LOS ANGELES — In the rafters of the Rogers Centre, above the scoreboard and the field-facing hotel windows, a line of banners honors the history of the Toronto Blue Jays. Most of the flags recognize the franchise’s playoff seasons. The one on the far right shows the number 32.
It is rendered in the team’s distinctive style and represents Roy Halladay, the only Blue Jay with a retired number. But because there is no name alongside it, a quick glance could conjure another meaning for 32: the number of years since Toronto last won a title.
Nobody in the Blue Jays’ lineup for Game 5 of the World Series, an emphatic 6-1 thumping of the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday, was alive in 1993. But the number 32 hangs above them all, literally, as a burden of history and a beacon of hope.
It reminds them that Toronto once ruled the baseball world, first in 1992 and then when Joe Carter’s home run ended the next season in a burst of national pride. The Blue Jays are returning now with a three-games-to-two lead in this World Series. On Friday they could end the drought and earn their own championship.
Maybe even with a walk-off homer.
“I grew up in Denver, so I wasn’t hearing too much about the Blue Jays, to be honest,” said Kevin Gausman, a 34-year-old righty who will start for Toronto in Game 6. “But since I’ve known about baseball, I’ve definitely known about the swing and the call and the importance of the swing. You know, a walk-off homer in the World Series — there’s not many of those.”
There have been only two, and we are now nearly as close to Carter’s as Carter’s was to the first, by Bill Mazeroski for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1960.
Last fall, the Dodgers got their chance to re-enact Kirk Gibson’s opening walk-off, when Freddie Freeman did the same in Game 1 against the New York Yankees. If the baseball gods have any sense of fairness — a big if — these Blue Jays may have their own Carter moment, which came against the Phillies in Game 6.
“You see the videos; we play that as part of our hype-up tape,” said Joey Loperfido, a Blue Jays outfielder who grew up in Philadelphia, where they curse Carter’s name.
“We got to see Joe throw out the first pitch (before Game 2) and put the home run jacket on and stuff like that. So I think now, being in the dugout and being on the field for big moments and big postseason moments, you realize the magnitude of how one swing can kind of engrave your name with a city and a championship — a legacy.”
Trey Yesavage etched his name in Blue Jays lore on Wednesday, baiting and baffling the Dodgers with dastardly splitters from a catapult delivery. Yesavage is a 22-year-old rookie earning the minimum salary. His opponent, Blake Snell, makes $36.4 million for the Dodgers. Snell pitched well in Game 5 but has now lost twice in this World Series in games started by Yesavage.
The Blue Jays are a tough sell as an underdog; only the Dodgers, New York Mets, Yankees and Phillies spend more on player salaries. But it was charming, at least, to see a kid who started this season facing the Jupiter Hammerheads dominating the sport’s behemoth when it mattered most.
“We believe in him, we’ve seen it,” Max Scherzer said. “He’s one of us.”
Yesavage has three career starts in the regular season. The rest of the Blue Jays’ World Series rotation — Gausman, Scherzer and Shane Bieber — has combined for 937. Yesavage said he talked to all of them this week to help him prepare. That is how it must have been for the 1992 champions with seasoned starters like Jack Morris, David Cone and Jimmy Key, and the 1993 group with Dave Stewart.
Those teams also had a few grizzled hitters willing to help. The first World Series victory in Blue Jays history turned on a home run by a young pinch-hitter, Ed Sprague, who had asked a veteran, Rance Mulliniks, for tips on Braves closer Jeff Reardon, then the career leader in saves.
He’ll try to get you to chase a high fastball, Mulliniks told Sprague, so make sure to get him down in the zone. Sprague considered taking a pitch, but thought better of it. He hunted the low fastball, swung at one thigh-high, and belted it over the left field wall in Atlanta.
So it was in Game 5, when Davis Schneider led off for the first time since mid-August. He remembered what he’d heard from the injured George Springer, who usually hits first, and applied it against Snell.
“He has a really good changeup — his off-speed, his curveball, his slider — so he has a lot of good pitches,” Schneider said. “Obviously his fastball’s 96-98, so you can’t really take that for granted as well. But George kind of always preaches: always be ready for the fastball (on the) first pitch leading off the game, and George has done it for numerous years. I’ve got to take some advice when I can get it.”
Schneider smashed the first pitch of the game for a homer — something that hadn’t been done in the World Series since the Yankees’ Derek Jeter connected off the Mets’ Bobby Jones in Game 4 in 2000. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed Schneider with another homer two pitches later, and just like that, the Blue Jays had all the runs they needed.
The task now facing the Dodgers, who must win Games 6 and 7 on the road, has been accomplished twice in recent years, by the Chicago Cubs in Cleveland in 2016 and the Washington Nationals in Houston in 2019.
But Toronto, of course, has the easier path and the chance to clinch at home, something only two teams have managed in the last 13 World Series. The 2013 Boston Red Sox and 2022 Astros both treated their fans to a Game 6 clincher, and so far the Blue Jays have followed their pattern.
After splitting the first two World Series games at home, the 2013 Red Sox and 2022 Astros lost Game 3 on the road but recovered to win Games 4 and 5. That’s the route the Jays have taken against the Dodgers, too.
The Blue Jays’ title teams both could have clinched in Game 5, but lost and saved their celebration for Game 6. For Carter, the first season ended in his glove, the second off his bat: as a first baseman in 1992, he caught a throw from pitcher Mike Timlin, who had fielded a bunt by the Braves’ Otis Nixon.
After dominant Game 5, the Blue Jays head home for a moment 32 years in the making. A bunt one October, a blast the next. Both times, Carter and his teammates earned a feeling now tantalizingly close for the Blue Jays of 2025.
“You can go from as far east as Nova Scotia to as far west as Vancouver and it was all about the Blue Jays, and it was all about Canada, and that has a warm place in my heart,” Carter said in Toronto before his first pitch.
“So you’re not just playing for a city. You’ve got the Dodgers — they’re playing for L.A. They’re not playing for the whole U.S., they’re playing for Los Angeles. Toronto, totally different. You’re playing for all of Canada.
“Let me tell you, it’s a lot of fun.”
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