Biggest homer in Jays’ history?

Three home runs, three different ballparks and three completely different circumstances changed everything for the Toronto Blue Jays’ back-to-back championship seasons.

Twenty five years after the fact and the home hero himself, Joe Carter, calls Ed Sprague’s pinch hit home run in Game 2 of the 1992 World Series the biggest hit in Blue Jays history.

Candy Maldonado and Duane Ward call Roberto Alomar’s American League Championship Series home run in Oakland off Dennis Eckersley the biggest in Jays history. And so many, especially a television watching audience, call Carter’s walkoff World Series touch-em-all-Joe winner in 1993 the biggest hit any Blue Jay has ever had.

You can make an argument that no one is wrong here and that the greatest moments that this baseball franchise has ever experienced — a franchise which hasn’t had enough moments the past 25 years — all came from home run balls.

Carter was in the in the ondeck circle in Oakland on a late October afternoon when Alomar went to the plate to face Eckersley in the ninth inning, with Blue Jays trailing by two runs. Pat Gillick, the general manager, was sitting in the stands, worried as much about the twilight Alomar would be facing as he was about him coming to bat against the Cy Young winner and that’s year American League MVP.

“I remember that day well,” said Gillick. “It was very difficult to see. I was sitting in the stands and it was hard to see anything and I was a little surprised that Robbie wasn’t having more difficulty seeing the ball.”

Manager Cito Gaston didn’t mind the matchup himself. He has had arguments with Eckersley in the past and with Oakland manager Tony LaRussa. But Alomar was his best player, probably best in franchise history. “Who better than Robbie Alomar up there to hit, who rises to the occasion for just about everything an anything?

“Eck was a great reliever, evidently he’s a Hall of Famer. But I knew LaRussa was careful about not pitching him against left handers. Normally he would use (Rick) Honeycutt against left handers but he had already used Honeycutt. I guess that worked out in our favour.”

Alomar hit a hanging slider. “And I’m yelling ‘Run’ ” said Carter. “And Robbie’s arms are in the air and he’s not moving and I want him to go. ‘Run.’ I didn’t think he hit (a home run). He’s not a power hitter. But he got all of it.”

“The home run was historic because it got us over the hump,” said Maldonado, the Jays’ left fielder in 1992. “Before then, we had a good team but we had a devastating playoff loss to Minnesota the year before. We were known as the good team that couldn’t win. We won in extra innings that day.”

Duane Ward was in the on-deck circle in 1992, Game 2 of the World Series, in the ninth inning in Atlanta when he was called back for a pinch hitter. The Jays had lost Game 1 of the Series to the Braves and were on the verge of being down two games.

Little known Ed Sprague went to the plate in Atlanta to face veteran Jeff Reardon. “I think Cito just had a gut feeling on this one,” said Gillick.

A moment later, Sprague’s home run put the Jays in the lead heading to the bottom of nine.

“I always call that my home run because he pinch hit for me,” said Ward. “That won us our first World Series game. It had taken the organization 17 years to get to the World Series and it’s been 25 years since they’ve been in the World Series, so you realize how important that hit was.

“If we’re down 2-0 in the Series and lose both games in Atlanta, I don’t think we’re coming back from that,” said Carter. “But that was the kind of team we were both years. We had different heroes all the time. We wouldn’t have been there without Ward, without Dave Stewart, without Paul Molitor, without Devon White and I could go on and one. Every day we were out there, it was like an all-star team. It wasn’t one guy. It was a different guy doing their job and doing it every day. That’s what makes those teams so special.”

“I wasn’t thinking home run,” said Joe Carter. “With Molitor on first base and Rickey Henderson on second base, I was thinking hit the ball somewhere in the gap.

“In this case, everyone was doing their job the way it was expected. Rickey was supposed to walk to get on. Molitor was supposed to get a hit. And I was supposed to drive them in. We knew our jobs and stayed in our lane.”

In a save situation, Mitch Williams threw a fastball, down and in to Carter in the bottom of the ninth inning, with the Phillies leading by a run. Some of his teammates, to this day, swear he hit a slider. “That’s my happy zone,” he said.

Whatever pitch he hit, it left the park, a walkoff celebration and a replay for the ages. The last World Series moment for the Jays. A quarter century later, we don’t know when the next one will come.

For Carter, it was a dream come true that never stops being amazing. “That’s what you do in the back yard,” he said. “It’s bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, and the end of the World Series and you’re up. You live those dreams as a kid and I’m here to say that dreams do come true. I was laying in bed this morning and watching the loops on TV and I’m watching the home run, thinking about it. And every time I see it, I see something different. You see people’s reactions. You see the first base coach Bob Bailor. You see the fans reacting. You see my teammates in the dugout. You were part of it so you didn’t see what was around you.

“Off the bat, I knew I hit it good. I just didn’t know if it was high enough to get over the fence.”

He jumped high after hitting the home run and get kept on jumping. And in the broadcast booth, the late Tom Cheek improvised with his famous “touch-em-all-Joe” call of the home run.

Three home runs. Two championships. Still worth celebrating. It feels like yesterday. And it feels like so long ago.