FANS CAN DEBATE WHICH HOME RUN WAS JAYS’ BIGGEST
Carter, Alomar and Sprague all hit blasts that changed the course of team history
Three home runs, three different ballparks, and three completely different circumstances changed everything for the Toronto Blue Jays in their back-to-back championship seasons.
Twenty five years after the fact, 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 1992 American League Championship Series home run in Oakland off Dennis Eckersley the biggest in Jays history.
Andsomany,especiallya television-watching audience, call Carter’s walk-off 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 have ever experienced — a franchise that hasn’t had enough moments the past 25 years — all came from home run balls.
Carter was in the on-deck circle in Oakland on a late October afternoon when Alomar went to the plate to face Eckersley in the ninth inning, with the 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’s 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 and anything ?
“Eck was a great reliever, evidently he’s a hall of famer. But I knew LaRussa was careful about not pitching him against lefthanders. Normally he would use (Rick) Honeycutt against lefthanders, 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.”
“It got us over the hump,” said Pat Tabler, the utility man.
“Candy felt it. I felt it. Everybody in the dugout felt it. There were a lot of great home runs in Blue Jays history. To me, that was the biggest one.”
Duane Ward was in the ondeck 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.”
“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.”
For Carter, it was a dream come true that never stops being amazing.
“That’s what you do in the backyard,” 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. 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.
“I asked Tom afterwards ‘What were you thinking when you made that call?’ ” said Carter.
He said: “I saw you jumping up and down and running the bases and I was telling you, make sure you touch all the bases.”
“If you remember, I was jumping up and down, and when I got to first base, I thought, stop jumping. The first thing that came to mind was, touch all the bases. So we had that moment in time when were on the same page together.”
Three home runs. Two championships. Still worth celebrating.
It feels like yesterday. And it feels like so long ago.
If we’re down 2-0 in the series and lose both games in Atlanta, I don’t think we’re coming back . ... But that was the kind of team we were both years. We had different heroes all the time.