some doubts about whether or not we could get it done. Can we beat the Yankees in September and wrap up this division?” recalls Buck Martinez, who was out with a broken ankle and had to watch the Jays play from the broadcasting booth. “Everyone expected that loss to set the tone for the series. Everyone went, ‘Oh my God, the Blue Jays are gonna get creamed. They’re gonna crumble here in September,'” he says. “But as history shows, we didn’t crumble. We came back.”
They won the next three games and went on to take the division.
Compared to their predecessors, today’s Jays stack up, but it remains to be seen if history will repeat itself. “They’re right where they wanna be,” says Henke. “And it’s pretty much the exact same scenario. To me, we were the best team in ’85, and personally I think the Blue Jays are the best team in 2015. This will be a series to really see what they’re made of.”
