The Toronto Blue Jays are back in the playoffs. It’s their first trip back there since 1993 – before the Strike, the (first) Wild Card, and even before the TV show Friends, which has been off the air now for eleven years. Baseball in Toronto reached its apex in the magical years of the back-to-back World Series Championships of 1992 and 1993, when Joe Carter and his home run put an exclamation point a successful run that included players like Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Jack Morris, John Olerud, Devon White and Roberto Alomar.
In a city that prizes its Canadian Football Argonauts and NHL’s Maple Leafs (and whose locals can visit the Hockey Hall of Fame any time they wish), this was a big deal in Toronto. The Blue Jays became the first team to have four million fans attend games in one season, and they did it three times in a row starting in 1991 (the year they lost the ALCS to the eventual champion Minnesota Twins). The Blue Jays were flying higher than any other team and had a solid core of players to assure success for coming years.
That success never came, though. Their pitching fell off dramatically in 1994 and then the season was cancelled anyway due to the catastrophic labor impasse that damaged baseball’s standing everywhere. Longtime General Manager, and future Hall of Famer, Pat Gillick stepped down, and when play resumed in 1995 the Blue Jays fell apart and fell into the baseball wilderness. Many good or great players passed through, including Roger Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Roy Halladay and Vernon Wells, but they were never quite able to put it together. GM’s and managers came and went, and at one point they even had to fire a manager named Tim Johnson for lying about his alleged exploits during the Vietnam War.
The Blue Jays also had the misfortune of having to try to reassemble a successful team in an era when the powerful New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox had a chokehold on the AL East Division. They never finished higher than 3rd place in those years, often either a whisper’s or even a shout’s distance to .500. From the 2001 season until now, they never finished a season fewer than 11 games out of first place. By 2010, their attendance dipped under 1.5 million fans for the season.
The Blue Jays spent much of last year’s offseason trying to pry Dan Duquette loose from the Baltimore Orioles to become their President and CEO. That failed, and they went into the season with their GM Alexei Anthopoulos reportedly on the hot seat after several seasons of the Blue Jays’ running in place.
So what happened? This year they found themselves in a division where the Yankees and Red Sox were quite fallible and the defending division champion Orioles were not a perfect team, either. The Tampa Bay Rays had new management in place and were no lock, either. Their offense came alive and then kept getting better. By midseason, they had the best offense in the game, but also had a vulnerable starting rotation. At the trade deadline, they shored up their rotation with a true stud in David Price, who was probably relieved to be freed from the Detroit Tigers’ sinking ship. They also brought in Ben Revere from the Philadelphia Phillies for some extra offense and, since they weren’t quite bludgeoning other teams’ pitchers often enough for their liking, also traded for the best offensive shortstop in the game in Troy Tulowitzki. The Yankees put up somewhat of a fight, but this year, finally, belonged to the Blue Jays.
We obviously don’t know what will happen in the playoffs, but if the Blue Jays don’t win another game in 2015, they’ve already accomplished something huge: they are relevant again. They snapped the game’s longest playoff drought (you’re up next, Seattle Mariners!). Seriously, there have been five U.S. presidential elections since the Blue Jays last tasted the playoffs. They are a player, they have the players, and their fans have noticed. Welcome back, Blue Jays.
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