Champagne Year

It was 20 years ago yesterday that I had my greatest moment in sports fandom...watching my beloved Toronto Blue Jays win the 1992 World Series over the Atlanta Braves. And of course, they won it again the following year on a dramatic Joe Carter home run. But the first win was the most rewarding because it came after 15 years of futility for the Jays.

I got into baseball in the mid-1970s when I was a little kid growing up in Toronto...rooting for the Montreal Expos and learning about the game. In 1977, the Toronto Blue Jays made their debut...and man, were they awful. Of course, they were an expansion team and as such were made up (along with the Seattle Mariners, who joined the American League at the same time) of the castoffs of other teams. I didn't really care that they sucked, though; I was just glad to be able to go see professional baseball. I used to take the commuter rail from our suburban town to the big city, where I'd see the Jays play at old Exhibition Stadium on Lake Ontario. Bleacher seats cost $2 back in the late '70s. My favorite player in those early days was Bob Bailor, who hit .310 in the Jays' first season and was a scrappy utility player who busted his butt all the time.

The Jays were terrible until 1982, when new manager Bobby Cox led the team to a 78-84 record and a new crop of young stars were emerging: pitchers Dave Stieb, Jim Clancy and Luis Leal and an exciting outfield of George Bell, Lloyd Moseby and Jesse Barfield. The Jays started coming into their own in 1983 and two years later won the AL East and were up 3-1 in the ALCS before the Royals came back and won the series. There was a horrific choke in the last week of the 1987 season when the Jays seemingly had the division sewn up before the Detroit Tigers swept them in the last weekend and won the East. Then in 1989 and 1991, the Jays won the East but were knocked off easily by Oakland and Minnesota, respectively.

But in 1992, things were different. The Jays added free agents Jack Morris and Dave Winfield to a powerful nucleus of stars including Roberto Alomar, Joe Carter, Kelly Gruber, Jimmy Key and Tom Henke. The team had a swagger right from the start and added top starter David Cone at the trade deadline. I lived in Boston area by this time and went up to see the Jays win some big games in late September. As we were driving home, I stopped at the Beer Store (that's what the province-run stores are called) and picked up a 6-pack of Labatt's Blue, which I would hopefully drink to celebrate each time the Jays made it to another level of the postseason. When they won the division with 96 games, I had a few of the Blues.

They faced the powerful Oakland A's in the ALCS, a team that featured Dennis Eckersley coming off an MVP and Cy Young season and the scary bats of Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Rickey Henderson, among others. Nobody gave the Jays a chance, especially after Oakland won game 1 4-3. But the Jays took the next two games and then in game 4, the series totally shifted in Toronto's favor when Alomar hit a 2-run homer in the top of the ninth off Eckersley to tie the game; the Jays won it 7-6 in 11 innings and never looked back. I still remember going nuts after that Alomar bomb. It was hugely symbolic, both in the way it put the Jays over the top and eventually into the World Series, but also it marked the last gasp of the Bash Brothers (aka steroid-aided) era of the A's, who wouldn't make the playoffs again until 2000. I had a few more of the Blues.

The World Series was tense and exciting. I watched the Series every year, but this was different. My team had never been there before. Every pitch was nerve-wracking. The series started in Atlanta, and it was light-hitting Braves catcher Damon Berryhill who got Atlanta off to a good start with a big homer in game 1. But game 2 featured another amazing clutch moment, when pinch-hitter Ed Sprague hit a two-run homer in extra innings that eventually won the game for Toronto. Between the fans doing their stupid Indian chant and shots of Jane Fonda "praying" next to Braves owner Ted Turner in the stands, I was sick of the Braves, who were essentially assumed to have the Series in the bag. The Jays went back to Toronto and won games 3 and 4 to take a commanding 3-1 series lead before losing game 5 and having to go back to Atlanta.

Game 6 was unreal. I sat in my living room in the same spot I watched all the other games. The Jays led 2-1 in the 9th before Henke uncharacteristically blew the lead and the game went to extra innings. In the 11th, Dave Winfield hit a two-run double to give Toronto a 4-2 lead and I was going nuts. It was after midnight and I just had to hope the Jays could retire the side and preserve the victory. Of course, the pesky Braves got baserunners immediately and scored to make the game 4-3. Manager Cito Gaston comes in and shockingly took Key out of the game, bringing in untested rookie Mike Timlin to face Otis Nixon with two outs and the tying run on third. Nixon bunted and Timlin fielded and threw to first baseman Carter for the win. Carter started jumping around and so did I, hooting and hollering and going nuts (as I would do a year later when Carter won the Series for the Jays again). I was watching the postgame show drinking that last Labatt's Blue when my buddy Eric showed up around 1 a.m. with a bottle of champagne. It was a pretty damn thoughtful gesture given he liked the Red Sox, but that's the kind of guy he is. And the champagne tasted mighty sweet that night.

In the years since, I saw the Jays win again but then fail to make the postseason every year. My even more beloved Toronto Maple Leafs had a few good runs over the years but never made it past the semifinals in the NHL playoffs, but the last seven years have been just horrendous. And the New England Patriots, who I started following in the early '80s after moving here, won three Super Bowls in the last decade and are consistently good, so there's that. But barring a Leafs Stanley Cup win (which seems sadly a long ways away, especially with this season locked out and on the brink of cancellation), that 1992 World Series win will always be my favorite sports moment.