Kawhi left a championship gift to cherish forever

When Joe Carter hit the famous World Series winning home run on a Saturday night in Toronto, who knew in 1993 that this would be the last championship victory by the Blue Jays.

Maybe the last World Series we'll ever know in this city, win or lose.

Back then, we celebrated the moment and the accomplishment. We paraded through the streets. We embraced the great back-to-back run of two very different Blue Jays teams. And naturally, we assumed after two World Series titles, that more would be on the way. There have been none. This is Kawhi Leonard Day in Toronto. The day he returns to get the NBA championship ring he so richly deserves. The day he grunts a few words for the fans or maybe laughs that big awful laugh of his, if he chooses to do that at all. The truth: we cannot thank him enough for bringing a basketball championship to the most unlikely of NBA championship cities.

We can't cheer loud enough to explain how it was he changed history and changed a franchise and changed people's lives. Insulated as he may keep himself, he probably isn't all that aware of all that. The basketball part, yes. The social part, definitely not.

How he grabbed a franchise best known for playoff defeats and changed everything, and along the way brought a divided country together that couldn't give a hoot about basketball in places like Red Deer and Fredericton and Moose Jaw and Kamloops and had them following every moment of every Raptors playoff game and had people cheering on the streets in every corner of every province.

There's really never been anything like this in Canada before. The Sidney Crosby goal in Vancouver in 2010 brought people to the streets. But that was one goal, one game, one afternoon. Maybe the Paul Henderson goal of 1972 was more emotional, more stirring.