Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - The Fall of '87: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1558

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

In this 1558th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike shares "The Fall of ‘87," a deep dive on the Toronto Blue Jays’ catastrophic collapse in the last week of the aforementioned season. Gare Joyce sets things up and explains how this audio was almost lost forever. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1558 of Toronto Miked. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. The Advantage'd Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada.

Learn how to plan, invest, and live smarter. Season 7 of Yes We Are Open, an award-winning podcast from Minaris. Recycle My Electronics.ca, committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. If you thought the 2024 Blue Jays season sucked, let me tell you about the fall of 1987. Even better, let me connect with FOTM Geir Joyce at his home in Kingston, Ontario, so he can tell you about the fall of 1987. And following this brief catch-up with Geir Joyce, I will drop in this feed a fantastic audio documentary

on the fall of 1987 that was produced for the 30th anniversary of that epic and horrific collapse. Gere Joyce, how is Kingston treating you? I'm just a townie. A limestone cowboy. You should write a song about that. That's it. So things are well with you, my friend?

I haven't seen you in a little bit. Yeah, it's been a while. Heading out to do comedy tonight. Just plugging away. Do you get good crowds in Kingston? Are they ready to laugh? Yeah, you know, it's actually a pretty solid comedy town. There used to be an absolute comedy here and a club.

And the first time I did comedy here, it's back in 2016. They had a comedy festival with like a dozen shows all sold out wall to wall. So it's funny. It's not a campus crowd. It's kind of a working crowd. But the place I'm doing comedy tonight, a little bit more of a progressive place.

So it's just a fun scene. You know what's a good time? Your sub stack. Shout out your sub stack. Yeah, my sub stack is how to succeed in sports writing without really trying. And it's a spin-off of the memoir by the same name that I did for Audible a couple of years back. And I drop weekly at least, and occasionally a fair bit more than that,

weekly essays about my experiences as writing sports, about people that I've interviewed and profiled over the years and the newspaper and magazine business in general, some personal stuff. It's a glorious mix of stuff that would be richly enjoyed by your vast audience. So the address I would send people to right now, if they want well-written sports analysis and observations and the stylings of GareJoyce, you go to GareJoyce2022.substack.com. Just go there and subscribe, right? That would be it. I think if you did a Google search of my name and sub stack, you're going to land on it. You got it.

Now, one, we're going back a bit here but there's a number 104 so I subscribe I get these emails. Issue number 104 captured my attention it's called the fall of 87 and I guess this was written after the fail of 17 but I feel like it should be revised following the fail of 2024 here. I mean as awful as this Blue Jays season was my expectations weren't very high to start with so and it was kind of over pretty quickly So I don't think 2024 really compares to the pain I felt at the end of the 1987 season

it was a spectacular demise, a vortex thatancing. And in the wake of that season, I was approached by an editor at Toronto Magazine, which was a supplement, city supplement that came in the Globe and Mail and asked if I would be interested in doing a profile of Tom Henke. And the assumption was that Tom Henke would be devastated by the Homer that Kurt Gibson hit off him, which was the first domino to fall in the seven consecutive games that the Jays lost to end the season and lose the division title on the last day of the campaign. And I ended up becoming good friends with Tom, went hunting with him. I ended up what should have been like a

three-day assignment. I ended up staying in small-town Missouri I think for 12 days and all. And the story of my going hunting with Tom Hickey is both in the audible memoir, and it's also on my sub stack in the archive. It was one of the stranger experiences going raccoon hunting, uh, with, with, with Tom me being a non meat eater, uh, since 1974. Um, a little problematic. I was kind of almost sick to my stomach when he was skinning these freshly killed

raccoons, um, and,ons and bagging up the meat. I mean, it was, it was kind of tough and I couldn't believe the stuff that Tom was eating. He was eating like squirrel and what? Yeah. I'm just like, Oh, squirrel on a bun. You can't beat it. I was like, yeah, maybe not.

So, uh, anyways, but that, that fall, um, Tom was, was his role in it is, I always thought way overstated. He gave up a home run ball to Kirk Gibson and then didn't get into a game. The rest of the way. Uh, you know, there were so many things that went down. Tony Fernandez was taken out on a hard slide by Bill Madlock, which was a crushing blow, uh, losing Fernandez and having to play manly the rest of the way. And there were Ernie Witt was playing her,

Garth Orge was playing her. It just went sideways in every imaginable way. What what misery could have visited the the team did. AL MVP George Bell stopped hitting It had all happened at the worst possible time so I'm reading your sub stack about the fall of 87 and I learned because you you you Uncovered this what we thought was lost audio So there was this audio put together for the 30th anniversary of the

fall of 1987. So if I do my math right, that's 2017. So you put together this, and I'm gonna ask you about, you know, who's involved in everything in a moment, but bottom line is there's this excellent audio documentary about the fall of 87 that you you produced and it's being essentially erased from the internet. So this was on a former employee or of yours and simply of yours a former employee or of yours deleted it from their web servers. So you cannot find this in the public domain, but you somehow tell me how did you come across this seemingly lost audio relic? I had it from back when okay, like on a hard drive or something and then you just stumbled

upon it. Yeah on on I had it on a little some drive and yeah, I I tried to keep a few of those things as samples. Not necessarily imagining that I would be out there doing a substack or something like that. But yeah, I wanted, I remember I played it for my friends and family before it went up on the Rogers site. I wrote, oh God, I wrote a long, long, long feature. And when I say long, I go long to start with. That was that accompanied the podcast.

I've seen it. This is on the the big reads section of the sports. Now I've seen it. I'm sure that it's still there. It is. Yeah. I haven't looked at it for a while. What I would say is, I mean, it still haunts me,

but I had a great interview with Jeff Musselman and that part of the story makes it into the print version accompanying the podcast, but there was an issue with the recording of the interview I did with Jeff Musselman, who was almost in tears. He really sweated it hard. Um, he came in in relief of Mike Flanagan, um, deeply troubled guy, fantastic pitcher in his day. Um, and, uh, the Jays that was the last weekend of the season. That was the last weekend of the season and Jeff was a younger player. He was thrust into his position that he wasn't really equipped for. Tom Hanke, meanwhile, doesn't get a call to come up in a tie game in next earnings.

And Flanagan factored into his suicide later on, Mike Flanagan had plenty of victories and all kinds of successes. So that's not the worry there. But it was just a really gut wrenching account that Jeff Musselman gave me. And at the time, I thought there's something screwy here with the audio. And the, it was not an intern, but it was a young guy who was the techie on that. And he drew, I begged him, I was like, please make sure this audio is okay and his name is Josh I won't go into his last name it's probably probably a CBC executive at this point but I we lost the audio I mean I had the notes it happens right it

happens yeah not to me of course happens. But I tried calling Jeff Musselman back. He's a prominent baseball agent now. And it was kind of like, hey, I did this once. Right. You know, you get one you get this is one strike and you're. I'm eager to get to this thing, but I have to ask, why did Rogers delete it from their servers?

Like, why has this thing been erased from the internet until we resurrect it as we're about to do right now? Yeah, I wasn't aware of that, quite frankly. I didn't know that it wasn't around. I just assumed that it was something that, I mean, I don't go back and visit my past work unless I'm writing about it on my sub stack. I do mine stories that I've written over the years and trying to retrace my steps and not just revisit the story, but reach out to people that I've talked a substack entry. I know you mentioned, like, this is more than a year ago, I guess. Right.

And I wasn't aware that this, that Rogers had taken it off the website, off the providers. I didn't know that. I have a copy of it going back, so I put it on my substack. I'm glad they still have the print piece there. Yes. I thought it was really well done. Full credit to the producer, Amal Delik, who's moved on from Rogers. A super talented producer. He held my hand throughout.

I tested his patience. God knows I tripped over my tongue 100 times. That's getting raspy. I'm not a natural at this stuff. And it kind of prepped me for doing my my Audible original, my memoir for Audible, which was eight hours as opposed to, I don't know how long the podcast is. I think it's 90 minutes or so, the fall of 87. I think it's about 90 minutes. It felt longer when I was doing it, I can tell you. Now before I throw to it and let people hear it, for the first time in years, because again, this is a was sitting on a thumb drive and has been erased from the Roger servers. But I want to make sure the listenership knows that this audio documentary, The Fall of 87

was a finalist for best news feature podcast in the Canadian Radio Television Digital News Association Awards. It was. And it was funny. We lost. To there were three finalists. We were one and then there were two. CBA, CBC pods.

God knows one of them must have had like some ridiculous budget, right? There was international travel and they just knocked it out of the park. Heavyweight stuff. I mean, when you get down to it, we're a retrospective sports deal, competing with, you know, breaking international news and CBC does great work with this stuff. And

you know, I went in with no illusions that we were going to win. But after the awards, I said to Amel, well, you know, one day we'll get one of these. And Amel, who was in his first year at Sportsnet told me, actually, I produced those other two podcasts. So was so, so he was a winner. He just, I guess that's the way a hedging your bet is the, the, to have, have fingers in all three pods. Stuff the ballot box. Okay. Way to go there. So the two of you basically worked on this as like a dynamic duo.

We did. All right. Well, Gare, in the spirit of this awful 2024 Blue Jays season, I present to the listenership the fall of 87. Talking about the history of the Blue Jays of bygone days, I run the risk of sounding like your dad or your crazy uncle, but this is a simple statement of fact. A generation of fans don't know what it's like to have watched the Jays at Exhibition Stadium. A whole generation of fans never went to a concert there. Pink Floyd practically sold out the X three straight nights on their momentary lapse of reason to her while the Jays wrapped up their second last road trip of the

season in Baltimore. Boy I tell you what I've seen a lot of batting practice in my day where nobody hit the ball away Toronto's hitting the ball against the Orioles tonight. Three and a half games up Floyd encored each night with run like hell and that's exactly what the Jays did in the fall of 87. If you're in your 20s you'd have no idea. If you're 35 your 20s, you'd have no idea. If you're 35, you might have some vague recollection of a trip as a tyke bouncing on your father's knee. Maybe. It doesn't matter how much of a fan you are, it's just a timeline.

If you were born too late, you don't know what it's like to sit completely sideways with your neck crammed 90 degrees to get a look at home plate. To look overhead with dread at Seagulls. To be chilled to the bone by winds off the lake during an April night game. By 1987, play-by-play man Jerry Howarth had been calling games at the X for seven seasons, and suffered through numbing cold like the rest of us with his play-by-play partner, Tom Cheek. So Exhibition Stadium, I'll remember for a few things. One, how old the ballpark was, but how beautiful it was in my own mind because it was Major

League Baseball. And then I realized too how cold it was in April and May, and ice built up on the windows, and I always liked to up on the windows and I always liked to broadcast with the windows open and Tom didn't particularly care for that but he was a good partner for me and he let me do that and I stopped giving out complimentary tickets in April May because I didn't want my friends and family shivering down there in the ice storms that were part of baseball at that time and in the 80s here before a lot of factors began to add to it. So that was all fun for me. Exhibition Stadium was great. That's where you were close to the field

and it was the artificial turf and it was all new but it was a team trying to get to the playoffs. Exhibition Stadium also made an impression on visiting players like Kirk Gibson. Loved going to Exhibition Stadium. You know, it wasn't really a baseball stadium, but we had some great rivalry right there and we had some great games and got to know many of the Blue Jays after we all retired and we were all very respectful of each other in our efforts. The Jays left their original home in 1989 for the Sky Dome, a wind-free, littered if necessary, stadium built for baseball. And if you think the game in the Rogers Centre gives you any idea what it was like at the

X, you must be winning some sort of fantasy league of memory. Here's what I remember about the X. Beside the Who farewell tour and the police picnic. Not the Toronto police. Tonight's winner receives a pair of tickets to the police picnic rock concert, August 23rd. And when you find the reference to Flock of Seagulls, that's a British synth band, not any relatives of the bird murdered by Dave Winfield back in 83.

A seagull has flown over the infield and darting down the right field line and back he comes again. During the Jays expansion years, in those 100 lost seasons, I had my usual place in section 7 in the stands. It wasn't a seat per se, it was an aluminum bench down the right field line. Suckers in section 9 were paying 2 bucks more just to have seats with plastic backs. In section 7, you could sit in the first row and talk to the guys in the visiting teams bullpens and the right fielders.

Some guys wouldn't shut up. Mickey Hatcher with the twins was one of the favorites. A complete chatterbox. In 82 alone, I made it out to almost 40 games, watching Lloyd Mosby and Jesse Barfield. Bill James, an influential numbers cruncher who changed the way we look at the game, was no fan of Mosby and Barfield. He ranked them as the worst at their positions in that year's baseball abstract. Then again, they were barely in their 20s. Stats didn't tell you what the eye test did.

A ton of raw talent and bright futures. Wilcox fires in the lame duck, swung on blasted deep left field that'll defy the wind. It's way out of here. Jesse Barfield has hit another home run. Make it three for three now. Here's the delivery and Jacoby shoots a line drive to right center. Mosby's on the move running over, reaches out and makes the catch. Whirls and throws back to second on a bounce driving tabler back to first base. By 1985 though, I have one foot in section 7 and the other in the press box.

I was trying to break into the media. I couldn't quite kick down the front door, so I came in the side, writing stories about music and sports for magazines, now long gone. Yeah, I wrote about Blue Rodeo and the Blue Jays. Talked to Jim Cuddy one day, Jimmy Key the next. The music side was good for free vinyl and CDs but sports? Well it was broader horizons. One piece actually took me to the Dominican Republic. That story led to a deal to write a book about the Jays' operation down in the Dominican. Look, I wasn't above cheering for a good story.

After all, it was good for business. And 1985 was great for business. That whole world-class city thing? Toronto was completely wrapped up in it. Toronto was starstruck. The biggest grossing movie of the year was Three Men and a Baby. People would go to the uptown to pick out locations around the city where the film was shot. They'd talk about the time they saw Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg out for dinner. Toronto wanted its place on the world stage and a World Series would do all that.

Doyle Alexander is an out of way from tying his high as a Blue Jays with 17 wins. He is one out of way from pitching the championship game here for the Eastern Division crown. And he's going to go all the way to do it. He works to Hasse. There's a swing and a fly ball left field. Belazar, he's got it. The Blue Jays have done it. They have won the East.

They have won the East. George Bell catching the ball and dropping to his knees! 99 wins in an AL East title clinched on the last Saturday of the season. 1987 looked like it was going to be a storybook season, and steady work for an entry-level writer like me. Mosby and Barfield were two thirds of what Bill James was now conceding as the best outfield in baseball. The other third was George Bell.

The bell is rung for George Bell here in the fourth inning, batting for Barry Kendall of Moncton, New Brunswick. Went to Astro Electronics, looking for a TV from Zenith. There's a pitch deep left center field hit a ton it's heading for the grandstands it's back and there she goes. Yes sir! George Bell has just hit an enormous home run here at Exhibition Stadium and the Orioles lead is cut to two to one. Rigetti to the belt, the 1-0 pitch. A swing and a fly ball hit to deep left center field. It's going, going, going! Grand slam home run for George Bell.

George Bell has hit a grand slam home run his career third. Tom, unbelievable. Look at this crowd on its feet. I'll say it's unbelievable. And George Bell comes dancing up for a curtain call. Bell was racking up monstrous numbers. A 308 batting average, 47 homers, and 134 Ribbies would land him the American League MVP. The Jays were absolutely stacked. They led the AL in fewest runs allowed. Their ace Jimmy Key led the

league in ERA and Tom Henke had the most saves in the league. Toronto's run differential was 190. Catcher Ernie Witt was one of the original Jays, a survivor of 100 lost seasons. He has no doubt where he ranks the 87 team. To me it was the best team that I ever played on. 85 was nice, we won it, but as far as talent and everything, I thought we had probably the best talent at that point in time.

I just felt that that was probably the most underrated team that people talk about, and I thought it was the best team that I ever played on. But even fans deeply invested in the team might not remember a lot of the names. Juan Beníquez, a professional hitter, was a gun for hire. Rick Leach, the former Michigan QB, was backup to the Big Three in the outfield.

Charlie Moore was a veteran catcher, another late season addition. Nelson Liriano looked like the Jays second baseman of the future. Here's the Tigers Lou Whittaker who walked on four pitches in the first. He whacks a line drive putt by a diving Nelson Liriano at second base. Home run Nelson Liriano. Oh man, he teed off. Nelly's second home run. How you like me, now?

Coming into the second last Sunday of the 87th season, the Jays had won seven straight. They were on pace to win more than 100 games, but overshadowing a great season was the worst week in franchise history. It happened to be the last week of the season. That team with 96 victories, with seven to play, wouldn't win another game. 7 straight losses.

Memory is a funny thing. There are a few lasting images, lasting sequences, but many things are misremembered, many things forgotten. This is the lost history of that last lost week went down just days before it all started to go sideways. It was the third inning of the opening game of a four-game series against the Tigers at the X. Detroit's designated hitter that night was Bill Madlock. Madlock slid into second base trying to break up a double play. Okay, not into second base itself.

Not even in the same postal code as second. It looked like a cold-blooded play intended to take out Tony Fernandez. The J's star shortstop went down on his right elbow. The tip of it was broken and displaced. Tony's elbow hit the seam where the dirt met the turf. That should tell you just how wide Madlogg slid. An inch or two either way might have left Fernandez with only a bruise, but he landed precisely in the worst possible place.

Assistant GM Gordache remembers the play like it was yesterday. The thing I remember most about it is there was always a lot of talk about how dangerous the field was there because they had these around the dirt bases. There was this AstroTurf covered piece of metal that kept the AstroTurf in place when they played football there. And it was very, very hard. And he just happened to come down on his elbow right on that piece of metal. Fernandez writhed. Within seconds, you knew he was done for the season. Fans thought that Madlock would get tossed. So did the Jays.

The UMPs didn't even huddle to discuss it. Madlock seemed to glory in the role of villain after the game. He stirred the pot. He didn't trash talk. It was more like passive aggressive taunting. When asked if he intended to foam Fernandez in hospital, Madlock expressed disbelief. He said, what am I, the welcome wagon? Good to his word, Madlock saved his quarter.

After batting practice the next day, he expressed no remorse. First of all, I don't know why it's such a big deal. I guess if it won this time of the season, it wasn't the two teams playing. I mean, this is the way I played all the time. The guys in the National League know I come in to try to keep up and get them out. We end up scoring two runs. The main thing about that slide was to get us an extra out, and the extra out got us two runs. It wasn't the slide that hurt him.

It was the wood around the second base that did it. It came down on his elbow on that and I had nothing to do with that. There had been bad blood brewing for a couple of seasons. The Jays thought Detroit's manager, Sparky Anderson, was telling his pitchers to brush back hitters. Madlock's slide just raised the stakes. The Jays wound up with a W that night.

Mike Flanagan got the win, Henke the save. The final score seemed less significant than Fernandez's injury. That single play was a paradigm shift. Yes, George Bell would win the league's MVP award, but I'd say Tony Fernandez was the team's most valuable player. It looked that way when the grim fact sank in, that Jays had to go with Manny Lee at shortstop

the rest of the way. And Lee hadn't even been on the Major League roster on September 1st. Manny had a good glove, decent range, a little speed, but he wasn't Tony. Fernandez was magical in the field, but it was likely his bat that would be missed most. With Fernandez as the number three hitter ahead of Bell, the Jays' offense had averaged almost six runs a game in September before the shortstop went down. Over those last seven games of the season, they scored a meager 16 runs,

including a pair of games that went deep into extra innings. I had first met Fernandez in the Dominican a month after his first full season in the major leagues. In fact, one night I was stranded at the ballpark in Santa Domingo and Fernandez gave me a lift back to my hotel. He didn't have the ride you'd expect of a major leaguer. It was a rust bucket that was at least five years old and rattled. It looked like something he picked up used with his $3,000 signing bonus, and it probably was. I thought he had to be the

least ostentatious all-star ever. I knew he was a devout Christian. Fernandez bailed me out, but there seemed to be some part of him that no fan, no media type could ever reach. I couldn't put my finger on it, at least until I went to his hometown of San Pedro de Macarise, the famous cradle of short stops. I wound up at his parents home. It was in the shadow of the ballpark. Kids ran around with no shoes. You could see the daily struggle of people just trying to get by. Fernandez grew up in grinding poverty. Could people in Toronto ever relate to his roots? Not a chance. His faith was his compass. It's impossible for us to imagine moving between the two worlds Fernandez navigated.

Back in those days, people talked about Fernandez as a future Hall of Fame. In 1986, his 213 hits set a single season Major League record for shortstop. Still, when you think of Fernandez, you think of him in the field. Good job by Tony. Over in the hole to come up with it. A long throw to get in Cavalier. Very nice play. Fernandez had to come hard to his right. Made that jumping throw and it was on the money as Big Fred McGriff stretched up to finish it off.

So if you're scoring tonight's game, you can put a little star by that one. And it has brought a lot of these fans right up out of their seats. He fought it off and grounds it out towards second. Fernandez a leaping catch right at the back, throws the first, he got another one. A head first slide by Ripken to no avail. And that is twice that Tony Fernandez has splashed over to the right side of second to take a high-chopping ground ball. There was something beautiful about the way he played shortstop. Pure ballet. In the team's 40-year history there have been all kinds of

highlight reel plays in the field. You could do a top 10 list of Kevin Pilar's alone, but nothing amazed as regularly as Tony Fernandez going deep in the hole, digging out a ball, and then in a flash throwing it across his body to first base. a ball and then in a flash throwing it across his body to first base. Flanagan's fastball is hit on the ground, picks by Fernandez out behind second. Oh what a play as he makes the difficult throw to first to get Herndon. Ranging way over behind second base and then the toughest play really for the shortstop to make. That is with his momentum as he's going full tilt toward right field to make the accurate throw to first base and Tony did it so

well. Those were some of the sweetest moments of watching the Jays back then. Madlock's takeout of Fernandez wasn't just a blow to the Jays in 87, it was the shape of things to come. Look, Tony Fernandez had a great career. He'd get his ring in 93 in his second stint with Toronto. Nearly got another in Cleveland of all places. He played hurt and suffered a series of injuries. And with those injuries, he lost something more than time in the lineup. The worst was a fastball from Cecilia Oguante that flushed Fernandez in the face in Texas in 1989. Tony Fernandez was a star and star-crossed at the same time. That last

week of the 87 season was the first time we'd say one thing of Tony Fernandez. What might have been? Randy Travis's Forever and Ever on Men was the number one country hit that year, and one moment has had that kind of staying power. It's the first scene that comes to mind with that loss last week, even though it didn't actually decide again. For the first time ever, over 50 million people have gone to the ballpark, and J-Fans contributed greatly to that total.

This weekend, Exhibition Stadium was filled to the seams to the ballpark. And J fans contributed greatly to that total. This weekend, exhibition stadium was filled to the seams for the main event, the J's and the Tigers. Then fans got their money worth as game four was like the previous three, another close one. ["I'm Gonna Love You Forever"] The collapse began with the J's looking to sweep a four game series against the Tigers on a Sunday afternoon at

the X in front of 46,000 fans. With a win, the Jays would have owned a four-and-a-half game lead in the division with six games to play, all but locking up the AL East. Jim Clancy pitched seven shutout innings before giving way to Tom Henke with a score 1-0. The unlikely leading man of those old AquaVelva commercials, Henke came in with a league leading 34 saves and this was his 42nd save opportunity. No need to go to the set up man, straight to the closer, the lanky guy with the glasses and high heat. 87, I think I had almost 94 innings as a closer. That's unheard of. That'd be three years' work now.

You know, and there was a number of years that I got close to 100 innings as a closer. So the role has changed over the years. Back when I first started 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, I was getting a lot of innings in as a closer. So now, you know, it's a one-inning job and sometimes less than that. Henke mowed down the Tigers in the top of the eighth. Strictly routine. Two-two pitch. Swing and a miss, strike three. Henke strikes him out. After a scoreless bottom half of the inning, Kirk Gibson led off the ninth.

Gibson had had little luck with Henke in the past, so he stepped into the box with borrowed wood. So I got up to hit, I think I led the inning off, and Tom Henke was coming in, who threw high fastballs, was not my strength. I think he handled me pretty well. And Bill Matlock said, here use this black bat right here. It was just a little light pea shooter. So I said, all right. So sure enough, I hit one out, high fastball, hit it out, went out, tied it up. In one swing of Matlock's bat, the game was tied.

Henke brings 30 years of perspective when he talks about that moment. Does it haunt me? No. I know I did the best I could. didn't get any in any of the games now Give up the home run to Gibson early, you know in Toronto in that series, but does that haunt me? No, I know I did the best I could for the fans for my family for everybody I just wasn't good enough that day and I accept that.

Henke finished by retiring three in the ninth and a couple in the tenth before giving way to the bullpen. He might have worried that the game was going to get away from the Jays. He never suspected that he had thrown his last pitch of the season. I still remember the seven straight games where we were one run games, never got in a game. That was agonizing never to be able to get in that game to help the team win. But you know, it's still a good memory, even though it hurts a little bit. It still was a experience I wouldn't give up.

I mean, we were right there. Yeah, with any luck at all. It's not fair or remotely accurate to say the Jays missed out on a pennant or a World Series because of Henke's failure to keep the slate clean and the ninth that Sunday. But baseball fans have memories that aren't always fair and accurate.

We've seen fans throw players like Henke under the bus. Just look at the previous season. Bill Buckner went underground for years because of a botched grounder. Little roller up along first, behind the bag! It gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight and the Mets win it! And that gaffe only forced a game seven

in the 1986 World Series. Just days before there was Donnie Moore. Moore was on the mound closing out the ninth for the Angels, one single pitch away from the World Series. Two away and two strikes to Dave Henderson, who then hit a homer to keep Boston's hopes alive. The Red Sox won the game and a couple more to move on to the big dance.

Moore was a broken man after that. Two years later, he took his own life, having shot and wounded his wife with his children in the house. Then there's Jay's history. Exhibition Stadium had been a graveyard for relief pitchers. Memories of Joey McLaughlin, Bill Caudill, Dennis Lamp, blowing up were still fresh.

Henke righted things in 85 and had been nothing less than solid ever since. With the single lapse against Gibson, one at bat cast him back with the others. It was a question many mulled over, including a magazine editor who asked me to write about Henke early that off season. So as fall gave way to winter, I called Henke. He was back in his hometown of Taos, Missouri, hometown of Taos, Missouri. Population 758. I asked him if he'd be open to having me come down to talk to him, a photographer in tow. I expected to get politely declined. Buckner and Donnie Moore weren't doing interviews weeks after their awful moments. Henkie though gave me the green light, something to the effect of, come on down. I expected to spend a couple of hours with him. Standard stuff when a writer takes on a feature. If I got a whole day, I'd buy a

bag of confetti. I ended up staying in Taos 12 days. And while you might be able to stay in Taos 12 days without going hunting, you couldn't hang out 12 days with Tom Hanke without going hunting. Now we walked miles from evening to dawn following his coon hounds. All the while I looked for one sign, one tell, anything at all that gave away a feeling of awful burden. And in time I found well nothing, absolutely nothing. nothing. Last month I asked Henke how important it was to come back to his hometown that October. Well it was everything.

It was everything. I mean to be able to come back here and people knew exactly what happened. They knew the Gibson home run, you know the losing seven straight games at the end of the year. They followed the Blue Jays down here in Missouri just about as well as anybody in Canada because they were all Blue Jays fans at that time around here and it hurt them too. At the time, Tom and his wife Kathy were weighing the decision to have a fourth child. Their third, Amanda, was born with Down syndrome. The chances of another child being born with the condition spiked.

It's just a game. You know, it really is. When my daughter Amanda was born with Down syndrome, it made me understand that, hey, this is just a game. You know, when she has to struggle to eat or walk or talk, do things that we take for granted, it's just a game. Yeah, it's an important game and there's a lot of people counting on you. But that moment in my career put things in perspective for me and I think enabled me to go out and forget things. Just say, okay, I had a bad game, I'm going on.

Because I get to go home and see my daughter Amanda and my family and that was always my way out. Tom and his wife had a fourth child, a daughter. They decided to get back in the game after life had dealt them a tough hand. That's a pretty fair parallel for his baseball life too. Gibson's homer was a bad memory but he moved on, got his ring and had a long career, good to the very end.

Despite that loss to Detroit on Sunday, fans in Toronto were euphoric. It might have been hard for some in the media to stay objective. Some didn't even try. John Robertson in the star literally waved the pom-poms. He tried to be the voice of the fan and the insider all at the same time. That Monday morning, Robertson was all sunshine and hyperbolic cheer. Quote, there were no heads hanging in the Jays clubhouse, nor should there have been. End quote. Jays clubhouse nor should there have been." End quote. Robertson said, despite the loss, the Jays were quote, ecstatic.

In my 30 years in the business, I've been in hundreds of clubhouses and dressing rooms, and I've never been in one where anyone was ecstatic after any sort of loss. If anyone questioned manager Jimmy Williams pulling Clancy after seven innings Sunday afternoon having only thrown 79 pitches, well John Robertson would have knocked that doubter down. Williams had his critics and Robertson had been among them but now that the Jays had won 19 of 25 in

September, Robertson would tell you that Williams was John McGraw, Connie Mack and Casey Stengel all rolled into one. But that's not exactly how Tom Hankey saw it. I always thought Jimmy was too nice a guy to be a manager because sometimes, you know, you got to sit on guys or you got to be that manager, whether it's working at a factory or whatever, you got to sit on guys or you got to be that manager whether it's working at a factory or whatever you got to be that person to pull the rug out from under somebody or sit on them you don't make make him realize hey I'm the boss and Jimmy was a great coach I just think he was too nice a guy to be a manager because guys I seen guys walk on him.

The player who butted heads with Williams most often was George Bell. The temperamental outfielder was loved by his teammates, but most in the media thought he was a jerk. Usually, Robertson and the others would rip him at every opportunity. But with Bell lighting it up, hitting 371 in September, he was gorgeous George to John Robertson. Although Robertson would occasionally bury players and managers, he'd kiss up to them in situations like this. Think of it as World Series foreplay. And you didn't have to wear John Robertson's rose-coloured glasses to imagine the Jays in the playoffs, in the World Series, or in a parade.

Even long-time pitching coach Al Widmar was taking questions about prospective matchups in the playoffs. Widmar said sidearmor Mark Eichorn would cause a lot of grief for the big right-handed bats in the Minnesota lineup. The twins had already clinched the West that week. And then Widmar offered that Icahorn would be an even bigger challenge for the national league hitters who had never seen him. If a lifetime baseball man like Al

Widmar can get ahead of himself, well, you know exactly how intoxicating these heady times were. On Monday, they played their first game in a three-game set against the Milwaukee Brewers. If the Jays swept the last home series of the season, they could start printing playoff tickets. swept the last home series of the season, they could start printing playoff tickets. Well, not quite. Detroit had a four game set in Baltimore. The Jays couldn't count on help from the O's. Baltimore was ahead of only Cleveland in the division

and would go on to lose 95 games that year. Still, a sweep of Milwaukee and the Jays magic number would be no more than two heading into the final series of the season in Detroit. It seemed like a pretty ideal situation. After all, the Brewers had nothing to play for. They were out of the pennant race. How motivated could they possibly be?

Milwaukee was a real danger though. Henke was just one of the Jays who dreaded games against the Brewers. I hated Milwaukee. I'll be honest. If you look at my career stats, my career ERA is 267 I think. And I think my career ERA against Milwaukee is like 467. Like two runs better. And people ask you, they say, did you have a hitter or did you have a team that just owns you?

Well, Milwaukee would send a limo to the airport, make sure I got to the game one time. No names here, but a Milwaukee reliever hit on my girlfriend in section seven. He was a dirt bag with tobacco juice drooling down his chin. Believe me, I cheered his every loss, and his career was satisfyingly short. That piece of personal history aside, I was with Henke. I saw the Brewers as a real threat to play the spoiler. They had the third

best record in the American League. They'd wind up winning 91 games. In fact, of all the teams in the American League, they'd wind up winning 91 games. In fact, of all the teams in the AL East, they had the best record against division rivals. The Brewers had won six of their first ten games against the Blue Jays that season. Here it comes. There's a swing and a belt. Hit deep to left field. Bell gives up on it. It's gone. Rob Deer hits a two-run home run into the seats in left center and that will tighten things up here. They had future Hall of Famers in Robin Yount and Paul Molotov who had a 39-game hitting streak earlier that summer. Garth Orange recognized the Brewers were more than a potential headache. They had always given the Jays fits. Well, I mean, if you look at it, if you can remember those Milwaukee teams, you know,

led by Yount and Molitor and Norman Thomas and Ben Ogilvie, you know, Cecil Cooper, I mean, that's the most underrated player I've ever been around in my life. I mean, the guy had to be Pivo and he'd be like three years in a row or something, hitting 350, you know, hitting 35, 40 home runs. This guy was amazing. And you look at their whole team with Gantner and you know all their extra players, they were a great team. My gosh that was a great team. By the end of the three game series against Milwaukee, there had to be some heads hanging in the Jays clubhouse. On Monday, the Brewers beat the Jays 6-4 with Mike Flanagan giving up four earned runs and a couple of homers in four and a third taking the loss. There were cheers at Exhibition Stadium though when the

out of town scoreboard showed the Orioles beating the Tigers 3-0. So the magic number for the Jays remained 4, and their division lead was still 2.5-2. Tuesday night, there were no cheers, and maybe for the first time a sense of dread. The Brewers 5-3 win wasn't really the worst of it. Neither was the fact that Detroit was laying a 10-1 spanking on the Orioles. No, the worst of it came in the bottom of the sixth when Ernie Witt slid into second base trying to break up a double play and wound up only breaking a couple of ribs. Yep, the same patch of dirt where Tony Fernandez's season ended just days before.

Witts wasn't an egregious takeout slide like Bill Madlock's. He was right on the bag. It was clear that Witt was in a world of pain when he collided with the Brewers' Paul Molitor. He was an original Jay and he had won fans over with his grit more than his talent. He was old, old school. A bruise, a cut, a twisted knee, something like that, and Witt would have bounced up and not let on that he was hurting. This time though, he stayed down. Witt had to be helped off the field and taken to Mount Sinai for X-Ray. When we lost Tony on the Thursday night and then I got against Milwaukee, you know, I slid into second base and ran into Paul Molitor's knee and that put me out for the rest of the season and I wanted to play desperately and I just wasn't able to answer the call. The Jays didn't even need to know the results from the hospital.

They understood what impact the loss of wit would have down the stretch. Larry Milsen covered the Jays that season for the Globe and Mail. The quietest I think I heard that clubhouse was when Ernie was hurt against Milwaukee and they lost. That was like a tomb because they knew they'd lost a key player and there was nobody really talk that much. It was very, very quiet. That was the quietest I remember that clubhouse being.

They knew that Fernandez, at least the game with Fernandez, they'd won. And it was a rousing win, right? They knew that was tough, but then to lose Ernie on top of that, and I think there was a certain realization set in there with them deep down, even though maybe they wouldn't want to talk about it the next day. That they were really in trouble now. GM Pac Gillick addressed the media after the game. He has two ribs that are fractured. There's no displacement of them. He has no lung damage, and there's no damage to his spleen. And so there's a possibility that with a flak jacket and

with some medication that he could play on Friday. Replacing Witt? Well, the fall off from Fernandez to Manny Lee was nothing compared to the implications of Witt being on the shelf. Witt was batting fifth in the lineup, the protection for George Bell. At 35, Witt had never been hotter. He was tied with Bell for the most home runs in September with eight. On top of that, the Michigan native

always tore it up at Tiger Stadium. Now, who? Swung on, there's a drive, deep right field, forget about it, it's gone! Home run Ernie Witt, and the Blue Jays lead it 3-2. Tom you called it. The Indians now with 11 hits, they've out hit the Blue Jays 11-8. Ackar ready, a look back. And Nixon running to third to pitch a strike, Witt's throw the tag, he's out at third base. Witt's longtime partner in the catching platoon, Buck Martinez, had retired after the 86th season. The Jays struggled to find a serviceable replacement. Well, mark it down as a first.

That is the first time Otis Nixon has been caught stealing. It was five for five, and Ernie Witt nailed him with a great throw. The Jays were down to Charlie Moore, a long past at veteran who had come over in midseason and a 21 year old rookie Greg Myers who had yet to step into the batter's box in the major leagues. Witt understood better than anyone the pressure on a kid straight out of the minor. Well it's tough for anyone to put anyone without any very little experience to put him into that role. It's unfair to him. You know, you did the best that he could do and you know you always try to keep yourself prepared and ready to

play in case of injuries come into play but it's hard to step in and do that type of job that is expected. It was nothing against him. You know, he did the best that he possibly could do. It was so dire that Pat Gillick actually made calls to GMs trying to trade for a catcher even though he'd be ineligible for the postseason. Dire times call for extreme measures. Yet some stayed optimistic. When I looked over old clips in the library,

I happened on this gem. Jimmy Williams told reporters that other players had stepped into the lineup, on the field, on the mound, and performed well. Manny Lee, not the least of them. Robertson wasn't about to put down the pom-poms. He quoted himself as saying, What you're trying to tell me is that the way this club has been able to respond to adversity, you might be able to turn his loss into a plus.

Yes, all you can say about that. It was a time of magical thinking. Even someone with a half century in the game wasn't immune. The venerable Al Widmar told reporters Witt's injury would take two or three weeks in recovery. He even suggested Witt could be back for the World Series. You would have thought Al Widmar would have known not to get out ahead of himself. After all, Widmar had been Philadelphia's pitching coach in 1964, the year the Phillies infamously blew a 6.5 game lead with 12 to play, losing 10 in a row at one stretch.

The next day, thousands lined Bay Street, all the way from Union Station to City Hall They had come out to salute Ben Johnson the 25 year old who had beaten Carl Lewis in the hundred meters at the worlds And it is a fair start it is Ben Johnson who is that and Ben Johnson is two meters of Carl Lewis And Ben Johnson is going to run away with it Lewis cannot catch it Ben Johnson of Canada does it. A nine, eight, four. Unbelievable. You gotta love it. A world record.

The wind is okay. Woo! Officially, Johnson's time was rounded off to nine, eight, three. When it was originally planned, Johnson's slow roll up Bay Street would have looked like a dress rehearsal for a Jays parade, but the Brewers kept messing up the plans. That night the Brewers completed a three game sweep with a 5-3 victory at the X. Juan Nieves pitched the complete game, while on the other side Dave Steve gave up four runs in four and a third

The longtime ace of the franchise was in and out of the rotation in September He'd been so dominant for so many seasons it seems strange to see him struggle, especially with his control. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, the Orioles once again knocked off the Tigers, this time 7-3, so the Jays still had a game and a half lead. They knew that they'd be going into Detroit with some sort of lead. As it turned out, it would be a single game. The Tigers won 9-5 in Baltimore that Thursday. The three games in Detroit were playoff games in everything but name. In fact,

they were more dramatic than a lot of playoff series. Gordache said nothing in the team's history compared to that weekend in Detroit. We've had some close races through the years, but nothing is as dramatic or traumatic as that one. Thursday was a day of rest and travel for the Jays. After four losses in four days, that was just what you'd think they needed. But even on their off day, the Jays' run of bad luck held.

They boarded a jet for the short hop to Detroit, and things went sideways. Jesse Barfield recounts the strangest turn in that lost last week. Actually, we got on the airplane going to Detroit, and Juan Bonique was making baby noises, like crying baby noises in the back, and we took off and we hit a flock of geese.

And Lloyd's wife, Adrienne, hit the call button. My wife was sitting right by her, Marla. And the engine had flamed up, and she let them know right away. So we had to turn around and come back in emergency landing. So that was a bad situation. And Juan in the back went from baby noises to ah but he might eat oh my god it was unbelievable it got quiet so we had to

take a bus to Detroit and there was a sign of bad things to go a lot of fans presume travel for pro athletes is all deluxe stuff just part of their charmed lives but in the 30 years I've covered sports I've seen a play out too many athletes is all deluxe stuff, just part of their charmed lives. But in the 30 years I've covered sports, I've seen a play out too many times to think that travel nightmares happen any less frequently with them than any other business travel. Delays, hold ups of customs, standard stuff, flights aborted because of weather? Seen that, ditto teams having to bus in, arriving just before game time. Maybe another team had a flight preempted by a flock of geese.

But I'm confident none had the league's best record and was playing for first place on the last weekend of the season. Most people regarded Exhibition Stadium as hardly a ballpark at all. A makeshift home until a real stadium was built. There was nothing makeshift about Tiger Stadium though. Everything around the ball yard had been leveled, it stood alone in an urban wasteland. The 1987 AL East was going to be decided on the same grounds where Detroit beat the Cubs to win the 1935 World Series. Base runners on the Jays and Tigers were going to be sliding into second base where Ty Cobb spiked the loins of middle infielders back before World War one

I had been to Tiger Stadium a few times on assignment and as a fan. It was dingy and dark on assignment and as a fan. It was dingy and dark, archaic and in places cramped. Steel beams obstructed the view of the diamond from a few seats. In other words, it was beautiful. For Jerry Howarth, likewise, it was love at first sight. Well it was terrific. That was my first Major League broadcast July 4th 1980 and I met Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey and I didn't really know too much about either of them but then I found out later what a wonderful person Ernie was, iconic in the profession and those first three games for me I remember how nervous I was in the first game Friday night then I remember the adrenaline slipped to about 20% but I was still nervous on Saturday and I thought to

myself can I do this? And then on Sunday after five years in the Coast League broadcasting AAA games I felt like I was home broadcasting like I did in the Coast League and I didn't have to get on a plane that night I could have flown home on my own just up in the air sky-high and I'll always remember saying to myself Jerry you can do this if given an opportunity and thanks for the opportunity to go to Tiger Stadium where you're right over home plate in a ballpark that for me was a treasure because it meant so much to me and so many others including Arnie. Ty Cobb knew nothing about advanced stats.

It might as well have been Einstein's theory of relativity. That week the star ran a story by a friend, Martin Levin, who was one of the first aboard Bill James' Saber Metrics train. Martin used a complicated formula devised and popularized by James to determine that in a short series of games between Toronto and Detroit, the Jays would win 70% of the time. Bottom line, Martin wrote, Toronto had two edges, fielding and pitching, while the Tigers edge was in run scoring. They led the American league in that department, though the Jays led in run differential. Tom Henke saw it in starker terms. I mean, that was a do or die series that we needed to win one game. You got to give Detroit a lot of credit.

I mean they had their backs against the wall. Maybe they didn't have anything to lose. Everybody said well they can't win three straight against the Blue Jays, you know, but when your backs against the wall and you got nothing to lose, sometimes you play looser. So you got to give Detroit, Sparky Anderson, that whole crew over there a lot of credit. They played their tails off. They beat us. I mean, we didn't give them many games. They just beat us and they were the better team in that series. Now, over the course of the whole year, I still think we were the better team.

None of the Stabs could factor in the absences of Tony Fernandez and Ernie Witt. And because the metrics extended across the full season, they didn't fully factor in the impact of Doyle Alexander, an alum of the Jays 85 team, who was traded to Atlanta for Duane Ward in 86. A year later, Alexander was on the move again. This time the Tigers picked him up on August 12th, sending Atlanta their best pitching prospect and a future Hall of Famer, a kid named John Smoltz. Jack Morris had been Detroit's ace, but he says Alexander was a crucial add for the race

to the pennant. I think his record speaks for itself. 9-0. We're never there without Doyle. He was incredible. You know, we lost a guy who became a Hall of Famer in John Smoltz, but we didn't know that at the time. You know, Doyle did everything we asked him to do.

If they awarded Cy Youngs for the first and second halves of the season, Alexander would have been the unanimous pick for the second half, no doubt. As it was, based on seven weeks of work in Detroit, he finished fourth in the voting. The 4-3 victory over Jim Clancy and the Jays on a bitterly cold Friday night was Alexander's ninth win in 11 starts for Detroit. It dropped ZR Ray to 153, and it left the Tigers and Jays tied atop the division with two games left in the season

factor in the possible playoff game on Monday and After 160 games the pennant had come down to a best two out of three Whenever you talk about the great single-game performances in the history of a franchise about the great single game performances in the history of a franchise, inevitably you're talking about victories. If sports doesn't always mirror war, it does on this count. So when people talk about the great pitching performances in Blue Jays history, Mike Flanagan's name doesn't come up as often as it should. But on that last Saturday of the season, Flanagan took it right to the limit and beyond. Gord Ash said nothing less was expected of Flanagan. He had earned that reputation.

You know, he was an old school baseball guy. He was a real competitor. The term warrior gets thrown around a lot, but it applied to him. He was a low-key guy. He never got really vocal and angry. He just had this grit about him that you wanted to have on your team, and it made a big impact. He was a great guy. He was a great guy.

He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. He was a low-key guy, never got really vocal and angry. He just had this grit about him that he wanted to have on your team and it made a big impact. And I think because he had had some post-season experience in the past, I think that was a bit of a calming

influence. He was a very thoughtful guy. He was a guy that spent a lot of time talking to other pitchers, thinking about the game, how to maximize your performance just from a preparation point of view. When Mike Flanagan's name gets tossed out there you picture him as a Baltimore Oriole where he started and played most of his career. He won a Cy Young there in 79 and a World Series in 83. In JAB Baltimore is where he landed after his playing days, including a stint as the Orioles GM. Like I said, in 87, I had one foot in the press box and the other in the stands. And with Flanagan, I unabashedly thought of him, leaning on my foot in the cheap seats.

Back in the early 80s, when we'd go to games at the X, we made a point of getting there as soon as the gates open, especially if the visiting team had a big name starter going. Where we sat on the aluminum benches in section 7 was right next to the visiting bullpen. And because it wasn't a desired seat, you could walk up and get a ticket in the first row. We were so on top of the visitors' pen, we didn't just see the starters warm up, we could actually hear them. The Orioles were a priority for us.

We'd watch Jim Palmer toss and think, how does he make it look so easy, so unhurried? And we'd listen for Mike Flanagan. He was considered the funniest guy in the game, the coiner of nicknames. When Flanagan was in his Cy Young season, he called the veteran Jim Palmer Cy Old. He was a fountain of one-liners. Tom Henke became best friends with Flanagan.

Mike was one of the greatest guys I ever met. I mean, his humor was just unbelievable. Witt, he was so quick. He never wanted to get into any kind of sparring match with words with him because he would just bury him. You know, and Mike was one of my dear friends, went fishing a lot with him, but having him in, I'll never forget him

giving up a home run to Jose Kinseko I think it was in the fifth deck might still be the longest home run in Skydome history he come in to the dugout and said I must not be that old I can still throw that ball a long way that kind of wit you know in the face of adversity I mean that that just loosened up the whole team. When Pat Gillick dealt for Flanagan with the clock ticking at the trade deadline it was a signal that the Jays were doubling down on an autumn run. The thing that stands out to me is this is back when the rules were when you made an August 31st trade the player had to report to the city before midnight and

I remember that was a bit of a three-ring circus getting him in town before the deadline. But just so you know, we made the deal I think that day and the night before and then he had to report to Toronto and you know there wasn't a lot of flights coming into Toronto from I guess he was in Baltimore at the time. I think we may have run to the private plane to get him here on time. The media had saddled Pat Gillick with the nickname Stand Pat, but the acquisition of Flanagan nullified the knocks. The Jays had lost confidence in Dave Steeb and you had the idea that

even Dave Steeb had lost confidence in Dave Steeb, what most had presumed an impossibility. Getting a former Cy Young winner with a ring and swagger, well, as a fan you couldn't ask more of the GM. Having been with the club for 10 seasons, Ernie Witt was familiar with moves like this. That was the beauty too, is that the fact that if there was a need for a player or someone, that's when Pat and the organization would go out and acquire that person that they felt that would put us over the top. I think they recognized that we needed one more starting pitcher and that's when they

went out and acquired Flanney and he was a great addition to the ball club. He had experience pitching with the Orioles who had a number of championship teams. So his presence was well felt in the clubhouse and on the field. That Saturday, the Jays and Tigers were tied for first. A Toronto win would have at least guaranteed a tie atop the AL East for the regular season and a playoff game at Tiger Stadium on Monday. It was Flanagan versus Jack Morris, two guys who didn't make the Hall of Fame. Two guys you'd want to hand the ball to at the time of greatest need.

Two guys more clutch than a lot of those in Cooperstown. It was a fascinating game to watch, a game of contrasts. Morris was pitching in and out of trouble all day long. He walked five batters and the Jays left eight men on base between the fifth and eighth. George Bell got all of a Morris fastball, but he was just out ahead of it and it just hooked foul into the upper

deck Larry Melson still wonders how it all would have played out if that bomb had stayed fair if George had hit that home run that you know it could have done something like that probably would have loosened up the whole team because you that day you sense there is a especially a tightness now that there's a certain denial that comes in. People say that they're, they're not feeling the pressure and all that, but this team obviously was, you know, by the end of nine, Morris had thrown 163 pitches and given up only two runs.

Mike Flanagan didn't have his greatest stuff, not by a long shot, but he never overpowered anybody. Through nine, Flanagan had also surrendered two runs. It might have only been one and a W for the Jays if it weren't for an errant throw by Manny Lee in the fifth that led to a run for the home team. The Jays and the Tigers went into extras. Flanagan stayed in the game. Larry Milsom was in the press box at Tiger Stadium.

He went 11 innings and he wanted to keep going. The only reason Jimmy Williams was able to talk him into coming out of the game was that Flanagan thought Henke was going in. Flanagan was out of the game after the bottom of the 11th. He had thrown 139 pitches through 11 innings, but Jimmy Williams didn't go to Henke, even though the big reliever hadn't pitched since Sunday. Instead it was Jeff Musselman. And Jeff Musselman had warmed up several times.

He ended up with a shoulder injury that needed attention in the off season. You know, and I think by the time he got in, he might've been gassed, you know? I mean, Jeff was really a starter, but they, because of who they had in the starting rotation, he would have been, he was used as a reliever and he was left-handed. There are no transcripts of the conversation between the much-doubted manager and the veteran who was pitching the game of his life. The scorebook shows Williams called for rookie Jeff Musselman to start the 12th and Musselman wound up loading the bases. Mark Eichhorn came on and induced Alan Trammell to hit an infield grounder to the left side of the infield.

Dwayne Ward ruefully remembers that awful moment as the ball passed Manny Lee. Well, you say passed Manny Lee, I remember it went right between his legs. And actually gave Alan Trammell a base hit on that, which is kind of incredible. But you know, him and George were battling out for the MVP and all that. So I mean, that's a little home field scoring. But you know, thinking about, thinking back But, you know, thinking back, you know, you take each game one at a time. And I think that's why there was no panic button pushed. And you see that base hit, you know, that they gave tram with that ground ball, you know, by Manny Lee. And you said, okay, guys, hey, let's just come back tomorrow. Let's get them.

Let's come back tomorrow. Let's get them. You know, and that's how I think everybody's attitude was on the team back then. It was like, hey, it's never over until it's over. Hey, we still got tomorrow. So it was heartbreaking But it wasn't a killer. It was too tempting to think what if what if Tony Fernandez was that shortstop? The game wouldn't have gone to extras and certainly wouldn't have ended on Trammell's routine grounder What if wit were there? Would George Bell be mired in a 1 for 23 slump? ended on Trammell's routine grounder. What if Whit were there? Would George Bell be mired in a one for 23 slump?

Would Tigers manager Sparky Anderson have had his pitchers nibbling at the edges of the strike zone if it were Whit and not rookie Fred McGriff hitting fifth? Mike Flanagan was burning up in the clubhouse after the game. He didn't throw Williams under the bus. He did everything but. Flanagan never forgave Jimmy for that. I remember he put a break kind of cryptically to me after the game. He says, there's no one in this clubhouse.

It's not their fault. Now I knew what he was getting at without pointing a finger at the manager. And I think he wanted to keep going, but he would give way to Hanke. And it's not like Hanke was gonna be in there for one inning. Hanke could have gone three innings.

He did it before. The Jays were down a game to the Tigers with one to play. Just watching the six consecutive losses unfold was pure torture. And you had to think that anyone who was optimistic about the Jays getting to the World Series was untethered to reality. While John Robertson wanted to be the voice of the fan, he wasn't echoing the public's opinion when he was guaranteeing of the fan. He wasn't echoing the public's opinion when he was guaranteeing, yes, guaranteeing Jay's wins in game 162 on Sunday and in the one-game playoff on Monday. In Sunday's Star,

Robertson wrote, They're going to win today, they're going to win tomorrow. And when they land triumphantly in Toronto tomorrow night, you'll all be out there chanting we never doubted you guys we knew you'd do it we're with you all the way this wasn't the voice of fandom this was the voice of denial an American tradition continues on October 3rd1, Bobby Thompson hit the shot heard around the world and brought a pennant to the polo grounds. This October 3rd, baseball's race for the pennant winds down as the Tigers host the Blue Jays. The tradition is here. The memories are waiting.

On the last day of the season, the Jays were down to their last shot, their last hope. A win would put them into a playoff game for the AL East. A loss was just too awful to consider. Ernie Witt wanted to get into the game on Friday night or Saturday, but couldn't go. He still held out hope on Sunday. Well, there was always hope. And, you know, I went to, you you know put on a flak jacket I had busted ribs and went to a series of injections and and on the Friday evening I went out to try to to do some things even with the injections it was just too

painful and I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to start anyways but I could possibly be used in a pentium role so it was I remember in the fifth sixth inning I would go into the locker room and the doctor would meet me in there and he would inject me with with some numbing stuff from my ribs just in case they needed to use me and I think on the Sunday that's where I felt like I could have possibly pinched it and done something. Garth Orge almost couldn't believe that Witt was game to go. Yeah he's taking shots you know and it's just like you know he got no shot. The Jays were seemingly in a position of advantage Yeah, the Tigers had home field, but the visitors had their best pitcher going Jimmy Key

Stretch the three two pitch strike three Fastball inside corner and the inning is over ten strikeouts for Jimmy In discussions about Jays history, Jimmy Key probably gets short shrift. When you think of the franchise's best-ever pitchers, Roy Halliday's name is the first drop. People will throw in Dave Steebe, whose sick stuff was just about unhittable. And yeah, Roger Clements won two Cy Youngs in his brief stint with the Jays. Yet Jimmy Key's 1987 season was up there with anyone else's. He finished second to Clements in the Cy Young voting, but that was mostly rep.

Yeah Clements had 20 wins, Key 17, but the Jays run support was pretty spotty. An example, Key pitched back to back complete games against the Tigers and Brewers in June, gave up three runs across 18 innings, and came out of it with two losses. Key led the league with a 276 ERA and a whip of just over one. The Jays had their man.

Tom Henke had this scouting report from 1987 on the pitcher nickname Peewee. And Jimmy Key, we called him that. That was his nickname and Jimmy was a pitcher. He was the ultimate in pitching. I mean, he didn't have that 100 mile an hour fastball like I had, but he could put the ball wherever he wanted it, whenever he wanted it, with any pitch, in any count.

And that's what pitching's all about. And Jimmy was that kind of guy. He was a student of the game before a lot of these other guys became students of the game. He knew, he studied the hitters, he watched the game during the game, he was the consummate professional. I mean, to have the kind of year he had, it was just a pleasure to be able to play with him. On the other side, the Tigers had Frank Tanana on the mound. One of baseball's great

reinvention stories. Tanana was a lefty who owned a 100 mile per hour fastball until he blew out his arm. By 1987 he was a 33 year old vet who couldn't break 90 with his heater and had to live on junk in his wits. Sure, Tanana was having a good season, 14-10 coming into this showdown game. Still, you'd have to say that it was advantage Jays. Key pitched the gem. Through eight innings, he had struck out eight and given up just three hits. One of those, though, was a solo homer to Larry Herndon. One that just scraped over the left field fence. I wasn't sure, no I don't think so.

Because it just got over the wall and just over Bell's glove, he had stepped on the short retaining wall there in left field, no. Number nine for Larry Herndon, one nothing Detroit. Night foam run of the year. Tries to get the ball in, gets in a little bit and Herndon's a low ball hitter yet. If you look at the configurations, if you look at Bell going back, the power hours are very short here in Detroit. One of those balls that you can jump up on the ledge and I've seen it done.

You have a chance to catch that ball. This is how Larry Milson saw herndon's homer the first thing we talked to we noticed that George Bell we thought he could have made a better effort on that ball he did make I guess kind of a jump for it he might have misjudged it a little bit the Sun at that time a year maybe is a little bit different than he was used to might have lost sight of the ball over the wind or something like that, but he very well could have caught that ball. Watching it on TV, I thought Bell had a play on it and just mistimed it. He didn't even make a desperate leap at the fence. Herndon's homer wasn't a walk-off. It gave the Tigers the narrowest of leads and the Jays had 15 outs to scratch out a run to tie or two

to take the lead. The strangest play down the stretch came with a miss sign and an unintentional attempted steal by the most unlikely thief. It was nothing to laugh at 30 years ago but Jesse Barfield smiles when he relives the moment. I know Tanana's a feisty veteran. He knows how to pitch, changes speeds on you. He's not going to give up a whole lot with runners in scoring position. Actually, we didn't have that many runners in scoring position that game. But I remember when he put on a hit and run with Cecil.

And we were all into the game. And I saw the hit and run. Everybody looked at each other like, did he just put on the hit and run? Oh, he didn't wipe it off. And so we were like, pins and needles looking. And he didn't make contact. I think it was Manny, he didn't make contact.

And Cecil was thrown out by 15, 15 miles. I forgot who was many, didn't make contact. And Cesar was thrown up by 15 miles. I forgot who was taking the throw. It might have been Trammell Whitaker. I don't remember exactly who. We were in such shock that whoever it was went up to get a hot dog, came back, forgot to catch up, came back, dang it, forgot his coat, came back and put the tag on Cesar.

We were in shock. Fans were still scratching their heads moments later when Lee smacked a triple that would have tied the game if not for the miss sign. By the top of the ninth it was a mirror image of the game the Sunday before. The visiting team down 1-0 going into the top of the ninth. Hang on everybody here's the ninth inning the Tigers won Toronto nothing. The Tigers three outs away from becoming the Eastern Division champions but Frank Tanana who has spun a shutout through eight will have to get by Fielder Lee and Orange for a pinch hitter or two in the ninth inning.

In this game though, it was Tanana going the distance. With the left-hander on the mound, there was no getting Ernie Witt off the bench. The game was in doubt to the very last out. With two out in the ninth, with the whole season hanging in the balance, Garth Orge stepped up to the plate. Like Ernie Witt, he was a bridge from those days when the Jays were still a novelty in Toronto and the whipping boys in the American League East. Orge had been in the organization since year one. In the inaugural season he was in Syracuse. Then he was called up to the big club for the first time in 78 and stuck with the Jays for good in 80. He was platooning at third base with the Rance Mullenix when the team made the playoffs in

85. That season he had a career year batting 313. In 87 the Jays had Kelly Gruber at third and a hole at second base that Orge filled along with a cast of others. Most of September Nelson Liriano was getting the call. Orge was mired in the worst season of his career. He was hitting only 202. Just four home runs and almost 350 at bats. It would have been storybook stuff if Orge had somehow managed to hit a bomb off Tanana or even just get on base to key a comeback and extend the season. The odds were long but only Orge understood exactly how long they were. It wasn't just that Tanana was lights out that day. Orge remembers walking to the plate in the ninth.

I had hurt my neck and didn't tell nobody. You know I went in and got treatment but the treatment was worthless and I was fighting all year to get right and I just could not get right. I never as of by far my worst year I've ever had in baseball. Man it was I mean I didn't sleep. I don't think I slept for two months. I'd wake up in the middle of the night going to my batting stand and say, what can I do? What can I do? And I just could not get right that year. One to go and the Tigers are the Eastern champions. This big crowd, 51,000 plus on its feet, Garth Orge is the obstacle now for Frank Kanata

in the ninth inning. I'm tempted to say that Orge's attitude was a throwback, but really that was the game back in the 80s. Pro ball players' first instinct was to play through injury, to contribute in any way, no matter what, to a team on course to the playoffs. With the comebacker to Tanana and the throw to first, the fall was complete. That's how the last at bat of the J season turned out. And coincidentally, the last at bat of Garth Orge's career.

At some level, he knew it. Down the homestretch, Orge wrote a daily column for the star. Maybe not wrote, he spoke daily to a reporter who did a ghost writing job on the column forum. In the last installment, based on a conversation within an hour of watching the Tigers celebrate, Orge floated it out there that it wasn't just the season that was sadly at an end. The last lines read, I just hope the good nucleus of this team will stay together and be back at it next year.

I hope to be part of it. If I'm not, it's been great. It's been 30 years, and Orge voices no regrets about his decision to try and stay in the lineup Even if it cost him a shot at playing two or three more seasons You know like I'm sitting there and I can you know like Pat Gilley called me up said they're gonna not gonna They're not gonna pursue me. They're gonna go to somebody else and you know, I couldn't blame him I could not blame him at all. I mean there's loyalty then there's like I I couldn't blame him. I could not blame him at all.

I mean, there's loyalty, then there's like, I have nothing but good things to say about Pat, Paul Beeson, the whole Toronto Blues Day organization. And I was hoping I'd get another shot with another club and it just come through fruition. So, you know, that was it. Whether you sit in the stands or on press row, you imagine those in management have a big vision for the team, some sort of master plan or design. You think they'd have a pretty good idea how things will unfold. After the loss in game 162 though, it was clear that those in the Jays' front office were shaken.

The Jays' run of bad luck didn't end in Detroit that Sunday, at least for catcher Charlie Moore. Larry Milsun explains. The next day he was in the wheat sheaf. He lived in an apartment building right next to the wheat sheaf. And he was in having a couple of brews and the roof fell in at the wheat sheaf and he was there. And I guess it's not funny because he got hurt a little bit and had to go, I guess he took some, but it was a minor injury.

I think he went to hospital, but was treated. So I called him a couple of days later and I thought it might be a funny story, but he wasn't too amused. So I felt sorry for him. The roof fell on him in two consecutive days. It was just that sort of week with Charlie Moore being the punchline

to an awful cosmic joke. It's tempting to say that Jays needed the heartbreak in 87 to become champions down the line. Those are the narratives that fans write in retrospect. Those are the connections that those of us in the media like to make. Grist for the mill. No one I talked to saw it that way though. The view looked entirely different for the players who had been in the organization for years. Every team in any sport is its own little universe. Each team lives in its own place and

time. 1987 was just one that got away and it stood completely independent from the Eastern Division Championships in 85 and 89 and the World Series wins in 92 and 93. And for many, Orange among them, it was a personal end point. The foundation had been poured back in the early 80s when Lloyd Mosby made his Jays debut at 20 and Jesse Barfield at 21. When George Bell was added in 84, the team had the best outfield in baseball and surged to 89 wins. The mid-80s were a time of so much promise and yet Jesse Barfield talks about them wistfully as disappointments.

Honestly, and I said it the other day to Lloyd and George and the other guys that were here I said we should have had three rings with the team we had Why it didn't happen. I don't know but in this game everything has to be clicking on all cylinders And we did but you know, what do you say some turnover was immediate the decision not to bring back Garth Orge was probably the easiest Manny Lee could make the move over to second base. The Jays had to find a way to get the bats of Fred McGriff and Cecil Fielder into the lineup, and old loyalties can only go so far. So another of the original Jays, Willie Upshaw, would be gone.

Everywhere you looked in the lineup, decisions loomed. Behind the plate, Ernie Witt would be 36 the next season. The Jays had Todd Stottlemyre making his debut the next spring, and from the get-go it was clear he'd pressed Jim Clancy for a spot in the rotation. And so it went. By the time the Jays won their first World Series, there were a handful of holdovers from that 87 team. Just Gruber and Lee among position players. Key, Steeb, Hanke and Ward on the mound.

And really, that excruciating near miss in 87 had nothing to do with their performance in 92. Not a thing. Like the stadium on the Lakeshore, that 87 team wasn't even in the rearview mirror. That team existed only in memory, and the memory of that last week of the season had begun to fade. 1987 had its share of historical moments, great and small. Reagan's speech at the Berlin Wall still echoes.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Just before game three of the World Series that year, the stock market crashed around the world. Fortunes were lost in a day. Blood spilled onto the sidewalk outside the exchanges. So much of what we take for granted was so new 30 years ago. The first loonies were put into circulation. If you find a dollar coin stamped 1987 in your pocket, you've got a first edition. The changes in the city of Toronto over the years have happened daily and you grow so used to them

you barely notice. If you look at photos of the skyline then and now, you wonder if it's the same place at all. Really, all that's left is a faint imprint of the city we knew, and so it goes with the city's ball club. Now, 30 years later, none of the players from the 87 Jays works in the organization. In the clubhouse, in management, they've all gone their separate ways. Some have stayed in the game. Tony Fernandez works in the Rangers front office. Ernie Witt scouts for Philly. Garth Orridge for Major League Baseball. And others are gone. Most tragically, Mike Flanagan, who committed suicide a couple of years after being fired as the Orioles GM.

Very surprising, sad time in my life. Mike was a good friend of mine. I don't pretend to understand what happened. The visitation and stuff was pretty much closed. They didn't want anybody to come. That was a very tough time. I've lost some great friends, can't understand it. You know, but with Mike, he was such a happy, easy-going, funny guy. It just was something that really hit me hard and was, to this day, it's a shock. It's not just that it seems like another team. It seems like an entirely different game, another time. And it was. All the soaring moments in 96 wins thrown into eclipse by seven awful games in the fall of 87. It was such a great experience putting together that podcast.

And you have to tip my hat to Amel. I mean, he's just an incredible talent and would love to work with him again. We had pitched a series of pod docs on the sporting year in 1972. I know it would have been expensive to do. It was really well received when we showed it around to people in the industry and a friend Bruce Hedlum who works for Pushkin, the Malcolm Gladwell podcast company, he was in on it with us. But that did not come to pass. And I also pitch how to succeed in sports writing as a series of comic pods, personal essays, I don't

know if you ever have listened to dead eyes. That was my my model. I was I was going to do Dead Eyes, but instead of being a character actor, I was going to be a sports writer. I was going to relive all the awful indignities in the same way that the host and protagonist of Dead Eyes did. But so I look back on all this fondly, and I came out of it with a great friendship

with Tom Hankey, which was the best thing, I would say, out of all of it. So I appreciate you throwing this up there and the love that you give. And yes, it was the first time that I did a podcast. I only came on Toronto Mike a couple months down the line. And that I recall now was when Mike got pneumonia. If I'm not mistaken. Oh yeah, walking pneumonia. Cause I didn't miss a beat.

I remember I was still biking and stuff, but I did have pneumonia. I had to pop a pill every day and then it was gone. I was thinking like, God, listen to him. He's so rough. Right. I must be okay. Well, I've never been nominated for and I hope I get these initials right in RTD and

a award. And again, you pointed out, you know, the CBC was doing hard hitting news. There wasn't a sports section or division or you would have cleaned up at those awards. You were going up against the hard news and the fall of 87 just simply couldn't cut the mustard. But I loved this doc. I'm glad we could resurrect it and breathe new life into it and let people. I mean, there's a lot of Toronto Blue Jays fans hurting right now, so let's hurt them a little more. Oh, it's so painful.

And that brings us to the end of our 1,558th episode of Toronto Miked. For all your Toronto Miked needs, go to torontomic.com. Much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, RecycleMyElectronics.ca, Raymond James Canada, Monaris, and Ridley Funeral Home. See you all Monday when my special guest is Leona Boyd. And drink some goodness from a tin If it's my UI check, ask, just come in Ah, where you been? Because everything is coming out rosy and gray

Yeah, the wind is cold, but snow is cold It won't ski today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and green