After a shaky August, the Jays raised their game when it mattered most

If the Jays had any kinks that still needed working out, those late-August pastings at the hands of the Brewers did the trick. Not only did Toronto rebound to close out the month with back-to-back wins over Milwaukee and the White Sox, their summer skid had been mirrored by the Orioles, who went 16-12 in August, allowing the Jays to stay a game and a half ahead. Still, the Brewers, against whom Toronto had struggled all season, were looking like a late-season threat. The Jays needed a near-perfect final month.

Joe Carter RF
The last two months of the season, we never lost back-to-back games. We had our minds straight, we knew what we wanted to do, and we were not going to let anybody stand in our way.

The pennant race was captivating for fans, but the media attention it attracted could be taxing.

Pat Tabler 1b
I don’t think it affected just Toronto. We would go to Minnesota and the Metrodome would be packed with Canadian Blue Jays fans; Detroit: packed with Canadian Blue Jays fans.

Howard Starkman pr
The media wanted Joe Carter to talk every game, win or lose, because he was generally available and every game was huge. It’s tough to go to a player when he really didn’t have anything to do with the loss—maybe the pitcher was horses–t that night. What’s he supposed to say?

If anyone, aside from Winfield, could help take the glare of the spotlight off Carter for a moment, it was infielder Mike Maksudian.

Joe Carter
Mike Maksudian was a young guy who came up in September and had a fetish for eating bugs. He ate a lot of bugs while he was with the team. I remember CBS came to Toronto, they had him front and centre and had him being served a plate of food. They took the top off the plate of food and it was nothing but insects.

Tom Henke RP
We’d dare him to eat grasshoppers and worms. In Kansas City, I caught a couple great big locusts out in the bullpen. We got a pool together: 700 bucks, still alive. He put a piece of spaghetti around one and chewed on it and swallowed. The bug was buzzing in his mouth. I thought Dave Winfield was gonna upchuck right there.

Maksudian wasn’t the only benchwarmer keeping the starters loose.

Turner Ward of
When Joe DH’d, we would go in and play ping pong [while the Jays were in the field]. That was his way of staying loose and working on his hand-eye coordination. We would go in there and hit a few balls and he’d come back out and get ready to hit.

For years, Jays fans had been criticized for being too sedate and cheering at the wrong times. Speaking to Toronto Star writer Jim Proudfoot in early September, Winfield urged the fans to get loud right from the first pitch. The slogan “Winfield Wants Noise” was born.

Darren Kritzer bat boy
After Winfield said something, it changed things.

Dave Winfield DH
I remember doing an interview near the end of the season saying we needed a home-field advantage. I commented that come playoff time, we needed the crowd on our side from the get-go, they couldn’t wait until we did something good to ignite. Next game, signs were out, people saying “Winfield Wants Noise!” When you see that it makes you feel good. Like the fans get it. It made it feel like an honour to play for them.

Roberto Alomar 2B
After that it felt like the noise was there, the crowd was in it. To us, the home crowd was the 25th man on the roster. As a player, you come to a packed house every day, you push yourself a little bit more. I’m glad that the man we all respected said something.

Candy Maldonado LF
We needed [the fans] to reach the World Series. It takes more than the players on the field.

The team repaid the increased support with a 16–5 drubbing of the Twins that earned David Cone his first win as a Jay and sparked a series sweep. A scheduling quirk had the Brewers and Orioles play each other seven times in mid-September. As those clubs slugged it out, the Jays caught fire, going 18-9 in September. Every one of those wins was crucial to the team’s playoff chances, but a Sept. 27 victory at Yankee Stadium provided a particularly sweet milestone. After waiting out a two-hour rain delay, Jack Morris retook the mound and carried a 9–0 lead through the sixth. Toronto went on to win 12–2, making Morris the first 20-game winner in franchise history.

Cito Gaston manager
I remember Alfredo [Griffin] swinging at a pitch that wasn’t even close to the plate, trying to get the game in.

Jerry Howarth radio
I think Dave Stieb would’ve been the first 20-game winner had he had a bullpen over his seven years as an all-star.

Unfortunately, Stieb wasn’t there to cheer on Morris. Off-season back surgery and flaring tendinitis in his elbow had teamed to render him largely ineffective. After 14 seasons as a Blue Jay, he officially announced he was done for the year on Sept. 23.

David Wells SP
Hitters feared [Stieb] because he was so nasty and he wasn’t afraid to knock you on your butt. That was his mentality: “That’s my plate. Here you go, try to wear that slider around your neck.” He’d start it at their neck and it’d come down for a strike on the outside corner.

Pat Hentgen SP
Dave was the guy I looked up to the most. Playing in the minor leagues from 1986 to 1990, there was no other pitcher on the planet except for Dave Stieb.

David Wells
When he went down with his back surgery, I took over for him as a spot starter. I got that opportunity to start until he came back, but when you get Dave Stieb out there at 70 percent, as long as the opposition doesn’t know, he’s effective.

With just two games separating them from Milwaukee, the Jays still hadn’t clinched the division entering their final series of the season at home against the Tigers. After winning the first game 8–7, they had a chance Oct. 3—Dave Winfield’s 41st birthday—to clinch with
Juan Guzmán on the mound. Guzmán struck out seven of the first 12 Detroit batters he faced and gave up only one hit over eight innings. When Winfield drove in the Jays’ third run in the fifth,
a sold out SkyDome treated him to its best rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

Jerry Howarth
Oct. 3, 1951. That’s when Dave was born. That was the same day Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard ’Round the World.” So, when Dave came from that birth, which was a historic day in baseball, to what he did there, I think a lot of the fans appreciated that, too, and went with the ride and the flow.

Dave Winfield
I felt like I was totally accepted, like I was part of a larger family.

Cito Gaston
We needed that because Milwaukee was on our backs. We always had trouble beating them, so we wanted to get around that. That was a big hit.

Darren Kritzer
They won it the hard way, battling in divisions of seven or eight teams. It was tougher back then.

Sweeping the Tigers in the final set of the year, the Jays shut the door on Milwaukee and took the AL East by four games.

PART ONE: “A lot to live up to”
The pre-season came with great expectations for the star-studded Jays

PART TWO: “This is a special team”
Veteran leadership helped the Jays start strong

PART THREE: “Smoking hot in the Big Smoke”
An early-summer winning streak had the Jays looking down on the AL East

PART FOUR: “Feeling the stretch”
After a shaky August, the Jays raised their game when it mattered most

PART FIVE: “Over the hump”
Seven years after choking away a 3–1 ALCS lead, the Jays found redemption

PART SIX: “Three for three”
Victory for the True North Strong and Free in the home of the Braves

This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine.