Joe Carter was 33 years old when he stepped up to home plate on an October night during Game 6 of the 1993 World Series. The city of Toronto was 159. Both had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.
Mr. Carter grew up in Oklahoma City, Okla. His father owned a downtown gas station where young Joe would pump gas as a kid. He had 10 brothers and sisters. The family was crazy about sports. To feed them all, his dad hunted quails, pheasants and rabbits.
Joe picked up a ball as soon as he could walk. When he started going to the park with his brothers, he was always the last one picked for teams. He was only four or five, after all. Then the other kids saw what he could do.
He played both baseball and football in high school, but ended up gravitating to baseball in college, then worked his way up through the minor leagues to the majors.
By 1993, he was a veteran, known as a power hitter who could drive in runs and hit the ball over the fence. He had helped lead the Blue Jays to a World Series win in 1992, the first for a Canadian club. All of Toronto – all of Canada – wondered: Could they perform an encore?
Now, 32 years later, they are asking the same question. Toronto is dying for another brilliant moment like the one Mr. Carter gave them in 1993.
A banner on the massive grey sides of the stadium where they play proclaims that we “Want It All.” Do we ever. Want it and need it. Canada’s biggest city has a whole host of challenges, from a housing crisis to the threat to its prosperity from a rampaging U.S. president. A diversion like the charming 2025 Jays is a sudden ray of sunshine.
There was an unmistakable buzz in the air as the city woke up on Friday, the day of the first game. The readouts on Toronto’s famous red-and-white streetcars said, “Go Jays Go.” The school board urged kids to wear blue to class.
Outside the Rogers Centre, hundreds of people lined up happily to buy absurdly overpriced Jays merch. It was the usual Toronto crowd, a crazy quilt of languages, looks and origins. One guy put a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. jersey on his dog.
Around them, the whole city was hoping, dreaming, praying.
If Mr. Carter was born in Oklahoma, Toronto was born when John Graves Simcoe, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, established the town of York at a strategic spot on the north shore of Lake Ontario in an area where Indigenous peoples had hunted and farmed for millennia.
It grew into a bustling but far from elegant colonial outpost nicknamed “Muddy York” because its unpaved roads turned to muck in the rain.
Long after its official incorporation as the city of Toronto in 1834, it played second fiddle to Montreal, Canada’s financial and economic hub. Not until the 1970s census did its population surpass Montreal’s.
Montreal got Expo 67, the flashy international exposition that drew millions. Montreal got the Olympic Games in 1976. Montreal got Canada’s first major league baseball franchise, the Expos, who started playing in 1969.
Toronto finally got its own team in 1976. The Blue Jays played their first game on April 7, 1977, with snow dusting the infield. Their home park, Exhibition Stadium, was a disaster, earning the nickname “the Mistake by the Lake.”
Along with snow and rain, hungry seagulls blew in. When a visiting player, Dave Winfield of the New York Yankees, pegged one with a ball, leaving it bereft of life, the Toronto cops charged him with cruelty to animals. Was there ever a more Toronto story?
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An early April snowfall cast a chill on the Jays’ 1977 home opener at Exhibition Stadium, their base of operations for the next 12 years. BMO Field now occupies part of the site.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
Then as now, the Jays did spring training in Dunedin, Fla. Their first manager, Roy Hartsfield – demonstrating good slide techniques in 1978 – was a veteran of the Brooklyn Dodgers, whose modern successors in Los Angeles are at the World Series this year.
Dennis Robinson and John McNeill/The Globe and Mail
The early Jays did not cover themselves in glory. They finished last in their division for the first five seasons. They lost more games than they won until 1983. They blew a three-games-to-one playoff lead over the Kansas City Royals in 1985 and missed a chance to reach their first World Series. They collapsed in the last week of the 1987 season and failed to win the division pennant that they had seemed to have in their back pocket. So when they went all the way to the World Series in 1992, it was a really big deal.
Toronto was booming at the time. Tens of thousands of talented Montrealers fleeing separatism had come down the 401 for safer pastures. Striving immigrants from Hong Kong, India, China and the Philippines were lending new dynamism to a buttoned-down metropolis. European cities wondered at its ability to absorb so many immigrants with so little strife. American cities wondered how it had avoided urban blight. It was in 1987 that a British actor, Peter Ustinov, called the city “New York run by the Swiss.” Toronto beamed.
The soaring bank towers of Bay Street testified to the city’s status as Canada’s capital of business and finance; the CN Tower, built of poured concrete in just 40 months, to its ambition. To top it all, the Jays had a new stadium, the SkyDome, an engineering marvel with a retractable roof that (unlike the roof on Montreal’s Olympic Stadium) actually retracted. It had been open for just four years when Mr. Carter approached the plate on Oct. 23, 1993.
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The retractable roof of the SkyDome would become a fixture of the Toronto skyline.Jeff Wasserman / The Globe and Mail
Yet the city still had something to prove. All the prattling about how Toronto has become a world-class city only underlined a queasy feeling that it didn’t really belong at the top table. Cities that are truly world class never have to say it. Despite all its evident successes, Toronto was still waiting for its fireworks moment.
So was Joe Carter. He had enjoyed an excellent career, by any measure. Playing for Cleveland, he knocked in more runs than any other major-leaguer in the 1986 season. He joined the 30-30 club when he hit more than 30 home runs (32) and stole more than 30 bases (31) the following year. He hit the single that cashed in the winning run in the game that made the Jays champions of American League East in 1991. He made the final out at first base to give them their first World Series win in 1992.
But as a kid playing in the backyard with his brothers, he had always fantasized about hitting that World Series-winning homer, the one that would make him a true hero.
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With two weeks to go till Game 6, Paul Ellis of Yarmouth, N.S., waited 12 hours at the SkyDome to get World Series tickets. He got six for a total of $370.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
Toronto was ahead three games to two in the ‘93 Series when Mr. Carter came up to bat at the SkyDome. The Jays had been ahead 5-1 in the fifth inning, but their opponents, the Philadelphia Phillies, came back in the seventh with five runs and led 6-5. If they prevailed, the series would go to a seventh do-or-die game. No one in Toronto wanted that.
To keep their lead, the Phillies brought in one of their star relief pitchers, Mitch Williams. Wikipedia refers to him dryly as “a left-hander with a high-90s fastball and major control issues.” That, and his habit of staggering off the mound when he released a pitch earned him the nickname the Wild Thing. But, if he could control his “control issues,” he was a dangerous foe.
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The Phillies were counting on relief pitcher Mitch Williams to keep the Jays in check in 1993.Joe Giza/Reuters
Mr. Williams walked the Jays’ Rickey Henderson, history’s greatest base stealer. Then he gave up a single to the square-jawed, blue-eyed veteran Paul Molitor, a future member of baseball’s Hall of Fame who had already hit a triple and a homer. Now it was Mr. Carter’s turn.
With his easy confidence and his big smile, he had become a team leader in the dressing room as well as on the field. In his Midwestern drawl, he told his teammates before the game: “I’ve got my saddle on. Hop on.”
But as he gripped his bat to face the Wild Thing, he was not thinking home run. When I reached him this week, I asked him to recall what was going through his head. He spoke to me from inside a car wash, saying that he hoped the sound of the brushes and sprayers didn’t drown him out. He had been fielding calls and texts and e-mails all day as his old team prepared for another World Series.
When he came to the plate that day, Mr. Carter had never managed so much as a hit against Mr. Williams in four career encounters. A little single this time would do. “I was like, oh, if I can get a base hit, Rickey’s going to score,” he told me.
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Mr. Carter, at right with Rickey Henderson and John Olerud, today still vividly remembers his showdown with Williams, the Wild Thing.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
As foreign as the word was to Mr. Williams, he seemed to have things under control. His first four pitches had him even with Mr. Carter at two balls and two strikes. Mr. Carter had flailed, flat-footed, at the last pitch. One more strike would send him back to the dugout, leaving the Phillies just one out short of victory.
Mr. Williams reached back and delivered. The pitch was down and inside, but Mr. Carter managed to reach it with a lightning-fast, almost golf-like swing. He knew he had hit it well, but he wasn’t sure it had gone high enough to clear the wall in left field and he couldn’t make out its trajectory against the bright lights.
He knew soon enough. The roof almost came off the stadium from the roar of the crowd. It was a game-ending, World Series-winning, walk-off home run, only the second of its kind ever hit. It ranks as one of the most dramatic, climactic, ecstatic moments in Canadian professional sports, right up there with Paul Henderson’s last-minute winning goal for Team Canada in the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviets.
What happened next is perhaps more famous than the home-run shot itself: Mr. Carter’s prancing, leaping circuit of the base path, a moment of pure childlike joy ending in a mob scene back at home plate. This was no arrogant bat flip or stately all-in-a-day’s-work Babe Ruth trot. Mr. Carter’s helmet flew clear off as he bounced half airborne around the bases.
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Mr. Carter’s helmet fell to the ground as he ran the bases, triumphant.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The call from radio broadcaster Tom Cheek – another classic of its kind – captured the exaltation of the 50,000 fans in the stadium and the millions tuning in from Tofino to St. John’s. “Here’s a pitch on the way. A swing and a belt. Left field! Way back! Blue Jays win it! The Blue Jays are World Series champions…” Then, as Mr. Carter rounded the bases, the immortal line: “Touch ’em all, Joe! You’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life!”
Truer words. Mr. Carter kept playing pro ball until 1998 and ended his career with 396 home runs and 1,445 runs driven in. Nothing would ever come even close to the magic of that October night.
Mr. Carter says he still has no words to describe the feeling. To capture it, “you go back to when you were a kid, seven, eight years old in your backyard,” play-acting the moment when you would win it all.
Mind you, this was not precisely how he imagined it. His childhood fantasy was a seventh game, championship-winning grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning, not a mere three-run walk-off championship-winning homer. So “I fell a little bit short of my expectations,” he says with a laugh.
Still, he will take it. “All in all, it was a great moment that I’ve lived for 32 years.” He would be happy if he could pass the magic on to the current Jays and see the city erupt as it did back then.
Thirty-two years have passed since Joe Carter’s historic homer; this year, the Springer Dinger helped the Jays beat the Seattle Mariners to advance to the World Series.
Elise Amendola/AP; Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
From the Jays merchandise store to sports bars around town, businesses have also been preparing.
Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press; Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
Toronto could certainly use the jolt. The years since have been a time of ups and downs.
In many ways, the city has thrived, taking in hundreds of thousands more newcomers, surviving the Great Recession with its gold-plated banking system sector, mobilizing to fight COVID-19, reviving its neglected waterfront, building one of the globe’s biggest film festivals, constructing forests of new office and condominium towers that have transformed its skyline. The once-barren district around the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) would be all but unrecognizable to a time traveller from 1993.
David Crombie, mayor of Toronto from 1973 to 1978, thinks the back-to-back World Series wins “contributed to a growing sense in those days that Toronto was finding its place in the world.”
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Nathan Phillips Square will be a magnet for Jays fans during the series, but continuing construction has left parts of it in a more forlorn state than decades past.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
But big-city status has brought big-city problems. The roads are gridlocked, the transit system often unreliable. Big projects like the Eglinton Crosstown light-rail line (will it ever open?) seem to take forever and cost the Earth. Home ownership is only a dream for many young people. Homelessness and drug addiction are more visible than ever. The tariff assault from the Trump White House is taking a toll.
Big-league sports have seen their ups and downs, too. Toronto had another glorious day in the sun when basketball’s Raptors won it all in 2019. Kawhi Leonard’s unforgettable buzzer beater – bounce, bounce, in! – was a moment almost as sweet as Mr. Carter’s big shot. Football’s Argonauts have won seven Grey Cups since 1993. Hockey, we won’t even talk about.
Wouldn’t it be great to win the World Series again? You can sneer all you want at big-league sports and its preening, overpaid jocks, but victories on the field bring people together. Big cities like Toronto can be lonely, isolating places, prim Toronto more than most. You get a funny look if you say “hi” to someone on the sidewalk. The divisive spirit of the times has made many people feel anxious and beleaguered.
All that vanishes in the shared excitement and yearning of a championship run. Everyone who was alive in 1993 remembers how the crowd poured out of the stadium after the Jays final win to mingle with other streams of celebrants in the teeming streets. What a feeling. Is it so wrong to be excited it might happen again?
The 2025 Jays crew is less star-studded than the 1993 one, but in many ways even more likeable. It has hoary old vets like “Mad Max” Scherzer, so fired up that he yelled in his manager’s face last week for trying to pull him from the game. It has a seasoned playoff performer like George Springer, channelling Mr. Carter’s bounding energy as he made his own triumphant tour of the bases after the three-run shot that carried the team to the championship series.
It has youngsters like 22-year-old rookie pitcher Trey Yesavage, who was playing single-A ball in front of hundreds in April but found himself mowing down hitters in front of tens of thousands in the Rogers Centre come October.
Nathan Lukes toiled for years in the minor leagues before making it to “the Show.” Alejandro Kirk is no one’s idea of a model athlete at 5 feet, eight inches and 245 pounds, but what grit, what pride, what power. Ernie Clement is a clean-hitting all-rounder, everyone’s boy next door. And then of course there is Vladdy, the “born ready” baby-faced slugger, full of Carter-like glee, coming out of a late-season slump to lead the team to the final round.
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Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is signed on with the Jays for the next 14 years, part of a US$500-million deal.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Torontonians may be feeling sour about the state of their city, but many of these guys seem to love it. Kevin Gausman has a house in midtown and says he enjoys taking his family to the Royal Ontario Museum or the Toronto Islands.
Mr. Springer, who is from Connecticut, left even cynics feeling verklempt when, after hitting his epic Springer dinger, said that he was happy for “our fans, our city, our country.”
Together, they are teaching a fed-up city to appreciate itself again. And there is much to be grateful for. The harbour, the lake, the ravines, the galleries, the diversity, the truly astounding number of coffee houses – and above all, the sheer big-cityness of the place, something that (with apologies to Vancouver and Montreal) you cannot find in the same way anywhere else in Canada.
This team reminds Mr. Carter of his old squad. “Everybody loves being around each other. Everybody loves to come to the ballpark. They’re happy when they get to work. And that’s the exact same thing we had.”
His advice to them: enjoy the moment. As stressful as a World Series can be, 28 other teams are sitting at home wishing they were you.
If they let themselves have a little fun, he says, they can go all the way.
“Really?” I said. Against a powerhouse like the Los Angeles Dodgers? Against a guy, Shohei Ohtani, who just pitched and homered his way through what is considered one of the best single games any baseball player has had in the history of the sport?
Mr. Carter came as close to scoffing as a well-mannered Oklahoman can. “Are you kidding me?” he said, as his car went through the wash somewhere outside Kansas City. “You take these guys lightly, and you’re in for trouble, because they put the ball in play, they know how to win. And it’s not just one guy… You’ve got to deal with that whole lineup.”
He predicted the Jays would win in seven games. And that was before the Jays announced Friday morning that injured ace hitter Bo Bichette had recovered enough to rejoin the lineup. He says he will be there to cheer them on. “It’s been 32 years. I wouldn’t miss this. They’re going to surprise a lot of people.”
Mr. Carter is 65 now. His account on X describes him as a “World Series Hero, Avid Golfer and Loving Life.” A few years back, he posted a video of his famous homer, complete with Tom Cheek’s call. “This never get old!!” he said. No it does not.
Watch it again if you get a chance. Try not to smile, I dare you. Toronto needs some of that again. Go Jays!
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Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
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